In fact, it is not unreasonable to speak of there being two armies today: the "small army" that is focused on counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency, stabilization and reconstruction (S&R) and the myriad species of low intensity combat (LIC); and the "Big Army" that is constantly preparing to fight the Big War of tanks, infantry combat vehicles, and artillery that is very much the exception rather than the rule. The small army is dominated by combat-tested junior officers who have learned first hand on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan the demands of 21st century ground combat; the Big Army is dominated by generals and colonels who came up in the Cold War, who have made their careers managing big-ticket weapon systems and commanding large formations intended to stop the Soviet Army in the Fulda Gap. There is a chasm between the two that is difficult to bridge.
In fact, it is not too much to say that there is a fight going on for the soul of the Army today, between the old guard of the Big Army, fighting budget battles to preserve expensive and only marginally useful programs such as the Future Combat System, who see the future of the Army revolving around major conventional wars; and the small army of bright young company, battalion and even some brigade commanders, who understand that most of our future wars will look a lot more like Iraq, and who are developing the skills, tactics and equipment to fight them. Evidence of this ongoing fight can be seen in the decision to bring General Petraeus back to the United States to sit on the recent promotion board for brigadier generals. This was apparently done at the behest of Defense Secretary Gates, who was anxious to break the mold of previous promotion boards and institutionalize the changes made by the Army in Iraq and Afghanistan by advancing officers who embodied those changes. Whether, in the long term, this will lead to systemic change is an important question.
So when was Iraq (the post-major combat phase) deemed the most likely type of war we will fight in the future? It seems that it was once a condemnation of the military that they always prepared to fight the last war. And now it is the height of sophisticated analysis to disregard conventional warfare because the Army should assume it will only need to fight more wars like the current one in Iraq?
It was a conventional assault that took down Saddam's army--twice. It was a conventional assault that overthrew Noriega's regime. It was a conventional air assault that compelled Milosevich to capitulate. And a conventional army prepared to invade Serbia marched into Kosovo after that. A conventional force took down the Marxist regime in Grenada. And it was a conventional Army that held the Soviets at bay and kept the North Koreans quiet throughout the Cold War.
Remember that the conventional Army adapted to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq in a COIN campaign. We actually did have the time to adapt our well-trained troops from conventional war to COIN. And the new Army operations manual will hopefully keep the institutional knowledge alive if needed. But if an Army unable to fight conventionally must fight a conventional war, we will not get the time to adapt--our Army will be destroyed on the battlefield the way Saddam's was in 2003.
Those junior officers of ours fighting in Iraq are indeed gaining valuable combat experience. So I'm glad they will be fast-tracked for promotion. This wartime experience will make them better officers across the conflict spectrum even though their combat experience is in COIN. But these officers must be retrained in conventional combat and all those soldiers who are training as infantry instead of as engineers or gunners or air defense troops must go back to their primary jobs once Iraq is won. This is the "rebalancing" you may have heard about. This is not the same as stress from deployment. This just means all our efforts are--rightly--focused on winning in Iraq and so training for the war takes priority. But this focus unbalances our military.
In time, we must rebalance the force to fight enemy brigades and divisions. We obviously need to be able to fight COIN. But I guarantee that the Big Army will save our collective butts one day--if we don't cripple it ourselves by believing we know how all our enemies will fight us.
