An American officer doesn't think we are ready for the big league:
Most of today’s senior generals – division commanders up to four-stars — got their first taste of battle in 1991’s Desert Storm. Brigade-and-below commanders typically deployed first to Bosnia or fought in Iraq or Afghanistan soon after 9/11. All of these military operations were hailed as unequivocal tactical successes. But all military success is not alike.
The level of difficulty and set of challenges the Army has faced since 1980 isn’t comparable to those faced by uniformed leaders during World War II, Korea, and even the initial stages of Vietnam. Our senior leaders have spent virtually their entire careers in environments where they were able to schedule “war” as if it were a training event. They had the luxury of establishing deployment schedules, often times years in advance. Next-to-deploy units had predictable flight schedules, shipping timetables, and arrived in the combat theater to mature infrastructure. Troops frequently had on-base shopping malls (post exchanges), restaurants, coffee shops, and all-you-can-eat military dining facilities (typically featuring weekly lobster and steak nights).
Throughout Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom, leaders at Regional Command and below have been able to conduct tactical engagements throughout their deployment window against Iraqi and Afghan insurgents with unprecedented certainty. Before the first boot hit the ground, leaders often knew exactly when their units would return. American troops were able to conduct tactical missions at a time, place, scope, and speed as they saw fit. If any conditions didn’t favor employment, U.S. leaders could choose to alter the fight timelines or cancel the mission altogether. The only time the enemy took the tactical initiative it was at something like platoon-level or below, and action of that nature was rare. Since the Vietnam War, no American combat leader above the position of company commander has faced a situation where his unit was at risk of defeat by an unexpected enemy attack.
Ever.
In fact, never since Vietnam has any enemy formation had any chance of inflicting a tactical defeat on U.S. forces. Not in Grenada, Desert Storm, Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia, the conventional phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom, nor any phase of counterinsurgency operations since 9/11.
He has a point. Although I think that even in Grenada there were some tight periods when our enemies could have hurt us. There were some close calls in Afghanistan, even though the author is generally right that in the counter-insurgency fights we rarely faced enemies in larger than platoon strength (50 enemy). After losing in battle--in both Afghanistan and Iraq--they tended to rely on IEDs and indirect fire to attack us. So the fact that we won these engagements doesn't mean we didn't face a threat of loss (Wanat, anyone?).
At one level, we are correcting the fact that our Army became "unbalanced" in more than a decade of counter-insurgency and counter-terrorist operations. Units just did not practice at conventional warfare. Which was the right thing to do, I'll add. Losing a counter-insurgency war we are waging to keep troops ready for a hypothetical conventional war made no sense.
That is changing. And while our foes the last decade have been second-rate, just having troops used to being shot at is a tremendous advantage for the future.
But it is true that we can't assume that battlefield victory is our birthright. I've said this enough in the past. And recent talk of speeding up the Army to be strategically mobile says to me that too many people assume that victory is the constant in the equation of war and we just have to lighten up the Army to deploy it overseas faster to collect that assumed victory.
And I recently read an Air Force Magazine article arguing that (this time for sure!), killing power against ground power now lies in the hands of the Air Force rather than the Army. Really, the Army just needs to be a screen that holds the enemy in place with enough forward air controllers to call in the smart bombs.
This attitude will lead to a defeat if unchecked.
And I've addressed the failure to rush to the sound of the guns in Benghazi as if military operations can only take place at our pace--and preferably after a lovely PowerPoint presentation on what we will do.
Mind you, this officer caused a stir a couple years ago with an article essentially accusing the military of lying about progress in Afghanistan. I disagreed, noting that we weren't creating an Afghan military capable of taking on our troops--we have been building an Afghan security force capable of defeating the Taliban.
But on this issue, I think the author is spot on:
If America wants a championship-caliber Army, we must subject them to much tougher training – both physical and emotional – and place our leaders under considerably more stress, exposing them to a much broader set of potential combat environments than has been the case for the past couple decades. Further, we must hold commanders responsible for how they perform under these stressful conditions, rewarding prudent risk-taking (even if the outcome of any given engagement might result in mission failure) and avoid rewarding performance that seeks the avoidance of risk.
Our troops are good. But they are not invincible. And I don't want them assuming no battlefield foe can stop them. I want our training to get back to brutally tough field exercises in conventional operations against our OPFOR (opposing forces) at the National Training Center (NTC). That training was so good that conventional Iraqi forces in battle were nothing compared to the OPFOR in training, according to our troops who experienced both.
The old saying is true: sweat during peace to avoid bleeding during war. Make our troops sweat, physically, intellectually, and emotionally.
