This is a good ambition:
The Defense Department doesn’t want to lose its irregular warfare edge, honed through more than a decade of conflict across the Middle East, even as it directs its armed forces to refocus on state-level adversaries.
Retaining the U.S. military’s hard-fought knowledge of counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism was a priority for former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who helped design a new national defense strategy in 2018 that prioritizes countering peer-level adversaries like China and Russia.
“Sec. Mattis specifically wanted to end this boom-bust cycle in IW [irregular warfare] that we’ve all experienced,” Owen West, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, said at a defense industry symposium Tuesday.
But it is tough to manage when a unit is preparing for its primary role. Staying good at irregular warfare even as a unit prepares for conventional warfare is no easier than it was to retain conventional skills as our Army got "unbalanced" fighting insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Could the answer lie in our large supply of officers available for expanding the Army in a big-war crisis?
I start with my belief that any good soldier geared for conventional war is the building block for a counter-insurgency force if properly led and given the orders and missions appropriate for counter-insurgency.
Should the Army model the Navy practice of assigning "gold" and "blue" crews for some of its ships that have the crews fly in to crew the ship without bringing the ship (or subs, which do come back to home port for the swap, I think) home?
The Army could start to think of the combat brigades and its units as platforms and think of the command element as the crew.
Rather than having brigades assigned to either conventional or irregular warfare (and I've long thought that units assigned exclusively to the latter role--by whatever new term you want to call them--become worthless for the former), the Army could use its plethora of officers to create Blue and Gold command elements that focus on conventional or irregular missions (perhaps Red for conventional and Blue for COIN?) that can utilize the basic good soldier for new brigade missions.
Heck, add in other colors if you want specializations in urban missions (Gray) or whatever (e.g., White for Arctic, Green for jungle, Brown for mountain).
The default command elements would be the conventional Red HQ. The alternate "color" headquarters elements would exercise with simulated troops in command post exercises in addition to occasionally being plugged into American units.
Perhaps the alternate Army color headquarters could get the cooperation of allied units that specialize in the same type of combat and spend time commanding them in exercises. This would allow Army alternate HQs more command opportunities and would familiarize allied forces with American command and control procedures to allow them to work more effectively with American units.
For the basic soldier, the senior headquarters leadership might as well be on another planet. Why would they care if new brigade and battalion leadership is brought in? When I was in uniform (with my limited Guard service, of course--no snake eating was involved with your REMF TDR host) I barely saw my platoon leader let alone the brigade or battalion commanders.
And of course, the alternate HQ elements would be available to mobilize new units in national emergencies. Yes, the command elements might have to refocused on the main type of combat that the then-ongoing war requires, but they'd have time as new troops are trained and existing troops our pulled from other units.
To me the key to preserving skills and capabilities in different methods of warfare is the officer corps and senior NCOs. As long as the knowledge base is preserved the good soldiers properly equipped can be rapidly adapted to the new missions.
