Tag strategic studies

The State of U.S. Air Force Air Power

Operation Inherent Resolve 2014. [Business Insider]

The U.S. Air Force (USAF) has fielded a formidable force, demonstrating air dominance in conflicts fought, as well as those threatened, across the globe for decades through the Cold War (1945-1991); think Strategic Air Command (SAC) under Gen Curtis LeMay. Pax Americana has been further extended to the present. A “pax” (Latin for peace) being a period of relative peace due to a preponderance of power. The French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine famously defined the U.S. as a “hyperpower”, or “a country that is dominant or predominant in all categories” (NY Times, 1999-02-05). The ability to project power by the U.S. military, especially by the USAF, is and was unparalleled.

According to Gen David Goldfein, Air Force Chief of Staff, “We’re everywhere. Air power has become the oxygen the joint team breathes. Have it, you don’t even think about [it]. Don’t have it, it’s all you think about. Air superiority, ISR [Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance], space, lift [airlift, or transport services] are just a few examples.”

Indeed, “Land-based forces now are going to have to penetrate denied areas to facilitate air and naval forces. This is exact opposite of what we have done for the last 70 years, where air and naval forces have enabled ground forces,” according to General Mark Milley, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army. War on the Rocks claims “there is no end in sight to the [U.S.] Army’s dependence on airpower.”

The USAF Fights as a Joint Force

The photo above illustrates a joint team across U.S. and allied forces, by combining assets from the USAF, the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC), as well as the Royal Air Force (RAF), and Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) into a single fighting force. But it also demonstrates this preponderance of power by the USAF, which provided almost all of the aircraft used by the operation. Pictured aircraft include (clockwise from left):

  • U-2S (USAF) – provides ISR.
  • PAC-3 (USAF) – surface-to-air missile to attack airborne targets.
  • KC-10 (USAF) – provide in-flight refueling services.
  • F-15E (USAF) – provides both air superiority and precision strike capabilities.
  • E-3D Sentry (RAF or USAF) – provides command, control, communications and computers, plus ISR, which happily forms the unique acronym C4ISR, rather than “CCCCISR”
  • F/A-18C (USMC or RAAF) – provides both air superiority and precision strike capabilities.
  • F/A-22 (USAF) – provides penetrating strike and air dominance capabilities.
  • A330 MRTT (RAF?) – provides both in-flight refueling and airlift services.
  • Emergency Medical and Firefighting ground vehicles.
  • RQ-4 Global Hawk (USAF) – Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) providing ISR.

Thus, I’d assert, we have seen some strong evidence of great plans, and more importantly a planning capability by the U.S. military, including and especially the USAF.

The USAF Faces Some Significant Challenges

According to a RAND study on the USAF pilot shortage, the real issue is experience levels in “Operational Units (i.e., those with combat responsibilities) are the only assignment options for newly trained pilots while they mature and develop their mission knowledge. Thus, these units require enough experienced pilots to supervise the development of the new pilots. As the proportion of experienced pilots in a unit drops, each one must fly more to provide essential supervision to an increasing number of new pilots. If the unit’s flying capacity cannot increase, new pilots each fly less, extending the time they need to become experienced themselves.”

Given that the career path from military pilot to airlines pilot has been in operation since the 1940’s, why should this be a critical issue now? Because the difference in pay has changed. “The Air Force believes much of the problem comes from commercial airlines that have been hiring at increased rates and can offer bigger paychecks.” All major U.S. Airlines, however, must report not only pilot quantities and salaries, but many other financial details to the Office of Airline Information (OAI), which provides this data to the public for free. Does the USAF not have the capability to analyze and manage the economics of pilot demand and supply? It seems they have been caught reacting, rather than proactively managing their most critical resource, trained human pilots.

“Drone pilots suffer a high rate of burnout, as they work 12 to 13 hour days, performing mainly intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions, but also some strikes where mistakes caused by tired eyes can cost lives.” Given the autopilot capabilities of commercial airliners, why are Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) aircrews working so much? Why has autonomy not been granted to a machine for the long, boring and tedious tasks of loiter, and then a human alerted when required to make decisions? Perhaps because the RPA concept is not developed enough to allow for man-machine teaming, perhaps because military leaders do not trust technology to deliver the right alerts.

  • According to Goldfein, “I believe it’s a crisis: air superiority is not an American birthright. It’s actually something you have to fight for and maintain.”

As fighter pilots seem to be more likely to leave the USAF, these issues seem to be related. As “drones” (more properly RPA) became the star of the global war on terrorism since 2001, many USAF fighter pilots who were formerly physically flying USAF aircraft such as the F-16 were tasked with sitting in a cargo container and staring at a screen, while their inputs to controls were beamed across the world at the speed of light to the controlled drone, which was often loitering for hours over a target area that required persistent ISR. Several Hollywood movies (such as Good Kill (2014)) have been made about this twofold life of USAF pilots. Did the USAF not know that these circumstances would erode morale? Do they know why pilots sign up for service, and why they stay?

How About Battlefield Networking?

A Battle Network enabled by an F-15C with Talon HATE pod. [foxtrot alpha]

In previous posts in this blog, we’ve seen that information is a critical resource. The ability to share information on a battlefield network is the defining capability about how we will win future wars, according to Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work. Most units in the USAF (as well as most NATO units) have the Link 16 network (depicted in blue above). This was conceived in 1967 by MITRE, demonstrated in 1973 by MITRE, and developed as the Joint Tactical Information Distribution System (JTIDS) in 1981 by what is now BAE Systems. “Fielding proceeded slowly throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s with rapid expansion (following 9/11) in preparation for Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan) and Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

Not all units are equipped with Link 16 capability, especially the new stealth fighters, since broadcasting over this network gives away a units position. Instead, the F-22 was equipped with the In-Flight Data Link (IFDL), the red lines in diagram above. Since only the F-22 was equipped with this type of data link, legacy fighters like the F-15C could not communicate easily with F-22 units. Similarly, the F-35 program is being deployed with its own, the Multi-Function Advanced Data Link (MADL), which likewise preserves stealth, but also impedes communications with units not so equipped.

The difficulty and complexity of fielding a battlefield network which allows aircraft to communicate without compromising their stealth is tough, which is why Lt Col Berke stated that “these networks have yet to be created.” The Talon HATE pod is a stopgap capability, requested by the Pacific Air Forces, prototyped and deployed by Boeing Phantom Works. “With the stealthy F-22 buy truncated at 183 aircraft and F-35s being introduced into service far more slowly than planned, the Air Force is being forced to devise a connectivity regimen among these platforms to maximize their capabilities in battle.” The Talon HATE pod also includes an IRST, which the USAF has learned is effective at detecting stealth fighters.

Indeed, as reported by Aviation Week, the USAF is still in the process to rolling out Link 16 to its older tankers the KC-135, which are among the oldest aircraft still flown by the USAF. Perhaps this is a reaction to the Chinese operationalized stealth fighter, the J-20. It has recently been photographed carrying four external fuel tanks, which may give it the range to attack potentially vulnerable targets, such as tankers.

The U.S. Army’s Identity Crisis: Optimizing For Future Warfare

[GlobalSecurity.org]

As the U.S. national security establishment grapples with the implications of the changing character of warfare in the early 21st century, one of more difficult questions to be addressed will be how to properly structure its land combat forces. After nearly two decades of irregular warfare, advocates argue that U.S land forces are in need of recapitalization and modernization. Their major weapons systems are aging and the most recent initiative to replace them was cancelled in 2009. While some upgrades have been funded on the margins, U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps leaders have also committed to developing a new warfighting doctrine—Multi-Domain Battle (MDB)—to meet the potential challenges of 21st century warfare.

Because conflicts arising from Great Power rivalries and emerging regional challenges pose the greatest potential strategic danger to the U.S., some have called for optimizing the Army to execute combined arms maneuver warfare against peer or near-peer armies. Recent experience suggests however that the most likely future conflicts the U.S. will engage in will involve ongoing post-Cold War ethnic and nationalist-driven political violence, leading others to support a balanced force structure also capable of conducting wide-area security, or stabilization operations and counterinsurgency.

The Army attempted in 2011 to define wide-area security and combined arms maneuver as the two core competencies in its basic doctrine that would allow it to best prepare for these contingencies. By 2016, Army doctrine abandoned specific competencies in favor of the ability to execute “unified land operations,” broadly defined as “simultaneous offensive, defensive, and stability or defense support of civil authorities tasks to seize, retain, and exploit the initiative and consolidate gains to prevent conflict, shape the operational environment, and win our Nation’s wars as part of unified action.”

The failure to prioritize strategic missions or adequately fund modernization leaves the Army in the position of having to be ready to face all possible contingencies. Gates Brown claims this is inflicting an identity crisis on the Army that jeopardizes its combat effectiveness.

[B]y training forces for all types of wars it ends up lessening combat effectiveness across the entire spectrum. Instead of preparing inadequately for every war, the Army needs to focus on a specific skill set and hone it to a sharp edge… [A] well-defined Army can scramble to remedy known deficiencies in combat operations; however, consciously choosing not to set a deliberate course will not serve the Army well.

The Army’s Identity Crisis

To this point, the Army has relied on a balanced mix of land combat forces divided between armor (heavy tracked and medium wheeled) and light infantry formations. Although optimized for neither combined arms maneuver nor wide-area security, these general purpose forces have heretofore demonstrated the capability to execute both missions tolerably well. The Active Army currently fields 10 divisions comprising 31 Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs) almost evenly split between armor/mechanized and infantry (16 armored/Stryker and 15 infantry).

Major Nathan Jennings contends that the Army force structure should be specifically reorganized for combined arms maneuver and MDB.

Designed to maximize diverse elements of joint, interorganizational and multinational power to create temporary windows of advantage against complex enemy systems, the Army’s incorporation of the idea should be accompanied by optimization of its order of battle to excel against integrated fire and maneuver networks. To that end, it should functionalize its tactical forces to fight as penetration, exploitation and stabilization divisions with corresponding expertise in enabling the vast panoply of American and allied coercive abilities.

This forcewide realignment would enable “flexible and resilient ground formations [to] project combat power from land into other domains to enable joint force freedom of action,” as required by Gen. David G. Perkins, commander of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. While tailored brigades and battalions would feature combined arms with the ability to maneuver in a dispersed manner, optimized divisions would allow functional expertise in rear, close, deep and non-linear contests while maintaining operational tempo throughout rapid deep attacks, decisive assaults, and consolidation of gains. The new order would also bridge tactical and operational divides to allow greater cross-domain integration across the full range of military operations.

On the other hand, Lieutenant Colonel Jason Nicholson advocates heeding the lessons of the last decade and a half of U.S. experience with irregular warfare and fielding an upgraded, yet balanced, force structure. He does not offer a prescription for a proper force mix, but sees the recent Army decision to stand up six Security Force Assistance Brigades (SFABs) as an encouraging development.

The last sixteen years of ongoing military operations have been conducted at the expense of future requirements of all types. The modernization problems presented by “small wars” challenge the Army as surely as those related to high-intensity conflicts. While SFABs are a step in the right direction, greater investment is required to maximize the lessons learned after sixteen years of counterinsurgency. Training for specific missions like combat advising and security force assistance should be institutionalized for tactical units beyond the designated SFABs. The need for additional capabilities for operating in austere environments will also drive equipment requirements such as lighter power generation and enhanced tactical mobility. Greater expeditionary logistics, armor, and fire support assets will also be critical in future operations. Hybrid warfare, from the Russian campaign in Ukraine to the French campaign in Mali, will continue to change the nature of “small wars.” Megacities, climate change, and other similar challenges will require the same attention to detail by the Army as near-peer conflict in order to ensure future operational success.

No Simple Answers To Strategic Insolvency

Decisions regarding the Army’s force structure will be in the hands of senior political and military decision-makers and will require hard choices and accepting risks. Proponents of optimizing for combined arms maneuver concede that future U.S. commitments to counterinsurgency or large-scale stabilization operations would likely have to be curtailed. Conversely, a balanced force structure is a gamble that either conventional war is unlikely to occur or that general purpose forces are still effective enough to prevail in an emergency.

Hal Brands and Eric Edelman argue that the U.S. currently faces a crisis of “strategic insolvency” due to the misalignment of military capabilities with geopolitical ends in foreign policy, caused by the growth in strategic and geopolitical challenges combined with a “disinvestment” in defense resources. They contend that Great Powers have traditionally restored strategic solvency in three ways:

  • “First, they can decrease commitments thereby restoring equilibrium with diminished resources.”
  • “Second, they can live with greater risk by gambling that their enemies will not test vulnerable commitments or by employing riskier approaches—such as nuclear escalation—to sustain commitments on the cheap.”
  • “Third, they can expand capabilities, thereby restoring strategic solvency.”

Brands and Edelman contend that most commentators favor decreasing foreign policy commitments. Thus far, the U.S. has seemingly adopted the second option–living with greater risk—by default, simply by avoiding choosing to reduce foreign policy commitments or to boost defense spending.

The administration of President Donald Trump is discovering, however, that simply choosing one course over another can be politically problematic. On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump called for expanding U.S. military capability, including increasing U.S. Army end strength to 540,000, rebuilding the U.S. Navy to at least 350 vessels, adding 100 fighter and attack aircraft to boost the U.S. Air Force to 1,200 aircraft, and boosting the U.S. Marine Corps from 24 battalions to 36. He signed an executive order after assuming office mandating this expansion, stating that his administration will pursue an as-yet undefined policy of “peace through strength.”

Estimates for the cost of these additional capabilities range from $55-$95 billion in additional annual defense spending. Trump called for an additional $54 billion spending on defense in his FY 2018 budget proposal. Secretary of Defense James Mattis told members of Congress that while the additional spending will help remedy short-term readiness challenges, it is not enough to finance the armed services plans for expansion and modernization. As Congress wrangles over a funding bill, many remain skeptical of increased government spending and it is unclear whether even Trump’s proposed increase will be approved.

Trump also said during the campaign that as president, he would end U.S. efforts at nation-building, focusing instead on “foreign policy realism” dedicated to destroying extremist organizations in conjunction with temporary coalitions of willing allies regardless of ideological or strategic differences. However, Trump has expressed ambivalent positions on intervention in Syria. While he has stated that he would not deploy large numbers of U.S. troops there, he also suggested that the U.S. could establish “safe zones” His cabinet has reportedly debated plans to deploy up to tens of thousands of ground troops in Syria in order to clear the Islamic State out, protect local populations, and encourage the return of refugees.

It does not appear as if the Army’s identity crisis will be resolved any time soon. If the past is any indication, the U.S. will continue to “muddle through” on its foreign policy, despite the risks.

 

So, Who’s Your Favorite Admiral?

Fleet Tactics: Theory and Practice by Capt. Wayne P. Hughes, Jr., (USN, ret.)

Over at Tom Ricks’ Best Defense blog at Foreign Policy, Captain Wayne Hughes (U.S. Navy, ret.) has written an entertaining and informative series of posts about four of his favorite U.S. Navy admirals and why he finds them notable.

Hughes is a familiar figure to TDI; he was a colleague and contemporary of Trevor Dupuy and a long-time member of The Military Conflict Institute (TMCI). Currently a Professor of Practice in the Operations Research Department at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey, California, Hughes is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate with 30 years of active duty service. He is perhaps best known for authoring the seminal volume Fleet Tactics: Theory and Practice (1986), Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat (2000), and Military Modeling for Decision Making (1989). In 1997, he co-authored A Concise Theory of Combat with Edmund Dubois and Lawrence Low for TMCI.

Hughes selected some familiar names, World War II stalwarts Raymond Spruance and Chester Nimitz; another, lesser-known figure from World War II who had a greater impact on the post-war Navy, Arleigh Burke; and an obscure individual who had an outsized influence on the Navy’s transition from steam to iron, Bradley Fiske. The common thread Hughes identifies that links these admirals was a grounding in a technological understanding of ships and how that related to naval warfare. Hughes credits that deep knowledge of naval technology and warfare as the basis for strategic and operational brilliance, as well as successful political and bureaucratic management of periods of great change in sea power. The pieces are insightful and a delight to read. I well recommend them.

 

Predictions

We do like to claim we have predicted the casualty rates correctly in three wars (operations): 1) The 1991 Gulf War, 2) the 1995 Bosnia intervention, and 3) the Iraq insurgency.  Furthermore, these were predictions make of three very different types of operations, a conventional war, an “operation other than war” (OOTW) and an insurgency.

The Gulf War prediction was made in public testimony by Trevor Dupuy to Congress and published in his book If War Comes: How to Defeat Saddam Hussein. It is discussed in my book America’s Modern Wars (AMW) pages 51-52 and in some blog posts here.

The Bosnia intervention prediction is discussed in Appendix II of AMW and the Iraq casualty estimate is Chapter 1 and Appendix I.

We like to claim that we are three for three on these predictions. What does that really mean? If the odds of making a correct prediction are 50/50 (the same as a coin toss), then the odds of getting three correct predictions in a row is 12.5%. We may not be particularly clever, just a little lucky.

On the other hand, some might argue that these predictions were not that hard to make, and knowledgeable experts would certainly predict correctly at least two-thirds of the time. In that case the odds of getting three correct predictions in a row is more like 30%.

Still, one notes that there was a lot of predictions concerning the Gulf War that were higher than Trevor Dupuy’s. In the case of Bosnia, the Joint Staff was informed by a senior OR (Operations Research) office in the Army that there was no methodology for predicting losses in an “operation other than war” (AMW, page 309). In the case of the Iraq casualty estimate, we were informed by a director of an OR organization that our estimate was too high, and that the U.S. would suffer less than 2,000 killed and be withdrawn in a couple of years (Shawn was at that meeting). I think I left that out of my book in its more neutered final draft….my first draft was more detailed and maybe a little too “angry”. So maybe, predicting casualties in military operations is a little tricky. If the odds of a correct prediction was only one-in-three, then the odds of getting three correct predictions in a row is only 4%. For marketing purposes, we like this argument better 😉

Hard to say what are the odds of making a correct prediction are. The only war that had multiple public predictions (and of course, several private and classified ones) was the 1991 Gulf War. There were a number of predictions made and we believe most were pretty high. There was no other predictions we are aware of for Bosnia in 1995, other than the “it could turn into another Vietnam” ones. There are no other predictions we are aware of for Iraq in 2004, although lots of people were expressing opinions on the subject. So, it is hard to say how difficult it is to make a correct prediction in these cases.

P.S.: Yes, this post was inspired by my previous post on the Stanley Cup play-offs.

 

Classics of Infoporn: Minard’s “Napoleon’s March”

Map from “Cartographies of Time” courtesy of Princeton Architectural Press.

We at the The Dupuy Institute love infoporn, those amazing, information-laden graphics that at once render dense, complex topics instantly understandable to the masses. Wired, Jalopnik, and Gizmodo have tags dedicated to sharing the best examples of it. Wiktionary defines infoporn as “Information which does not serve a purpose other than to hold the attention of its audience; information for information’s sake.” Perhaps so, but we at TDI feel that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Betsey Mason, a co-author of National Geographic‘s All Over The Map blog, has a profile of one of the greatest purveyors of infoporn, Charles Minard. Minard created what is considered by many to be the iconic work of information graphics, “Napoleon’s March,” or “the Minard graphic.” Created in 1869, Minard’s map depicts Imperial France’s doomed 1812-13 invasion of Russia. It traces the advance and catastrophic retreat of Napoleon Bonaparte’s Grande Armee, while simultaneously showing its gradually dwindling manpower. At age 88, Minard conveyed an essential understanding of the subject with an imaginative combination of spacial and quantitative information that continues to resonate and astonish nearly a century and a half later.

As Mason writes,

Today Minard is revered in the data-visualization world, commonly mentioned alongside other greats such as John Snow, Florence Nightingale, and William Playfair. But Minard’s legacy has been almost completely dominated by his best-known work. In fact, it may be more accurate to say that Napoleon’s March is his only widely known work. Many fans of the March have likely never even seen the graphic that Minard originally paired it with: a visualization of Hannibal’s famous military campaign in 218 BC, as seen in the image [above].

Go check out the full article and marvel at the power of infoporn.

Army University Press “The Future of War” Resource

Army University Press has created a new web resource, New Extended Battlefield: Future of War. Its main focus is on the current Multi-Domain Battle concept under development by the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps. The site contains links to other sites addressing relevant topics, articles and papers on MDB, and relevant news items and current events.

On the front page, the site links to an article written in 1981 by General Donn A. Starry, one of the prime movers behind the development of the Army’s AirLand Battle doctrine. His notion of the “extended battlefield” remains as relevant today as when he first addressed it.

Its definitely worth checking out.

A New-Style Army Brigade For Multi-Domain Battle

Schematic depiction of Douglas Macgregor’s proposed Reconnaissance Strike Group (RSG). Douglas Macgregor, PhD, “Information Briefing on the Reconnaissance Strike Group (RSG) as presented in the FY 17 National Defense Authorization Bill,” 31 October 2016

As the U.S. Army and Marine Corps work together to define multi-domain battle, their joint concept for waging warfare in the near future, will they redesign their force structures? This seems possible for the Army at least; Congress has already ordered it to evaluate proposed changes. In the context of the ongoing debate over U.S. Army readiness, Daniel L. Davis, a Senior Fellow for Defense Priorities at The National Interest, highlights one idea whose time may have come: the Reconnaissance Strike Group (RSG).

The RSG concept is the brainchild of Douglas Macgregor (LTC, U.S. Army, retired), a Gulf War combat veteran, military thinker, and author who has acquired a reputation as a gadfly for his forceful critiques of U.S. land warfare doctrine and recent combat operations. Macgregor has been an outspoken advocate since the 1990s for reorganizing the Army to fully exploit the advantages promised by the Revolution in Military Affairs and maneuver warfare.

Congress Gets Involved

Macgregor’s arguments have received renewed attention following sobering assessments of the implications of Russia’s successful military operations in the Ukraine. He gained a powerful patron after briefing Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in January 2015. McCain subsequently arranged for Macgregor to brief other senators and Congressional staff on his assessments of relative U.S. and Russian military capabilities as well as the RSG concept.

In January 2016, the National Commission on the Future of the Army, created by the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act, recommended that Congress mandate that the Army assess alternative combat force design and operational concepts, including the RSG. Section 1091 of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, signed by President Barack Obama in October 2016, directed the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Chief of Staff of the Army to separately report on “alternative Army operational concepts and organizational designs, known as the Reconnaissance Strike Group.” (It is not clear from this wording if this applies only to the RSG or to other concepts and designs as well.)

In consultation with the United States European Command commander, the JCS Chairman and Army Chief of Staff are each to appraise operational merits, feasible force mix under programmed end-strength, estimated costs for assessed potential force structure changes, and strategic force sufficiency and risks. Their findings are then to be each independently reviewed and evaluated by a Federally Funded Research and Development Center of their choice. The final reports, independent reviews, and JCS Chairman and Army Chief of Staff recommendations are to be submitted to the Senate and House armed services committees no later than October 2017.

The RSG and Multi-Domain Battle

Since the passage of the 2017 NDAA, the Army has publicly unveiled its multi-domain battle operational concept and committed to developing it in conjunction with the Marine Corps. What impact this may have on the RSG concept evaluation is not clear. On the face of it, the RSG appears tailor-made for multi-domain battle. However, while Macgregor was lobbying on its behalf in 2015, LTG H. R. McMaster, then commander of the U.S. Army’s Capabilities Integration Center (now currently the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs) was reported to be a skeptic. McMaster appeared to disagree with Macgregor’s assertions that the current Army Brigade Combat Team structures were too heavy and ponderous to fight effectively in hybrid warfare environments. He suggested that Macgregor’s proposed RSGs were insufficiently manned to conduct vitally important stabilization operations and were too lightly supported logistically.

These disagreements were likely more apparent than real. McMaster’s subsequent emphasis on cross-domain fires as one solution to the challenges of Russian military capabilities and anti-access/area denial environments sound strikingly similar to Macgregor’s “all arms/all effects” RSG concepts. The capabilities Macgregor advocates and claims for the RSG comport very closely to the current conceptualization of multi-domain battle. If the Army does not adopt the RSG, it will probably develop come up with very similar.

That is not to say that multi-domain battle and the RSG do not face some serious opposition within the Army. The changes they portend will have serious repercussions on the armor and airborne branches and more traditional warfighting concepts. I will take a closer look at the RSG concept and its possible implications in my next post.

A Roundup of Recent Reading Lists

Books in the vault, Deck C, Folger Shakespeare Library, 9/11/09

Everyone who is someone and every organization that is something seems to be putting out a reading list these days. Perhaps I can persuade Chris to put one together for TDI sometime. In the meantime, several lists have popped up recently that are worth the time to peruse. They are particular good for sparking arguments over what was omitted and should be added.

The first is from LTG H.R. McMaster (scroll halfway down for the sidebar), the newly appointed Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. He actually put this together a few years ago to outline his reading choices for military professionals. The list should be familiar to military historians and folks working in defense-related fields. It definitely delivers a sold grounding in theory and practice and informs McMaster’s view of the relationship between war and policy.

However, policy-making veteran Heather Hurlburt pointed out that McMaster’s list included no works written by women or non-Westerners. So she compiled a list of additional selections written primarily by women, including several contributors to the current ongoing national security conversation. As for non-Westerns, she only offers the ubiquitous Sun Tze, so there is room for more recommendations on that score.

The next comes from the membership of War on the Rocks and addresses the Vietnam War. It is an impressive mix of classic works on the subject and newer revisions based on declassified primary sources from all of the belligerents. The list also includes personal memoirs and novels. As a former Special Operations Forces historian, I lament the exclusion of any titles related to the covert side of that conflict.

The last list comes from Professor Andrew Bacevich, by way of West Point’s Modern War Institute. His list of five works includes Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of Dr. Strangelove. Bacevich also cites the theologian Reinhold Neibuhr’s The Irony of American History. His admiration for Neibuhr’s work is shared by former President Barack Obama.

So, has anyone read anything interesting lately?

Army Creates Security Force Assistance Brigades and Training Academy

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Brandon Blanton, center, a trainer with Company A, 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, Task Force Strike, assists Iraqi army ranger students during a room-clearing drill at Camp Taji, Iraq, July 18, 2016. The new Security Force Assistance Brigades will assume these types of missions in the future. (Photo Credit: 1st Lt. Daniel Johnson)

With much of the focus of the defense and national security communities shifting to peer and near-peer challenges, the Department of the Army’s recent announcement that the first Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB) will begin standing up in October 2017 comes as an interesting bit of news. The Army will also establish a new Military Advisor Training Academy at Ft. Benning, Georgia to train officers and non-commissioned officers to staff what are projected to a total of six SFABs with 500 personnel each.

The Strategic Role of Security Force Assistance

Security Force Assistance (SFA) is the umbrella term for U.S. whole-of-government support provided to develop the capability and capacity of foreign security forces and institutions. SFA is intended to help defend host nations from external and internal threats, and encompasses foreign internal defense (FID), counterterrorism (CT), counterinsurgency (COIN), and stability operations.

The use of military aid to bolster allies is a time-old strategic expedient; it was one of the primary weapons with which the U.S.waged the Cold War. SFA has assumed a similar role in U.S. policy for countering global terrorism, as a cost-effective alternative to direct involvement in destroying or deterring the development of terrorist sanctuaries. The efficacy of this approach is a hot topic for debate in foreign policy and national security circles these days.

Organizing, training, equipping, building, advising, and assisting foreign security forces is a time and resource-intensive task and the best way of doing it has been long debated. One of the Army’s justifications for creating the SFAB’s was the need to free line units from SFA taskings to focus on preparing for combat operations. The Army is also highlighting the SFABs dual capability as cadres upon which combat-ready U.S. Army Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs) can be quickly created in a national emergency with the addition of junior personnel.

Advise and Assist: SOF vs. General Purpose Forces?

The Army believes that dedicated SFABs will be more effective at providing SFA than has been the case with recent efforts. This is an important consideration in light of the decidedly mixed combat performance of U.S.-trained and equipped Afghan and Iraqi security forces. The dramatic collapse of Iraqi Army units defending Mosul in 2014 that had been trained by conventional U.S. forces contrasts with the current dependence on U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF)-trained Iraqi Counterrorism Service (CTS) forces to lead the effort to retake the city.

This apparent disparity in success between the SOF advise and assist model and the more generic conventional force SFA template is causing some angst in the U.S. Army Special Forces (ARSOF) community, some of whom see training foreign security forces as its traditional institutional role. Part of the reason conventional forces are assigned SFA tasks is because there will never be enough ARSOF to meet the massive demand, and ARSOF units are needed for other specialized taskings as well. But the ultimate success of the SFABs will likely be gauged against the historical accomplishments of their SOF colleagues.