From the Passdown at Military​.com:

Six months after President Obama dis­patched a new Afghanistan war com­man­der, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, to win the “just” bat­tle there, the White House seems inde­ci­sive about giv­ing the gen­eral all the tools he needs to fight it. For weeks, the admin­is­tra­tion has been urg­ing cau­tion after McChrystal’s leaked assess­ment called for 40,000 more troops to sup­port the kind of com­pre­hen­sive coun­terin­sur­gency strat­egy Obama pro­posed in March. 

The first expla­na­tion was that the recent Afghan pres­i­den­tial elec­tion was poten­tially fraud­u­lent — that Karzai might not be worth defend­ing with American troops if Afghans viewed his pres­i­dency as ille­git­i­mate. Then it was that ful­fill­ing McChrystal’s request for more troops with­out a strat­egy would be fool­hardy — the White House needed more time to assess and dis­cuss options from a vari­ety of view­points before send­ing more resources. Now, National Security Advisor, retired Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Jones, says it’s “hypo­thet­i­cal” that a Taliban takeover of the Afghan gov­ern­ment would mean a return of al Qaeda — and besides, he said dur­ing a CNN appear­ance on Oct. 4, al Qaeda is largely defeated in Afghanistan with less than 100 oper­a­tives in the coun­try right now. 

Recent polls show that the “all in” coun­terin­sur­gency strat­egy increas­ingly lacks American pub­lic sup­port. With ever-​​aggressive assaults by Taliban mil­i­tants killing U.S. troops in high-​​profile ambushes that nearly over­run American out­posts and leave U.S. train­ers stranded with dwin­dling ammu­ni­tion and no fire sup­port — the nation’s abil­ity to eek out some kind of “vic­tory” in the land where the 9–11 attacks were planned is in doubt. 

Just six months ago President Obama said the U.S. must “over­come the trust deficit’ it faces in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where many believe that we are not a reli­able long-​​term part­ner.” Now the Administration is con­sid­er­ing a more anti­sep­tic “coun­tert­er­ror­ism” model of drone strikes and com­mando raids. In March, the admin­is­tra­tion said that its “new strat­egy of focus­ing on our core goal — to dis­rupt, dis­man­tle, and even­tu­ally destroy extrem­ists and their safe havens … will require imme­di­ate action, sus­tained com­mit­ment, and sub­stan­tial resources,” but now it chal­lenges the resources requested by its newly appointed com­man­der to achieve secu­rity in Afghanistan.

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There’s a great story this morn­ing in the New York Times about the Pentagon giv­ing Gen. McChrystal a lot of lee­way to put together his “dream team” of Afghan command.

It’s pre­cisely what the doc­tor ordered and the kind of thing that folks like Nagl and the Kagans have been say­ing would be the key to suc­cess there. It’s the same kind of carte blanche con­trol that GW Bush gave Petraeus — with great suc­cess in a very short time.

Also, it’s bril­liant that McC wants these guys to stay on for three years instead of one year stints in their bil­lets. They’ll become more invested in the suc­cess of the fight and have greater insight into the inner work­ings of Afghanistan.

The Times story says Gates and Mullen have impressed upon McChrystal that Afghanistan is the “main effort”…it’s about time from my per­spec­tive. And it’s a good thing that we have a steely-​​eyed spe­cial oper­a­tor at the helm. He under­stands econ­omy of force, uncon­ven­tional war­fare and rapid task­ing — which is just the kind of mind­set the con­flict in Afghanistan needs.

Another inter­est­ing note…the Times piece men­tions that McC asked Rear Adm. Greg Smith to be his chief of pub­lic affairs. Petraeus did the same thing when he asked Smith to come over to Iraq to assess the PA oper­a­tion there and when Smith deliv­ered his report said “OK, can you stay here and imple­ment it for me?”

Smith was due to retire but has report­edly agreed to stay on with McC…true patri­ots all and we wish them the best of luck.

– Christian

The TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) con­fer­ences started out as a small forum to exchange cut­ting edge ideas about –as the name implies– sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy. That was in 1984. Today, appro­pri­ately enough, the inter­net has helped the TED lec­ture series explode into a ground­break­ing dis­sem­i­na­tion of cut­ting edge ideas that effect every facet of the human con­di­tion — includ­ing, well… mod­ern war­fare.
In the clip below, physi­cist Sean Gourley breaks anthropology’s grip on irreg­u­lar warfare’s strate­gic evo­lu­tion and intro­duces the math­e­mat­i­cal con­tri­bu­tion to win­ning –and pre­vent­ing– 21st cen­tury con­flicts. It’s absolutely fas­ci­nat­ing stuff.

Another inter­est­ing thing Elder men­tioned at yesterday’s break­fast was the poten­tial rea­son­ing behind the delay of the so-​​called Next Generation Bomber (the one tabbed for field­ing in 2018).

Elder wasn’t sure if this was the rea­son but thought it might have played a large role in the deci­sion, but he said President Obama’s desire to reen­gage in strate­gic arms talks with Russia might have impacted the deci­sion to punt the NGB. Reason is, if you go ahead with NGB you’re mak­ing it a part of the nego­ti­a­tion process, and Elder saw no need — based on arcane count­ing rules for war­heads per bomber — to include the puta­tive NGB in the negotiations.

I sus­pect that one of the things that could be in play here, I don’t know this for a fact, it makes sense to me, is that you don’t want to lock your­self in on an air­plane until you know what the count­ing rules are going to be. Why would I want a pro­gram this year that puts me in a bad posi­tion in terms of how I’m nego­ti­at­ing what the START nego­ti­a­tions are going to look like. … I would not want to tie my hands in the nego­ti­a­tions.

If this is true, it would be a shame that the Obama admin­is­tra­tion would under­cut our long-​​range strike capa­bil­ity for a more favor­able nego­ti­at­ing posi­tion on some pie in the sky res­ur­rec­tion of anti­quated nuclear arms reduc­tion talks. What, am I watch­ing “War Games” or “Failsafe” here? Are we get­ting back into Game Theory? I thought 1989 was 20 years ago…The Russians must be laugh­ing all the way to the arms con­trol bank on this one. Now their 100 year-​​old bombers are going to be matched up against our 100 year-​​old bombers — in that equa­tion, the Russkies win.

Since they’re look­ing at doing these nego­ti­a­tions this year, and I don’t know this for a fact that the sec­re­tary brought this up, nor­mally I would say strat­egy should drive your force struc­ture. … The count­ing rules in START for bombers are pretty oner­ous. … The way a B-​​52 is counted, it’s counted as car­ry­ing more weapons than you would want to carry oper­a­tionally. … It’s a mat­ter of let’s not lock our­selves in and save some money.

Elder said the 2018 time­line for the NGB was tied to the retire­ment of the Air Launched Cruise mis­sile which gives B-​​52s enough stand­off range to be a viable strate­gic deter­rent. But with the NGB falling by the way­side, then the B-​​52 will have to last until 2040. Yikes!

But, hey, maybe Obama and his nego­tia­tors with the Russians (and the Paks and Indians and Chinese and French and Israelis, etc.) can make good on his com­mit­ment to a nuclear free world before we even have to worry about centi­ge­nar­ian strate­gic bombers mak­ing up the bulk of our inven­tory? But I’m not hold­ing my breath.

– Christian

Our boy Greg Grant has an awe­some scoop on DoD Buzz reveal­ing key con­cepts in the upcom­ing Quadrennial Defense Review.

Clearly Gates has pushed the ser­vices to embrace an afflic­tion of “this-​​war-​​itis” in forg­ing a plan to build a mil­i­tary that can respond more effec­tively to uncon­ven­tional threats.

I’m a bit leery of aban­don­ing the “big war” capa­bil­ity the U.S. has become so dom­i­nant in, but I then think about the Israel/​Hezbollah con­flict in Lebanon and rea­son that even a near-​​peer com­peti­tor would try to employ sim­i­lar tac­tics. Then I bounce back to the Georgia/​Russia spat last year and think “well, maybe a near-​​peer would try to blud­geon its way through”… and back and forth.

Be that as it may, when you strip all the sce­nar­ios away, I think it makes sense to pos­ture the U.S. mil­i­tary to fight these uncon­ven­tional wars because it relies on inno­va­tion, quick think­ing, a broad skill set and the abon­don­ment of rigid plan­ning. Set-​​piece, con­ven­tional wars can be won with adapt­abil­ity and out­side the box strat­egy and tac­tics — the same pre­req­ui­sits for win­ning a “hybrid” war.

Greg writes:

The strate­gic review will run through the sum­mer with the intent to have it wrapped in time to inform FY 2011 defense bud­get deci­sions. There is some con­cern in the Pentagon that the short time line might prove inad­e­quate for a com­pre­hen­sive strate­gic review and could pro­duce a rushed prod­uct, accord­ing to sources I spoke with. The worry is that the out­come will reflect the think­ing and biases of the newly installed Obama team in OSD with­out ade­quately account­ing for the views of the ser­vices. The QDR will be run out of the office of Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Michele Flournoy. Flournoy played a sim­i­lar though less promi­nent role in the Clinton admin­is­tra­tion so she is famil­iar with games the ser­vices play dur­ing a QDR.

This QDR will use the 2008 National Defense Strategy as a point of depar­ture. A big theme in the strat­egy doc­u­ment, and a point Gates empha­sizes repeat­edly, is the need to achieve bal­ance across the mil­i­tary. Gates has clearly decided what the future of con­flict will look like and he believes the ser­vices are weighted far too heav­ily towards large scale con­ven­tional war and wants to shift their focus towards the lower end of the con­flict spec­trum. Last years National Defense Strategy con­cluded that although U.S. pre­dom­i­nance in con­ven­tional war­fare is not unchal­lenged, it is sus­tain­able for the medium term, given cur­rent trends, Gates said.

He also wants the QDR to cap­ture bat­tle­field lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan and believes those should influ­ence force struc­ture and spend­ing deci­sions. His call for more aer­ial drones and his push for big invest­ments in Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles are exam­ples where bat­tle­field lessons have influ­enced spend­ing choices; we should expect more of these. Gates says fewer costly, leading-​​edge weapons are needed to insure against the rise of a great power; greater invest­ment is needed to add troops and buy greater quan­ti­ties of less tech­no­log­i­cally advanced weapons for hunt­ing ter­ror­ists and wag­ing coun­terin­sur­gency cam­paigns.

I’d encour­age you to read the rest of his com­pre­hen­sive report on DoD Buzz and give your own views on where Gates should take the ser­vices. One thing I will say is that the QDR tends to have an impact in the short term, but almost always reflects the trends of the day. If all of the sud­den World War III breaks out, the 2014 QDR will look more like one that might have been writ­ten in 1980.

– Christian

Our boy Greg Grant has a great piece on a pre­sen­ta­tion given by Steven Biddle and T.X. Hammes on the future of war­fare over at DoD Buzz.

I think it’s a good com­pan­ion piece to the inter­view we just did with Dakota Wood at CSBA and also dove­tails nicely with Greg’s pre­vi­ous piece on pro­pos­als from Mattis on how to bet­ter orga­nize the Marine Corps.

Gates is head­ing in the right direc­tion with a return to threat-​​based plan­ning ver­sus the capabilities-​​based port­fo­lio plan­ning of his pre­de­ces­sor that pro­duced unaf­ford­able pro­cure­ment plans, Hammes said at the Washington gath­er­ing. Trying to guess the exact type or nature of future war the U.S. is likely to fight is the wrong way to go as more often than not youre going to end up with the wrong force. Instead, develop a force that can fight well enough across the spec­trum of con­flict to buy time to work your way up the learn­ing curve. No mat­ter what type of war, youll be forced into a game of adap­ta­tion, as that is wars true nature, and the out­come usu­ally comes down to who can adapt the fastest. 

I agree 100 per­cent with this and am frus­trated when ana­lysts use China and Russia as exam­ples of “near-​​peer” com­peti­tors that we need to equip our­selves to fight. In fact, for all their excel­lent analy­sis, the CSBA tends to default to that con­tention — but I don’t think it’s out of some xeno­pho­bic reac­tion, just a way to com­pare apples to apples.

The chal­lenge is pre­vent­ing the ser­vices from default­ing to plan­ning for another Cold War by sub­sti­tut­ing China for the Soviet Union. Setting aside for a moment the absur­dity of going to war with your de-​​facto banker, Hammes said there is the lit­tle dis­cussed issue of Chinas nuclear arse­nal. A U.S. air and naval cam­paign against China would tar­get the coun­trys com­mand and con­trol. How do you do that with­out threat­en­ing their nukes and national com­mand author­ity? The Chinese lack a reli­able sec­ond strike capa­bil­ity, attacks on their com­mand and con­trol could be per­ceived as an effort to take out their nuclear capa­bil­ity, pos­si­bly trig­ger­ing a use-​​it or lose-​​it sce­nario. The Chinese know they cant stop indi­vid­ual air­craft attack­ing the main­land, instead, theyre build­ing bal­lis­tic mis­siles to tar­get airstrips and car­ri­ers to force the U.S. to fight at the extreme lim­its of range, tak­ing short range fight­ers out of the equa­tion. As for the Russians: in Georgia, the Russians drove a sin­gle divi­sion 60 miles after three months prepa­ra­tion. Not a threat. 

Thank good­ness there are at least some sober minds to help advance the debate in a more “mid­dle ground” approach. Rather than swing­ing all the way to the left and say China isn’t a threat because they’ve just adopted a dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal struc­ture, or to go all the way to the right and say they are a threat because of it, misses the point. It’s about capa­bil­i­ties. When more than 3/​4 of your pop­u­la­tion doesn’t have run­ning water, I’m sorry but that’s not “near peer.” By the same token, we get all freaked out about Russian bombers fly­ing close to Alaska or some such, but don’t real­ize that the pilots are so happy to just get the flight hours they don’t give a crap where they’re flying.

However, I do remem­ber an arti­cle in the Atlantic about a year ago pos­tu­lat­ing how we’d fight China (it was part of Robert Kaplan’s series) and it made me think about some­thing: How com­fort­able would I feel look­ing off the shore of my mother’s house in coastal North Carolina and see­ing a Chinese air­craft car­rier steam­ing nearby as apposed to a British or a French or a Japanese one? I’ll let you answer that one for yourselves.

Lethality in hybrid war­fare is cer­tainly increas­ing, as the vul­ner­a­bil­ity of even the most heav­ily armored vehi­cles will attest. Biddle ques­tions the notion that sit­u­a­tional aware­ness will prove ade­quate: In a hybrid form of war­fare, the ubiq­uity of cover and con­ceal­ment makes it pos­si­ble for rea­son­ably skilled oppo­nents to stay out of our infor­ma­tion grid. If we cant find them then we cant include them in a net­worked form of sit­u­a­tional aware­ness. Instead of adding armor to vehi­cles or look­ing to infor­ma­tion supe­ri­or­ity to pro­vide a bat­tle­field edge, Biddle said the U.S. will be forced to adopt more hybrid war like tac­tics: dis­per­sion, cover and con­ceal­ment, com­bined arms, fire and maneuver. 

A clear swipe at FCS…And this great line:

The U.S. mil­i­tary may be forced to under­take two trans­for­ma­tions. If win­ning today means the mil­i­tary must trans­form for low inten­sity con­flict, with larger ground forces and less empha­sis on high-​​tech mod­ern­iza­tion, and then trans­form once again, after these wars are con­cluded, for a dif­fer­ent kind of war, then thats prob­a­bly the right path to take, as incon­ve­nient and expen­sive as that may prove. 

It’s a bit­ter pill to swal­low, but I think Biddle’s right.

Be sure to check out the entire story on DoD Buzz.

– Christian

[Editor: I just wanted to post this excel­lent arti­cle writ­ten by our col­league Greg Grant over at DoD Buzz as an add-​​on to my Afghan rant. He has a really help­ful dis­sec­tion of Hybrid Warfare (coined by old DT friend Frank Hoffman) and how the USMil is falling short.]

For the past fifty years, the mil­i­tary has sized, trained and equipped its ground forces to bat­tle a con­ven­tional, mech­a­nized, tank heavy oppo­nent, orga­nized in com­pa­nies, bat­tal­ions and brigades, with sup­port­ing artillery and air­craft. Training sce­nar­ios envi­sioned a repeat of World War II tank bat­tles, Army units were run through sim­u­lated armored clashes in the open deserts at its pre­mier train­ing ground, the NTC at Ft. Irwin, Ca. Now, at its train­ing cen­ters, the Army, and Marines also train for urban counterinsurgency. 

That the Armys big-​​battle mind­set hasnt gone far, despite eight years spent fight­ing two coun­terin­sur­gency wars, can be seen in this arti­cle on the Small Wars Journal web site by an Army cap­tain who recently com­pleted the cap­tains career course and had this to say: With rare excep­tion, the exer­cises which hone offi­cers skills in these areas are focused on the con­ven­tional Fulda gap-​​style bat­tle Despite all that has been writ­ten about third-​​generation war­fare (Blitzkrieg) and fourth-​​generation war­fare (state vs. non-​​state), we oper­ated largely in the sec­ond gen­er­a­tion of warfare. 

A small group of strate­gic thinkers are flex­ing their intel­lec­tual mus­cle, and a new oppo­nent model is tak­ing shape against which Americas ground forces will be con­fig­ured to fight (with the Marines way ahead of the Army). Called hybrid ene­mies, they come equipped with high-​​end, pre­ci­sion guided weapons, yet fight in dis­trib­uted net­works of small units and cells more akin to guer­ril­las. One of the lead­ing schol­ars in this group, Frank Hoffman, who advises the Marines and is a researcher at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, says hybrid wars, blend the lethal­ity of state con­flict with the fanat­i­cal and pro­tracted fer­vor of irreg­u­lar war­fare. Theory moved to real­ity when Hezbollah, equipped with loads of advanced mis­siles and skill­fully using urban ter­rain, fought the Israeli army to a stand still in 2006. Hezbollah, Hoffman says, is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the ris­ing hybrid threat. 

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has given his impri­matur to the hybrid oppo­nent as the new OpFor, first in his recent Foreign Affairs piece, and then again in his tes­ti­mony to the Senate Armed Services Committee. In his Senate hear­ing, speak­ing about the Armys FCS pro­gram, Gates said that unless new weapons and vehi­cles can be shown to be effec­tive in com­plex hybrid wars, they shouldnt be funded. Ive also heard that some ser­vices, Im think­ing of the Marines here, were loathe to buy into the irreg­u­lar war­fare mis­sion as they couldnt jus­tify their more expen­sive new sys­tems to fight coun­terin­sur­gen­cies, but they have a bet­ter chance at get­ting what they want if they play up the hybrid threat. 

I thought Id flesh out a bit exactly what the mil­i­tary has in mind when they dis­cuss hybrid wars. A good place to start is this arti­cle by Hoffman in Joint Forces Quarterly or this longer dis­cus­sion here for those of you with more time.

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The IDF is oper­at­ing to a well thought out war plan on the ground as well as in the air. This is a descrip­tion of IDF ground oper­a­tions from strat​e​gy​page​.com:

For the last two years, the Israeli Army has been devel­op­ing new tac­tics and equip­ment for fight­ing Hamas and Hezbollah-​​type gun­men in urban areas. The Israelis have built train­ing areas, with dense urban con­struc­tion, and run many of its ground troops through spe­cial exer­cises. How well the new tac­tics and train­ing are will be seen in the next week or so. The new tac­tics are meant to min­i­mize civil­ian casu­al­ties, while enabling Israeli troops to quickly move through the area and kill or cap­ture enemy per­son­nel and equip­ment. Reservist units that have not gone through the spe­cial train­ing are being sent to the new train­ing cen­ters for at least a few days of instruc­tion on the new tac­tics. These new meth­ods, while offi­cially secret, appar­ently involve some new fight­ing tac­tics, and lots of elec­tronic war­fare. Hamas has had to oper­ate with both cell phones and land­line com­mu­ni­ca­tions down. In addi­tion, their walkie-​​talkies are some­times jammed, and appar­ently lis­tened to care­fully by Israeli elec­tronic war­fare troops. This is caus­ing com­mand and coor­di­na­tion prob­lems for Hamas fighters. 

What we are see­ing here is an IDF ver­sion of the British Army urban tac­tics used in the 2003 Iraqi inva­sion at Basra, with IDF spe­cial forces repris­ing the role of the SAS.

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Had an inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion this morn­ing with the chief of counter ter­ror­ism for the State Department, Amb. Dell Dailey. It was part of the Defense Writers Group break­fasts that I go to peri­od­i­cally and I wanted to point out some­thing that might inter­est you all.

Asked a ques­tion about sur­veil­lance tech­nolo­gies, avi­a­tion assets and other gad­gets his office might need to more effec­tively counter ter­ror­ist move­ments, Dailey had an inter­est­ing answer. He said the depart­ment always needs more air­craft, but the sur­veil­lance tech is already good enough for his needs. Instead, he needs a com­pre­hen­sive map of the human ter­rain he’ll encounter.

“During the Cold War we mapped the floor of the oceans for our sub­marines to move around and not bump into under­wa­ter moun­tains. We ought to take that same men­tal­ity and apply it to the humans that may end up com­ing after us that are terrorists.”

Basically Dailey is ask­ing for an extremely detailed, lay­ered map of tribes, reli­gions, cul­tures, races, pol­i­tics, his­tory and lan­guages for key areas and their inter­ac­tion with the geography.

“Human prepa­ra­tion of the envi­ron­ment rather than phys­i­cal prepa­ra­tion of the envi­ron­ment… We need to map the human ter­rain in those sen­si­tive areas as thor­oughly as we mapped the bot­tom of the Atlantic Ocean. That will allow us in the future not to go into a post-​​9/​11 scratch­ing our heads ‘should we go kinetic, should we go non-​​kinetic? Should we go after this tribe or should we go after that tribe?’ It allows us to have a foun­da­tion in place already to move for our gov­ern­ment actions. I don’t see that right now.”

Dailey said sev­eral think tanks, uni­ver­si­ties and some offices within the US Gov. are work­ing on some kind of vari­a­tion of his human ter­rain map, but there lacks the “Manhattan Project men­tal­ity” that pushed the sea floor map­ping dur­ing the Cold War.

– Christian

First of all Happy New Year from Defense Tech. I hope you all had a won­der­ful hol­i­day sea­son and are ready to get back to work help­ing us deci­pher the strate­gic and tech­no­log­i­cal dilem­mas fac­ing the world’s militaries. 

I heard today that a friend and col­league of mine Tom Ricks of the Washington Post has started a new gig blog­ging with Foreign Policy online — relaunched by the Washingtonpost/​Newsweek/​Slate pub­lish­ing group after it pur­chased the mag­a­zine from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in September. 

Let’s just say the so-​​called “Best Defense” blog is off to an OK start. But that’s fine, Tom will hit his stride and learn that he needs to shed some of that jour­nal­is­tic punch pulling he’s been trained to do for his entire career. And there have been a bunch of updates since I first checked the blog this morn­ing that are damned good and we’re look­ing for­ward to more. 

Anyway, he summed up for me a thought I’d had since this whole Gaza goat rope started. Seems to me Israel can’t pos­si­bly “win” with Operation Cast Lead as it stands. I just don’t under­stand the goals here and can’t put together the logic that must have led them to this deci­sion — unless of course it’s PURELY pol­i­tics (don’t for­get, FM Livni and DM Barak are both run­ning for PM in February against Likud hawk Netanyahu). 

Here’s what Ricks pulled from his sources:

Terry Daly, one of the smartest peo­ple I know on coun­terin­sur­gency issues, doesn’t see much hope for Israel’s crack­down in Gaza. “Don’t ask me what the solu­tion is to Israel’s strate­gic prob­lem,” he com­ments in a note. “Thomas Henriksen’s excel­lent 2007 Joint Special Operations University mono­graph, ‘The Israeli Approach to Irregular Warfare and Implications for the United States,’ clearly relates how the Israelis have tried most of the usual solu­tions. For 60 years, though, Israel through the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), basi­cally has relied on ‘the util­ity of force.’ The IDF became and remains a shin­ing exam­ple of con­ven­tional mil­i­tary excel­lence, but it also seems to be head­ing for defeat in ‘war amongst the peo­ple,’ where the objec­tive is to win peo­ples’ sup­port not to kill them and break all their toys.… Meanwhile the Muslim nihilists must be sali­vat­ing at the thought of get­ting the IDF on the ground in the Gaza Strip.“ 

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