by Major David J. Painter, Major Mark C. Weaver and Major Scott C. White.
Reorganizing for Irregular Warfare is a master's thesis to be published next month by the Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict (SO/LIC) program at the Naval Postgraduate School.
Thesis Abstract:
A thorough understanding of Irregular Warfare (IW) and the principles of organizational theory and design will enable the Department of Defense (DoD) to organize efficiently and effectively for operations within the IW Environment, while maintaining its conventional capabilities. We develop our argument for this thesis in several stages. First, we define irregular warfare and differentiate it from conventional warfare through the development of our critical success factors. We introduce organizational theory and design in order to incorporate the critical success factors. We conclude that the DoD should reorganize certain elements of the U.S. Special Operations Command by incorporating existing capabilities, focusing on conducting operations within the IW Environment, and implementing our critical success factors.
Download the full thesis: Reorganizing for Irregular Warfare
The authors would like to thank the U.S. Special Operations Command for allowing us to further our professional education within our respective career fields. We would also like to thank the staff of Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, for their mentorship throughout the writing of this thesis. Finally, we thank Dr. Hy Rothstein and Dr. Eric Jansen for their instruction and guidance as we addressed the complexity of Irregular Warfare in this thesis.
About the Author(s)
Comments
I don't think we have the same thoughts on what UW is. This thesis does not advocate dedicating SF solely to UW, although SF is our DoD's only UW force! UW does play a very intricate role within the IW environment though. The way that IW doctrine has developed, UW is essentially the centerpiece. We are either conducting UW (very small percentage of the time) or helping to counter it (large percentage of the time)in some degree or fashion through the other IW activities as discussed throughout this thesis.
SF's emphasis on UW gives it a comparative advantage at conducting the other activities within the IW environment.
Authors:
Sure, but you make my point. If you are going to pull the SF (and CA and PSYOPs) from doing their other four missions to be dedicated to UW, then who fills the resulting gap? Either more SF or some other organization currently not manned and trained to do it.
And the SF itself would have to be greatly increased. One group for all of Africa? That would not suffice to support a rotational effort. It took an entire battalion out of the SF group for Africa to train up--sequentially, not simultaneously, and train, not go into combat situations with--the 7 African battalions for Operation Focus Relief. And Africa (I use it as an example since I was a 48J) alone is so diverse, that true regional expertise would require more personnel than were currently assigned even back in the 90s before the GWOT. Picture what it would take for UW in Somalia alone, with its size, number of (putative) countries and separtist movements.
Regards.
DOD's take on the definition of IW at: http://www.dtic.mil/futurejointwarfare/concepts/iw_joc1_0.pdf
BL: IW is much more than UW.
"Irregular warfare (IW) is defined as a violent struggle among state and nonstate
actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant populations. IW favors
indirect and asymmetric approaches, though it may employ the full range of
military and other capabilities, in order to erode an adversarys power, influence,
and will. It is inherently a protracted struggle that will test the resolve of our
Nation and our strategic partners."
libertariansoldier:
In reference your comments here: " The first is national policy. It makes the assumption that IW will be a high enough priority for the US over a long enough period of time to justify significant restructuring of the military without providing a basis for making the assumption. There is a case to be made that costs of a trillion dollars, thousands of military lives and tens of thousands of civilian lives will so sour the US on interventions that decades may be required before the US is willing to accept such a role again, and require such specialized forces. The paper does not even address that possibility."
Authors remarks: Part of our argument is that if an Iraq or Afghanistan situation happens again it is a failure on our part to not engage early enough. We need long-term, persistent engagement that respects and bolsters a government's legitimacy (different in UW of course). This must be done with the smallest "footprint" possible....Think ODA/ODB, not a BCT! If we don't have an emphasis on this our future will be very similar to our present.....This is preventative maintenance, not a reaction to an existing emergency!
As for building the Force......It exists! The US Army Special Forces (GREEN BERETS) are uniquely selected, trained, equipped, organized, and educated to operate and excel within the IW environment. The adddition of CA and PSYOPS, as well as certain Convention enablers would further increase the capaability and efficiency. Placing these under a centralized organization that bolsters, instead of hampers their culture and capabilities will furhter enhance our "indirect" capability as a Nation.
Now the hard part, is separating this large portion of SOCOM from SOCOM. Within SOCOM there exists 2 distinctly different cultures and metric/reward systems. As Organizational Theory and Design indicates, when this happens one will dominate. In the case of USSOCOM it is the DA/Enemy-Centric one that has historically prevailed to the dismay of its indirect capabilities. Bottom line, this causes us to not use our forces in ways in which they have the comparative advantage.
Barry:
My first suggestion would be to take your political comments to a political Blog, there are plenty out there and this isn't one of the them. My second would be to clean up your language, your ability to defy requests to avoid profanity is noted. If you want to sensibly discuss issues, we can do that -- if you want to engage in polemics, you can talk to yourself.
The WMD issue had little to nothing to do with the attack on Iraq though it was (stupidly) cited by the Administration as a reason. That you cite it as a reason is telling.
The attack on Iraq was strategically inept in totality though quite sound from the standpoint on which it was <i>actually</i> launched, to destabilize the ME and disrupt long term Islamist attempts to attack the US. It was also operationally poorly conducted due to our national, political and military arrogance.
Saddam schnookered us because -- even though he told us what he was going to do; releasing all the prisoners from jails, planting weapons all over the country, waging a guerrilla war and more -- we fell for the idea that we were going to fight a conventional war and proceeded to do that.
He had no such intention. We got taken; that's the fault of the Intel community and the Armed forces who walked into it. The methodology to pursue a political directive is generally the choice of the Armed Forces and was in this case. The Force was told what to do, not how to do it (barring a few minor Rumsfeld et.al. twists).<blockquote>"Which made sod-all difference in being prepared for an occupation."</blockquote>True. Another military, not political, shortfall.<blockquote>"It took another 18 months to get the big bureaucratic elephant turned around and then 18 months more for all the systems to function and produce the changes required. "</blockquote>That's both a military and a national shortfall developed over many years that simply was exhibited in the time frame you cite. It has been demonstrated in all our wars to include WW II.
Ken White:
"Disagree on the "recognize" assumption though; it took a little less than six weeks to recognize we'd been schnookered by Saddam "
Lessee - Saddam said that he didn't have WMD's, Hans Blix said that the UN had encountered no significan practical obstacles to their inspections, and had found no evidence of WMD's. Please note that they were working off of US intelligence, so that was a signficant finding.
I understand that you just don't want to admit that St. George deliberately lied us into the war, and you'll probably succeed - the lie is strong and the truth is weak.
"..and about 18 months for that knowledge to percolate to the upper levels of the bureaucracy."
Which made sod-all difference in being prepared for an occupation.
" It took another 18 months to get the big bureaucratic elephant turned around and then 18 months more for all the systems to function and produce the changes required. "
And that was because St. George didn't spend the time between 9/11 and spring '03 doing jack sh*t for productive work.
Bob: "I watched the inception of a full blown insurgency in 2003, in Iraq, and it took our sage military/civilian leaders until 2008 to recognize this fact. When are we going to extricate ourselves from these states of denial and recognize the indicators and blatant red flags before it is too late. Is Vietnam, Beirut, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq just chimeras?"
That's odd, because us liberals figured out what was going on after a few months. I guess it takes longer for Patriotic Republicans to get their heads out of their *sses.
I wish the authors luck in their future careers.
The study is an excellent piece of work and demonstrates both dedication and a passion to "get things right". And to demonstrate their ability to write a paper that meets the requirement for their degrees, no doubt it accomplishes the mission.
However, as a thoughtful argument/proposal, it fails on two basic issues. The first is national policy. It makes the assumption that IW will be a high enough priority for the US over a long enough period of time to justify significant restructuring of the military without providing a basis for making the assumption. There is a case to be made that costs of a trillion dollars, thousands of military lives and tens of thousands of civilian lives will so sour the US on interventions that decades may be required before the US is willing to accept such a role again, and require such specialized forces. The paper does not even address that possibility.
Secondly, it does not address--even in the macro sense--resource constraints. At the very end there is a recommendation to look for 'redundant capacity" to be billpayers. But there is no consideration at all of what it would take to create such regionally capable forces in large enough quantities to be rotationally sustainable over the period of time required to achieve the desired effects.
These comments should certainly not be taken as personal criticism of the authors or of the need for IW capacity within the US military.
Nobody's Opinion:
Totally agree.
That's another case of the personnel system driving actions for its ease of administration and their benefit rather than for the good of the service person -- or the Army they're supposed to be supporting.
Training improvement will eventually put people in billets where they can and will change the terribly flawed 1916 personnel system we still have to live with.
Every major War Game and assessment over the last four years has come up with three big items. We cannot go back to the way we were. Fix training. Fix the personnel system.
What does it take...
However, to get back on thread, I agree with Bill Moore. It is a good paper, I could quibble on details but the thrust is solid. We really just need people to do their proper jobs, no matter how dangerous or tedious, while note getting sidetracked into someone's pet effort that's more fun...
Ken White:
Wow. Excellent thoughts on military training.
I would add one comment that IMHO should be added to the end of your message:
Discontinue the policy of "up or out" which tends to reduce all service members to the same level of mediocrity
Some people are made (and enjoy) to be MG gunners and don't want to be squad leaders or PSGs. Let them retire as such if they want. Let the leaders rise instead of stifling them.
Quality Management should also be based on present duty perfomance vs. digging up the mistakes of youth.
Ken,
I personally find your post above to be one most powerful, honest and important posts you have made (out of many excellent ones). Request you turn this into a SWJ article, because the article can save lives.
On the negative side, this post distracts from the thesis we should be discussing ;-)
Authors,
Thanks for sharing the thesis and for further clarifying you're not guilty of confusing UW with IW. On another note, I personally think IW is too limited in scope to deal with emergent threats, but that is another thread. The bottom line is we still need to get better at IW as it is defined now.
Scott Shaw:
As a fellow former TRADOC SGI -- and a former Instructional Branch Chief on a set of subjects taught -- or mistaught -- in virtually all Schools and Training centers I agree with you on this:<blockquote>"I dont think that we do a bad job of educating and training our leaders. I think we do a better than average - and I will admit that it could be a lot better."</blockquote>We train better now than we ever have in my over 60 years of being in or watching the process. However, your last quoted clause is embarrassingly accurate. I could address specifics for a few combat arms fields (writing about what I know...) but to keep it Army wide and general, my main generic complaints starting at the bottom and working up are:
- Much initial entry training is tabbed out from institutional to unit train. Some of this is unavoidable due to resource and time constraints. However, during my admittedly long past days, much of it was also tabbed to unit due to low 'go' rates; better to force it to be trained in the unit rather than have a series of potentially embarrassing scores.
- The current training system of tasks, conditions and standards was derived to provide 'objective' evaluations of performance. It does not, it simply replace macro subjectivity with a micro effort. It also literally 'dumbs down' training to the lowest common denominator, tends to avoid training of complex tasks, does not allow for varying conditions and is an abysmal failure. We have trained reasonably well in spite of it, not because of it. We need to get back to outcome based training and evaluation and we need to do that rapidly.
- The system is designed around the philosophy of training people for their next job. That is cost effective and in line with civilian occupational training methodology. However, we are not a civilian operation and a failure to properly manufacture or sell Widgets for which we get a tax write off is not an issue of training or educational shortfalls -- someone being killed unnecessarily is the result of that inexcusable error. The system must be designed to train most attendees at all levels not for their next job but for a minimum of two levels higher. Perhaps most CPTs attending the Career Course have not been Commanders today -- but some years ago virtually all had command before they attended. Most ANCOC attendees had been Platoon Sergeants for some time before attendance at a school to learn that job. The basic flaw is that the system as it now exists is designed to support Personnel Management, not war fighting. War fighting is the job; education and training support that and personnel management supports those things in that order. We've got it exactly backwards. As an aside on that, I understand that ANCOC is being revamped to make it more like the SMA in miniature and BNCOC is being modified to be a deliverable, web or TV / Sim based effort. That's backwards also...
- It is my belief that we do not train the basics at all well. Currently, 16+ weeks are spent in IET and an individual then goes to a unit -- it will take two more years in peacetime (half that or a little less in wartime) for that individual to really be a competent PV2 / PFC. I'm not aware of what's been going on with the Officer Basic Courses but I'll wager that all are long on Admin BS and short on tactical training, that they are aimed at preparing the individual to be the unit Supply Officer (Addl Dy). Oh, and as a Platoon Leader designed to be mentored by a Co Cdr (who has other things to do...) and A PSG who may or may not be competent. I'll also note that both those 'mentors' are selected by many factors of which few are related to technical and tactical competence. Enlisted IET should take six to eight months (for most) and prepare the individual to, in the combat arms, if not compete immediately to become a junior leader, at least be a competent performer of the duties in his (usually pretty accurate after 20 plus years of tinkering) task list. Officer IET should probably be from nine months to a year with a goal of producing a person who could command a company level unit in an emergency -- as he or she might have to. Do the initial training job better and later training and education efforts can be shortened, it will balance out...
- Stop trying to procure technology to compensate for poor or inadequate training (an error that is induced and compounded by the issue below).
- Professional education for more senior Officers and NCOs is being revamped; we have an excellent opportunity to fix many ills and most things I see and hear are encouraging. One problem which is above all our pay grades is that funding for training is rarely adequate due to the fact that an M1A2 built in Lima, Ohio gets parts and pieces from sub contractors in many Congressional Districts so the Army finds it easier to get funding for materiel than for training -- where training dollars provide benefit to only a few districts out of many. That's a hard nut to crack but hopefully, we will do that so we can:
Discard the Task, Condition and Standard based training philosophy and converting to outcome based Training and Education
Teach the basics thoroughly upon initial entry and allow adequate practice prior to assignment to units.
Force individuals of all -- say again, ALL -- ranks to get involved in off duty study and self improvement without treating them like children by giving them a list of things to do. People must be given responsibility; directing them to be responsible is not quite the same thing
Allow experimentation in professional military education and reverse the flawed premise that such education is primarily to support personnel management practices.
Prepare all graduates to perform at two levels higher than the entry level.
Encourage rather than, as is current practice, stifling initiative. Reduce the bureaucracy to the maximum extent possible.
Make training and therefor Soldiering challenging. Most people at all levels fail to make the grade or excel or just leave due to a lack of challenge.
Ken,
Am interested in what you might propose as changes to our PME and training to better prepare our Soldiers, NCOs, and officers for the current and future fights. While we cant change what happened, I think that theres a lot that you can talk about in this forum (which a lot of guys in TRADOC read) that can lead to improvements in our training and education process.
Full Disclosure: I am a former SGI in TRADOC, recent attendee of ILE at Leavenworth, and am currently deployed so am the receiver of TRADOC products.
Having admitted to my background, I dont think that we do a bad job of educating and training our leaders. I think we do a better than average - and I will admit that it could be a lot better. I do think that we do a better job that most if not all other armies as a whole. I also think that while its true that we have many in the TRADOC organization that are stuck to their ways, all is not lost. Every day, a new Soldier comes into TRADOC from the field with ideas and sticks to his or her guns. We have some amazing things going on in Career Courses, at Leavenworth, and at Benning (with both the NCOA and the Maneuver Center). I dont want to slight any school, but I write about what I know.
Our PME is only one leg of the three. We dont do a great job of unit training or promoting self development - part of it is the "tyranny of the urgent" and getting the next slide done, but another part of it is just personal responsibility. An organization is like a fighting position - you are never done with it and resting on your laurels is just asking for something to happen.
Again, looking for ideas from you or any of our distinguished colleagues.
Scott
Bob:<blockquote>"I watched the inception of a full blown insurgency in 2003, in Iraq, and it took our sage military/civilian leaders until 2008 to recognize this fact."</blockquote>Yeah, I watched that too. When we tolerated the looting, the 1-325 popped caps in Fallujah and that loser CPA was formed, I thought "there goes the ball game..."<br><br>
Disagree on the "recognize" assumption though; it took a little less than six weeks to recognize we'd been schnookered by Saddam and about 18 months for that knowledge to percolate to the upper levels of the bureaucracy. It took another 18 months to get the big bureaucratic elephant turned around and then 18 months more for all the systems to function and produce the changes required. Still not good and the same time delay, just different components. While some of those delays are inherent in any big monolithic enterprise, there's no question that from 2003 until 2007+ was way too long. Good thing the environment was as benign as it was; could've been much worse.<blockquote>"When are we going to extricate ourselves from these states of denial and recognize the indicators and blatant red flags before it is too late. Is Vietnam, Beirut, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq just chimeras?"</blockquote>I don't think they're chimeras; I think the denial problem is one I see in a lot of kids today -- a major excess of self esteem leading to overweening arrogance accompanied by a significant deficit in true self confidence caused by a known if vocally denied lack of basic competence; people in high places, as the British would say, not fit for for task...
Put another way, less than competent civilian and military senior leadership with inadequate knowledge, dismissive of disagreement and proceeding on bluster and false bravado.
IOW, our poor training and PME are responsible for much that was and is wrong; societal failings and Politicians for many more. We cannot fix the latter but perhaps remediating our own shortfalls could reduce some of the fallout from the former.
Anyhoo, we agree on the problems if not on the causes and the timeline. ;)
I respectfully applaud this thesis on Irregular Warfare (IW). And I bow to the erudition of its authors; however, as the authors reflect, IW is a "loose" synonym for Uncoventional Warfare (UW) which is a term that has been in the SOF community for decades, and does not need a synonym. Are we again attempting to be "politically correct" like the government is attempting to do in the investigation of the Muslim terrorist Nidal Hasan and in allowing KSM et al to be tried in NYC as criminals subjected to our judicial system? This is no different than our sage military leaders continued use of conventional wisdom/tactics in an insurgency. I watched the inception of a full blown insurgency in 2003, in Iraq, and it took our sage military/civilian leaders until 2008 to recognize this fact. When are we going to extricate ourselves from these states of denial and recognize the indicators and blatant red flags before it is too late. Is Vietnam, Beirut, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq just chimeras?