A Comprehensive Approach to Improving US Security Force Assistance Efforts
A Comprehensive Approach to Improving US Security Force Assistance Efforts
by Lieutenant Colonel Theresa Baginski, Colonel Brian Clark, Lieutenant Colonel Frank Donovan, Ms Karma Job, Lieutenant Colonel John Kolasheski, Colonel Richard Lacquement, Colonel Michael McMahon. Colonel Don Roach. Colonel Sean Swindell and Lieutenant Colonel Curt Van De Walle, Small Wars Journal
A Comprehensive Approach to Improving US SFA Efforts (Full PDF Article)
Current operations, the demands of persistent conflict, and the enduring national security interests of the United States underscore the immediate and continuing need to improve US Security Force Assistance (SFA) efforts. The frequency and importance of such activities throughout US history demonstrate that the current requirements are not anomalies. Since 9/11, the United States has been challenged to accomplish key national security goals due to a lack of capability and capacity to effectively advise, utilize and partner with foreign security forces. To meet this challenge, this paper recommends the creation of a new organization as a means of overcoming current bureaucratic impediments and providing a coherent focus on SFA challenges.
Previous US advisory experience with similar requirements did not result in institutionalized capabilities that would have forestalled major problems. Instead, US SFA efforts have been largely ad hoc ventures. The United States should have had expertise, plans, authorities, and organizational solutions readily at hand to address the full range of partnership activities when the inevitable crises arose. The Department of Defense (DoD) must act now to avoid future SFA difficulties and to ensure that it does not squander the hard-won lessons of recent experience. DoD is long overdue for a comprehensive approach to SFA that supports Geographic Combatant Commander’s (GCC) Theater Campaign Plans (TCP) and contingency operations in a manner that integrates US military assistance activities from ministerial through tactical levels, while providing strong links to complementary interagency and multinational activities.
This paper offers recommendations that build upon recent initiatives within DoD to create a comprehensive approach to improve US Security Force Assistance. At the heart of our recommendations is a DoD-level organizational approach to effectively institutionalize SFA activities and facilitate interagency and multinational unity of effort. We intend to adapt current DoD processes that encourage the ad hoc approach and implement a single DoD-level integrating organization. Expertise in key SFA activities, massed and integrated within a DoD-level organization, offers the best opportunity to improve hitherto disjointed efforts. This single integrator can be successful only with simultaneous change to DoD’s authorities and policies.
A Comprehensive Approach to Improving US SFA Efforts (Full PDF Article)