The Azimuth: COIN Edition
The Azimuth is the official training bulletin of the Army National Guard (ARNG). It is prepared and published by the Battle Command Training Center at Fort Leavenworth. April’s edition is devoted to counterinsurgency and can be found here; it’s a very large pdf file so be patient.
From the ARNG Training Chief, Colonel Robert A, Moore:
The Army National Guard Training Division (NGB-ART) is pleased to link The Azimuth “training message” with that of the U.S. Army / USMC Counterinsurgency (COIN) Center, U.S. Army Combined Arms Center (CAC) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas to communicate new and emerging information in the conduct of COIN.
As we enter our ninth year of being at war, we are still fully engaged in an operational environment characterized by population centricity, religious and tribal fundamentalism, and zealots of political power…a COIN environment. We are often over-tasked and under-resourced, deployed into harm’s way when only a few months separate when we were last there, and challenged to be trained when sufficient training time is not available…yet we still prevail. Army National Guard (ARNG) units have performed, and continue to perform, magnificently, both in this environment and support at home to civil authorities and response to domestic emergencies. Still, the myriad tasks are arduous and delicately balanced against available resources. Our current environment is what it is, and we must embrace it with ingenuity, eagerness, and professional resolve.