Lessons learned in Iraq war will apply in future conflicts
Lessons learned in Iraq war will apply in furture conflicts
by Drew Brooks
Fayetteville Observer
Col. Robert Forrester, deputy director of CALL – the Center for Army Lessons Learned at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. – said the war resulted in countless compilations, newsletters and handbooks that have changed Army policy and practices.
The newsletters alone number between 400 and 500, he said.
Forrester, who previously served as an adviser to an Iraqi general, said CALL has been analyzing and dispersing lessons learned since the Iraq War began and will continue to do so for years to come.
After speaking to other CALL analysts, Forrester said, he compiled an unofficial "top 5" lessons learned from the war.
He said those lessons have led to a more productive, comprehensive approach to operations, better intelligence, an emphasis on cultural understanding, ways to counter improvised explosive devices and more efficient sustainment.
The sustainment improvements include using contractors to provide the bulk of support for soldiers.
In military intelligence, Forrester said, the Iraq war taught the Army that there is no substitute for human intelligence and that officials can't rely on templates as they have in the past.
"In the past we were guilty of believing we could know and template an enemy, that we could somehow know and prevent actions," he said before explaining the Army's shift toward more investigative-type intelligence. "Now it almost looks like law enforcement."
Perhaps the lessons that have saved the most lives in Iraq come in counter IED operations.
"We had no counter IED effort when this war started nine years ago," Forrester said. "Now we have a robust effort across the board."
In other news, a new report says that maintaining proper tire pressure will result in better fuel economy.
Mr. Bacon’s sarcasm is not lost on me….
Some stuff that comes to my mind:
1. How is it that logistics are mentioned…we had many of the same lessons from Desert Shield / Storm. It was very evident that sustainment was unlikely to maintain pace with the combat units and the tooth to tail ratio has always been an issue. We reduced troop levels to the point that we had to have contractors for support as we couldn’t do it organically. So, we’re are about to reduce troop levels again, apparently. Not to mention a lot of those fat contract jobs are going to disappear. There will again be no mechanism to ensure sustainment needs are met. So I have to ask: how can we say we’ve learned a lesson if we insist on setting ourselves up for the same shortfall?
2. Intelligence…the lesson here should be, “laziness doesn’t work”. We look to cameras, sensors, drones, aerial platforms and everything else except brain power and humans. There’s a reason our tactics dictate a leaders recon before departing the ORP: you can’t count on ISR assets without verifying with humans, what the ground truth is. Our military is like a group of seven year olds in front of a Playstation: totally mesmerized by the fancy graphics and the wonders of technology. Are we really still having to learn this?
3. IEDs and C-IED. Sorry but that’s just plain negligence on the part of leaders and planners. IEDs are not new. The concept has been around for a long time. Complex ambushes in urban terrain, also been around for quite a while. Our vehicles, body armor and other baseline items should have been better from the start. Instead we went into reaction mode and screwed it all up. Body armor is too cumbersome, MRAPs lack mobility. We have sacrificed speed, surprise, and the initiative all because of the implementation of crude weapons systems buried in a mound of trash next to the road.
4. The comprehensive approach to ops, I assume, refers to the new FSO we talk about. We HAD to do FSO for a long, long time now. Our doctrine, however, was more in line with AirLandBattle, despite the talk of FSO. We still want to fight that way and many of our leaders are still trying to fight the battle like it’s ALB not FSO. The continuum we speak of in FSO has always been there but we are unable to establish and sustain the continuum needed, linking the political and military aspects of warfare. When that doesn’t exist, the real doctrinal way we do things will not resemble the template of FSO.
5. I see no mention of risk aversion, “toxic leadership” or careerism that has plagued us and delayed our progress by years.