BG Brian Mennes: Army Looking To Stand Up Divisions For New Security Force Assistance Brigades by Meghann Myers - Army Times
The Army’s 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade left for Afghanistan last week, the first deployment in a new train-advise-assist model that the service hopes to build on with larger organizational units, the Army staff’s director of force management said Friday.
With a goal to create five active-duty and one reserve SFAB, brigades could be organized under new parent commands, which would then cooperate with their counterparts in partner countries, Brig. Gen. Brian Mennes told an audience at the Washington Institute.
“We have a vision of creating two security force assistance divisions and corps that would do the bonding from the adviser teams at the corps level, let’s say, of the Afghan army,” Mennes said. “Folks that would be in tune with the intimate force management issues that would have to be created, enhanced to support future army.”
The SFAB concept is not new for the Army, in that groups of soldiers in a range of organizational structures have been training, advising and assisting local forces in countries around the world for the better part of the last century.
The Army may know what it wants to achieve in Afghanistan or other countries, Karlin said, but military plans are useless if they’re not integrated with the country’s civilian leadership abroad, while under continuous study and review back home…