The Army Capabilities Integration Center's Future Warfare Division is sponsoring a symposium entitled Grounded Projections for a Vision of Alternative Futures. The symposium will be Nov 3-4, 2010, in McLean, VA.

The symposium seeks to explore possible challenges facing the military and how they might affect the future. The symposium will seek to explore various alternatives of what the future may look like in light of what is known today and the implications of various factors on the Army.

As the military prepares for 2030 and beyond, what challenges lie ahead? Prior to the terrorist attacks of September 2001, national defense concepts were based on an assumption that conventional threats would come from hostile nations. In hindsight, it becomes apparent that the real and emerging threats to national security were coming from non-state actors. The military held the belief that surveillance, communications, and information technologies would allow the United States to dominate the battlespace against any opponent.

These erroneous assumptions brought to light the need to study and view all possible alternative futures in the context of history and contemporary knowledge. Recent conflicts and emerging trends need studied from all aspects to provide holistic views of alternative futures. Theories about the character of future warfare must be grounded in knowledge of emerging threats to national security.

A thorough study of contemporary conflict in an historical perspective is needed to correct flawed thinking about the character of conflict, help define future challenges to international security and build relevant military and civilian governmental capabilities to meet those challenges.

Potential areas for study could include expanded globalization and evolution of science, technology and engineering developments; advances in technology and their potential impacts on armed conflicts; where conflicts are likely to rise and where stability is likely to take root; social, economic or environmental trends likely to impact future armed conflicts; the changing global demographics and generational values and their impact on future conflicts and forces.

Ensuring conventional military forces are relevant to the contemporary security environment and capable of coping with threats from hostile states as well as non-state actors should begin with a thorough study to help identify implications for how forces ought to be organized, equipped and trained as well as how leaders ought to be educated.

The symposium will seek to explore possible alternative future views of armed conflict in light of the current environments. Conclusions drawn from the presentations will be used to help guide Army training and leadership development through the next 20 to 30 years. Following the symposium, papers will be posted online.

The symposium will take place Nov. 3-4, 2010, in McLean, VA. Some travel funding may be available. For further details, call Dr Robert Wood at (757) 788-2148 or email abstracts to: robert.wood2@us.army.mil no later than Sept. 1, 2010.

Since 2001, Pakistan has undertaken a number of operations against militant groups, including al Qa'ida, that directly affect U.S. national security. Despite some successes, militant groups continue to present a significant threat to Pakistan, the United States, and a range of other countries. Numerous militant networks - including al Qa'ida and other foreign fighters - exist in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and North West Frontier Province. Pakistan will not be able to deal with the militant threat over the long run unless it does a more effective job of addressing the root causes of the crisis and makes security of the civilian population, rather than destroying the enemy, its top counterinsurgency priority. In addition, Pakistan needs to abandon militancy as a tool of its foreign and domestic policy; it sends a confusing message internally and has a large potential to backfire.

Read the entire monograph at Rand.

Mr. Haider Ali Hussein Mullick is a fellow at the U.S. Joint Special Operations University and the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. Additionally, he consults with government organizations and advises on security, diplomacy, governance and development issues in South Asia. In the past he has conducted research at the Brookings Institution's Foreign Policy Studies (U.S.-Pakistan Relations), the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (Pakistan's Political Economy and Reviving Failed States), and the Hudson Institute's Center on Islam, Democracy, and the Future of the Muslim World (Madrassa Education and Links to Islamist Militancy). He is the author of "Pakistan's Security Paradox: Countering and Fomenting Insurgencies".

Please mark your calendars and pass this announcement along to those who you think may be interested. More details will follow for subsequent presentations.

Resources and information pertaining to this lecture series are also available at the MES at MCU website at the following link: http://www.mcu.usmc.mil/Pages/Middle%20East%20Studies.aspx.

Should you have any questions, or wish to RSVP for the event, please contact Adam Seitz at (703) 432-5260 or seitzac@grc.usmcu.edu.

A Warrior

Ethos by Bing West at National

Interest online.  Hat tip to Carl for sending this along:

Bing West wrote a very good article/book review dated June 28, 2010. 

Like all his stuff it is very insightful. 

Here is the

link.

This is a review / comparison at the National Interest of a triple threat of

recently published and painfully relevant books, from an author who knows it when

he sees it:

• David J. Kilcullen,

  Counterinsurgency

• Ted Morgan,

  Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu That Led America into the Vietnam

  War

• Megan K. Stack,

  Every Man in This Village is a Liar: An Education in War

Our June beg-a-thon

has come to a graceful conclusion.  With the generous support of a

committed core group of Small Warriors, we raised almost $10,000 -- $9,695 to be

precise. On the one hand, it's a tangible vote of encouragement an impressive

response to a couple of blog posts.  On the other hand, it amounts to 20%

of our goal of $50,000 to close the resourcing gap to support plans for a lot of

the content, responsiveness, and community support improvements we want to make

in the fall.

We have more work to do to resource our efforts and attain our goals. 

In SWJ as well as Afghanistan and the world. ;)

Our site renovation efforts are already budgeted and underway.  We're

looking forward to rolling out those enhancements later in the summer. We'll

then run as far and as fast with those new capabilities as our resources allow.

Thanks again to all our supporters, financial and otherwise -- your

engagement with the site and your active participation in this small wars

community of interest enriches us all.  There are many ways to

support us, and we hope

we are helping you as you work to advance the field of practice. 

Gen. Petraeus Assumes Command of ISAF - SFC Matthew Chlosta , ISAF Public Affairs Office

U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus emphasized the continuity of the counterinsurgency strategy as he assumed command of the International Security Assistance Force in front of the ISAF headquarters building, here.

Framed by towering pine trees, Petraeus was introduced by Germany Army Gen. Egon Ramms, the commander of NATO Allied Joint Force Command Headquarters Brunssum, in the Netherlands.

"As President Obama and NATO Secretary General Rasmussen have noted, my assumption of command represents a change in personnel, not a change in policy or strategy," Petraeus said. "To be sure, I will, as any new commander should, together with ISAF, Afghan, and diplomatic partners, examine our civil-military effort to determine where refinements might be needed."

"I feel privileged to be joining this critical effort at such a pivotal time," Petraeus said. "We are engaged in a tough fight. After years of war, we have arrived at a critical moment. We must demonstrate to the Afghan people, and to the world, that Al Qaeda and its network of extremist allies will not be allowed to once again establish sanctuaries in Afghanistan from which they can launch attacks on the Afghan people and on freedom-loving nations around the world. And with the surge in ISAF forces and the growth of our Afghan partners, we have a new opportunity to do just that...

More:

Remarks by Gen. David H. Petraeus Upon Assumption of Command - Transcript

Petraeus Assumes Command of ISAF - Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 - Footage

Petraeus Calls for United Effort to Win Afghan War - Voice of America

In Kabul, Petraeus Stresses 'Unity of Effort' - Washington Post

Petraeus Seeks Unity in Afghan Effort - New York Times

Petraeus, Eikenberry Stress Unity - Los Angeles Times

Petraeus: 'We Are in This to Win' in Afghanistan - Associated Press

Afghan War At Critical Stage, Says Petraeus - Reuters

Afghan War's No. 2 Readies His New Boss - Stars and Stripes

Update:

Petraeus Takes Command of Afghan Mission - New York Times

Petraeus Takes Command in Afghanistan, Pledging Victory - Washington Post

Petraeus Takes Command of the Afghanistan War - Christian Science Monitor

Petraeus on Afghanistan: 'We are in this to Win' - Voice of America

Winning is NATO's Mission, Petraeus Says - American Forces Press Service

Petraeus Takes Over Afghan Fight, Vows 'to Win' It - Associated Press

Gen Petraeus Formally Takes Over Afghanistan Campaign - BBC News

Petraeus Advisor Predicts Changes in Afghan Strategy - Los Angeles Times

Afghans See Change in Command as a Threat to Safety - Los Angeles Times

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ordered top military officials to inform the Pentagon before giving interviews to news media.

The new policy announced Friday comes little more than a week after the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, was forced to resign because of a published article. The U.S. magazine Rolling Stone last month published mocking comments McChrystal and his staff made about the Obama administration.

Pentagon officials say Secretary Gates was working on the new policy before that scandal. They added that the policy was not intended to restrict information or media access to officials.

Some reporters have expressed concern after the McChrystal episode that military officials will be wary of communicating with them.

More:

Gates Tightens Rules for Military and the Media - New York Times

Pentagon Issues New Rules for Engaging the Press - Wall Street Journal

Gates Wants Military Interviews with Press Cleared - Associated Press

Gates Tightens Military's Media Rules - BBC News

Pentagon Tightens Media Rules for U.S. Military - Agence France-Presse

We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

-- U.S. Declaration of Independence

I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure it will cost us to maintain this declaration, and support and defend these states. Yet through all the gloom I see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is worth all the means. This is our day of deliverance.

-- John Adams

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

-- Benjamin Franklin

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Topics include:

1) The Pentagon's entitlement spending problem,

2) The U.S. is a spectator at Afghanistan's end game.

The Pentagon's entitlement spending problem

A recent report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) explained the dismal trends that are bogging down the Pentagon's budget. Over the past decade, the budget, after subtracting out inflation, has almost doubled. Yet during that time, the number of aircraft and warships has declined and those that remain have gotten older. Funding has expanded at Reagan-like levels. But compared to the Reagan years, there has been relatively little modernization resulting from all of that spending.

The operational costs of fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are a large part of the problem. According to the CSBA, 20 percent of defense spending (including supplemental budgets) between 2001 and 2010 went to operational costs of those two wars. But the remaining 80 percent of the spending doesn't seem to have produced much new capability.

The rapid escalation in the cost of new weapons -- partly caused by frustrating mismanagement in research and procurement practices -- has resulted in a bleak return on investment for taxpayers. In 1985, during the peak of the Reagan defense buildup, the Pentagon bought 338 new tactical fighter aircraft and 23 new warships, among other items. In 2008, procurement spending was 33 percent higher after adjusting for inflation, yet the department could afford only 56 new airplanes and 7 new warships. One wonders whether the increases in weapons quality have been worth the inflation in unit costs.

But it is the Department's personnel costs that will pose the biggest headache in the future. Just like entitlement spending in the domestic budget, salaries, health care, and family services benefits granted today compound into the future and are politically impossible to retract. In order to reduce stress on ground troops making repeated deployments to the war zones, Defense Secretary Robert Gates expanded Army and Marine Corps headcounts by 92,100 immediately after taking office in late 2006. Meanwhile, Congress has consistently upped the ante on the Pentagon's salary requests. Just like everywhere else in the economy, the Pentagon's health care bill has run wild, tripling the rate of inflation in the rest of the economy since 2001 -- it now consumes nearly a tenth of the Pentagon's base budget. And in order to retain experienced personnel constantly separated from their families, Congress has expanded a variety of family benefits.

The result has been a growth in inflation-adjusted personnel costs from $73,300 per head in 2000 to $126,800 in the 2011 budget. When it comes time for Congress to roll back defense spending, this compensation will be untouchable. Training, maintenance, and equipment modernization will suffer the cuts.

Gates has rightly made the preservation of the all-volunteer force his top budget priority. Military success depends first and always on the quality of the soldiers in an army. That requires competitive compensation.

But just like any other enterprise struggling under financial pressure, the military will soon have to examine whether there are new paradigms that might allow one soldier to make the same contribution to security that ten or a hundred previously did. This does not imply a naí¯ve technological fix or a pricey substitution of capital for labor. The answer may be in who the military recruits into its ranks, what they are trained to do, and how they are organized and led when deployed. Perhaps the looming budget crunch will result in long-overdue innovations that were never contemplated when times were flush.

The U.S. is a spectator at Afghanistan's end game

The Obama administration's proposed July 2011 deadline to begin a withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan dominated the Senate Armed Services Committee's hearing this week to confirm Gen. David Petraeus as the new commander in Afghanistan. Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security advisor, explained to the New York Times, "We want the Afghans to understand that we're going to be expecting more out of them, so to the extent that it conveys a sense of urgency, that's an important message." To some extent, the White House's incentives are working; Afghan President Hamid Karzai is already delivering much more than before. But what he is delivering is far different from what Rhodes and his colleagues had in mind.

The Afghanistan end game may be arriving much sooner than expected. Negotiations between Karzai, Pakistani military and intelligence officials, and Taliban leaders seem to be advancing. And in spite of the surge of troops to Afghanistan, the United States may end up being a spectator as Karzai and his interlocutors work out their own truce.

Karzai realized long before Gen. Stanley McChrystal's defenestration that he had to develop alternatives to Washington's plans. He undoubtedly also concluded that Pakistan, with the sanctuary and support it provides to the Afghan Taliban and its control over supply routes (for all sides) into the theater, has vastly more authority over any outcome than the United States. As a corollary, Karzai has likely concluded that U.S. military operations in Helmand and Kandahar provinces are irrelevant to the calculations of Pakistani officials and Taliban leaders. Finally, Karzai would seem to have little confidence that Afghanistan's own security forces will be useful any time soon. All reasons for Karzai to ignore the U.S. playbook and make his own deal. Thus his decision to engage Pakistani officials to broker talks, first with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and now with the Haqqani network.

What is Pakistan's interest in brokering a truce right now? Its long term goal is to minimize India's influence in Afghanistan. A settlement that ends with Islamabad's Afghan proxies intact and inside the Afghan government will help further that goal. But why cooperate with Karzai now? Although Pakistan seeks a different end state than the United States, it has no interest in seeing the Americans lose the war. Pakistani leaders do not want to see a bitter United States pack up and leave as it did after its defeat in Vietnam. That would leave Pakistan cut off from U.S. aid and left to fend off India by itself. Thus there is an incentive to broker a deal that will appear to be a U.S. success and that will help officials in Washington save face.

U.S. leaders seem to be resisting a deal that leaves top-level Taliban leaders in the game. They fear that this will look more like surrender than success. What these officials need to realize is that their minimal bargaining leverage over Pakistan is likely to be even more minimal next year after the surge has run its course.

U.S. officials might not like what Pakistani and Afghan leaders are discussing with the Taliban, but after considering the alternatives, they might conclude it's the best deal going.

Some press accounts have placed blame for M4 carbine malfunctions at the Battle of Wanat, Afghanistan, squarely on the weapon's manufacturer. In fact, other factors could have led to the disaster there...

Read the entire article at Proceedings.