What is it?

During the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) semi-annual Senior Leaders Conference (TSLC) TRADOC leaders discuss emerging issues and chart the way ahead. Now for the first time, TRADOC will make the conference transparent and seek public interaction by allowing anyone to follow the conversation, contribute comments and ask questions via a Small Wars Journal (SWJ) discussion board. At the August 18 to 20 conference, two editors and a moderator from SWJ will blog live, providing readers observations and ongoing commentary about the proceedings.

What has the Army done?

TRADOC conducts these conferences to facilitate seminal discussion among senior Army leaders, but now you don't have to be general officer to get a front-row seat. The inclusion of social media in this year's TSLC provides a near real-time interactive public dialogue that offers an opportunity for the outside community to understand and even participate in the conversation by reading and writing on the SWJ discussion board. Also, TRADOC Public Affairs will guide followers through the many planned conference events using Twitter, Facebook, blog posts via TRADOC Live, and web updates.

The "Next Battles" conference theme emphasizes the future as our Army returns to a 1:2 BOG/DWELL (Boots on the Ground dwell time in unit rotations out of theater to home-station). This TSLC will address institutional adaptation; synchronizing and aligning the TRADOC Campaign Plan (TCP), merging the TCP with the Army Enterprise effort, and replicating the complexities of combat in Army training.

What continued efforts does the Army have planned for the future?

TRADOC envisions far more interaction between everyday people and senior Army leaders; and social networking tools make this possible. Public feedback from this TSLC will help drive the discussion forward and shape future TSLC events that will include more military bloggers, an expansion of TRADOC Live active-duty contributors, and a Facebook fan page devoted to TSLC issues. Soon, the Army will implement a new social networking policy, formally opening the door to even greater transparency and interaction between the Army and the public.

Why is this important to the Army?

The participation and interaction with the social media community allows the Army and TRADOC the opportunity to tell its story in a transparent, thoughtful manner, while offering the public community a stake in the future of their Army.

Resources / Background:

TRADOC Senior Leaders Conference - General Martin Dempsey

Training and Doctrine Command Web site

SWJ's Small Wars Council - TRADOC SLC forum

TRADOC Live

As General Stanley McChrystal's 60-day strategic assessment is wrapping up, he poised to recommend a new approach for Afghanistan, one grounded in counterinsurgency's strategy of protecting the population.

This is an important step, but for the new strategy to succeed, it must recognize that there isn't just one Afghan war - there are thousands of Afghan wars, each differing in motivations, organization, regional strength and possibilities for resolution...

The challenge for General McChrystal is creating a comprehensive and integrated strategy for Afghanistan out of the hundreds, if not thousands, of peoples, identities, and conflicts in the country...

More at The New York Times.

... I recently returned from second trip to Afghanistan. Having studied the demographics and potential effects of a surge in Iraq as well as here, I think those who resist sending more troops must answer a question: Why would counterinsurgency in Afghanistan be easier? It seems pretty hard. Afghanistan is significantly larger and more populous than Iraq, for example. Its compartmentalized terrain hinders the movement of forces and resources. The fragmented nature of Afghan society keeps "ink spots" of security success from spreading. The enemy's attacks are not as spectacular as they were in Iraq, but its operations are sophisticated and effective.

US Army doctrine calls for one counterinsurgent for every 50 people. The Afghan insurgency is confined to the Pashtun and some mixed areas of the country - perhaps 16 million people requiring about 320,000 counterinsurgent troops. US, international and Afghan forces will total around 275,000 by the end of this year, or roughly 45,000 below the doctrinal norm. In reality, most of the Afghan police are ineffective at best, and several thousand coalition forces are legally prevented from fighting. The actual gap between the forces we have in Afghanistan and what doctrine recommends is significantly higher...

More at The Washington Post.

How Many Troops for Afghanistan? - Washington Post opinions. Ed Rogers, Scott Keeter, Dennis Kucinich, Meghan O'Sullivan and Andrew Natsios debate the politics of sending more troops to Afghanistan.

The Obama administration is establishing a new unit within the State Department for countering militant propaganda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, engaging more fully than ever in a war of words and ideas that it acknowledges the United States has been losing.

Proposals are being considered to give the team up to $150 million a year to spend on local FM radio stations, to counter illegal militant broadcasting, and on expanded cellphone service across Afghanistan and Pakistan. The project would step up the training of local journalists and help produce audio and video programming, as well as pamphlets, posters and CDs denigrating militants and their messages.

Senior officials say they consider the counterpropaganda mission to be vital to the war...

More at The New York Times.

... Before 2001, America's military women had rarely seen ground combat. Their jobs kept them mostly away from enemy lines, as military policy dictates.

But the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, often fought in marketplaces and alleyways, have changed that. In both countries, women have repeatedly proved their mettle in combat. The number of high-ranking women and women who command all-male units has climbed considerably along with their status in the military.

"Iraq has advanced the cause of full integration for women in the Army by leaps and bounds," said Peter R. Mansoor, a retired Army colonel who served as executive officer to Gen. David H. Petraeus while he was the top American commander in Iraq. "They have earned the confidence and respect of male colleagues."

Their success, widely known in the military, remains largely hidden from public view. In part, this is because their most challenging work is often the result of a quiet circumvention of military policy....

More at The New York Times.

It appears our strategy is nation-building, with fighting and dismantling of the Taliban a secondary consideration. Thus, the number of enemy killed will not be counted, let alone used as a metric. This non-kinetic theory of counterinsurgency has persuaded the liberal community in America to support or at least not to vociferously oppose the war. But we have to maintain a balance between messages that gain domestic support and messages that direct battlefield operations.

We must understand what our riflemen do in Afghanistan every day. The answer is they conduct combat patrols. That underlies all their other activities. They go out with rifles to engage and kill the enemy. That is how they protect the population. For our generals to stress that the war is 80% non-kinetic discounts the basic activity of our soldiers. Although crime isn't eradicated by locking up criminals, we expect our police to make arrests to keep the streets safe. Similarly, our riflemen are trained to engage the enemy. That's how they protect the population. If we're not out in the countryside night and day -- and we're not -- then the Taliban can move around as they please and intimidate or persuade the population.

I'm not arguing that we Americans can ever dominate the Taliban gangs. There's a level of understanding and accommodation among Afghans in the countryside that culturally surpasses our understanding. During the May poppy harvest, the shooting stops on both sides and men from far and wide head to the fields to participate in the harvest. That's an Afghan thing. Only the Afghans can figure out what sort of society and leaders they want.

That said, we should strive to do a better job of what we are doing for as long as we are there. I condensed several hours of firefights I filmed during various patrols into the 30-second clip I posted here on 10 August (Not a Tactical Hurdle). The purpose is to illustrate a tactical problem that is strategic in its dimensions. Simply put, our ground forces are not inflicting heavy losses on the enemy. However, the annual bill for the US military in Afghanistan exceeds $70 billion, with another four to six billion for development. We've already spent $38 billion on Afghan reconstruction. Congress may eventually balk at spending such sums year after year. The problem is we're liable to be gradually pulled out while the Taliban is intact. Nation-building alone is not sufficient; the Taliban must be disrupted.

Our soldiers only get a small number of chances to engage the enemy. Our battalions average one arrest every two months, and one platoon-sized patrol per day per company that infrequently makes solid contact. On average, a US rifleman will glimpse a Taliban once a month. The Taliban initiate the fights because they know they can escape. Our patrols have firepower but lack mobility. Our soldiers are carrying 70 pounds; a Taliban is carrying ten pounds. The Taliban have the distinct edge in mobility. Because the Taliban are well-concealed and scoot away, our superior firepower does not yield precision aim points to do severe damage.

More senior-level attention must be paid to inflicting severe enemy losses in firefights and to arresting the Taliban, so that their morale and networks are broken. A recent directive forbids applying indirect fires against compounds where civilians might be hiding. That directive upholds human decency and may reduce enemy propaganda. But indirect fires -- helicopter gunships and jets -- used to be called "precision fires" and gave the US its enormous advantage in combat. Now that such fires are restricted, what provides our advantage when the enemy sensibly fights from compounds? Don't expect Afghan soldiers to do it for us. We have equipped and trained the Afghans in our image. They are as heavy and slow-moving on the ground as we are, and rely upon our advisors to call in the firepower.

This is my third war. It has the highest level of military scholars. Those scholars who emphasized the concepts of non-kinetic counterinsurgency need also to design concepts that bring more lethality to the ground battlefield. We're pumping billions into UAVs. Surely we can find technologies and techniques for the grunt.

Originally posted at In Harmonium

Yesterday, Friday August 14th, was to have seen a talk given by Lynndie England at the Library of Congress on her new biography Tortured: Lynndie England, Abu Ghraib and the Photographs That Shocked the World. The talk, however, sparked a very strong reaction from Morris Davis, a veteran and employee of the Library of Congress that was posted at the SWJ Blog here.

The post itself is in the genre of "Shocked and Appalled" style, letter to the Editor. Davis notes that:

Thousands and thousands of honorable men and women have and are serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places. They don't get book deals and invited to lecture at the Library of Congress. Most of them would be happy with a thank you and a chance at an education or a decent job when the mission is over. It's a disgrace that the dishonorable profit and that we use government property and resources to glorify the gutless. If you attend the lecture on Friday, don't save me a seat.

Now, regardless of what one thinks about England's actions, this letter to the editor is now being credited with instigating a series of "threats" to the organizers that have resulted in the cancellation of this talk and several future ones (source). In particular, David Moore, another employee at the LoC and a veteran as well, notes:

David Moore, a Vietnam War veteran and German acquisitions specialist at the library who organized the event, said he received several e-mails threatening violence and shared them with police and the library's inspector general.

He said he was disappointed by the cancellation but supports the decision because of safety concerns. "We can't have an event here that's going to develop into a brawl like a town hall meeting," he said.

He added, "Free speech in America is pretty well dead."

He blamed an essay decrying the event on the Small Wars Journal blog for stirring up much of the opposition. The site focuses on war politics and strategy.

In a response to this, Dave Dilegge posted a notification of the cancellation here which has sparked a s*** storm of reactions that truly bother me. Anyone who takes the time to get to know Dave knows that he is one of those people who supports free speech even if he disagrees with what is being said. The line for him, and for the Small wars Council as a whole, is whether or not the process of discussion / debate remains "civilized" in the sense that people can agree to disagree and are (relatively) polite -- the ROE is "Attack the message, not the messenger".

One of the more interesting, and ominous, references in the AP article was Moore's comment that "[w]e can't have an event here that's going to develop into a brawl like a town hall meeting". What I find ominous about it is that this lack of "civilized" behaviour is permeating the US town hall meetings on health care reform and spilling over into all sorts of other issues and destroying the habit of reasoned debate and disagreement, replacing that with yelling matches and the threat of "direct action". As Bill Nagle, publisher of the Small Wars Journal noted

I would not join David Moore in saying that free speech is dead. Yet I believe I can speak for many of us here in saying that, as much as we oppose the event, we are appalled the outcome is the result of safety concerns arising from threats of violence. Thuggery is unacceptable — over there, and especially over here. Small Wars Journal, and I am confident Moe Davis, a man of great principle, do not stand for that.

And that is the word for it -- Thuggery.

A lecture by the woman who became the public face of the Abu Ghraib scandal was canceled Friday at the Library of Congress after threats caused concerns about staff safety...

David Moore, a Vietnam War veteran and German acquisitions specialist at the library who organized the event, said he had received several e-mails threatening violence and that he shared them with police and the library's inspector general...

He said he was disappointed by the cancellation but supports the decision because of safety concerns. "We can't have an event here that's going to develop into a brawl like a town hall meeting," he said.

He added, "Free speech in America is pretty well dead."

He blamed an essay decrying the event [link added] on the Small Wars Journal blog for stirring up much of the opposition. The site focuses on war politics and strategy...

Nah, he said it all and opened himself up to severe criticism by those better versed than I. Moore is quoted as saying - "I'm just fed up" - welcome to the club Mr. Moore - you are in select company.

He never contacted us - nor did any officials concerning the so-called threats - and obviously he has some sort of agenda. Might as well preach to a wall than try to reason with the unreasonable - you can quote me here - I'm just fed up.

Drones are taking over the Air Force

The United States Air Force will reach a milestone this year: for the first time it will train more pilots for unmanned aircraft than for manned aircraft. A decade ago unmanned aircraft were hardly known. Now they dominate the Air Force's pilot training system and it is very unlikely this trend will ever reverse. In fact, it is not hard to imagine that within another decade unmanned aircraft operations will dominate day-to-day Air Force operations, force planning decisions, and budgets.

We can see how the Air Force's drones will soon crowd out manned aircraft inside its aircraft hangars. By 2013, software and communications improvements will allow the Air Force's unmanned aircraft pilots to simultaneously fly three drones at one time, four in an emergency. Another factor supporting the likely proliferation of drones such as the Predator, Reaper, and Global Hawk is their low cost compared to new manned aircraft such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. According to the Government Accountability Office, $24.5 million will purchase a set of four MQ-9 Reaper hunter-killer drones plus a ground station and satellite relay. (See page 117 of this report) The latest guess of the price for a single F-35 fighter-bomber is $100 million. (See page 93.) This gap in cost led Defense Secretary Robert Gates to demand the cancellation of the manned F-22 Raptor program in order to fund the purchase of more drones for service in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The F-35 and the Reaper obviously have different roles and are not direct substitutes for each other. Lieutenant General Dave Deptula, the officer in charge of the Air Force's unmanned aircraft programs, admitted at a recent press conference that the Air Force's current unmanned systems might be vulnerable to air-defense threats, electronic attack, and satellite communication problems.

But at the same briefing, Deptula made it clear (see this presentation) that the Air Force expects unmanned systems to transform the service's doctrines, force structure, organization, and culture. Drones are taking over the Air Force -- this year's graduates from Air Force pilot training can explain that.

Maybe the state is the problem, not the solution

Next week, Afghans will head to the polls to elect a president. Quite a bit of international commentary has focused on the worthiness of Afghanistan's current president Hamid Karzai, what Afghanistan would be like under opposition candidate Abdullah Abdullah, and whether Ashraf Ghani, a U.S.-educated former World Bank official, has any chance of winning. (Click here for FP's election coverage.)

Although the election makes for a dramatic story, some analysts wonder whether the focus on who will be Afghanistan's next president is a distraction from the real key to the country's stability -- its tribes. While the U.S. government and the United Nations ponder how they will get along in the years ahead with Karzai, Abdullah, or Ghani and attempt to supervise the corrupt ministries in Kabul, Afghanistan's future, according to these analysts, will actually be decided by tribal leaders in the most remote corners of the country. Their advice is to spend less time on Kabul and more time understanding and supporting Afghanistan's tribes.

Seth Jones, an expert on Afghanistan at RAND, recently observed that Americans headed to Afghanistan seem to be studying the wrong history:

It is striking that most Americans who try to learn lessons from Afghanistan's recent history turn to the failed military exploits of the British or Soviet Union ... Yet, outside of some anthropologists, few people have bothered to examine Afghanistan's stable periods. The lessons are revealing.

The Musahiban dynasty, which included Zahir Shah, Nadir Shah, and Daoud Khan ruled Afghanistan from 1929 to 1978. It was one of the most stable periods in modern Afghan history, partly because the Musahibans understood the importance of local power. Many U.S. policy makers have not grasped this reality, still clinging to the fantasy that stabilizing Afghanistan requires expanding the central government's writ to rural areas.

Jones condemns the U.S. focus on the Afghan national army and police over the tribes, which provided the best local security during the country's stable periods. Jones notes that while the United States expends precious resources building up Kabul, the Taliban are focusing their efforts on Afghanistan's local political structures, much to their advantage.

Dan Green, a former State Department advisor in Uruzgan Province, echoes Jones's view in an essay republished at Small Wars Journal. Green recommends that coalition forces take the risk of spreading out and place small infantry units in Afghanistan's villages. Once there, they would help organize tribal lashgars, local self-defense militias. Coalition forces would also facilitate the integration of the lashgars into a province's defense plans and integrate tribal self-defense efforts with those of the Afghan army.

Jones and Green's essays relate to a broader theme I raised in my recent piece for The American, "Is Foggy Bottom ready for irregular warfare?" I argued that the U.S. military, led by its middle-ranking leaders, has relearned the techniques of irregular warfare this decade. In Iraq and Afghanistan and also many other parts of the world, U.S. soldiers have shown how to accomplish challenging tasks by establishing relationships with indigenous military forces and local leaders.

However, top-level U.S. statesmen continue to focus on the nation-state system. For them a stability operation successfully concludes with the emergence of a virtuous nation-state with well-functioning institutions and counterparts familiar to those who work in the top reaches of the State Department, Pentagon, or White House.

For U.S. infantry captains and sergeants dealing with tribal leaders around the world, the nation-state "solution" might not only be irrelevant, it could make it harder to achieve their goal of resolving conflicts. After all, it is rebellion against central authority that is frequently the cause of conflict in the first place.

U.S. soldiers have adapted to irregular warfare. U.S. statesmen, if fixated on the nation-state "solution" to conflicts, will demonstrate that they have not. These statesmen must first resolve the conflict they are having with their own soldiers.

The Department of Defense (DoD) Web 2.0 Guidance Forum is a new initiative to solicit input from the public that has been undertaken in the spirit of President Obama's Open Government Directive. President Obama issued a memorandum on 21 January 2009 entitled, "Transparency and Open Government," which emphasized the need to ensure public trust and to establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. We are using this blog as an approach to engage the public in Department of Defense (DoD) considerations of web 2.0 capabilities, and are excited to participate in this new facet to the President's openness and transparency efforts.

The blog posts will be written by a number of different DoD participants. The primary moderators will be Noel Dickover, a contractor supporting the DoD CIO, and Jack Holt, Senior Strategist for Emerging Media. In some cases, we may post blog entries for other participants. This will be annotated by the author's name listed at the bottom of the blog post.