COIN: Are we forgetting the lessons of the past 14 years already?

SGT Tyler G. — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 00:01:27 -0500

Over the past 14 years we've been fighting an asymmetric war and have had to change our tactics to accommodate. We learned many lessons about how to conduct COIN throughout OIF, OND, and OEF, writing entire new doctrines from lessons learnt on the subject. Now that these conflicts are winding down, the military is making a tonal shift back to conventional warfare. They aren't even teaching COIN in military intelligence training anymore.

With the new, but not unfamiliar, threat of ISIS now in our gaze, I've seen a lot of war cries about how we should deal with them. The thing that seems to be most apparent to me is that we are quickly disregarding everything we learned.

Even whilst we were in the midst of COIN operations, too many service members didn't understand what they were, how they worked, why they were important, and the role they personally played in either making them successful or unsuccessful.

Should we make COIN training mandatory for all jobs, since every service member who interacts with local nationals has a significant effect on overall success? What is your take on this issue? Do you not believe it to be an issue and if so why? I'm curious as to what the RP community has to say or discuss on this topic.

Response by Lt Col Fred Marheine, PMP made Feb 20 at 2015 11:29 AM

Lt Col Fred Marheine, PMP — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 11:29:18 -0500

Great question that I think speaks to the very heart of what the U.S. military considers "it's job" and how that definition is out of synch with what the civilian leadership expects the military to do in securing the political objective in a COIN environment.

If you ask the average SM - up to and including most FO/GOs - what the purpose of the military is, the answer will be something along the lines of "break sh*t and kill people." It's the type of "war" the U.S. military excels at - and the least likely war we will fight, IMHO, because our potential adversaries understand just how overwhelming our advantage is (at the moment) in conventional, force-on-force warfare.

We simply don't like COIN - it doesn't fit our institutional model of what a "real" war looks like; it's hard, requires enormous restraint in the use of force, and is really hard to keep score/tell who is winning. We don't want to do it and will resist being ordered to do it with all of our bureaucratic might (anyone recall the Powell Doctrine?).

It's also incredibly difficult to train for on any sort of a consistent basis given the diversity of tasks, skills, and cultures that must be incorporated. I think we got pretty decent at it recently, but at the expense of the sort of training we really prefer to do - big, heavy, force-on-force maneuver warfare. And oh, by the way, maneuver warfare demands huge quantities of expensive gear, which require budgets to procure systems, contractors/constituents, etc., etc..

As another example, did you see the other article up on RP today? The USAF is building virtual air-to-air combat simulators...when was the last A-A engagement and why is that our highest priority for simulation? Don't get me wrong - I'm a firm believer in air dominance/supremacy enabling all other operations, but resources are tight and we must choose wisely: so why is A-A the USAF priority? Because it's the fight we believe we exist to fight. And hey, why don't we retire the A-10 since we don't need that non-A-A POS any more? (that is sarcasm)

What's the solution? Make tough choices. Acknowledge we don't like COIN, don't want to train for it, and are going to lose lives if we get thrust into it in the future (as we re-learn what we've forgotten from last time) because we think it's more important to prep for a force-on-force conflict. Or, acknowledge we will fight these in the future and actively break the existing paradigm to train/equip a COIN force - which I do not think the Spec Ops community has the bandwidth to handle - hence it will require either a chunk of personnel out of hide or an increase in end-strength - or perhaps assigning responsibility for COIN to State to manage (and yes, I cringe at the thought of that). And lets not forget the personnel - I think we want our military to be very proficient at "breaking sh*t and killing people." That said, it seems reasonable to assume the person who volunteers for that duty is likely different - not worse, bad, less capable or anything disparaging: just different - than the one who volunteers for a COIN force and we do them a dis-service to recruit them for one role and put them in the position of executing the other.

Trying to walk some middle road seems doomed from the outset given current attitudes and the existing bureaucracy.

Sorry for the rant - institutional bias gets my underwear twisted.

Response by SFC William Swartz Jr made Feb 20 at 2015 11:41 AM

SFC William Swartz Jr — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 11:41:48 -0500

I am not sure that we are "forgetting the lessons learned", but there are a whole lotta folks that need to learn/re-learn the basics of their actual MOSs after the heavy does of COIN training/operating that has been conducted. Speaking from the perspective of a Tanker, yes retired now but still in the know within the Armor community, there are far too may junior leaders that never operated as a tanker when they were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan and never even conducted an actual Tan Gunnery. While retaining the valuable lessons we have learned over the last decade or so, emphasis should be placed in the normal training events that a unit is responsible for based on their unit's METL.

Response by SSgt Private RallyPoint Member made Feb 20 at 2015 12:41 PM

SSgt Private RallyPoint Member — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 12:41:14 -0500

"Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife". That is all...