War, the military, COIN and stuff

Marines Sending in the Tanks

There has been some skepticism over the Marine Corps’ decision to send a company of M1 Abrams tanks to join the battle in southern Afghanistan, but the use of tanks in a counterinsurgency in general, and in Afghanistan in particular, is hardly new.

In Afghanistan, the Canadians and the Danes have used their tanks to great effect--and Canadian Army Maj. Trevor Cadieu has written a detailed acocunt on how tanks became an integral part of the Canadian fight in Kandahar—the place U.S. Marines are fighting now. In December 2006, the Canadians deployed a squadron of Leopard C2 tanks to Kandahar, and he Major writes that “after deploying forward… the tank squadron and armoured engineers featured prominently in all major combat operations undertaken by the Canadian BG… Since May 2007, the tank squadron has fought almost constantly alongside Canadian and Afghan infantry in close combat with the Taliban.”

The Canadians say that they’ve found so much success in Afghanistan with the German-made Leopard tank that they completely revised plans for the structure of their ground forces. In 2001, the Canadians decided not to replace their aging fleet of Leopard I tanks—the plan was to simply ride them until they died and then transition to a lighter force structure using the Stryker-like LAV infantry carriers as their heaviest piece of equipment. It wasn’t long before the heavy fighting and the toll that powerful roadside bombs Canadian troops encountered in southern Afghanistan changed this calculus, however, prompting the Ottawa government to kick off a “crash program” to buy surplus German and Dutch Leopard II tanks, which began arriving in Afghanistan in 2008.

Please  read the rest of this post over at ARES

The Numbers game in Afghanistan

U.S. and Afghan forces on patrol. Pic: Paul McLeary

When it comes to building a reliable and effective national security force, one of the critical questions to be answered is which is more important, quality or quantity. Up until late last year, says Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell, the American officer in charge of overseeing the recruitment and training of all Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), the focus was on quantity, and quality suffered. Speaking on a conference call earlier today, Caldwell said that his command is trying to bring the two a little closer together by growing the force while focusing on things like literacy,  drug use, and professionalism, but some of the number the General used to illustrate the difficulties ahead were less than enouraging.

Given the current attrition rates for both the army and the police, in order for the ANSF to hit its October 2011 goal of 305,000 personnel, an additional 56,000 cops and soldiers will need to be recruited, trained, equipped and fielded. But in order to do that, a staggering 141,000 soldiers and police will have to enter the pipeline to hit that 56,000 number. That means 85,000 of that 141,000 that NATO spends money on not only to recruit and train--but to issue paychecks--will simply vanish.  “If I can put that into some context for you,” the general said, “in order to meet the 2011 goal, we will need to recruit and train, in the next 15 months, approximately the same number as the total strength of the Afghan National Army today.”

That is stunning. Let’s break that down. The Afghan army today has 134,000 soldiers. By next October, that number is slated to swell to 171,000--meaning 37,000 more soldiers need to be trained and fielded over the next 15 months. But in order for that to happen, Caldwell said, “we're going to have to recruit, train and assign 86,000 more people to the army in order to make that growth of 37 thousand.” That means 49,000 men will walk after receiving some form of training/pay/equipping.

And then there is the famously beleaguered, and just as famously corrupt, Afghan police. Their ranks number about 115,000 today, and by October 2011, the force is set to grow to 134,000. But to make that growth of 19,000, NATO is going to have to recruit, train and assign almost 56,000 men. That means 37,000 would-be cops are going to eat up money, resources, and the time of the already thinly-spread trainers, primarily U.S. armed forces personnel. Overall, NATO trainers--who are still only staffed up to about 60 percent of their intended capacity--will have spent time training 85,000 soldiers and cops over the next 15 months, with nothing to show for it.

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Joint Forces Command on the Chopping Block?

The Associated Press is reporting that as part of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' effort to eliminate 10 percent of the defense contractor workforce next year, and as part of $100 billion in cost savings over the next five years, the Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) will be eliminated. While there is no solid confirmation yet, Gates has announced a press briefing at 2:30pm this afternoon, and JFCOM Public Affairs officers have told ARES that while they currently have no comment, they will issue a statement after the Gates briefing.

Currently headed by Gen. James Mattis until he leaves to take command of CENTCOM later this year, JFCOM has long been something of a mystery to many, even those who follow defense and military matters closely. The command often works in the shadows, and has worked successfully to push critical technologies out to the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. Just as important is the emphasis the command has shown in stressing the need for innovation in virtual training simulation technologies to be used by troops before deployment. A typical project was one where the command teamed with the Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) to provide better training and simulation for troops before deployment.

Much of this training has also been aimed at better preparing small, dispersed infantry units for the irregular fights of Iraq and Afghanistan, and in particular their ability to anticipate and respond to the IED threat. The expected announcement at 2:30 leaves several big projects up in the air, including $285 million in funding JFCOM was awarded lasting through 2015 "to assist the services with the development of immersive trainers that replicate the joint operating environment."

There have been rumblings about JFCOM’s future for several weeks, ever since the Defense Business Board called for cutting the DoD's civilian work force by at least 15 percent and shuttering the Joint Forces Command back on July 22. JFCOM is currently comprised of about 6,000 military personnel and contract employees working in Norfolk, Va. – with the civilian / military ratio being about evenly split. The AP reports that the contractors at JFCOM account for annual salaries of more than $200 million, but we will have to wait for the full shakeout to see if these positions are actually eliminated, or simply moved to other commands.

One thing we can be sure of however, the Virginia Congressional delegation is going to put up a big fight. Governor Bob McDonnell, along with Congressman J. Randy Forbes, Glenn Nye, Bobby Scott, and Rob Wittman have already called a “high priority” press conference today at 4pm.

Crossposted at ARES

Blue Devils Over Afghanistan

Over at Aviation Week, Amy Butler has the scoop on a fascinating new Air Force program that is coming up with new ways to combine signals and imagery intelligence collection in Afghanistan using reconfigured Hawker Beechcraft King Air 90s. The program, dubbed Blue Devil, is the latest chapter in the ongoing saga of the Air Force trying to play catch-up with the Army’s hugely successful Task Force ODIN, which has been operating in Iraq and Afghanistan for several years now. ODIN is a mix of manned and unmanned air assets that conducts route surveillance, IED detection, and intelligence and information gathering operations in addition to flying lethal missions, and has become an integral part of both wars.  

Butler writes that “the goal with Blue Devil is to track individuals by using communications intelligence cues to help operators direct their imaging sensors,” and that:

The operational concept also could work in reverse as well. Using the wide-area camera system, large swaths of land can be surveyed and explored for evidence of communications networks. And, once located, signals intelligence can be positioned to listen in. House defense authorizers pushed for Blue Devil funding in the war supplemental budget for Fiscal 2010, and they say in a committee report that the Air Force should use it to assess the value of wide-area airborne surveillance (WAAS) technology in general. Blue Devil is viewed as a precursor to the Gorgon Stare project, which aims to put WAAS on the Reaper UAV.

Read the whole thing here.

Tanks in Counterinsurgency

A sharp, short new report from two researchers at RAND concludes that despite all of the scorn that has been heaped on heavy armor units over the past several years, heavy forces—meaning tanks and infantry fighting vehicles—”are key elements of any force that will fight hybrid enemies that have a modicum of training, discipline, organization, command and control, and advanced weapons (e.g., ATGMs, MANPADS, RPGs, mines, and IEDs). Light and medium forces complement heavy forces in hybrid warfare, particularly in urban and other complex terrain, but they do not provide the survivability, lethality, or mobility inherent in heavy forces. Quite simply, heavy forces reduce operational risks and minimize friendly casualties.”

The paper by David E. Johnson and John Gordon IV, is part of a larger research project that assesses how armor has been used in recent counterinsurgency fights, and the implications this will have for “U.S. Army force mix and capabilities, as well as for the elements that support or operate with ground forces.” The duo spoke with the U.S. Marines, the Brits, the Danes, the Canadians and the Israelis for the project, and found that contrary to what one might think, counterinsurgent forces in Afghanistan actually love their tanks. (Check Johnson’s paper on Israel’s performance during the recent fighting in Gaza for some more background on how the IDF is changing the way it fights.)

The Canadians and the Dutch say that they’ve found great success in Afghanistan with the German-made Leopard II tank, (as I wrote about in more detail here), so much so that the tanks have caused the Canadian military to completely revise plans for the structure of their ground forces. In 2001, the Canadians decided not to replace their aging fleet of Leopard I tanks--the plan was to simply ride them until they died and then transition to a lighter force structure by using the Stryker-like LAV infantry carriers as their heaviest piece of equipment. It wasn’t long before the heavy fighting and the toll that powerful roadside bombs Canadian troops encountered in southern Afghanistan changed this calculus, however,  prompting the Ottawa government to kick off a “crash program” to buy surplus German and Dutch Leopard II tanks, which began arriving in Afghanistan in 2008. Johnson and Gordon write that

The experience in southern Afghanistan has convinced the Canadian Army that armored forces have a very important role in COIN operations. The Leopard II tanks currently operating in Afghanistan have been modified with improved armor (in particular, all-around metal skirts to detonate RPG shaped-charge warheads) and improved crew-comfort items, such as cooling systems to cope with the intense summer heat.

The Canadians have also said that convoys have proven to be less likely to be ambushed if tanks are present. The Dutch have had much the same  experience with the Leopard II in Afghanistan, claiming that the tank’s 120mm gun is so accurate that it minimizes civilian casualties, and the RAND team reports that the Danes “noted that tanks can respond very quickly when contact is made with insurgents, and that it was clear the Taliban respects tank firepower. Indeed, it was stated that Taliban activity drops considerably when tanks are operating in an area.” The Canadians and Danes have been so successful with their Leopard tanks in Afghanistan that the British have taken to relying on them completely for their heavy armor and mobile firepower needs.

Despite having been very happy with the way their Challenger II Main Battle Tanks operated in Iraq, the Brits have decided not to send them to Afghanistan, instead relying on the 30-ton Warrior IFV with its 30-mm cannon for operations in Helmand. In a sharp departure from the Americans, Canadians and Dutch, the Brits are even considering shutting down their heavy tank units for up to three years to allow Tankers to perform other duties. While the final decision rests on what RAND terms as “funding constraints and the need to free personnel for other COIN-related tasks” it will also mean that for a while at least, the heaviest armored fighting vehicle that the British Army will field will be the 30-ton Warrior IFV. As it stand, this would hardly matter in Afghanistan, where the Brits are content to outsource their heavy armor needs to the Canadians and Danes, even though both countries are scheduled to pack up their Leopard II’s and go home in about a year from now.

Photo: Canadian MOD

ANCOP and Afghanistan's Police Problem

(Afghan soldier. Pic: Paul McLeary)

While the Afghan army has, in fits and starts, started to show the effects of several years of concentrated effort on the part of NATO trainers to whip it into fighting shape, by all accounts the police are years behind the army in any readiness category one can think of. New York Times journalist C.J. Chivers recently pointed this out when reporting on the ineffectiveness of Afghan National Civil Order Police (ANCOP) units serving in the town of Marja in Helmand province, where the performance of the ANCOP unit assigned to partner with the Marines is raising some serious issues about their readiness. (ANCOP are specialized police units that can be moved around the country to assist NATO forces in areas where there is no police presence.)

I asked Colonel John Ferrari, the deputy of programs for NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan what the institutional view of the ANCOP program and police training was, and he admitted that while the police had been ignored for much of the past decade, the NTM-A is trying to put training programs in place. Amazingly, the Afghan police have only just recently been able to stand up their own recruiting command, and Ferrari says, “we’re also in the middle of standing up a training command -- and it’s that training command, once its stood up that will help get at the development of the leadership of the police.”

When asked what was being done to put an “Afghan face” on the training of local police to ensure that they’re being trained to be Afghan cops, and not an Americanized version of an Afghan cop, Ferrari said that “we’re probably not as far as we want to be as far as having experienced Afghan instructors teaching the Afghans...ideally what you’d like is that ANCOP policeman who’s done two rotations in Marja to be the guy teaching the next generation of ANCOP coming in,” but due to current force needs, that just isn’t possible.

I asked that same question of Major General Mike Ward, deputy commander-police, NTM-A, in late June, and he said that while “we're very careful to try and make sure that the training is ‘Afghanized,’ if you will, or that it's the right training for local circumstances. And there is -- there is some disagreement about [what kind of] police training should be being delivered.”

He added that “the cultural issue that is causing the most challenge, I think, is for the police to understand their responsibility to get out with, mix with, know the publics and be able to both generate confidence that they're there to do a job but equally to get feedback from the public where and when they're not doing a good job.” There is currently a program at work in Kandahar that uses a mix of Canadian civilian police and the U.S. Army’s 97th MP Battalion that is training and partnering with the city’s beat cops, Ward said. “And generally speaking,” he added, “when they're partnered, we see the right kinds of behavior.” But the question is: what happens when they’re not partnered?

This post was originally published at ARES

Fighting Over the Fighting Prowess of Afghan Forces

(Afghan Army soldiers prepare for a misison. Pic: Paul McLeary)

A congressionally-mandated Inspector General report released last week offered an extremely harsh assessment of the job that the NATO/ISAF command tasked with training and mentoring Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) has been doing--and the report itself has in turn been criticized by the American general who heads up the training command.

The report from the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR)—an outfit funded by Congress in each defense spending bill since 2008--says that despite the fact that the United States has spent $27 billion on training and equipping the Afghan army and police since 2002, the rating system to measuring their progress has been largely ineffective, and as such, the United States government does not have a good handle on ANSF readiness. Since training a competent Afghan army and police force that can operate independently of NATO troops is the cornerstone of the alliance’s strategy for the war, no more serious or consequential change can be levied against the war effort.

But just how ineffective has the system been? According to SIGAR, the system “has not provided reliable or consistent assessments of ANSF capabilities,” even though NATO has been using what it calls the Capability Milestone (CM) rating system since 2005. While the system has been the main tool used for measuring the development of ANSF capabilities, it has also recently been scrapped by the NATO Training Mission (NTM-A) because its measurements were too subjective, and didn’t capture the true ability of Afghan forces to operate on their own, according with one American Army officer who spoke with ARES.

Since the rating system has recently changed and given that the audit work was conducted from October 2009 through May 2010, the head of the NATO Training Mission U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William Caldwell shot back in his official response that the report is “based on data that is six months old. The findings in this report do not accurately represent the current state of the Afghan National Security Force...this report is not only inaccurate, but it is potentially damaging.”

In total, the main charges that SIGAR outlines in the report are that measurements used in the assessment system “have overstated operational capabilities,” that “top-rated ANSF units have not indicated a capability to sustain independent operations,” and “ANSF capability reports have included outdated assessment data.”

As of the end of March 2010, ISAF reported CM ratings for 150 Afghan army and 130 Afghan police units, finding that “approximately 23 percent of those army units and 12 percent of police units received the highest rating, CM1,” meaning that they can operate independently. But not all of these units were actually capable of operating on their own due to attrition and the disturbing trend of Afghan units “backsliding” in effectiveness once NATO mentors leave. The SIGAR report found that 38 percent of army units, and 66 percent of police units, “had regressed at least one level” from February 2009 to January 2010.

Colonel John Ferrari, the deputy of programs for NTM-A told ARES that this regression can be explained in a number of ways, two of the most significant being the rapid growth of ANSF and the difficulties of training units in a combat zone. Since the ANSF is constantly expanding, trained leaders are often bounced around to different units, and some units don’t rate as well once they lose an effective leader, Ferrari said. When it comes to the police, some trained units may encounter newly formed, and better armed, Taliban groups that move into their area once NATO forces leave, which decreases the effectiveness of the unit.

NTM-A’s new rating process is called the Commanders Unit Assessment Tool, and Col. Ferrari says that since it is more subjective, it is also more accurate. As opposed to the recent past, “the embedded mentors stay with the units longer,” and instead of rating them with a 1, 2, 3, 4, rating where ‘1’ means they can operate independently, the categories have been expanded. ”We don’t have the [numbered] category anymore,” he said, “since if they’re operating independently, that can’t be rated. Now we rate them whether they‘re effective with advisors, whether they’re effective with assistance, whether they’re dependent on the coalition for success, or whether they’re barely effective or ineffective, so it’s tiered on how much assistance they need from coalition forces.”

But with more ANSF forces, that means that more NATO trainers and mentors are needed. The SIGAR report also found that as of April 2010, NTM-A was only staffed at 52 percent of its needed capacity. Ferrari said that as of early July, the command is “up to about 60 or 70 percent” of its desired staffing level and is waiting for some help from European allies. “A lot of those NATO trainers have been pledged, but they just haven’t come in.” To mitigate that shortfall, president Obama has authorized two infantry battalions from the United States to temporarily fill in the gaps left by the unfulfilled NATO commitments.

All of this begs one big question. If NATO claims that its ticket out of Afghanistan is through training a reasonably effective Afghan security force, how can western governments possibly under staff the command charged with training these forces? While Col. Ferrari pointed out that the Afghan National Army Training Command is working on the technical training aspects for skills like logistics, engineering, signals, and training non-commissioned officers—he also rightly pointed out that building a security force from scratch, while expecting it to fight immediately, is a complicated long-term project that takes years to complete. But with NATO beginning its pullout next year, Afghan forces don’t have that long.

Restrepo

During the 90 minutes it took for an invited audience to sit though a screening of Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington’s new documentary about the war in Afghanistan last Monday night, the Department of Defense announced the deaths of six more American Soldiers and Marines. But just as the vast majority of Americans will never see the names of the six service members killed, nor will they ever likely see or even hear of this arresting film that chronicles the sometimes desperate combat experiences of a small group of young Americans.

Restrepo, the much-lauded documentary that chronicles the 12 months that  Battle Company of the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade spent in Afghanistan’s remote Korengal Valley is in all respects a jarring movie, and to their credit the filmmakers avoid the temptation to rely on easy sensationalism or jingoism to try and sell it. But for all of the great press that the movie has been receiving, some claims about its singularity might be a little overstated. The excellent 2006 documentary, The War Tapes, which used footage shot by National Guard soldiers in Iraq covers much the same ground--albeit in a much different war, under much different circumstances. (The two films actually serve as pretty good markers for their respective conflicts -- Restrepo is a fight based around a fixed mountaintop fortification that sees almost daily violence, while the War Tapes follows a unit that provides convoy support across the flat expanse of IED-leaden desert roads.)

Not surprisingly, most reviews of Restrepo have focused on the movie’s steady stream of violence, since in the end that is what puts butts in the seats--but some of the most cringe-inducing scenes have nothing to do with combat. Instead, the film shows the difficulties inherent in asking Army officers and enlisted men to do two jobs at once: fight a war against an elusive and dedicated enemy, while at the same time acting as community outreach coordinators and economic advisors to groups of skeptical, impoverished Korengali villagers. In one scene, an American Sergeant excitedly tells the camera that a small group of Afghan elders has come to the embattled mountaintop combat outpost to talk, something that hasn’t happened before. It turns out that the elders have come to complain that the Americans have killed one of their cows, and they want compensation. The Sgt. radios his commander, who says he won’t pay, but will give the men sacks of rice and beans that equal the weight of their cow. The villagers don’t seem to be happy with this arrangement, but neither does the Sgt., who knows that he has just insulted men who he is trying to make his allies.

Other telling moments come when U.S. Army Captain Dan Kearney tries to win over skeptical locals by telling them that a road being built through the valley (which is the reason the Americans are there in the first place) will make them rich. It's obvious that they neither believe him nor are much interested in the road project--since they have heard promises from Americans before--but instead ask why some of their neighbors have been arrested. Kearney tells them that he has good intelligence linking the men to crimes, but the villagers remain unconvinced. In the end, neither side is willing to fully trust the other, and given the constant attacks on the American outpost, the refusal of the locals to provide intel on who is doing the shooting, and the complete absence of any representative of the Afghan government, little progress is ever made in the relationship.

Restrepo is what population-centric counterinsurgency looks like once it leaves the world of Powerpoint and the think tank seminar and enters the world of combat. It’s ambiguous, it’s unfair, it’s confusing, and people still end up dead. It’s the modern American way of war.  

CJR: A McChrystal Chill? Don’t Bet On It

I've got a piece over at the Columbia Journalism Review on relations between the military and the press in the wake of the recent unpleasantness surrounding the resignation/sacking of Gen. Stanley McChrystal. You can read the whole thing here. 

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As we walked in to the tactical operations center (TOC) of the small combat outpost in Tarmiyah, Iraq, U.S. Army Captain Christopher Loftis fixed me with a serious look. “This is all off limits,” he said, pointing to the classified Toughbook laptops and radio equipment jammed into the small room. It was January 2008, and I was a newly arrived reporter embedded with Loftis’ Alpha Company from the 1st Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division, covering their operations during the now-famous “Surge.” Loftis made it clear that he didn’t want me spending much time around this gear, and that asking questions of soldiers in the TOC would get me booted from his unit. “I don’t know you from Adam, bub.”

I wasn’t offended. He was right to set clear boundaries. But other than those initial restrictions (which I have heard from every officer whose TOC I have stepped into), I essentially had the run of the dilapidated former youth sports complex that Alpha Company called home. Loftis would also soon prove to be the kind of commander any reporter is lucky to run across: smart, honest, open, and forthright, and as an added bonus, a hell of a good interview. It was up to me how many missions I wanted to tag along on, and he allowed me access to meetings he held with former insurgents who were thinking about joining the fight against al Qaeda—though he did ask that some of what they discussed remain off the record.

The almost inexplicable decision that General Stanley McChrystal and a group of his aides made in speaking so harshly—and on the record—of their civilian bosses and peers with Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings has dragged the complicated relationship between the press and the military kicking and screaming back into the spotlight, and stirred fears of a chill between the two camps.

Frankly, that is unlikely. Although some parties might be loathe to admit it, the military needs the press to put its agenda before the American people just as much as the press needs the military’s cooperation to cover two wars. Yearly defense budgets don’t just drop from the sky. They are the result of a constant push and pull—and serious lobbying—among the military, politicians, and the defense industry. And much of that dance plays out in the media. It’s more or less the same with active operations. Not all commanders on the ground in Afghanistan, Iraq, or elsewhere will always welcome reporters with open arms, but their bosses know how important it is that the American people get a glimpse of what soldiers, marines, airmen, and sailors are doing in the country’s name.

But the question remains: How does the Army honestly feel about how this episode will affect its relationship with the press? The top brass—public relations pros like General David Petraeus and Michael Mullen, the commander of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—have been making all the right noises. Last week, for instance, Mullen said that “we need to tell our story. It needs to be done well. It needs to be told smartly. We need to learn the right lessons, not the wrong ones.” He later told a group of officers and government civilians working in Kabul that their response to the McChrystal episode should be: “Don’t overreact; don’t over-adjust. Don’t shy away from the press.”

Click over to the Columbia Journalism Review to read the rest