Topic “advising”
Need some advice?
January 27, 2009 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 8:27am | 34 Comments
A smart friend of mine said yesterday that Obama's problem in Afghanistan is not that he has too few brigades but that the advisory mission there is so woefully understaffed. (I'm talking, like, just 40% of capacity, folks.)
Tom Ricks takes up the question of advisers with his office buddy, John Nagl, in this post on Foreign Policy. John notes we have embraced COIN doctrine to a large degree but still do not reward officers for serving as advisers in their career paths. This just goes to show that it's easier to change doctrine than it is to change institutions. Can anyone, honestly, see the U.S. Army re-writing the career paths of its combat arms officers to reward them for service as advisers? Honestly?
Tom Ricks takes up the question of advisers with his office buddy, John Nagl, in this post on Foreign Policy. John notes we have embraced COIN doctrine to a large degree but still do not reward officers for serving as advisers in their career paths. This just goes to show that it's easier to change doctrine than it is to change institutions. Can anyone, honestly, see the U.S. Army re-writing the career paths of its combat arms officers to reward them for service as advisers? Honestly?
Going Native
July 24, 2008 | Posted by Kip - 5:48am | 39 Comments
"Advisors are not 'them.'" warns a principle from the emerging joint doctrine on security force assistance.
Task Force Phoenix in Afghanistan issues stern warning about hair cuts, shaving, and uniform standard so that advisors don't "go native."
"Going native" is a charge sometimes levied by Coalition maneuver force commanders when their advisors don't produce the effects they would like.
Kip thinks it is highly useful to explore the concept for a moment.
Advisors are in the business of developing a foreign force. This is done in order to further US interests in the region.
Advisors are not commanders. Successful advising is a factor of influence and the raw capabilities of the force with which the advisor is assigned. Because the advisor does not command the security forces with which he works, his success is based on his ability to build rapport with his counterpart, demonstrate his credibility as an advisor worth being listened to, and provide value in terms of access to resources otherwise unavailable to his counterpart.
Without rapport, the enterprise fails, and the advisor cannot demonstrate the overlap in US and foreign force interest required for success. Oftentimes, a strict adherence to US military standards of appearance is detrimental to the development of rapport--something long ago recognized by US Special Forces. In Afghanistan, for instance, a lack of facial hair is generally associated with youth, inexperience, Communism, and homosexuality, yet conventional advisors are prohibited from growing beards.
Advisors in both Iraq and Afghanistan have been oft-chastised by the advisor commands for uniform modifications meant to build rapport such as wearing of the Afghan or Iraqi flag opposite their US flag or wearing other elements of local dress. These advisors are criticized as having "gone native."
When US advisors eat, sleep, and live with their foreign counterparts, incredulous maneuver units still sometimes deride their "going native."
Such derision and concern is ludicrous. Good advisors recognize the importance of overcoming cultural and linguistic barriers by demonstrating their commitment to identifying with the unit they are advising. Such gestures allow the advisor to gain more influence to help drive the foreign unit toward US goals. US forces could not become "them" even if they tried...truly blending in with the populace is a rare skill gained over years of experience, not a couple of months.
The real concern should be over the lack of political understanding and context displayed by some advisors. Their responsibility is to facilitate US interests through support to the unit they are advising. In order to to do this successfully, they have to understand US interests. When the advisor is no longer working to support US interests because of closer identification with his counterpart's interests than those of the US or because he fails to understand that actions taken by his counterpart are undermining US interest, then we can say he has "gone native."
It has nothing to do with his haircut, and it would be nice if after a half decade of conventional force based advising in Afghanistan and Iraq if the advisor commands in both theaters would adopt uniform and grooming policies that recognized the importance of developing rapport with one's counterpart.
Heck, it might even save advisors from terrible facial infections, a result of the rush shave jobs when advisors hear higher is approaching.
Task Force Phoenix in Afghanistan issues stern warning about hair cuts, shaving, and uniform standard so that advisors don't "go native."
"Going native" is a charge sometimes levied by Coalition maneuver force commanders when their advisors don't produce the effects they would like.
Kip thinks it is highly useful to explore the concept for a moment.
Advisors are in the business of developing a foreign force. This is done in order to further US interests in the region.
Advisors are not commanders. Successful advising is a factor of influence and the raw capabilities of the force with which the advisor is assigned. Because the advisor does not command the security forces with which he works, his success is based on his ability to build rapport with his counterpart, demonstrate his credibility as an advisor worth being listened to, and provide value in terms of access to resources otherwise unavailable to his counterpart.
Without rapport, the enterprise fails, and the advisor cannot demonstrate the overlap in US and foreign force interest required for success. Oftentimes, a strict adherence to US military standards of appearance is detrimental to the development of rapport--something long ago recognized by US Special Forces. In Afghanistan, for instance, a lack of facial hair is generally associated with youth, inexperience, Communism, and homosexuality, yet conventional advisors are prohibited from growing beards.
Advisors in both Iraq and Afghanistan have been oft-chastised by the advisor commands for uniform modifications meant to build rapport such as wearing of the Afghan or Iraqi flag opposite their US flag or wearing other elements of local dress. These advisors are criticized as having "gone native."
When US advisors eat, sleep, and live with their foreign counterparts, incredulous maneuver units still sometimes deride their "going native."
Such derision and concern is ludicrous. Good advisors recognize the importance of overcoming cultural and linguistic barriers by demonstrating their commitment to identifying with the unit they are advising. Such gestures allow the advisor to gain more influence to help drive the foreign unit toward US goals. US forces could not become "them" even if they tried...truly blending in with the populace is a rare skill gained over years of experience, not a couple of months.
The real concern should be over the lack of political understanding and context displayed by some advisors. Their responsibility is to facilitate US interests through support to the unit they are advising. In order to to do this successfully, they have to understand US interests. When the advisor is no longer working to support US interests because of closer identification with his counterpart's interests than those of the US or because he fails to understand that actions taken by his counterpart are undermining US interest, then we can say he has "gone native."
It has nothing to do with his haircut, and it would be nice if after a half decade of conventional force based advising in Afghanistan and Iraq if the advisor commands in both theaters would adopt uniform and grooming policies that recognized the importance of developing rapport with one's counterpart.
Heck, it might even save advisors from terrible facial infections, a result of the rush shave jobs when advisors hear higher is approaching.
Habits that Are Good for You...Like Vehicle Maintenance
July 18, 2008 | Posted by Kip - 6:42am | 6 Comments
A recent article in the NY Times details the efforts of Dr. Val Kurtis to get people to wash their hands in poor, sub-Saharan African countries. Her method: study the work of industry giants to see how they created habits in Western consumers.
At the advisor level as well, there is plenty of utility in understanding the way humans form habits...indeed, "understanding human nature" is one of the identified advisor skills in our emerging security force assistance doctrine. Kip will certainly keep the following in mind the next time he works an advisor mission:
Kip believes there are lessons learned for our advisors conducting Security Force Assistance in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. At the macro-level, as we identify trends that undermine the force, e.g., poor vehicle maintenance, failure to clean weapons, failure to account for ammunition, etc., focus campaigns on creating habits associated with parts of a soldier's daily life, e.g., "finish your daily prayer, clean your weapon."If you look hard enough, you’ll find that many of the products we use every day — chewing gums, skin moisturizers, disinfecting wipes, air fresheners, water purifiers, health snacks, antiperspirants, colognes, teeth whiteners, fabric softeners, vitamins — are results of manufactured habits. A century ago, few people regularly brushed their teeth multiple times a day. Today, because of canny advertising and public health campaigns, many Americans habitually give their pearly whites a cavity-preventing scrub twice a day, often with Colgate, Crest or one of the other brands advertising that no morning is complete without a minty-fresh mouth.
A few decades ago, many people didn’t drink water outside of a meal. Then beverage companies started bottling the production of far-off springs, and now office workers unthinkingly sip bottled water all day long. Chewing gum, once bought primarily by adolescent boys, is now featured in commercials as a breath freshener and teeth cleanser for use after a meal. Skin moisturizers — which are effective even if applied at high noon — are advertised as part of morning beauty rituals, slipped in between hair brushing and putting on makeup.
“OUR products succeed when they become part of daily or weekly patterns,” said Carol Berning, a consumer psychologist who recently retired from Procter & Gamble, the company that sold $76 billion of Tide, Crest and other products last year. “Creating positive habits is a huge part of improving our consumers’ lives, and it’s essential to making new products commercially viable.”
At the advisor level as well, there is plenty of utility in understanding the way humans form habits...indeed, "understanding human nature" is one of the identified advisor skills in our emerging security force assistance doctrine. Kip will certainly keep the following in mind the next time he works an advisor mission:
“Habits are formed when the memory associates specific actions with specific places or moods,” said Dr. Wood, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke. “If you regularly eat chips while sitting on the couch, after a while, seeing the couch will automatically prompt you to reach for the Doritos. These associations are sometimes so strong that you have to replace the couch with a wooden chair for a diet to succeed.”If, as the article suggests, up to 45% of what humans do on any given day is habitual, then much of the role of the advisor might seem to be in fostering the right habits and identifying the underlying cues that cause bad military habits.
Finding Forces for Afghanistan
July 3, 2008 | Posted by Kip - 10:51am | 37 Comments
Yesterday Chairman of the Joint Chief of staff Admiral Mike Mullen indicated that we have too few troops in Afghanistan:
Kip believes that continued policy failures in Afghanistan and Pakistan are the most likely Al-Qaeda-mushroom-cloud scenario as we continue to focus on the wrong war.
That said, Admiral Mullen doesn't make policy. But to say that we cannot commit more troops to Afghanistan misses the point. At much lower cost and with much better results, we can arrest the growing insurgency by vastly expanding Afghan forces.
Today's Afghan National Security Forces stand at a paltry 133,000 (if we accept the Long War Journal's numbers on the Afghan National Police, which Kip finds slightly suspect). The desired total size of both forces will be an 82,000-man police force and an 80,000-man military. The total force size of 162,000 combined Afghan security forces will be smaller than the current size of the Iraqi Army, a force of some 200,000 personnel in a country smaller and less populous than Afghanistan.
The main determinant of force size has not been the numbers required to defeat the Taliban but rather the numbers that Afghanistan can sustain for the long-term. The question of what Afghanistan can sustain, however, becomes irrelevant if the Taliban wear out the will of the international community and then defeat the government's security force speed bump.
Among an Afghan population that is 80% rural in which the insurgency is centered among rural communities, force size becomes even more critical. Afghan forces today are still concentrated around cities and provincial and district centers. Few security forces are being used to secure the populace outside of these areas. Out in the districts, the front lines of the fight, the requirements on police to secure the district centers and district officials leaves few, if any, forces for deterrent patrolling and community policing.
Efforts to train and advise the Afghan forces have been middling. An article in this month's Military Review by US Army Captain Dan Helmer describes needed fixes to an advisor command unable to support its advisors with logistics, intelligence, or direction. The problems in that command ought be a focal point for the Joint Chiefs and GEN Petreaus at CENTCOM, particularly in light of Admiral Mullen's recent comments on junior leaders:
Beyond the vital need to hold senior leaders accountable for properly resourcing, training, and equipping our advisors, it is vital that we vastly increase the size of the Afghan forces. Senator Lieberman's March editorial to have an Afghanistan National Army of 200,000 is a start point for the discussion. Kip believes, however, that the army is too bureaucratic and too focused on Pakistan to be up to the task--even as it has shown great strides forward in recent months in terms of its ability to conduct independent maneuver operations. The Afghan National Police are six years behind the Army, and whether they will be investigative police or a constabulary force has really not been decided.
What is really need in Afghanistan is not an expansion of the professional Army and Police but the development of part-time local forces committed to the government and willing to fight the Taliban.
The jirga (council) system of Pashtun and some other areas of Afghanistan provides a means to developing local forces. In areas that we seek to bring under government control, the Afghan government and coalition could call for jirgas to negotiate a no Taliban policy for the area--the leaders willing to participate would obviously be the ones we are empowering. Mimicking the Combined Action Platoons of Vietnam, Coalition and US forces operating in squad- or platoon-size elements would work side-by-side with locally constituted arbakai (a Pashtun word for police constituted to enforce the ruling of a jirga) to conduct nightly patrols and prevent the Taliban from operating in their villages. Arbakai would be paid a small salary for their part time work. The Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police and some Coalition elements would play the role of quick reaction force should these forces encounter an element too large for their capabilities as well as clearing areas dominated by insurgents. Call the forces the Afghanistan Islamic Forces, and build 500,000 mujahideen over the next three years.
Some who know about Afghanistan might object that the Afghan National Auxiliary Police were an attempt to do exactly that. Yet there was never a sufficient plan to build the auxiliary police, sufficient support, sufficient numbers, or sufficient attention paid to their plight. These new auxiliaries, on the other hand, would be built only in partnership with a Coalition or Afghan unit (such as the commandos) providing support in order to make them sustainable over the long term.
Admiral Mullen is right that there are not enough US forces to stabilize Afghanistan. A plan to vastly expand the size of Afghan forces while empowering locals to defeat the Taliban would go a long way toward alleviating that need. It should become an urgent priority.
"Afghanistan has been and remains an economy-of-force campaign, which by definition means we need more forces there."
Kip believes that continued policy failures in Afghanistan and Pakistan are the most likely Al-Qaeda-mushroom-cloud scenario as we continue to focus on the wrong war.
That said, Admiral Mullen doesn't make policy. But to say that we cannot commit more troops to Afghanistan misses the point. At much lower cost and with much better results, we can arrest the growing insurgency by vastly expanding Afghan forces.
Today's Afghan National Security Forces stand at a paltry 133,000 (if we accept the Long War Journal's numbers on the Afghan National Police, which Kip finds slightly suspect). The desired total size of both forces will be an 82,000-man police force and an 80,000-man military. The total force size of 162,000 combined Afghan security forces will be smaller than the current size of the Iraqi Army, a force of some 200,000 personnel in a country smaller and less populous than Afghanistan.
The main determinant of force size has not been the numbers required to defeat the Taliban but rather the numbers that Afghanistan can sustain for the long-term. The question of what Afghanistan can sustain, however, becomes irrelevant if the Taliban wear out the will of the international community and then defeat the government's security force speed bump.
Among an Afghan population that is 80% rural in which the insurgency is centered among rural communities, force size becomes even more critical. Afghan forces today are still concentrated around cities and provincial and district centers. Few security forces are being used to secure the populace outside of these areas. Out in the districts, the front lines of the fight, the requirements on police to secure the district centers and district officials leaves few, if any, forces for deterrent patrolling and community policing.
Efforts to train and advise the Afghan forces have been middling. An article in this month's Military Review by US Army Captain Dan Helmer describes needed fixes to an advisor command unable to support its advisors with logistics, intelligence, or direction. The problems in that command ought be a focal point for the Joint Chiefs and GEN Petreaus at CENTCOM, particularly in light of Admiral Mullen's recent comments on junior leaders:
"We owe them our attention and our time. We owe them the opportunity to think and to speak."(The recent case of LT G does not bode well as an indicator of the willingness of senior officers to actually adopt such a listening approach, despite the efforts of Admiral Mullen and Lieutenant General Caldwell--it certainly has had a chilling effect on Kip's willingness to share his views with his command.)
Beyond the vital need to hold senior leaders accountable for properly resourcing, training, and equipping our advisors, it is vital that we vastly increase the size of the Afghan forces. Senator Lieberman's March editorial to have an Afghanistan National Army of 200,000 is a start point for the discussion. Kip believes, however, that the army is too bureaucratic and too focused on Pakistan to be up to the task--even as it has shown great strides forward in recent months in terms of its ability to conduct independent maneuver operations. The Afghan National Police are six years behind the Army, and whether they will be investigative police or a constabulary force has really not been decided.
What is really need in Afghanistan is not an expansion of the professional Army and Police but the development of part-time local forces committed to the government and willing to fight the Taliban.
The jirga (council) system of Pashtun and some other areas of Afghanistan provides a means to developing local forces. In areas that we seek to bring under government control, the Afghan government and coalition could call for jirgas to negotiate a no Taliban policy for the area--the leaders willing to participate would obviously be the ones we are empowering. Mimicking the Combined Action Platoons of Vietnam, Coalition and US forces operating in squad- or platoon-size elements would work side-by-side with locally constituted arbakai (a Pashtun word for police constituted to enforce the ruling of a jirga) to conduct nightly patrols and prevent the Taliban from operating in their villages. Arbakai would be paid a small salary for their part time work. The Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police and some Coalition elements would play the role of quick reaction force should these forces encounter an element too large for their capabilities as well as clearing areas dominated by insurgents. Call the forces the Afghanistan Islamic Forces, and build 500,000 mujahideen over the next three years.
Some who know about Afghanistan might object that the Afghan National Auxiliary Police were an attempt to do exactly that. Yet there was never a sufficient plan to build the auxiliary police, sufficient support, sufficient numbers, or sufficient attention paid to their plight. These new auxiliaries, on the other hand, would be built only in partnership with a Coalition or Afghan unit (such as the commandos) providing support in order to make them sustainable over the long term.
Admiral Mullen is right that there are not enough US forces to stabilize Afghanistan. A plan to vastly expand the size of Afghan forces while empowering locals to defeat the Taliban would go a long way toward alleviating that need. It should become an urgent priority.
Life Support to Our Exit Strategy
June 22, 2008 | Posted by Kip - 8:29am | 24 Comments
It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of General Casey's announcement this week that lieutenant colonel advisor team chiefs will be centrally selected to fill billets and that majors will not only receive professional credit for their advisor service but also be allowed to serve subsequently in conventional career progression slots.
The announcement is a remarkable about face for a leader who only three months ago said in an interview with Yochi Dreazen:
It is an important first step, but far more needs to be done to enshrine this as more than a gesture--even within the realm of personnel.
A key issue remains that centrally selected team commanders and majors receiving credit for their service will still have a team whose career tracks are being derailed. While better commanders will mitigate some of the captain retention issues arising from advisor service, captains will still return from their time on a team to an Army which does not place a premium on the combat tour they have just completed.
For those trying to make the Sergeants Major or Master Sergeants lists, advisor success will continue to play second fiddle to service in traditional positions.
In cases including much of Afghanistan where majors and captains are serving as team commanders far removed from any lieutenant colonels, the new policy does not give them command-equivalent credit where it is due.
Moreover, there is little reason to believe that service as an advisor will be regarded as equivalent to current check-the-block positions in maneuver units. Advisor service will likely be regarded by boards similarly to service in training commands. Successful service in training commands generally results in selection for future positions in training commands. Unfortunately, there will remain no advisor command in which to put these former advisors, and so they will remain generally uncompetitive unless they opt also for traditional maneuver positions. Nor does it seem that they will necessarily be more competitive for having done both when that option is available to them. Majors who due to time constraints must make a decision on a slot as an advisor or as a battalion executive or operations officer would be unlikely still to choose the former if they wish to remain competitive.
And while the promotion of Colonels MacFarland and McMaster signaled moves toward rewarding innovation, that it required the personal intervention of Secretary Gates and General Petraeus speaks to personnel systems that continue to fail in a time of war to reward wartime service in challenging positions.
There is significant historic justification for skepticism. When Vietnam-era Army Chief of Staff Harold K. Johnson similarly ordered boards to consider service as an advisor team chief the equivalent of battalion command, the boards simply ignored him.
And even if we get the boards on board better than General Johnson, for instance by mandating selection of advisors at a higher per capita rate than their peers (which would be a change over which to uncork the institutional change champagne), it does not solve the other issues of Doctrine, Organization, Training, Leader Development, Materiel, and Facilities.
In terms of doctrine, the big tent process through which FM 3-24 was developed is a good model for developing appropriate doctrine for Security Force Assistance. The limited open commentary on JCISFA's emerging doctrine is unlikely to produce doctrine sufficient for our advisory efforts in BOTH Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention other contingencies. It is moreover inexcusable seven years into our war in Afghanistan that while we have a Mission Training Plan for US Army bands (ARTEP 12-113-MTP), we lack an equivalent document for the hundreds of transition teams and thousands of personnel currently deployed in an advisory capacity in Afghanistan and Iraq. Finally, the current version of the Army's Operations Manual lacks any mechanism by which to tailor forces or task-organize to conduct security force assistance within the "Provide Support to Governance" stability task.
In terms of organization, no organization currently structured within the modular brigade concept can fulfill the increasing need in Afghanistan and Iraq for large scale security force assistance. The lack of organizations structured for advising prevents the development and retention of institutional knowledge on advising and inhibits the training, education, and employment of advisors to our current conflicts.
Designating units as advisor units with identified mission essential tasks and training and education prerogatives would significantly support the efforts to develop security forces capable of defeating the insurgencies in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. This is of course a zero sum game and can be done only at the expense of diminished capacity to man our maneuver brigades.
Much of the prerequisite thought and staffing for a military organization capable of providing support to host nation governance including security force assistance has already taken place...in 1968. DCSPER-40 directed the creation of the 6,000 man Military Assistance Officer Command, a force of 6,000 that would have combined the elements of both civil and military assistance. Unfortunately, like current attempts to reform the advisory effort, only 500 of those billets were filled two years into the program.
Training and education for advisors remains highly inadequate as described here, here, here, and here. The comparable Vietnam era school for advisors headed to the Military Assistance Officer Command was 22 weeks, compared to 8 weeks for our current transition teams.
Beyond significant personnel issues for captains and enlisted men still not addressed by the Chief's announcement, there remains the thorny issue of selecting the right personnel to serve in advisor positions. Major General John Cushman, who served several advisor tours in Vietnam, wrote in his final defbriefing report that a) the need for advisors would not go away and b) that the constitution and capabilities of good advisors did not necessarily overlap with those of good commanders.
The Army to date has resisted the implications of such findings, not taking language capacity or the ability to operate in a foreign culture into account in assigning advisors. Identifying those with the right skillsets to be advisors, taking only volunteers, and rewarding service in order to get those volunteers is necessary if our advisory efforts are to succeed. Leader development and education could then follow better training and personnel decisions. Integration of advisor training into current Leadership Development Programs would be a good start--where is the advisor module at the Captains Career Courses?
There is currently no single command with the identified responsibility of supplying and sustaining advisors. This is why they are often reduced to beggars in any area of operations (as applied to Kip during his service in Afghanistan). As for facilities, with the advisor mission likely to increase in coming years regardless of who wins the election, it is time to demonstrate institutional commitment to training through the development of world class and permanent facilities for advisor training.
The Army Chief of Staff's announcement is a vital first step in the move toward institutionalizing advisor capacity. It is, however, insufficient. Kip hopes it will not take seven more years to complete the significant reforms still required.
The announcement is a remarkable about face for a leader who only three months ago said in an interview with Yochi Dreazen:
"I'm just not convinced that anytime in the near future we're going to decide to build someone else's army from the ground up," said the Army's chief of staff, Gen. George Casey. "And to me, the 'advisory corps' is our Army Special Forces -- that's what they do."For an Army that has resisted all efforts to institutionalize security force assistance outside of Special Forces, this move is the first time that a portion of our personnel policies will reflect senior leaders' emphasis on developing capable Afghan and Iraqi forces.
It is an important first step, but far more needs to be done to enshrine this as more than a gesture--even within the realm of personnel.
A key issue remains that centrally selected team commanders and majors receiving credit for their service will still have a team whose career tracks are being derailed. While better commanders will mitigate some of the captain retention issues arising from advisor service, captains will still return from their time on a team to an Army which does not place a premium on the combat tour they have just completed.
For those trying to make the Sergeants Major or Master Sergeants lists, advisor success will continue to play second fiddle to service in traditional positions.
In cases including much of Afghanistan where majors and captains are serving as team commanders far removed from any lieutenant colonels, the new policy does not give them command-equivalent credit where it is due.
Moreover, there is little reason to believe that service as an advisor will be regarded as equivalent to current check-the-block positions in maneuver units. Advisor service will likely be regarded by boards similarly to service in training commands. Successful service in training commands generally results in selection for future positions in training commands. Unfortunately, there will remain no advisor command in which to put these former advisors, and so they will remain generally uncompetitive unless they opt also for traditional maneuver positions. Nor does it seem that they will necessarily be more competitive for having done both when that option is available to them. Majors who due to time constraints must make a decision on a slot as an advisor or as a battalion executive or operations officer would be unlikely still to choose the former if they wish to remain competitive.
And while the promotion of Colonels MacFarland and McMaster signaled moves toward rewarding innovation, that it required the personal intervention of Secretary Gates and General Petraeus speaks to personnel systems that continue to fail in a time of war to reward wartime service in challenging positions.
There is significant historic justification for skepticism. When Vietnam-era Army Chief of Staff Harold K. Johnson similarly ordered boards to consider service as an advisor team chief the equivalent of battalion command, the boards simply ignored him.
And even if we get the boards on board better than General Johnson, for instance by mandating selection of advisors at a higher per capita rate than their peers (which would be a change over which to uncork the institutional change champagne), it does not solve the other issues of Doctrine, Organization, Training, Leader Development, Materiel, and Facilities.
In terms of doctrine, the big tent process through which FM 3-24 was developed is a good model for developing appropriate doctrine for Security Force Assistance. The limited open commentary on JCISFA's emerging doctrine is unlikely to produce doctrine sufficient for our advisory efforts in BOTH Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention other contingencies. It is moreover inexcusable seven years into our war in Afghanistan that while we have a Mission Training Plan for US Army bands (ARTEP 12-113-MTP), we lack an equivalent document for the hundreds of transition teams and thousands of personnel currently deployed in an advisory capacity in Afghanistan and Iraq. Finally, the current version of the Army's Operations Manual lacks any mechanism by which to tailor forces or task-organize to conduct security force assistance within the "Provide Support to Governance" stability task.
In terms of organization, no organization currently structured within the modular brigade concept can fulfill the increasing need in Afghanistan and Iraq for large scale security force assistance. The lack of organizations structured for advising prevents the development and retention of institutional knowledge on advising and inhibits the training, education, and employment of advisors to our current conflicts.
Designating units as advisor units with identified mission essential tasks and training and education prerogatives would significantly support the efforts to develop security forces capable of defeating the insurgencies in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. This is of course a zero sum game and can be done only at the expense of diminished capacity to man our maneuver brigades.
Much of the prerequisite thought and staffing for a military organization capable of providing support to host nation governance including security force assistance has already taken place...in 1968. DCSPER-40 directed the creation of the 6,000 man Military Assistance Officer Command, a force of 6,000 that would have combined the elements of both civil and military assistance. Unfortunately, like current attempts to reform the advisory effort, only 500 of those billets were filled two years into the program.
Training and education for advisors remains highly inadequate as described here, here, here, and here. The comparable Vietnam era school for advisors headed to the Military Assistance Officer Command was 22 weeks, compared to 8 weeks for our current transition teams.
Beyond significant personnel issues for captains and enlisted men still not addressed by the Chief's announcement, there remains the thorny issue of selecting the right personnel to serve in advisor positions. Major General John Cushman, who served several advisor tours in Vietnam, wrote in his final defbriefing report that a) the need for advisors would not go away and b) that the constitution and capabilities of good advisors did not necessarily overlap with those of good commanders.
The Army to date has resisted the implications of such findings, not taking language capacity or the ability to operate in a foreign culture into account in assigning advisors. Identifying those with the right skillsets to be advisors, taking only volunteers, and rewarding service in order to get those volunteers is necessary if our advisory efforts are to succeed. Leader development and education could then follow better training and personnel decisions. Integration of advisor training into current Leadership Development Programs would be a good start--where is the advisor module at the Captains Career Courses?
There is currently no single command with the identified responsibility of supplying and sustaining advisors. This is why they are often reduced to beggars in any area of operations (as applied to Kip during his service in Afghanistan). As for facilities, with the advisor mission likely to increase in coming years regardless of who wins the election, it is time to demonstrate institutional commitment to training through the development of world class and permanent facilities for advisor training.
The Army Chief of Staff's announcement is a vital first step in the move toward institutionalizing advisor capacity. It is, however, insufficient. Kip hopes it will not take seven more years to complete the significant reforms still required.
Flunking the Advisor Training Mission
June 12, 2008 | Posted by Kip - 10:33am | 19 Comments
This is the last of a four-part series on the Army's advisor training efforts.
Are you deaf? Limp? Ancient (mostly our National Guard brethren)?
After climbing a flight of stairs, do you most resemble a hyperventilating pumpkin?
Can't fire your weapon? Can't learn a language? Think that Blue Force Tracker is a Ticketmaster promotion for the Blue Man Group?
Fired from your last company command for drunk driving?
Believe that preaching Christ to your Muslim counterparts is the surest way to salvation?
Great, because the US Army has a job for you that you literally can't fail--training at the Fort Riley Training Mission to be an advisor.
You can fail Airborne school. You can fail Ranger school. You can fail Sapper school. But the Army's number one mission--our efforts to develop security forces capable of providing security and stability to the populations of Iraq and Afghanistan--no matter what you do, no matter how terrible you are going to be as an advisor, you simply can't fail the training.
And herein lies the problem. Our doctrine on advising (in as much as we have one; our Special Operations manual on Foreign Internal Defense is the closest thing), describes a list of traits that advisors must possess in order to succeed. These are encapsulated in the ability to develop rapport with a foreign counterpart, demonstrate the credibility of your military advice, and provide value through access to United States and Coalition effects. Moreover, advisors must be capable of operating and surviving in small man teams, isolated from their Big Army brethren.
Like leadership, the traits of capable advisors are at times ingrained but also trainable.
The Joint Center for Security Force Assistance (JCISFA) has exercised itself to understand what makes good conventional force advisors. Yet there is little incorporation of their findings into either the training or selection of advisors.
It does not take a strategician of Petraeusean proportions to realize the bankruptcy of training advisors for such an important mission with no way to select and recognize the capable while preventing the incapable and untrainable from doing harm to our efforts.
Whether it is by selecting advisors through boards ahead of commanders and other slots or placing the selection and elimination criteria within the training itself or developing an advisor command is beyond the scope of this post. But until the Army can shut the spigot on mediocrity by developing quality controls for its advisor selection and training, the most difficult obstacle for the large number of good advisors may be the taint on their reputations resulting from the currently unflunkable bad.
For the first three posts in this series, click here, here, and here. For Tom Odom's ill-informed tripe on Kip being ill-informed, click here.
(Generally I find Tom Odom's comments on the SWJ blog illuminating but then again Mr. Odom is not usually criticizing me by citing not Kip's words but the words of some anonymous reader. I wonder who is ill-informed. I would ask Mr. Odom where the quarter billion dollars is for this mass movement of personnel and mission to Fort Polk. Polk doesn't even have housing for a handful of trainers right now to kick start the mission there let alone having broken ground on housing for 1000 trainers and 2000 students at any given time. And, as another member of the Council pointed out, my point had nothing to do with the nature of training at Fort Polk in general or mission overlap--which Kip thinks is a rather uninformed argument for a CTC focused on unit training exercises rather than advisor unit development and individual skills training--but the wisdom of moving the mission in the midst of an ever-larger need for advisors to a location that few former advisors will be willing to move their families. Rant over, and I'll go back to learning from LTC Odom again.)
Are you deaf? Limp? Ancient (mostly our National Guard brethren)?
After climbing a flight of stairs, do you most resemble a hyperventilating pumpkin?
Can't fire your weapon? Can't learn a language? Think that Blue Force Tracker is a Ticketmaster promotion for the Blue Man Group?
Fired from your last company command for drunk driving?
Believe that preaching Christ to your Muslim counterparts is the surest way to salvation?
Great, because the US Army has a job for you that you literally can't fail--training at the Fort Riley Training Mission to be an advisor.
You can fail Airborne school. You can fail Ranger school. You can fail Sapper school. But the Army's number one mission--our efforts to develop security forces capable of providing security and stability to the populations of Iraq and Afghanistan--no matter what you do, no matter how terrible you are going to be as an advisor, you simply can't fail the training.
And herein lies the problem. Our doctrine on advising (in as much as we have one; our Special Operations manual on Foreign Internal Defense is the closest thing), describes a list of traits that advisors must possess in order to succeed. These are encapsulated in the ability to develop rapport with a foreign counterpart, demonstrate the credibility of your military advice, and provide value through access to United States and Coalition effects. Moreover, advisors must be capable of operating and surviving in small man teams, isolated from their Big Army brethren.
Like leadership, the traits of capable advisors are at times ingrained but also trainable.
The Joint Center for Security Force Assistance (JCISFA) has exercised itself to understand what makes good conventional force advisors. Yet there is little incorporation of their findings into either the training or selection of advisors.
It does not take a strategician of Petraeusean proportions to realize the bankruptcy of training advisors for such an important mission with no way to select and recognize the capable while preventing the incapable and untrainable from doing harm to our efforts.
Whether it is by selecting advisors through boards ahead of commanders and other slots or placing the selection and elimination criteria within the training itself or developing an advisor command is beyond the scope of this post. But until the Army can shut the spigot on mediocrity by developing quality controls for its advisor selection and training, the most difficult obstacle for the large number of good advisors may be the taint on their reputations resulting from the currently unflunkable bad.
For the first three posts in this series, click here, here, and here. For Tom Odom's ill-informed tripe on Kip being ill-informed, click here.
(Generally I find Tom Odom's comments on the SWJ blog illuminating but then again Mr. Odom is not usually criticizing me by citing not Kip's words but the words of some anonymous reader. I wonder who is ill-informed. I would ask Mr. Odom where the quarter billion dollars is for this mass movement of personnel and mission to Fort Polk. Polk doesn't even have housing for a handful of trainers right now to kick start the mission there let alone having broken ground on housing for 1000 trainers and 2000 students at any given time. And, as another member of the Council pointed out, my point had nothing to do with the nature of training at Fort Polk in general or mission overlap--which Kip thinks is a rather uninformed argument for a CTC focused on unit training exercises rather than advisor unit development and individual skills training--but the wisdom of moving the mission in the midst of an ever-larger need for advisors to a location that few former advisors will be willing to move their families. Rant over, and I'll go back to learning from LTC Odom again.)
Polking the Advisor Mission in the Eye
June 5, 2008 | Posted by Kip - 8:04am | 10 Comments
This is the third in a four part series on training advisors.
Six years into the Long War, efforts to train advisors remain mediocre. But they are improving. Fort Riley Training Mission commander Colonel Jeff Ingram deserves special plaudits for taking a thankless mission after having the combat forces gutted from his brigade and attempting to foster effective, survivable combat advisor teams.
As an advisor-in-training in October 2006, the training we received was the worst I had received in the Army to date. The training schedule seemed to be an hour ahead of our current location, and often an hour behind. The idea that operating in Afghanistan might be different than Iraq had perhaps crossed the trainers' minds, but the solutions was simply to train as though we would go to Iraq and finish by saying, "Well, this should help for Afghanistan as well." If I had ten dollars for every time an instructor said, "So, where are you guys headed in Iraq? Oh, you're going to Afghanistan. Well, its about the same thing," I could have foregone combat pay.
By the end of training, some enterprising students had begun publishing an underground weekly The Funston Insurgent (Camp Funston is where advisor training takes place at Fort Riley).
The conditions today are significantly improved. Advisors begin their training with a week-long session on advising host nation security forces in a counterinsurgency. They engage in practical leader meetings to evaluate their ability to influence Iraqis and Afghans. They conduct realistic combat training to prepare them to act as teams. Much of the training is tailored to the specific theater of operations where they will deploy.
Key shortcomings remain. Unlike most other schools in the Army, there remains no way to fail advisor training (the subject of the final post in this series). And unlike just about any other military training, few of the instructors have ever been practitioners. With fewer than 5% of the current trainers having been advisors in the past, the training is the equivalent of running Airborne school with 95% of the instructors never having jumped out of a plane (aka dirty, nasty "legs")
That said, the efforts at Fort Riley represent major progress in the training of advisors even as significant problems remain with advisor selection and employment in the Long War. The Fort Riley Training Mission still requires tremendous work but all trends in its training are moving in the right direction. And what has the Army now decided to do? Move the mission to Fort Polk. At the same time, the Army has not committed any real resources toward the establishment of a training center at Polk.
Fort Polk, Louisiana is the post where the divorce lawyers begin as civilization ends. It has been difficult to get former advisors to commit to moving their families to Fort Riley, Kansas after serving a hardship tour. Quality contractors with expertise in Iraq and Afghanistan are equally difficult to hire to come to Fort Riley, Kansas, despite the presence of Kansas State University just a few miles away. It will become next to impossible in a Louisiana swamp.
Mediocre but steadily improving advisor training will atrophy back to terrible, and we will see the emergence of the next incarnation of The Funston Insurgent, The Polk Guerrilla.
The advisor needs of Afghanistan and Iraq are going to increase regardless of who wins the upcoming election. Derailing the Fort Riley train just as it has become operational is a stupid turning back of the clock, especially without any real plan to resource a training mission at Fort Polk and real thought as to the quality of folks that will be attracted to serving there.
Fort Riley was a terrible place to establish an advisor training center. But it is the best thing we have going now. With far fewer resources than are required to move the thing to Polk, the right answer is to improve on the training mission's current status as a trailer park in tornado land. Establishing the ability to conduct field training exercises in locations resembling the terrain of Afghanistan or Iraq as the Marines do with their transition teams out of Twenty-Nine Palms would also allow better training without uprooting the entire mission.
The advisor training mission has been conducted at any number of revolving locations from Fort Shelby to Carson to Riley. It has finally settled down, and it is time to see the return on the investment rather than cash out to buy junk bonds.
(For the first two posts in this series, click here and here)
Six years into the Long War, efforts to train advisors remain mediocre. But they are improving. Fort Riley Training Mission commander Colonel Jeff Ingram deserves special plaudits for taking a thankless mission after having the combat forces gutted from his brigade and attempting to foster effective, survivable combat advisor teams.
As an advisor-in-training in October 2006, the training we received was the worst I had received in the Army to date. The training schedule seemed to be an hour ahead of our current location, and often an hour behind. The idea that operating in Afghanistan might be different than Iraq had perhaps crossed the trainers' minds, but the solutions was simply to train as though we would go to Iraq and finish by saying, "Well, this should help for Afghanistan as well." If I had ten dollars for every time an instructor said, "So, where are you guys headed in Iraq? Oh, you're going to Afghanistan. Well, its about the same thing," I could have foregone combat pay.
By the end of training, some enterprising students had begun publishing an underground weekly The Funston Insurgent (Camp Funston is where advisor training takes place at Fort Riley).
The conditions today are significantly improved. Advisors begin their training with a week-long session on advising host nation security forces in a counterinsurgency. They engage in practical leader meetings to evaluate their ability to influence Iraqis and Afghans. They conduct realistic combat training to prepare them to act as teams. Much of the training is tailored to the specific theater of operations where they will deploy.
Key shortcomings remain. Unlike most other schools in the Army, there remains no way to fail advisor training (the subject of the final post in this series). And unlike just about any other military training, few of the instructors have ever been practitioners. With fewer than 5% of the current trainers having been advisors in the past, the training is the equivalent of running Airborne school with 95% of the instructors never having jumped out of a plane (aka dirty, nasty "legs")
That said, the efforts at Fort Riley represent major progress in the training of advisors even as significant problems remain with advisor selection and employment in the Long War. The Fort Riley Training Mission still requires tremendous work but all trends in its training are moving in the right direction. And what has the Army now decided to do? Move the mission to Fort Polk. At the same time, the Army has not committed any real resources toward the establishment of a training center at Polk.
Fort Polk, Louisiana is the post where the divorce lawyers begin as civilization ends. It has been difficult to get former advisors to commit to moving their families to Fort Riley, Kansas after serving a hardship tour. Quality contractors with expertise in Iraq and Afghanistan are equally difficult to hire to come to Fort Riley, Kansas, despite the presence of Kansas State University just a few miles away. It will become next to impossible in a Louisiana swamp.
Mediocre but steadily improving advisor training will atrophy back to terrible, and we will see the emergence of the next incarnation of The Funston Insurgent, The Polk Guerrilla.
The advisor needs of Afghanistan and Iraq are going to increase regardless of who wins the upcoming election. Derailing the Fort Riley train just as it has become operational is a stupid turning back of the clock, especially without any real plan to resource a training mission at Fort Polk and real thought as to the quality of folks that will be attracted to serving there.
Fort Riley was a terrible place to establish an advisor training center. But it is the best thing we have going now. With far fewer resources than are required to move the thing to Polk, the right answer is to improve on the training mission's current status as a trailer park in tornado land. Establishing the ability to conduct field training exercises in locations resembling the terrain of Afghanistan or Iraq as the Marines do with their transition teams out of Twenty-Nine Palms would also allow better training without uprooting the entire mission.
The advisor training mission has been conducted at any number of revolving locations from Fort Shelby to Carson to Riley. It has finally settled down, and it is time to see the return on the investment rather than cash out to buy junk bonds.
(For the first two posts in this series, click here and here)
Training Commanders to Employ Combat Advisors
June 3, 2008 | Posted by Kip - 8:45pm | 7 Comments
This is the second in a four part series on training combat advisors:
Perhaps the greatest challenge that faces our advisory efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq is not the negligence of our efforts to man, equip, and train transition teams effectively but rather the institutional failure to train our brigade and battalion commanders on the mission, capabilities, and employment of these teams.
In both theaters, conventional brigade and battalion commanders (including non-US ISAF commanders in Afghanistan) control "battlespace." This means that they are essentially lord of Coalition forces in their areas and, hence, lord of the combat advisors therein.
Unlike combat advisors who are told by doctrine to eat, sleep, and live with their counterparts, Coalition maneuver forces, even those co-located with local forces, generally live physically separated from both the locals and their advisors. Most of the time, advisors in the Coalition commander's area of operations will not know the commander personally, will not have met prior to deployment, and will not have their deployment time lines synched, i.e., the maneuver commander may have changes in his advisor teams during his watch, and the advisor teams may serve under different maneuver commanders.
Relationships between advisor teams and their maneuver commanders are fraught with friction. At no point, other than a few-hour briefing at the Counterinsurgency Center for Excellence in Taji for Iraq-bound commanders (Afghanistan-bound commanders do not attend the equivalent institution in Afghanistan) does the US Army provide commanders with the understanding of their advisors needed to successfully direct them.
Without advisor doctrine, it would be difficult to develop a training program for commanders on employing their advisors. Yet such a program is urgently needed. Here are just a few of the precepts it would teach:
1. Your advisors are exactly that, advisors. They do not control Iraqi or Afghan forces. You cannot make a plan that includes local security forces without involving the local commander in the planning, hand it to your advisor team, and suddenly expect the local forces to show up in support of your mission.
2. Your concern is the day-to-day operations of your unit. You know your Army or Marine Corps is going to function tomorrow. The best advisors are concerned not only with completing combat missions but also in building the institutional army or police capable of defeating the insurgency. Success in the latter is our exit strategy. Occasionally success in the latter will mean failing in the former--or at least not succeeding on your time line. Remember, this is a long-term effort.
3. Because developing host nation forces capable of separating the insurgency from the people is the only way that your grandchildren will not be serving in these theaters, you must design your operations and the employment of your forces to support the local security forces, not the other way around. At the end of the day it matters far less how effective your unit is at waging counterinsurgency than how effective the host nation security forces are at waging counterinsurgency (although the former is very important to fill the gaps and protect the populace).
4. Circulate with and engage with your combat advisors. They should not be the if-time-available stop after you have visited your platoons, companies, and battalions. If they are an afterthought, you are not engaging with the most important effort in the fight.
5. Train your subordinates, all the way down to private, on the role of the combat advisor. Identify those with a special knack for training, cultural competence, language, and other areas. When you are forced to internally source security forces or advisor teams, you will be prepared. If it is not painful to assign these personnel, i.e., it doesn't hurt your ability to operate as a unit, you are not assigning the right people.
6. Advisors have more access to human intelligence on a daily basis than any tactical human intelligence team in theater. What is your plan for collecting and analyzing this intelligence?
7. Have you thought about how you are going to battle track your advisors? How about logistics and intelligence support? Advisor teams have access only to what you provide them--determine how well you want the winning team to be resourced.
8. Advisors have many daddies, and you are just one, most important for their survival but probably not most important to their function as advisors. They, at a minimum, have their advisor chain of command and also have significant responsibility to the unit they are advising (and in Afghanistan, they have even more daddies). This makes advisors walk a fine line. Yes, you may not have ordered 1st Company to go anywhere, but the Ministry of Defense did, and the advisors had to make a decision about whether to do their job or not. If they stayed with the company, that essentially means that they chose to follow a Ministry of Defense order. It's a tough nut, and you need to empower them with sufficient guidance to anticipate the 15 minute "inshallah" (God-willing) order.
9. Advisors may advise a battalion, but they are not a battalion staff. They don't even have the resources of a platoon, so ensure you know what you are asking from them in terms of time and human resources for reporting, and understand who else is asking for reports. Many advisors have told me that 25% or more of their time was taken up with often redundant reporting requirements (and such was the case during my time as an advisor), severely undermining their ability to support the local unit.
10. It's actually not your battle space. It's the local commander's. When you begin to treat the area of operations that way, we are getting closer to winning.
This is not by any means a comprehensive list. Kip encourages current and former advisors to write in the comments on some of the lessons that they think commanders ought receive on the advisor mission. Commanders and non-advisors are welcome to write on their challenges in employing advisors (e.g., You all weren't exactly selected for being the cream of the crop, and you want to be taken seriously...)
That we haven't begun training commanders on the employment and resourcing of advisors is no surprise given that we have only just begun in the last year to somewhat seriously train some advisors. Our failure to train commanders has been a tremendous oversight on the part of both the US Army and Marine Corps. For Afghanistan, NATO will need to train not only OMLTs (Operational Mentor and Liaison Teams, e.g., NATO-sourced advisor teams) but also the Coalition commanders who will oversee them.
No brigade or regiment should deploy to Afghanistan or Iraq without significant training on sourcing and supporting combat advisors. The outcome of the Long War will rest on their commanders' abilities to support the development of local forces.
(To see the first post in this series, click here. To see a previous post on why the solution to this problem is not to simply turn brigades into advisor units, click here. If you want to know how cynical advisors become after doing the job for a while (and a good laugh), see Charlie's post here)
Perhaps the greatest challenge that faces our advisory efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq is not the negligence of our efforts to man, equip, and train transition teams effectively but rather the institutional failure to train our brigade and battalion commanders on the mission, capabilities, and employment of these teams.
In both theaters, conventional brigade and battalion commanders (including non-US ISAF commanders in Afghanistan) control "battlespace." This means that they are essentially lord of Coalition forces in their areas and, hence, lord of the combat advisors therein.
Unlike combat advisors who are told by doctrine to eat, sleep, and live with their counterparts, Coalition maneuver forces, even those co-located with local forces, generally live physically separated from both the locals and their advisors. Most of the time, advisors in the Coalition commander's area of operations will not know the commander personally, will not have met prior to deployment, and will not have their deployment time lines synched, i.e., the maneuver commander may have changes in his advisor teams during his watch, and the advisor teams may serve under different maneuver commanders.
Relationships between advisor teams and their maneuver commanders are fraught with friction. At no point, other than a few-hour briefing at the Counterinsurgency Center for Excellence in Taji for Iraq-bound commanders (Afghanistan-bound commanders do not attend the equivalent institution in Afghanistan) does the US Army provide commanders with the understanding of their advisors needed to successfully direct them.
Without advisor doctrine, it would be difficult to develop a training program for commanders on employing their advisors. Yet such a program is urgently needed. Here are just a few of the precepts it would teach:
1. Your advisors are exactly that, advisors. They do not control Iraqi or Afghan forces. You cannot make a plan that includes local security forces without involving the local commander in the planning, hand it to your advisor team, and suddenly expect the local forces to show up in support of your mission.
2. Your concern is the day-to-day operations of your unit. You know your Army or Marine Corps is going to function tomorrow. The best advisors are concerned not only with completing combat missions but also in building the institutional army or police capable of defeating the insurgency. Success in the latter is our exit strategy. Occasionally success in the latter will mean failing in the former--or at least not succeeding on your time line. Remember, this is a long-term effort.
3. Because developing host nation forces capable of separating the insurgency from the people is the only way that your grandchildren will not be serving in these theaters, you must design your operations and the employment of your forces to support the local security forces, not the other way around. At the end of the day it matters far less how effective your unit is at waging counterinsurgency than how effective the host nation security forces are at waging counterinsurgency (although the former is very important to fill the gaps and protect the populace).
4. Circulate with and engage with your combat advisors. They should not be the if-time-available stop after you have visited your platoons, companies, and battalions. If they are an afterthought, you are not engaging with the most important effort in the fight.
5. Train your subordinates, all the way down to private, on the role of the combat advisor. Identify those with a special knack for training, cultural competence, language, and other areas. When you are forced to internally source security forces or advisor teams, you will be prepared. If it is not painful to assign these personnel, i.e., it doesn't hurt your ability to operate as a unit, you are not assigning the right people.
6. Advisors have more access to human intelligence on a daily basis than any tactical human intelligence team in theater. What is your plan for collecting and analyzing this intelligence?
7. Have you thought about how you are going to battle track your advisors? How about logistics and intelligence support? Advisor teams have access only to what you provide them--determine how well you want the winning team to be resourced.
8. Advisors have many daddies, and you are just one, most important for their survival but probably not most important to their function as advisors. They, at a minimum, have their advisor chain of command and also have significant responsibility to the unit they are advising (and in Afghanistan, they have even more daddies). This makes advisors walk a fine line. Yes, you may not have ordered 1st Company to go anywhere, but the Ministry of Defense did, and the advisors had to make a decision about whether to do their job or not. If they stayed with the company, that essentially means that they chose to follow a Ministry of Defense order. It's a tough nut, and you need to empower them with sufficient guidance to anticipate the 15 minute "inshallah" (God-willing) order.
9. Advisors may advise a battalion, but they are not a battalion staff. They don't even have the resources of a platoon, so ensure you know what you are asking from them in terms of time and human resources for reporting, and understand who else is asking for reports. Many advisors have told me that 25% or more of their time was taken up with often redundant reporting requirements (and such was the case during my time as an advisor), severely undermining their ability to support the local unit.
10. It's actually not your battle space. It's the local commander's. When you begin to treat the area of operations that way, we are getting closer to winning.
This is not by any means a comprehensive list. Kip encourages current and former advisors to write in the comments on some of the lessons that they think commanders ought receive on the advisor mission. Commanders and non-advisors are welcome to write on their challenges in employing advisors (e.g., You all weren't exactly selected for being the cream of the crop, and you want to be taken seriously...)
That we haven't begun training commanders on the employment and resourcing of advisors is no surprise given that we have only just begun in the last year to somewhat seriously train some advisors. Our failure to train commanders has been a tremendous oversight on the part of both the US Army and Marine Corps. For Afghanistan, NATO will need to train not only OMLTs (Operational Mentor and Liaison Teams, e.g., NATO-sourced advisor teams) but also the Coalition commanders who will oversee them.
No brigade or regiment should deploy to Afghanistan or Iraq without significant training on sourcing and supporting combat advisors. The outcome of the Long War will rest on their commanders' abilities to support the development of local forces.
(To see the first post in this series, click here. To see a previous post on why the solution to this problem is not to simply turn brigades into advisor units, click here. If you want to know how cynical advisors become after doing the job for a while (and a good laugh), see Charlie's post here)
Who Trains US Military Advisors?
May 29, 2008 | Posted by Kip - 4:57pm | 10 Comments
It has become increasingly common knowledge that we only pay lip service to the advisor mission as the most important mission in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have not trained, equipped, or employed advisors in order to allow them to be decisive in both theaters--nor have we task organized the Army in particular or established its personnel management system to support long term advisory efforts. We will have these requirements for some time to come in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Give any officer or senior NCO today who would like to advance his career a choice about whether he would take a standard command or staff position or an advisor position and he would almost surely choose the former (some of us who have advised might choose the latter but we wouldn't believe it would enhance our careers). Several of my next few posts will deal with some less well-known specifics about the advisor mission that will need to be fixed if senior leaders believe, as I believe and they have said they believe, that only the Afghans and Iraqis can, at the end of the day, defeat Takfiris and other anti-government elements within.
The question of who trains US military advisors should seem on its face a simple one. For those who read this blog, serve in the US Army, or have read about the advisor mission elsewhere, the answer would seem the Fort Riley Training Mission in Kansas (subject of a Wall Street Journal piece in February, an article on NPR, and various other news stories). Indeed, Fort Riley was stood up to address the ad hoc training of advisors deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq that existed prior to 2006.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, perhaps if you've ever been stationed at Riley), the reality remains that many who serve as mentors to the Iraqi and Afghan Army and Police forces come from an utterly confusing array of different training posts with no standardized training nor a standardized conception of what it is that advisors do.
For Iraq, US Army advisors for the Iraqi Army and Iraqi National Police are often trained at Fort Riley. Advisors for the Iraqi Police (the local, as opposed to national force), however, are trained at Fort Leonard Wood with little or no cross talk between the two institutions. Advisors serving at higher levels within the Iraqi Assistance Group are trained at any mish mash of places as more-or-less individual augmentees.
For Afghanistan, US Army, Navy, and Air Force advisors theoretically train at Fort Riley. Unfortunately, since the command in Afghanistan does not identify in what capacity personnel will serve prior to their arrival in theater, many personnel who will be serving in mentor regional commands or TF Phoenix staff with no advisory function are sent to the training to gain tactical skills and advisor instruction totally irrelevant to their job (e.g., the computer network guy for Camp Phoenix in Kabul). Also, many who serve on advisor teams or in leadership positions receive their training not at Fort Riley but instead at Fort Shelby. This includes the current command at TF Phoenix and many of its senior mentors who, despite rebuffed attempts by the current commander to have the 27th trained at Fort Riley, were trained at Shelby.
Others serving in the advisor mission, for example security force personnel accompanying many of the advisor teams and therefore capable of being asked to serve as advisors while on missions, receive their training at Fort Bragg or any number of Reserve mobilization stations. Individual augmentees for Afghanistan can be trained at Fort Dix (about two weeks), Fort Benning (a few days), or any number of other sites.
US Marines, executing the same mission as Army, Navy, and Air Force advisors in both Iraq and Afghanistan are trained separately at Twenty-Nine Palms. Separately trained Marine teams often serve side by side with their sister-service brethren advisors.
Internally sourced training teams coming from Army and Marine Corps regular combat units receive no specific advisor training.
Meanwhile, the PRTs, who serve, when acting most effectively, as advisors to the Iraqi and Afghan governments on governance and economic development train at Fort Bragg entirely separate from those who will be mentoring the Iraqi and Afghan security forces, inhibiting unity of effort.
There is absolutely no cross over between advisor training efforts of components of Special Operations Command, primarily, MARSOC and USASOC and those of the regular forces, even as Special Operations units are working closely with conventionally-sourced advisors on the ground.
And we won't even get too deep into the training of non-US-NATO-sourced Operational Mentor and Liaison Teams which train in their home countries and then may or may not go to US-run JMRC in Germany for additional training.
What does this all add up to? A big mess. JCISFA (the Joint Center for International Security Force Assistance) based at Fort Leavenworth was an attempt to fix this, but it lacks any real teeth or control over even the Fort Riley Training Mission, located only a couple hours away in Kansas, let alone, the other advisor training efforts. And even JCISFA does not know all of the training centers that are involved in training advisors today.
Advisors on the ground don't have a common training regimen, let alone doctrine, to fall back on (although JCISFA is trying to fix the latter). Advisor commands, resourced by personnel who generally have never served as advisors and have received little advisor training, have little understanding of the training and capabilities of the teams which serve under them. Advisors with similar missions or working in the same area of operations deploy ad hoc to that area, even if they deploy as individual teams, inhibiting unity of effort at the ground level.
Fixing the situation will require first recognition that the advisor mission is not going to go away and then a push by senior leaders, including Congress, to codify advisor missions and training and to develop long-term, sustainable solutions that train and deploy Joint advisor teams capable of providing support across all counterinsurgency lines of effort. It remains a large question mark whether the leaders within these institutions can overcome bureaucratic inertia and their own prejudices (particularly SOCOM's allergies to supporting the training of conventional advisors) to enact such solutions. Their ability to prevail over the current system may be a large determining factor in just how long we have to fight and bleed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other theaters.
Give any officer or senior NCO today who would like to advance his career a choice about whether he would take a standard command or staff position or an advisor position and he would almost surely choose the former (some of us who have advised might choose the latter but we wouldn't believe it would enhance our careers). Several of my next few posts will deal with some less well-known specifics about the advisor mission that will need to be fixed if senior leaders believe, as I believe and they have said they believe, that only the Afghans and Iraqis can, at the end of the day, defeat Takfiris and other anti-government elements within.
The question of who trains US military advisors should seem on its face a simple one. For those who read this blog, serve in the US Army, or have read about the advisor mission elsewhere, the answer would seem the Fort Riley Training Mission in Kansas (subject of a Wall Street Journal piece in February, an article on NPR, and various other news stories). Indeed, Fort Riley was stood up to address the ad hoc training of advisors deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq that existed prior to 2006.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, perhaps if you've ever been stationed at Riley), the reality remains that many who serve as mentors to the Iraqi and Afghan Army and Police forces come from an utterly confusing array of different training posts with no standardized training nor a standardized conception of what it is that advisors do.
For Iraq, US Army advisors for the Iraqi Army and Iraqi National Police are often trained at Fort Riley. Advisors for the Iraqi Police (the local, as opposed to national force), however, are trained at Fort Leonard Wood with little or no cross talk between the two institutions. Advisors serving at higher levels within the Iraqi Assistance Group are trained at any mish mash of places as more-or-less individual augmentees.
For Afghanistan, US Army, Navy, and Air Force advisors theoretically train at Fort Riley. Unfortunately, since the command in Afghanistan does not identify in what capacity personnel will serve prior to their arrival in theater, many personnel who will be serving in mentor regional commands or TF Phoenix staff with no advisory function are sent to the training to gain tactical skills and advisor instruction totally irrelevant to their job (e.g., the computer network guy for Camp Phoenix in Kabul). Also, many who serve on advisor teams or in leadership positions receive their training not at Fort Riley but instead at Fort Shelby. This includes the current command at TF Phoenix and many of its senior mentors who, despite rebuffed attempts by the current commander to have the 27th trained at Fort Riley, were trained at Shelby.
Others serving in the advisor mission, for example security force personnel accompanying many of the advisor teams and therefore capable of being asked to serve as advisors while on missions, receive their training at Fort Bragg or any number of Reserve mobilization stations. Individual augmentees for Afghanistan can be trained at Fort Dix (about two weeks), Fort Benning (a few days), or any number of other sites.
US Marines, executing the same mission as Army, Navy, and Air Force advisors in both Iraq and Afghanistan are trained separately at Twenty-Nine Palms. Separately trained Marine teams often serve side by side with their sister-service brethren advisors.
Internally sourced training teams coming from Army and Marine Corps regular combat units receive no specific advisor training.
Meanwhile, the PRTs, who serve, when acting most effectively, as advisors to the Iraqi and Afghan governments on governance and economic development train at Fort Bragg entirely separate from those who will be mentoring the Iraqi and Afghan security forces, inhibiting unity of effort.
There is absolutely no cross over between advisor training efforts of components of Special Operations Command, primarily, MARSOC and USASOC and those of the regular forces, even as Special Operations units are working closely with conventionally-sourced advisors on the ground.
And we won't even get too deep into the training of non-US-NATO-sourced Operational Mentor and Liaison Teams which train in their home countries and then may or may not go to US-run JMRC in Germany for additional training.
What does this all add up to? A big mess. JCISFA (the Joint Center for International Security Force Assistance) based at Fort Leavenworth was an attempt to fix this, but it lacks any real teeth or control over even the Fort Riley Training Mission, located only a couple hours away in Kansas, let alone, the other advisor training efforts. And even JCISFA does not know all of the training centers that are involved in training advisors today.
Advisors on the ground don't have a common training regimen, let alone doctrine, to fall back on (although JCISFA is trying to fix the latter). Advisor commands, resourced by personnel who generally have never served as advisors and have received little advisor training, have little understanding of the training and capabilities of the teams which serve under them. Advisors with similar missions or working in the same area of operations deploy ad hoc to that area, even if they deploy as individual teams, inhibiting unity of effort at the ground level.
Fixing the situation will require first recognition that the advisor mission is not going to go away and then a push by senior leaders, including Congress, to codify advisor missions and training and to develop long-term, sustainable solutions that train and deploy Joint advisor teams capable of providing support across all counterinsurgency lines of effort. It remains a large question mark whether the leaders within these institutions can overcome bureaucratic inertia and their own prejudices (particularly SOCOM's allergies to supporting the training of conventional advisors) to enact such solutions. Their ability to prevail over the current system may be a large determining factor in just how long we have to fight and bleed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other theaters.
Not on Time Logistics
May 13, 2008 | Posted by Kip - 1:00am | 9 Comments
According to its auditor general, Canada is facing serious logistics shortages that will come to undermine its efforts in Afghanistan if not dealt with soon. (here, here, here)
Where logistics would be difficult anyway, they are further complicated by the command structure in Afghanistan which has each major national player responsible for its own logistics and separate logistics chains for ISAF, the advisor command, and the Special Forces command. For US advisors, a less-than-full-strength logistics battalion is responsible for logistic support for advisors throughout the country. Without centralized logistics planning, this often results in advisors who are unsupported and literally begging supplies off of ISAF and the Special Forces (this is not just theoretical--Kip's team was reduced to begging from a Special Forces team when we were issued only half the normal load of ammunition for our machine guns). For the Canadians, this means that they cannot both support and piggyback off of US logistics planning.
It is a system that will, for as long as it continues in its present form, leave soldiers of all nations in the Coalitions short of needed supplies when they need them.
"So far the military has been able to adapt and adjust so that operations have not been significantly affected," Fraser [the auditor general] reported Tuesday. "But unless the problems we found can be resolved, National Defence could have increasing difficulty supporting the mission."
The military has compensated by tripling support staff between May 2006 and July 2007 to more than 900 personnel. That also included a renewed reliance on civilian contractors, which also tripled between November 2006 and July 2007 to 266 from 95.
Logistical challenges are not limited to the Canadians in Afghanistan. Insufficient airlift, the limited military logistical personnel in country, and the poor roads contribute for all participating nations. The Afghan National Security Forces are logistically hindered by the same problems as the rest and also by a lack of capacity and corruption.
Logistics are often transported around the country on Afghan "jingle" trucks and, as in any guerrilla campaign, are often attacked en route to their final destination. More than other countries, the routes on which logistical convoys can travel are very limited, thus making them easier, more predictable targets than they would be in most parts of the world.
Even were they unhindered entirely, the long, difficult roads from Pakistani ports to Afghanistan would challenge any enthusiast and only get worse after entering Afghanistan (although the road from Spin Boldak to Kandahar is a relatively good one for supplies going directly to Canada's National Command in Kandahar).Where logistics would be difficult anyway, they are further complicated by the command structure in Afghanistan which has each major national player responsible for its own logistics and separate logistics chains for ISAF, the advisor command, and the Special Forces command. For US advisors, a less-than-full-strength logistics battalion is responsible for logistic support for advisors throughout the country. Without centralized logistics planning, this often results in advisors who are unsupported and literally begging supplies off of ISAF and the Special Forces (this is not just theoretical--Kip's team was reduced to begging from a Special Forces team when we were issued only half the normal load of ammunition for our machine guns). For the Canadians, this means that they cannot both support and piggyback off of US logistics planning.
It is a system that will, for as long as it continues in its present form, leave soldiers of all nations in the Coalitions short of needed supplies when they need them.
