Center for a New American Security

We are checking it out now, but apparently the last of 86 unique items and over 140 total books and two movies were purchased today and sent off to the Afghanistan Counterinsurgency Academy in Kabul. Moreover, through this effort the Academy and my (Dave Dilegge) 'day job' organization (Wargaming Division of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab) were able to hook up resulting in 50 Small Wars manuals and COIN related DVDs and CDs sent as well. Thanks to all who helped us and Abu Muqawama with this effort.

A Flotsam data special: Tangiblizing the intangible

After Tim McCarver’s month-long David Eckstein sploogefest that was October 2006, a serious investigation into 'grit' was long overdue. Despite the penchant of sportswriters and broadcasters to throw the term around willy-nilly, I was hard-pressed to locate a firm definition of grit in the baseball sense. Using lots of laptop science stuff, I think I’ve improved the definition, which isn’t really saying much, since there wasn’t one to begin with.

[snip]

Gritty players want to succeed. They just happen to not have the talent to actually do so. This results in inefficient baseball plays. For example, Jerry Hairston is gritty. He slides head-first into first base. A true sign of someone gritty enough to want to get to first base, but shitty enough to actually get there efficiently.

In interviews in Islamabad and Washington, Bush administration and military officials said they believed that much of the American money was not making its
way to frontline Pakistani units. Money has been diverted to help finance weapons systems designed to counter India, not Al Qaeda or the Taliban, the officials said, adding that the United States has paid tens of millions of dollars in inflated Pakistani reimbursement claims for fuel, ammunition and other costs.

For years, how money from the Coalition Support Funds was disbursed to the Pakistani government was veiled in secrecy. The size and scope of the payments to Pakistan was held so closely that one senior American military officer in Afghanistan said that he did not know that the administration was spending $1 billion a year until he attended a meeting in Islamabad in 2006. “I was astounded,” said the officer, who would not speak for attribution because he now holds another senior military post. “On one side of the border we were paying a billion to get very little done. On the other side of the border — the Afghan side — we were scrambling to find the funds to train an army that actually wanted to get something done.”

Readers of this blog are well familiar with the travails of those training the Afghan National Army. One assumes that we'd all be ok with a little less money for the Pakistani armor corps facing New Delhi, and a little more for what could be a world-class training academy in Kabul.

History professor Joseph Ellis writes in today's Washington Post about "what George Washington would do" with respect to the mess in Mesopotamia. It's a fascinating question, because Washington served both an insurgent (as commander of the Continental Army during the American Revolution) and a counterinsurgent (as an officer fighting Native Americans and the French during the Seven Years War). In fact, he probably ranks as one of history's most successful insurgents ever.

This is popularly as the "counterinsurgent's dilemma," perhaps best written about by David Galula in his classic Counterinsurgency Warfare — Theory and Practice. Setting aside those insurgencies which ripen into open warfare, like Mao's famous three-phase model, the goal of the insurgent is not to "win" in any conventional sense. Rather, the goal is to "win" by not losing. Either the insurgent bleeds the counterinsurgent to the point where his will to fight is gone, or the insurgent wins politically by earning the support of the people and alienating the people from the
counterinsurgent.

Aerospace Daily & Defense Report
December 18, 2007

Senators Pressure White House For More C-17s

Nineteen senators are pressuring the White House and Pentagon to "rightly fund" C-17 production by including it in the forthcoming fiscal 2009 budget request due to Congress in February.

Two letters, dated Dec. 13, were dispatched; one each went to White House Office of Management and Budget Director Jim Nussle and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Both letters encourage the Bush administration to stop looking to Congress to plus-up funding for Boeing's strategic airlifter production line in Long Beach, Calif.

"We encourage you to work with DOD leadership to have C-17 funding added to their budget," the senators say to Nussle. "While Congress has sustained C-17 production in recent years, it is unrealistic to presume that it will be able to continuously support needed production through congressional adds."

Congress has provided funding to keep the production line open in the last two years; orders now stand at 190. The senators, however, tell Gates that the strategy of relying on congressional plus ups "is no longer viable."

The production line would close in 2009 without additional money, and without a nod from the government, Boeing would be forced to close operations at its suppliers. The senators note that about 30,000 jobs around the country contribute to C-17 production. Suppliers are now being funded by Boeing in hopes that the U.S. government will buy more of the massive airlifters.

The Pentagon's requirement for strategic airlift is about 300 aircraft. It has about 111 C-5s, which are in disrepair and subject to a $17 billion re-engining project before they can provide sufficient reliability. However, past requirements studies have not taken into account use of the C-17 as an intratheater airlifter, the increasing end strength of the ground forces, addition of an Africa Command and the demands of the war on terrorism. The Pentagon is planning to undertake a new Mobility Capabilities and Requirements Study next year.

Citing skepticism about the future of the C-5 modernization program, U.S. Air Force Gen. Norton Schwartz, chief of U.S. Transportation Command, has told Congress he needs at least 250 C-17s to handle his missions.

Signatories of the two letters include nine Democrats and 11 Republicans, most of them from states in which Boeing has a significant business interest. They include Democrats Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Christopher Dodd (Conn.), Maria Cantwell (Wash.), Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Joseph Lieberman (Conn.), Patty Murray (Wash.) and Ron Wyden (Wash.).

Republican signatories are: Christopher Bond (Mo.), Kay Bailey Hutchison (Tex.), John Cornyn (Tex.), Susan Collins (Maine), George Voinovich (Ohio), Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), Johnny Isakson (Ga.), Olympia Snowe (Maine), Gordon Smith (Ore.), Larry Craig (Idaho) and Lindsay Graham (S.C.).