Land Warrior in Iraq

Major props go to Noah Schachtman, who took time out of a busy schedule of alternatively living in Ba'athist palaces and sleeping in fetid kitchens to look in on how the tech demonstrators from the now-cancelled Land Warrior are doing:

Captain Jack Moore, the commander of the 4/9's "Blowtorch" company, peers into his Land Warrior monocle. Inside is a digital map of Tarmiyah, a filthy little town about 25 kilometers north of Baghdad that's become a haven for Islamists. Blue icons show two of his platoons sweeping through the western half of the town. Two other icons represent Blowtorch soldiers who have teamed up with special forces and Iraqi Army units to raid local mosques with insurgent ties.

A red dot suddenly pops up on Moore's monocle screen: 3rd platoon has found a pair of improvised bombs -- black boxes, filled with homemade explosives. Other troops will circumvent the scene.

As the other platoons move south to north, green lights blink on Moore's map. Each of these "digital chem lights" represents a house checked and cleared. It keeps different groups of soldiers from kicking down the same set of doors twice.

A year ago, these chem lights weren't even part of the Land Warrior code. But after a suggestion from a Manchu soldier, the digital markers were added -- and quickly became the system's most popular feature. During air assaults on Baquba, to the northeast, troops were regularly dropped a quarter or half-kilometer from their original objective; the chem lights allowed them to converge on the spot where they were supposed to go. In the middle of one mission, a trail of green lights was used to mark a new objective -- and show the easiest way to get to the place.

[snip]

[Capt. Aaron] Miller is still not happy with how much the system weighs. "Look, I need this like I need a 10th arm," he sighs. And all this stuff (Land Warrior does), my cell phone basically does the same at home." But Miller is committed to soldiers being networked. So he's willing to be the digital guinea pig. "It's got to start with someone."

The system has become more palatable to the Manchus because it's been pared down, in all sorts of ways. By consolidating parts, a 16-pound ensemble is now down to a little more than 10. A new, digital gun scope has been largely abandoned by the troops -- the system was too cumbersome and too slow to be effective. And now, not every soldier in the 4/9 has to lug around Land Warrior. Only team leaders and above are so equipped.

Frankly, I'm a little surprised how accurately my concerns about the Land Warrior played out on the battlefield. The blue force tracking and land navigation functions are very popular, while the computing and scope pieces were largely relegated to the rubbish bin.

Complaints that the system would better if it were only a quarter of its current weight also indicate that either the underlying technology is not mature enough or that the designers crammed it with superfluous features. I'm going to bet that the latter is a far more likely culprit than the latter -- especially considering how many weapons systems in the pipe feel disconnected from current needs.

The most ironic bit of Capt. Miller's comment about how his cellphone back at home does many of the same functions as the Land Warrior. That sounds a lot like the result of this JASONS report issued two years ago, which theorized that adapting commercial communications platforms to military use might be a better method of improving situational awareness at the lowest levels.

This brings us to something I have been thing about since I read this Defense News piece on how the DoD is effectively hiring a lead system integrator to support their counternaroctics efforts. If there is little evidence that DoD bureaucrats can successfully plan and develop successful weapons platforms for the U.S. military, why shouldn't we be outsourcing large chunks of the acquisition process?

You can at least terminate contractors when it is clear they cannot deliver on the terms of their contract. The same cannot be said about the thousands of 'acquisition professionals' who are barely doing their job right now.

Memo to BG Mike Brogan

In response to Marine Brigadier-General Mike Brogan's comment that press coverage is inflaming insurgent interest and turning the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle into a 'symbolic target,' I have the following response:

BG Brown is forgetting one issue, namely that dead soldiers are the 'symbolic targets' that the insurgents are actually after. Getting the insurgents to concentrate their attention on the handful of MRAPs that will enter the arsenal over the next year will take some pressure off targeting the more plentiful up-armored HMMWV.

That will undoubtedly save lives and saving lives is the only reason why the public is allowing the Pentagon to grossly mismanage the MRAP program with few consequences. What he is really concerned about is looking bad when we drop $20 billion on a gas-guzzling monster of a wheeled transport that only offers a marginal advantage in protection.

In a sense, the MRAP is symbolic -- it is a symbol of the military's complete inability to recognize that peace-enforcement and peacekeeping have been very common military operations since the end of the Cold War. In order to make up for the two years we spent in Iraq without a cogent counterinsurgency manual or effective military strategy, they are dropping a huge wad of cash to field a weapons system at the 11th hour that isn't even really ready.

Don't get me wrong, I feel strongly that we should issue our troops with gear that will provide them with a generous amount of protection. My heart is always crushed when I see those poor wounded vets that come by the Pentagon every week.

I just think the Pentagon's acquisition strategy over the last six years has been to schizophrenically jump from one technology to the next in search of silver bullets. As a result, we let the insurgents set the technological tempo in Iraq, forcing the U.S. military to expend a premium of blood and treasure playing catch-up.

Why am I so incensed by this issue? Because I know that folks in the Army Secretariat periodically examined the issue of mine-protected vehicles going back to at least 2002. Instead of dusting off the concept in 2003 or 2004, the Pentagon blindly focused on IED jammers instead of simple armor issues.

But hey, I'm the crazy one, remember. Someone get me a straitjacket and a comfy padded room.

Dunlap is right, but does his point matter?

For my readers who don't feel like reading through the recent essays written by Air Force Major General Charles J. Dunlap, I can summarize his point in two sentences:

Advocates of traditional counterinsurgency doctrine argue that air power is not as effective as ground presence when fighting an insurgency. They are wrong because ground troops can cause just as much collateral damage to the local population.

He's right to a certain degree. Ground troops can easily harm just as many civilians as a pilot in an F-18. If you abstracted Dunlap's logic to its furthest extent, ground forces should actually be causing the preponderance of civilian casualties because there are more of them and operate closest to them. I'm even willing to accept that statement on its face value.

The only problem with Dunlap's argument is that it is missing one key element: The objective of counterinsurgency is to establish and maintain public order, not merely fight off insurgents. Just read this statement:

Consider, for instance, this astonishing statement from a ISAF spokesman: “I am assured by uniformed colleagues in NATO that there is a marginal difference to the potential for civilian casualties between using a 500lb bomb and a 2,000lb bomb."

If military people really believe that there is only a “marginal” difference between a 500 lbs. bomb and a 2,000 lbs. bomb, then the depth of misinformation is truly disturbing. Accordingly, my article will examine the technologies and processes that operate today to limit collateral damage from air-delivered munitions.

What does collateral damage matter when you accidentally bomb a wedding? Or someone's home? Does an Iraqi care whether the Air Force dropped a one-ton bomb in his neighborhood or is a quarter-ton okay?

Setting aside accidents and collateral damage, how would General Dunlap feel if bombs rained down on his hometown at random intervals? Does he think he could live a normal under such conditions?

The key to winning a counterinsurgency is understand both the military and the social dimensions of the conflict. An aircraft can attack insurgents, drop leaflets and provide humanitarian relief, but it can't establish trusting relationships with the locals, gather intelligence, or ensure basic order like ground troops can.

Unless the Air Force is willing to get out of its collective cockpit and spend some serious time working with the locals, it will never be flexible enough to play anything more than a supporting role in stability operations.

Sometimes its hard to work for the Army

I imagine every soldier in the U.S. Army -- from the lowest private to the highest general office -- about whether they prefer their battledress uniform or dress uniform, they will almost always pick their BDUs. Its just more comfortable and easier to care for.

Wearing BDUs while playing in the 1st Cavalry band is a bit much though, even when you're stationed in the Green Zone:

They could have at least taken their helmets off.

My take on the JIEDDO paper

Now that I'm finally free of the Army Research, Development, and Engineering Command (or as my office calls it, the kiddie pool), I wanted to discuss JIEDDO in light of the research paper written by Colonel William Adamson for the Industrial College of the Armed Forces.

To be completely honest, I started reading Col. Adamson's paper (available here) in the hopes of finding evidence to further my argument that JIEDDO is wasting money by being overly focused on gadgets designed to counter improvised explosive devices (IED). Instead of finding more proof the caricature, I was surprised to find that this insider's history of JIEDDO went beyond caricature into a study of the DoD's various cultures.

From Col. Adamson's description, the genesis of JIEDDO was nothing like the organization it is today. Both the Army and Marine Corps initially responded to the use of IEDs as a matter for explosive ordanance disposal (EOD) specialists. The Corps' Counter Explosive Exploitation Cell and the Army's IED Task Force focused on enhancing the EOD capabilities of individual units by assigning EOD specialists and collecting and disseminating lessons learned from the field. This was mostly a function performed by and for the soldiers in the field.

Everything changed in 2004 when General John Abizaid, then commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), wrote a personal letter to Donald Rumsfeld asking for the Pentagon to sponsor a 'Manhattan-like Project' to counter IEDs. This marked the decline of the EOD approach used by troops in the field and the rise of what Adamson calls the 'Title 10' approach.

For those not familiar with how the U.S. government bureaucracy works, the attitudes and direction of each agency or department is defined by the U.S. Code. Title 10 is the title governing the missions and authorities of the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the military departments. What Adamson is referring to is the statutory mission of each military department, which is to train, equip and supply the armed forces of the United States. To this end, the military departments tend to solve military issues with procurement or recuitment strategies because they are more in keeping with their mission.

So when the fruit of these early steps were handed off to a Joint IED Defeat Task Force and Joint Integrate Process Team (JIPT), the Pentagon naturally shifted its focus to technological solutions. This undercut comprehensive and aggressive efforts to counter IEDs in three ways:

First, doctrinal innovation took a back seat to technological innovation, even though it is easier and cheaper. There is a reason why 'doctrine' comes 3 letters before 'materiel' in DOTMLPF -- enough said.

Second, there was a tension between the Pentagon, CENTCOM and unit commanders over the completeness and efficacy of IED solutions. CENTCOM wanted to push anything that had at least a 51% success rate out to the troops, where as Pentagon acquisition folks wanted to only hand out robust, 'turnkey' solutions. The acquisition wasn't the only point of resistance though because unit commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan were wary to use unproven technology.

Finally, the technology-focused approach treated IEDs like the problem when they really were only a symptom of lawlessness and ineffectual governance. The billions poured into technology might have had a greater impact if they were focused on improving Iraqi police or the Iraqi judicial system.

Col. Adamson concludes the paper by arguing that JIEDDO's effectiveness would be enhanced by greater interagency cooperation. In his defense, the good colonel brings up plenty of instances where JIEDDO reached out to other elements of the U.S. government for assistance and, not surprisingly, they were turned away in most instances. He proposes overcoming this problem by establishing an IED 'integration center' that is strikingly similar to the National Counter-Terrorism Center. Building such a center would allow the U.S. government to shift away from its focus on countering IEDs to predicting and preventing them by blending intelligence, military and law enforcement action.

This approach has two key weaknesses:

1. It still treats IEDs like the problem instead of a symptom. Wouldn't an interagency coordinator or process focused on building Iraqi governance capacity ultimately be just as effective at stopping IEDs? Or for that matter, what about simply pouring more resources into rounding up loose munitions and explosives? Recent efforts to go after the IED production and deployment process has forced some bomb-makers to resort to cruder designs, including ANFO-based truckbombs.

2. It trips on the common source of all failed interagency efforts -- poor resource allocation. The reason why many of the other elements of the U.S. government couldn't sign up to assist JIEDDO is because they couldn't afford to take resources away from their own missions. The FBI and ATF are staffed to deal with domestic threats within the context of the United States. They are only given enough resources to handle a narrow set of operations and in practice, they rely heavily on the support of state and local police forces. It would probably easier for the DoD to build up its capacity to police, investigation and dispose of bombs than it would be to bring external law enforcement resources to bear. The Intelligence Community is the same way -- it can't be expected to divert day-to-day collection and reporting resources away from the strategic missions it must support.

Col. Adamson should be very proud of himself -- his paper is a well-written history of bureaucracy and organizational adaptation. If the process wasn't so personality-driven, I would recommend it as a case study for anyone interesting in organizational behavior. His proposals are innovative and very detailed, but unfortunately, even the most innovative bureaucracy can't make up for problems caused by contradictions and deficiencies in U.S. foreign policy.

I don't know where this guy gets his ideas

Shorter Krauthammer: The U.S. can push al-Qaeda out of Iraq by leaving the country in a Mexican standoff.

It finally happened

The Army is hiring a handful of anthropologists to embed with units based in Baghdad. This replacement to Vietnam-era Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support program (one of William Colby's few good ideas) is has been dubbed the Human Terrain System (HTS). I have been hoping that one of the anthropologists would blog about his/her experience and it appears a site has finally popped up. Christopher Newport University faculty member Marcus Griffin will deploy to Iraq sometime soon as an HTS advisor.

I definitely recommend checking in on this guy once in a while. It should be very interesting.

The best documentary I've seen in years

If you have a free hour this evening, watch Frontline's documentary "Endgame" (its available for free on the website). It is quite possibly the most detailed and even-handed account of what went wrong in post-invasion Iraq I have ever seen. It really plumbs the depths of how the Bush administration's desire to play politics with the war and prioritize photo-ops over strategy sessions has created the quagmire we are in today.

On the flip-side, the documentary also makes an excellent case for supporting the "surge/escalation/bananaphone" being carried out by counterinsurgency and peacekeeping nerd Gen. David Petraeus. To be honest, I'm inclined to support the new counterinsurgency strategy if it means we might be setting the Iraqis on a future path that is not marred by violence. Its sad that the Bush administration has politicized the conduct of this way so much that writing what I writing the previous sentence leaves me with mixed feelings and a bad taste in my mouth.

I heart Provincial Reconstruction Teams

David Axe wrote a totally sweet article for Military.com yesterday about U.S. Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT) in Iraq and Afghanistan:

First established in Afghanistan in 2002, PRTs were initially Army-led and included mostly Soldiers. But with the number and size of PRTs expanding throughout Central Command’s area of responsibility and constant deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan for combat operations, the Navy and Air Force have stepped in to relieve some Army’s manpower pressure, taking over leadership of 12 of the 24 American PRTs in Afghanistan.

Half of the 20 American PRTs in Iraq are led by the Army as well, with the other half led by State Department staffers - though, the department is having a tough time finding the personnel to assume the risky duty. There are as many as 100 people working in each PRT.

[Snip]

The problem is they don’t have the security to get around they way they should,” Cardon said.

Still, Cardon’s and Wilson’s teams managed. One of the Iraq teams’ biggest successes was coordinating pest mitigation for the large date palm industry in Karbala, a Shiite holy city south of Baghdad.

“There are these insects that come out and have to be sprayed within a six-week period. The Iraqis were having problems doing this for some time,” Cardon explained. So one of his PRTs stepped in, arranging for helicopters to do the spraying - a move that “should mean dramatic improvement in the date harvest.”

Next up: adding more State Department personnel to his PRTs and tasking them to train the Iraqi government in basic budgeting so ministries and local institutions can execute projects like the date palm spraying themselves.

“I’m trying to get the PRTs to focus more on building government capacity,” Cardon says.

I'll admit, I have a big soft spot for the PRTs. Peacekeeping and post-conflict reconstruction is a truly noble pursuit. The U.S. should treat it as an integral part of confronting terrorism and improving our image abroad.

The U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) has done a great job of recording and studying the PRT experience. They have conducted debriefing interviews with about 75 former PRT staffers and published the transcripts on the USIP website as part of an oral history project on reconstruction. Robert Perito, USIP's senior program officer for Post-Conflict Peace and Stability Operations has also written smashing reports on the evolution of PRTs in Afghanistan and Iraq. They provide an enormous amount of detail about the PRT's organization and missions, as well as some of the key problems they encountered.

I was really surprised to find out how very different the U.S. PRTs in Iraq and Afghanistan are. In Afghanistan, PRTs are essentially small infantry companies (fewer than 100 troops) with a representative from the State Department, Agriculture Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) attached to them. From Perito's description, it appears that the staffers from State didn't do much besides file reports, while the USAID and Ag representatives were out in the field working with the locals. Although the PRTs encountered some really problems, they have remained largely unchanged since 2004.

PRTs in Iraq, on the other hand, are sixty-man subunits attached to brigade combat team and they are lead by a foreign service officer. Their staff also comes from a much more diverse background, including 2-3 staffers from the State, 1 from Agriculture, 1 from Justice, 1 from USAID, two contractor advisers from civilian assistance companies, and only 3 soldiers. After undergoing a major reorganization in 2005, the roles and responsibilities of each PRT member are more clearly defined than for PRTs in Afghanistan.

The reports also reveal some interesting details about PRT work. PRTs in Afghanistan operate with a fair amount of autonomy from local governments because many local leaders are warlords. Since there is no real effort to coordinate the PRTs in Afghanistan, most of their projects are done in a scatter shot fashion. This is exacerbated by the fact that the notoriously short attention span of military commanders has lead to a number of ill-planned or rushed projects. PRT work in Iraq is better coordinated and planned out. They also work closely with local governments to improve governance, budgeting and public services. The main weakness of PRTs in Iraq is their lack of contact with the local population (not going "outside the wire" enough) and inadequate resources.

USIP also wrote a great report responding the oft-asked question of "Why aren't we enlisting the assistance of the NGO community?" According to Michael Dziedzic and Michael J. Siedl, working with the U.S. would tarnish NGOs' reputation of neutrality. Humanitarian groups are often afforded a great deal of mobility and access in war zones because place the idea of alleviating suffering above politics.

Where's the DOT before MRAP?

I'm really impressed by the quantity and quality of the debate over U.S. Army and Marine Corp plans to purchase and field a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected MRAP vehicle to replaced the venerable HMMWV. MRAP skeptics, including writers on the left and right of the Iraq debate, as well as my contemporary (or should I say 'blogging upperclassman') J. Sigger point out that the benefits offered by the MRAP in Iraq does not outweigh its hefty pricetag:

We're talking about making a multi-billion dollar procurement deal on a system that hasn't been run through any operational tests, to replace a system that cost about a fifth of the armored vehicle, and the military wants to rush production of "low rate initial production" vehicles through five contractors to meet the demand.

Now I know why the politicians will vote for this, because they've got a knee-jerk reaction to any issue that includes the term "protection from IEDs" in the title. But you have to ask, what the hell are the military leaders thinking by rushing these vehicles to the field? "These MVAPs have to work, because... because... if they don't, it's our asses." There's no excuse to short-cutting the operational testing of this vehicle, not when the consequences of failure are so high. My frustration with these kind of decisions is in part fueled by the continued demands by the military leadership to continue modernizing their aging equipment simultaneous with funding the high optempo requirements of the war, while the training and repair infrastructure in the United States continues to crumble.

While MRAP supporters, such as defense tech super-reporters Noah Schachtman and David Axe, acknowledge this issue, but present a set of compelling counterpoints:

Jason has a point. But, just to be clear, it's not like the things have no military track record. Engineers and bomb squads have been riding in 'em for more than a year, now. And they're based closely on South African designs which I understand performed just fine.

Also, let's not fetishize "operational tests" overmuch. After all, the Predator flunked its 2001 operational exam -- even as it was taking out Taliban in Afghanistan.

Still, there's reason to be skeptical. As the Standard notes, "'Eliminating the source' [of IEDs] is indeed the only way to stop the bleeding. MRAP is a stop-gap measure, [albeit] a good one."

While both side present compelling points, I tend to side with the MRAP skeptics for two reasons. First, physics is a hard mistress and she currently favors the insurgents. The competition over ever-improving Improvised Explosive Device (IED) and counter-IED tactics and technology has been a central theme of the struggle between U.S. ground forces and insurgent groups. While both sides have been forced to continually innovate, the marginal utility of technological innovation declines as the operational needs bump up against the laws of physics. It is not even really clear whether an car chasis can be hardened enough to stop an explosively-formed penetrator.

Second, whatever happened to the Doctrine, Organization, Training, Material, Leadership, Personnel, Facilities (DOTMLPF) process? For those unfamiliar with the term, the best description is found in Field Manual 1:

DOTMLPF is a problem-solving construct for assessing current capabilities and managing change. Change is achieved through a continuous cycle of adaptive innovation, experimentation, and experience. Change deliberately executed across DOTMLPF elements enables the Army to improve its capabilities to provide dominant landpower to the joint force.

The elements of DOTMLPF are organized in order of difficult, from easiest to change (doctrine) to most difficult (facilities). One thing that I have noticed about about U.S. operations in Iraq is a tendency to favor material solutions over doctrinal, organizational, and training solutions when a problem crops up on the battlefield. Just compare the $6 billion spent by JIEDDO on counter IED technology versus the years it took to the U.S. Army to role out a new counterinsurgency manual, despite the clear need for one.

Don't get me wrong, the military should replace part of its HMMWV fleet with MRAPs -- but not all of it. The Army will continue to need an medium-weight, all-purpose truck for missions that don't involve driving through a virtual minefield. Thankfully, it seem like the Pentagon is going to pick up just about the right number of MRAPs (15,000-20,000). In the meantime, I have a few radical proposals for doctrinal and organizational changes for the Army should meditate on:

1. If roadside bombs are such a problem for military supply convoys, why not consider sourcing some material locally? Laundry service, water purification and garbage collection, are could be outsources to local firms. The business will help build ties with the community and infuse some much needed cash into the local economy. As units build trusting relationships with the local population, they should consider outsourcing some functions that would involve a mild amount of risk, but employ important parts of the local economy. This would include preparing meals, mending uniforms and manufacturing basic consumables (batteries, non-sensitive spare parts, tires). Heck, if Iraq's oil ministry could get its act together, the U.S. Army's fleet of generators and trucks would be thirsty, high-paying customers.

2. If you can't make armored cars tough enough to resist IEDs then walk, or at least disperse Brigade Combat Teams into the urban environment even more. If Joint Security Stations commanded at the battalion level, some of them subdivide them into company-sized or even platoon-sized posts. The ultimate goal would be to saturate the security districts with small posts that aren't far apart and don't have to move much. Remember the painful lessons of the Kuomintang's early anti-communist campaigns -- insurgencies require space (or base areas). Slow and methodical encirclement is a proven way of starving insurgents of their space.

3. Abandon the idea of 'focused logistics.' The idea of 'tailored supplies' or 'just-in-time' delivery are not compatible with stability operations. When your mission is to provide 24-hour security to a town, you need to be preparing for everything. Building a 'mountain of metal' may be inexpensive or inefficient, but the opportunity cost of failing at your security mission can be even larger.

These ideas may seem risky, but successful stability operations often requires a wholesale abandonment of the military's conventional wisdom about the elements of operations -- like the 'battlefield,' the 'enemy,' and the whole idea of 'operations' itself.

A queston of endurance

I've been a reader of Bill Arkin's blog for a few years now. I was initially very impressed with the quality of his work and his uncanny ability to dig up some of the defense establishment's dirty little secrets. His reporting on the U.S. military posture towards Iran has been particularly solid and serves as a strong counterpoint to Seymour Hersh's overly credulous reporting.

His work has declined some in recent months and today's post is a perfect example:

We have 2.2 million men and women under arms in the active military and reserves and yet we have had a hard time sustaining 150,000 troops in Iraq, and are struggling to increase that force by just 20,000?

The political message these days is that with defense spending as a share of the gross domestic product at near record lows, the American people have somehow failed to contribute enough.

[snip]

I say we just aren't getting enough bang for our bucks, and a huge part of the problem is a military institution that is so bloated with support and dominated by a new industrial contractor class that it is increasingly challenged to produce combat power.

By the end of the "surge" next month, the total number of U.S. military forces in Iraq will peak at some 170,000 men and women, a ten percent increase over the 150,000 or so troops that the United States has sustained in country since 2003.

The number of U.S. troops in Iraq previously peaked in November 2005 at 161,000, according to Pentagon documents. Before the announcement of the surge in January, U.S. forces had declined to some 130,000.

With 2.2 million men and women in the active armed forces, reserves, and National Guard, plus some 650,000 civilians working directly for the Defense Department, how it that we are barely able to sustain one-tenth of the number of those in uniform in Iraq?

[snip]

Overall in the Defense Department, supporting "defense agencies" already get more than 16 percent of the defense budget. And, of course, with the services, various "supporting" functions, from bands to applicative war colleges to research and development eat up the lion's share of the money.

I don't mean to demean any of those people, but you have to wonder when the technologies needed to fight - such as counter-IED technologies or basic personnel protection gear - doesn't flow readily into the theater despite all the brains, the dollars, and the effort.

In the end then, if the forces on the front lines - the army brigades, the Marine Corps expeditionary units, the air wings, even the navy ships - are increasingly deemed lower on the readiness scale and stretched too thin, it is because of the overall organization of military and the fact that those who actually do the fighting are themselves spread too thin in an otherwise overfed organization.

How could he miss a blatantly obvious point: Wars occur over time.

Considering the way the the Department of Defense planned for wars prior to 2003, this issue shouldn't be all too surprising. Going all the way back to Les Aspin's Bottom-Up Review, the U.S. military has only planned to fight brief, decisive, high-intensity wars. The force sizing model that persisted throughout the 1990's was infamous "two major regional conflicts" model.

It held that the U.S. could wage two major regional conflicts (about the size of the first Persian Gulf War) with fewer than 1,000,000 active duty soldiers. The model basically implies that the military could win a decisive military campaign in either the Near East or on the Korean peninsula then build up to fight another Persian Gulf-sized war in the other region in about a month.

The problem with this model is that it is narrowly focused on winning a decisive campaign against a conventional military. It leaves no room for operational error (i.e. an indecisive victory). It also leaves the Army without a capacity for persistent, manpower-intensive operations.

The problem in Iraq is that Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) is entering its fifth year of persistent, manpower-intensive operations. Even though the Army has about 500,000 active duty troops and 500,000 reserve/National Guard troops, it can only muster approximately 150,000 active and reserve soldiers at a time. This is because soldiers can only operate for about a year before they need to reset and retrain.

For every year active duty units spend on the battlefield, the Army gives them about two years to reset and retrain. Reservists and National Guard troops are typically given somewhere between five and six years of downtime after a year of deployment.

The DoD may be a bloated bureaucracy (can anyone name an example of a lean bureaucracy?), but their manpower limitations are structural -- not the result of inefficiency or the domination of an "industrial contractor class."

Just wait until they create improvised lightsabers

Michael Yon has blessed us with yet another poorly lit picture of an odd-shaped mystery weapon in Iraq. This spooky follow-on to last time's maybe sawed-off RPG launcher, maybe laser-gun is probably an booby trap or some kind of improvised mine.

The brass disc on its top (or bottom) was most likely the object's trigger. What is slightly odd about the object is its shell, which could be anything between plastic, metal or even some sort of glazed composite. One thing is for sure, it definitely reminds me of a scene from the beginning of Return of the Jedi:

THREEPIO:
Uh, oh... but what, what did I say?
(to Boushh)
Uh, the mighty Jabba asks why he must pay fifty thousand.

The bounty hunter holds up a small silver ball in his hand. Threepio looks at it, then looks at Jabba, then back to the bounty hunter. The droid is very nervous and Jabba is getting very impatient.

THREEPIO:
Because he's holding a thermal detonator!

That must be it. The Iraqis have advanced from EFPs to thermal detonators. Next thing you know, they will be commanding the Force and riding Speeder Bikes.

With language, what you say is what you get

After watching Joe Leibermann and Stephen Hadley bloviate on today's Meet the Press, I started thinking about easily American leaders can mischaracterize Near East politics. I was particularly dumb-struck by how Leibermann so casually conflated the intentions and objectives of al-Qaeda with Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah under the rubric of "radical Islam." (transcript will be avilable here) Group the four together seriously dilutes the discursive meaning of the term and in my opinion, renders it about as useful as the ill-gotten label 'Islamofascism.'

Maybe its the anthropologist in me, but this reflection on the notion of what constitutes 'radical Islam' got me thinking about how communism was characterized during the Cold War. Both communism and radical Islam are described as universalist-revisionist doctrines. In a sense, both ideologies threaten the core of Western European civilization - humanism, Judeo-Christian values and nationalism.

Whereas communism is modern to the point of cold, deterministic atheism, radical Islam is just the opposite. It is frequently characterized as ultra-traditional and anti-modern to the point of being uncivilized.

The only major difference is that the scope of each movement is different. The idealized version of communism vilified in the West was feared because it advocated global revisionism - i.e. pushing the revolution to every corner of the globe.

Contemporary views of radical Islam typically circumscribe its range to a band of territory stretching from northern Africa through the Near East and south Asia to the southeast Asian archipelago. It is interesting to note that the scope of radical Islam preceived in the West is only on the margin of it's territory. I would hazard a guess that radical Islam has become such a threat because it sits on most of the world's energy resources.

It may seem pedantic to talk about the meanings that are loaded on political language, but I'm willing to believe the notion that those meanings hold huge sway over the political choices we make.

I'm afraid that popular misperceptions about the political objectives and sociological dynamics of radical revisionists in the Near East have lead us into another Cold War that will consume American politics for a generation or more (i.e. Generation X and my generation, the MTV generation).

Not the only one with Patriots on his mind

Spy68, a former military intelligence and fellow pseudononymous blogger also picked up on Bush's mention of Patriot missile deployments in the Middle East:

True, Patriot batteries can provide an important symbol of our willingness to protect our friends. But they're most useful in defending key facilities and population centers from air and ballistic missile attacks. It doesn't take a military analyst to understand that there's something larger at work here. The U.S. seems concerned that our military build-up--or a preemptive Israeli strike--could trigger a backlash from Iran, prompting missile attacks against our allies in the region (air strikes are a much lesser threat, given the limited capabilities of the Iranian Air Force). Deploying Patriot batterys now would illustrate U.S. resolve, while providing a missile defense capability in areas that are currently unprotected.

And that begs another important question, namely the beddown location for those Patriot batteries. Saudi Arabia, Israel and Kuwait already operate the system (among others). Additional deployments to those nations would provide redundant coverage. I'm guessing that the deployments announced last night will cover Iraq and the various Gulf States--Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)--that currently lack a land-based, missile defense capability. Turkey is another possibility, although our resources are not unlimited; there are only 9 Patriot battalions in the U.S. Army, which includes those currently deployed.

I forgot about the UAE. It would be a good candidate for Patriots too, especially considering Its al-Dahfra airbase is hosting an expeditionary air wing. I think Spy68 may be slightly off because last time I checked, I thought the Army had 11 ADA battlions, not 9. I doubt the Japanese or South Koreas would allow the U.S. to pull its three Patriot battlions in East Asia very easily, so we're really only talking about 1-3 additional battlions. An alternative to ADA deployments would be to loosen U.S. foreign military sales (FMS) policy on Patriot missile systems to our GCC allies. The Saudis and Kuwaitis already have their own Patriots batteries, but I doubt the UAE would have trouble fitting the cost in between their 7-star hotels, man-made islands, and Dubailand. Bahrain, Qatar and Oman may not be as flashy as the UAE, but I bet they could also fit a PAC-2 battery into their defense budgets. My coworkers that handle FMS policy and sales for CENTCOM don't seem busier than usual, but that doesn't mean they won't be soon.

Bush's Iraq speech

I have mixed feelings about President Bush's Iraq speech tonight. I was impressed with the amount of detail he provided on the mission of the 22,000 additional troops he wants to send to Iraq. It seemed like a reasonable idea and definitely smacks of traditional counterinsurgency doctrine. I was really disappointed by two things: 1) The Bush administration still appears to be clinging to the notion that there are 'extremists' and 'moderates' in Iraqi politics and society. I think this is a poor perspective that ignores the idea that armed militias have popped up in Iraq because fewer and fewer political groups in the country are invested in the democratic process. In a sense, groups like the Mehdi army are growing in power because public confidence in the government's monopoly on force is at an extreme low ebb. 2) Does the Bush administration honestly think all of the hyperbole on Iran, Syria, nuclear weapons, terrorist safe havens and even the improbable 'terrorist oil state' scenario was helpful? Americans aren't dumb. Most of us know there will be grave consequences in Iraq if the Iraqi government completely collapses. We also know that Iran and Syria aren't exactly helping us on Iraq (although I am seriously dubious about their active involvement in the violence). We don't need President Bush talking down to us like we are myopic children. Geez. I found two bits of his speech very interesting: 1) We're apparently going to deploy more Patriots in the Middle East. This is an idea I have been toying with for a while. I wonder who of the Gulf Cooperation Council will get them? My money is on at least Bahrain, Qatar and Oman. 2) Will the president's call for civilian deployments in Iraq materialize? The current civil service is ill-suited for the task and programs designed to bring in new blood on a temporary basis have been half-hearted at best. I'm not an expert in provincial reconstruction, but I still have the fearlessness of youth, I'm a quick learner and I'm willing to do a few years in the Third World. I even find that kind of 'squishy, blue helmeted' work really interesting. Anyone at State want a copy of my resume? It also looks like Bush administration plans to permanently increase Army and Marine end strength by almost 100,000 pairs of boots. Working so close to the U.S. Army over the last two years has given me a new appreciation for our grunts and jarheads and after all of the heavy lifting they have done since 2003, they deserve a boost. Today a higher end strength, tomorrow a larger portion of the DOD budget!