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2008-02-09 Home Front: WoT

War demands strain US military readiness

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Posted by gorb 2008-02-09 04:26|| || Front Page|| [10 views ] Top

#1 A classified Pentagon assessment concludes that long battlefield tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with persistent terrorist activity and other threats, have prevented the U.S. military from improving its ability to respond to any new crisis

ROTFLMAO. It's war asshats. I'm sure WWII prevented the US military from improving its ability to respond to any new crisis too! This is not a test. Repeat, this is not a test. This is the real thing.

This is exactly what Rummey was trying to root out of the bureaucracy. It's the same crap as attempting to reassign Petraeus. THIS IS THE WAR. The culture within the walls is still focusing on the 'next big one in Europe'. Someone needs to bitch slap the upper echelons real hard.

Posted by Procopius2k 2008-02-09 09:22|| 2008-02-09 09:22|| Front Page Top

#2 Some people do get it, I think, P2k. But they're looking out towards the next operations looming on the horizon.

From where I sit I see a lot of behind the scenes efforts to enable military to work with our own and other civilian agencies, emergency responders etc. Sooner or later we are likely to be hit with a major attack here which will trigger waves of jihadi/leftists from the south and maybe the north to come over the borders. There's more than one leader* who's thinking about the possibility that our troops may well be doing counterIED patrols and responding to WMD attacks within our homeland.

Or other non-force-on-force operations in places like friendly south American countries or oil/resource rich African states.

It's a juggling act, since the Army is also transitioning to the brigade combat team model from the WWII division as the unit of deployment. That's being done in parallel with the surge in Iraq, Afghanistan heating up and our Spec Ops being heavily deployed. Oh, and along the way, some Spec Ops experts are trying to teach elements of the regular army how to do the advisor role effectively in places like Anbar province.

And yes, in the meanwhile we are indeed using up / wearing out materiel and equipment, as always happens in war.

*(Wells has been pushing to have us figure out ahead of time how to integrate C2ISR systems to make data sharing work across military & civilian agencies if need be.)

Posted by lotp 2008-02-09 10:09|| 2008-02-09 10:09|| Front Page Top

#3 BTW, COL Ryan's slides (2nd link in that comment above) pack a lot into a small space. This interview with him at Ft. Leavenworth is worth a read, too. He volunteered to come back on active duty status after 9/11. Really impressive guy whose opinions about asymmetric warfare are based on experience in depth.

Posted by lotp 2008-02-09 10:19|| 2008-02-09 10:19|| Front Page Top

#4 From that pre-surge (12/06) interview:

In this interview, Ryan talks at length about the decision to deploy
elements of an institutional training division into a combat zone to pick up this training and advisory mission, and stresses the difficulty thereof especially given that advisor skills are somewhat enigmatic to the institutional Department of Defense.

As Ryan notes, When you say you need advisors, you either look to Special Forces or you put your hands in your pockets and start kicking stones, because theres no definition of advisors and theres no advisory training outside of SF.

Based on his own background in SF and past foreign internal defense work in both permissive and non-permissive environments, Ryan also expounds in great detail on what makes a good (and bad) advisor, explaining that its largely a function of temperament and personality and noting that these are not qualities the Army is presently equipped to measure and track.

In addition, he discusses what he considers the lack of a plan to reconstruct the security forces mechanisms and infrastructure within Iraq and the inability of US-based staff action processes to keep up with theater requirements.

Posted by lotp 2008-02-09 10:23|| 2008-02-09 10:23|| Front Page Top

#5 lotp, those are intriguing and informative posts. Given the significant possibility of a Democratic administration, I hope there is also a study underway to determine how the military is going to get all of that done with chewing gum and baling wire. Assuming, of course, that the officer corps does not resign en masse.

Posted by Matt 2008-02-09 10:41|| 2008-02-09 10:41|| Front Page Top

#6 Yup, that's the challenge. And IIUC the Pentagon is trying to get at least this coming fiscal year's funding secured because it might get really bad the year after.

And if the Clinton machine takes power again, you know they WILL sabotage ANY efforts to share data between military leaders and civilian authorities even after a major attack.

O'bama will Pre-emptively surrender before such an attack is deemed necessary.

BTW, I'm not kidding about concerns re: IEDs here in the US.

Posted by lotp 2008-02-09 10:50|| 2008-02-09 10:50|| Front Page Top

#7 It's a juggling act, since the Army is also transitioning to the brigade combat team model from the WWII division as the unit of deployment.

They may have deployed to theater as divisions, but they fought as Regimental Combat Teams. Which is what they are essentially getting back to.

Posted by Procopius2k 2008-02-09 11:37|| 2008-02-09 11:37|| Front Page Top

#8 Complete with unit rotation, which they haven't done for a long time.

Posted by lotp 2008-02-09 12:40|| 2008-02-09 12:40|| Front Page Top

#9 From an Air Force point of view, there is a certain amount of truth here. The war was initially a relief for the AF. Operation Northern Watch and Southern Watch meant that the AF had been flying combat in Iraq continuously since the end of the first Gulf War. The ability to actually blow away the bad guys was good. The problem is that the airplanes are pretty much worn out and there is NO money to refurbish them. Quite rightly, the Army and Marines get first call on the available funds, but the AF senior leadership is desperate to "recapitalize" (Air Staff speak for buy new airplanes) and there is no money. They submit budgets with reductions across the board to "free up" funds for "recapitalization" and Congress just takes the money rather than let them buy new airplanes with it. The F-15s are grounded because of metal fatigue. The KC-135s and F-16s aren't far behind them. The AF is on a going out of business curve. I wouldn't be surprised to see it merged with the Navy into some purple suit air force in the next administration.

Posted by RWV 2008-02-09 22:12|| 2008-02-09 22:12|| Front Page Top

#10 The AF pulled about 200 fighter pilots out of Iraq and reassigned them to "fly" RPVs. The force is steadily shrinking and manned planes are being replaced by cheaper unmanned vehicles.

Posted by RWV 2008-02-09 22:16|| 2008-02-09 22:16|| Front Page Top

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