Hotrod speaks on RSTA.

 A couple of notes - The RSTA squadrons are a relatively new "innovation". They've gone through a couple of name changes, e.g. I believe that they were ARSs - Armored Recon Squadrons - at one point, but I believe that RSTA is the current, and correct nomenclature. Reconnaissance, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, which I believe accurately emphasizes the only thing they're really capable of. When GEN Schoomaker, then CoS, wanted to both continue increasing the emphasis on brigades over divisions while simultaneously increasing the pool of available brigades - he ordered a reorg. Basically, divisions shuffled the pieces of their traditional three brigades around to get four. There were definite upsides - e.g. heavy battalions regained the fourth company that had been lost during the post Cold-War Force XXI reorg. All in all, though, you basically ended up with two well equipped and properly organized line battalions, plus a RSTA squadron. The RSTA units, whether light or heavy, ar e marginally appropriately equipped and organized to apply fires, e.g. they have a smattering of mortars and FIST teams (artillery spotters), but IIRC, a "heavy Cav Troop" now has 85 Soldiers. These are NOT elements suitable to sustained combat without reinforcement. The doctrine does acknowledge that, but the nature of the new MTOE (a

 listing of people and equipment) combined with the nature of the current fight tends to lock the BCTs into a numbers game. Faced with only having two combat formations (the line batts), BCTs are tending to use the RSTA as a combat element, instead of a screening or recon formation. Unreinforced, they are simply not equipped for sustained combat. Whether LTC Brown's bunch was reinforced or not, or whether they were 19Ds (cavalry scouts) or 11Bs (infantry) is not something I'm remotely privy to. Why is only having two true combat elements a big deal? "Two up, one back" is an old saw rooted in profound truths. I'd refer anyone who has time to Clay Blair's superb (and very long) history of the Korean War - "The Forgotten War". He discusses the problems regiments deploying short out of Japan suffered in far greater detail then I'll ever be able to manage. I’d also note that a BCT’s CDR and staff’s natural “span of control” is probably 3-5 combat elements, not 2. If a unit is running under their appropriate span of control, then micromanagement, painfully stupid Requests for Information and other initiative killing features tend to breed like rabbits. The antithesis of RSTA, both in mission and combat power, is Armored Cavalry, heavy units that can "fight for information". On the downside, true armored cavalry is being set aside (for now - I suspect certain lessons will be relearned at some point, hopefully with minimum pain), as the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment is refitted with Strykers. On the upside, there are rumblings of trimming BCTs to restore a third line battalion to the remaining units. Time will tell. Lots of people weigh in on this with their back of the envelope recipes to fixing the BCTs. My preferred option would be to halve the number of BCTs, double the number of line batts in those remaining to four each, create a true Cavalry formation to replace the RSTA in the heavy BCTs, and start from scratch with what we want a light BCTs scout/recon element to look like. Promote the BCT CDR to a one star, then leave everything else pretty much the same. That’s me though. People who get paid more than I do will have to figure this out, weighing both sound concerns and parochial ones. I’ll mostly take a pass on the unit lineage issue. I don’t know enough about it, other than that some really weird numbers came up when the light units started standing up “Cav”. IIRC, the 82nd has a bunch of squadrons from the 73rd Cavalry. I dunno. The US Army doesn’t really follow a regimental system the way the Brits and others do to various degrees. IMO, that’s unfortunate, but it is what it is. COL Lang also raises a larger issue in this and other recent posts about the way his and my Army is doing business. The term “COIN” has taken on meanings well beyond what it should, and has become a proxy for lots of other debates – some of them quite important. My very limited attempt at unraveling it follows – The Army (rightly) has very precise terms for things, e.g. a unit that is told to “secure” a hill has been told to do something VERY different than the unit that was told to “clear” a hill. Counter-Insurgency has a very precise definition, in both Army and Joint doctrine. It is a subset of the larger category of irregular warfare, and is simply the sum total of actions to defeat an insurgency. It is simply a task that any proper army should be able to execute to one degree or another. Unfortunately, for lots of reasons this definition has drifted in the course of various overlapping but ultimately separate public debates – -The most important debate is the one about the nature of our Army. I’m not entirely sure that all the debaters know that they are debating, but they are. The US Army as currently constructed is in many respects an outstanding Army. It works hard, serves faithfully and is, IMO, the most values based government institution in America. I do not use that last description lightly. It is also arrogant, paternalistic, insular and not merely conservative but institutionally hostile to innovation, particularly bottom-up innovation. ABOVE ALL – the US Army is a relentless proponent of the Science of War, at the expense of the Art of War, in that it tends to hold the measurable/quantifiable over more important intangibles. It’s difficult to point to any one single thing as exemplifying this, but I would note a few anecdotes (combined with imperfect comparisons) – -Army officers aren’t really taught about the NATURE (in the Clausewitzian sense) of war until they are Majors, typically after they have commanded companies. IIRC, Marine Officers learn about those topics as Captains at Expeditionary Warfare School, typically before they command companies. -An Army officer is more likely to be assessed on or held accountable over relatively easy to measure issues such as property accountability, crew served gunnery qualifications and maintenance readiness than he is over the very hard to measure and generally more important question of tactical competence/excellence. This is particularly true at the company command level where an officer’s performance largely sets his/her career track going forward. This has diminished in the face of sustained combat, but I don’t see anything looking like a permanent shift. -An Army officer has (historically) been trained to resist the idea that he does politics – instead he “kills people and breaks things”. A Brit or Commonwealth officer is more likely to understand that everyone wearing the flag is a political actor. I mean this all in the Clausewitzian sense of war being a continuation of politics. I know many here will want to see this in the domestic sense - I don’t mean that at all. -Faced with the inherent challenge of how do you measure competence at complex tasks, an Army leader is pushed to use a training model that tries to turn everything into a distinct, easily tracked task or battle drill that can be measured based on “task, condition, standards” (and now documented – to the individual Soldier level – in a web based application viewable by higher and higher headquarters). This has its role, but it’s overused, promotes micromanagement and leads to piling on – dumping more and more training tasks on which dumbs down training and takes away time from the work arounds that quality leaders have to REALLY train. Fewer tasks combined with more complex lanes would be a better approach. That’s not really new – the most important ACTUAL training (as opposed to what the Army sometimes thinks is training) has always been what NCOs impart combined with lanes, FTXs and what happens at the Combat Training Cente rs. There are some cautious signs that the Army is learning a little here, e.g. First Army slashed required training tasks recently – not to ease up but to give leaders more time to focus on what is really required. I’ll take it, but I firmly believe there’s a significant part of the Army that will absolutely fight to the death before they institutionalize an approach that is less conducive to them exporting very detailed reports to Powerpoint. - An Army Soldier, particularly a mid-career Officer or Senior NCO, exists in a personnel management system that largely treats them as interchangeable cogs in a machine. Outside of niche communities, there’s not much focus on individual strengths and weaknesses at the level where assignments are handed out. This leads to resume padding and conformity, among other things. The Regimental System, where Soldiers are managed largely by people who know them because they serve together, offers a better approach (IMO). But again – hard to measure, hard to document, hard to brief. -So what do all these anecdotes have to do with the nature of COIN? Though only actually invoked intermittently by those typically identified with COIN, IMO, COIN is a proxy in this debate, because COIN is largely about art and intangibles, which the Army tends to underemphasize. There are some metrics required in COIN, but it’s more likely you are trying to figure out which sheik is breaking which way, which is not very conducive to reporting on Command Post of the Future (CPOF – a kind of electronics setup). BTW - that example is stolen from a skeptical comment made by LTC Nagl. So at least some of those that those of you with sneers on your faces lump in with COIN-danistas are simply arguing for a future vision for the Army. Simply lumping everyone together, whether out of ignorance or malice, presents a FALSE CHOICE. Our Army should be able to do Art and Science both. An officer should understand fires, maneuver, shock effect AND culture. COIN is simpl y one more possible mission set. I’d point out that the first significant victory of the post-OIF 1 phase of the Iraq War was won by now BG McMaster and the 3rd ACR at Tal Afar. Then COL McMaster went into that fight wearing a Silver Star – which he didn’t get for handing out school supplies, but rather for this battle -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_73_Easting . -There is a second debate, or perhaps group of debates, where “COIN” is supposedly the flavor of the day, and COL Gian Gentile and others need to battle with the feckless generals and ignorant youngsters who are out to remake societies in a single deployment. COL Gentile spends more time slaying strawmen then flawed arguments, but there are perhaps bits of truth here and there. Certainly there have been some officers out there who think that you can hand out money and projects wily nilly and BAM… they like us, the war is won, NFL exhibition games to be held in Tikrit Stadium, with statehood for Ninewah to follow. Accordingly, there has evolved a tendency among some to see “COIN” as a combination of empire building in the bureaucratic sense combined with imperialism in the literal sense – COL Bacevich falls into this camp a little bit. But there’s no reason these things have to be about “COIN”. Tactical sloppiness is j ust that, tactical sloppiness. If it’s a problem, then let’s work on it. It doesn’t have to be about “COIN”. If a given campaign is a bad idea, then it’s a bad idea. If it’s a problem, let’s talk about it. It doesn’t have to be about “COIN”. And on and on and on with things that might well be bad habits or bad judgments, but when labeled with “COIN” confuse all parties. I have great respect for my fellow alum COL Lang, but I feel he falls into this habit a little bit. To be fair, I believe his 17 May post does a little better job of separating the issues out. - Then there is a group of people, typically, though not exclusively, reflexive hard lefties. They simply slap the COIN label onto every conspiracy theory because, well, they heard it a couple of times and it sounds like something useful to squawk about. It typically come packaged with the latest leftist garbage and is undeserving of the time it takes to read it. Nothing about this garbage is actually about “COIN”. Okay, I’m done now. Hopefully that wasn’t too incomprehensible.  Hotrod

Comments

[DT]

The '34 five window concept reminds me of Chrysler 318 powered APCs I saw in Vietnam that were supposed to be able to do 80mph. Not sure exactly what they did at night after the roads were off limits to us.Maybe somebody else knows.

You mention Clausewicz. What about Sun Tzu in this context? I'm no expert in military theory, just curious.

[Mike C]

...Far from incomprehensible.

Enlightening.

Thank you.

[HJFJR]

Concur with all that is said here would offer a couple of clarifying points:

* Stryker Brigades have 3 Maneuver Battalion plus a RSTA Battalion.

* One advantage of the BCT is in addition to the Maneuver Battalion organic to its structure are: A Fires (read artillery battalion), a MI Company, Engineer Company, Signal Company, as well as a CSS Battalion.

* In the Heavy BCT the Maneuver Battalion are in fact Combined Arms Battalions with 2 Bradley and 2 Abrams Companies.

* There are several changes being proposed for the BCTs to include the addition of more MI soldiers down to the company level.

* No one disagrees with adding a 3rd Maneuver Battalion but the current construct of 45 BCTs as being what the Army needs this will not happen; unless the Army is given an end strength increase.

The author is correct about the science of war verses the art of war. When General Starry was leading the original drafting of Air-Land Battle he placed great emphasis on the Art of War; unfortunately over time it was subsumed by the Science of War and those who believe you could measure everything by a metric, or chart.

One of the symptoms of the Science of War is the constant need for more and more information, so that the leader can make a decision. The Army is often paralyzed by analysis.

I also believe the author is on to something when he compares the ability of a US company commander and a Commonwealth Company Commander to understand that military operations are an extension of politics. I would proffer that there are several reasons for this. First, breath and depth of reading and understanding history, not just military history, but history writ large. Second, rank, Commanders from Commonwealth Countries are Majors--not Captains. They have had experience at the platoon, company, and on the staff. By in large they are more seasoned. This is not to say the US does not have good Company Commanders, they do. Third, and most importantly as the author highlighted the Army rewards tactical ability, while neglecting the operational and strategic until our officers are senior and I am afraid not comfortable with big ideas.

I too share the authors concern that the Army is falling into a COIN centric snare. The ability to wage COIN should be a means towards an end, not everything is COIN or should be waged like COIN, our forces must have the ability to transition quickly to killing the enemy.

[HJFJR]

COL Lang:

Here is an article which amplifies much of what I said in my previous comments. http://www.afji.com/2007/08/2765978/

[Tyler]

To be fair to GEN Mcmaster, he went into Tal Afar and wiped out a third of the population to show he meant business.

If there ever was a bunker city, that was it. Roads had been blocked off or rerouted to Iraqi Police substations, and every substation was in view of another substation or OP. There were four or five FOBs in the city, and one large base (Sykes) outside of it.

Regardless, Tal Afar was certainly more under control than Mosul, even though we still had our incidents there. I imagine a lot of this was there was a lot of initiative you could take being up on the ass end of nowhere, as opposed to being near regional HQ down by Mosul.

[hotrod]

"Restructuring the BCT" at Small Wars Journal

http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=10386

[The Twisted Genius]

Thanks, hotrod for your insights and the link to the Small Wars Journal thread. I've learned a lot this week about what's happening in the Army. Your mention of "task, conditions, standards" and the search for ever more metrics sent chills up my spine. I think that all started in the mid 70s. My Ranger class was the first to start using no/no go checklists rather than a previous reliance on Ranger Instructor narrative assessments. Everyone thought it was bogus and continued to use narrative assessments to determine who was awarded a tab at the end of my course. The soldiers manuals with the endless list of tasks, conditions and standards were ever present in the infantry. Every soldier had to carry a miniaturized version of his soldiers manual with him. Now it's all web based... Lord help us! I found an interesting thread on the danger of metrics on Slashdot this morning.

"Einstein once said, 'Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.' A New York Times article suggests that unless we know how things are counted, we don't know if it's wise to count on the numbers. The problem isn't with statistical tests themselves, but with what we do before and after we run them." Here are two links that further explains the phenomena.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ws/the_importance_of_goodharts_law/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/magazine/16FOB-WWLN-t.html
The emphasis on metrics leads to people gaming the metrics to beat the system. Not only do we lose sight of the art, but we engage in bad science.

[VietnamVet]

Hotrod,

I was so far down the chain of command that I wouldn’t recognize a “Task, Condition, or Standard” if it hit me in the face. Long ago I remember plastic cards with long lists in strange English sentences that were incomprehensible and strangely hard to memorize even if forced to try. The Sergeants had a vast store of knowledge but you only told you enough to get the Task at hand done.

The Army today is being tasked with an impossible job. The last big infantry war was won by the Vietnamese against the Chinese. Tubed Artillery and Close in Air Support are disappearing because their target, entrenched infantry and mechanized tanks, are an anachronism in the 21st Century with the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Israel will use its nuclear weapons if faced with extinction. The Army can only fight in non-nuclear wars which limits them to Wars of National Liberation. These are inevitably police actions and it is natural that the Army evolves into mobile SWAT Teams with vehicles that can withstand IEDs and rockets.

In addition, occupations inevitably corrupt an Army. There is never victory. In the end, all occupying armies leave. LZ English has disappeared. The Russians no long occupy Germany; the British lost the whole world, and the Spanish the New World. Only the Army’s offspring, the “Mestizoes”, live on.

[Patrick Lang]

VV

You would not say that if you had to defend an isolated post against heavy odds. pl

[different clue]

What kind of car was this before it became a hotrod?

[JM]

A lot of interesting discussion in your post, Hotrod, much of which whizzed way over my head, and I get the feeling that much of what you wrote about is tip-of-the-iceberg stuff in terms of your insights and comments.

Would be great to see your thoughts expanded into a longer essay or monograph.

[Mark Logan]

What was it? 33 or 34 Ford Three Window.

http://www.dieselstation.com/pics/1934-Ford-3-Window-Coupe-hot-rod-car-walls.jpg

But now, of course, a hot...rod....Lincoln...

[john-in-the-boro]

For the curious this link is to a slide show that graphically portrays the modular Army that hotrod talks about: http://www.blueskybroadcast.com/Client/Army_Stratcom/docs/printable.slides.pdf