Last week, Colonel Lang referred to an article by David Ignatius “in which he [Ignatius] made reference to a RAND study in which the author tries to make the case that SOF forces (Green Berets, Rangers, Delta, SEALS, and other cats and dogs) are the key to success in warfare in the future.” I just want to elaborate on the colonel’s comments. The RAND study is written by Linda Robinson, a senior international policy analyst at RAND who, in addition to numerous articles, has written a couple of books about Special Forces and our special operations forces: “Masters of Chaos” in 2005 and “One Hundred Victories: Special Ops and the Future of ” in 2013. I have not read either book and probably won’t. I did read her latest article which Ignatius referred to. Her article, “SOF’s Evolving Role: Warfare “By, With and Through” Local Forces” does contribute to a misguided idea that SOF, rather than conventional forces, is the answer to future wars. I say “contributes to” because I think Robinson’s understanding of the problem and proposed solution is more nuanced than that, but she still doesn’t seem to accept the centrality of combined arms forces in future wars. This view is apparently shared by Ignatius and even General Votel at CENTCOM.
In the crudest sense, this view stems from the overblown publicity that has surrounded years of night raids by the door kickers of Delta, the SEALs and Rangers. Not only do these high speed, low drag operations sell books, but they have influenced a generation of commanders, think tankers and Pentagon bureaucrats to put their faith in SOF.
Not all is lost, however. As our heaviest engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq wound down, the Army took a close look at what they were doing and what they were doing to the Army itself. Armor and artillery units were employed as COIN area commands. Combined arms combat against combined arms foes was becoming a lost art. Conventional Army units were given the mission to organize and train Afghan and Iraqi forces on an ad hoc basis with predictable results. The Iraqi army trained by the US in this fashion disintegrated in front of IS advances in 2014. The Afghan army is unsuitable and unsustainable without continued US presence and logistical support.
The first thing the Army to remedy the situation did was refocus on organizing and training for combined arms maneuver warfare against a near peer foe. The forward to the Nov 2016 publication of Army Doctrine Publication No. 3-0 (ADP 3-0) begins, “In 2011 the Army updated its warfighting doctrine to conduct unified land operations through decisive action and guided by mission command.” These may be new words, but they should be familiar to the oldest soldiers out there. The change, very slight in my opinion, can be seen in the definition of unified land operations.
“Simultaneous offensive, defensive and stability or defense support of civil authorities tasks to seize, retain, and exploit the initiative and consolidate gains to prevent conflict, shape the operational environment, and win our nation’s wars as part of unified action.”
I can’t argue with that. I do believe the Army is serious about getting their combined arms maneuver warfighting mojo back, but they’re not going to forget the experiences of the last fifteen years either. They will continue to organize, train and equip combined arms maneuver brigades with various mixes of infantry, armor, artillery and support units. There will also be lighter, more deployable forces built around Stryker, airborne and light infantry units. And, of course, there are the Special Forces groups and much ballyhooed commandos of JSOC. There is also a new kind of unit that was announced in March of this year. The Army intends to create six security force assistance brigades (SFAB).
These SFAB are to consist of roughly 500 officers, captain and above, and senior NCOs, staff sergeant and above. They will be organized along the lines of combined arms maneuver brigades, essentially taking a maneuver brigade and stripping away the junior officers and enlisted soldiers. All members with receive six weeks of training at a newly established Military Advisor Training Academy at Fort Benning. They will also receive training in foreign weapons at Fort Bragg from SF instructors from the JFK Special Warfare Center. There will also be SF among the approximately 70 instructors at the Military Advisor Training Academy. The SFAB will be regionally oriented and will receive language training after completing their training at Fort Benning. The first SFAB unit will be permanently stationed at Fort Benning. The second one, which is planned to stand up in the fall of 2018, will be a National Guard brigade.
The rationale for these brigades stems from our experiences, both failures and successes, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Robinson, Ignatius and others claim OUR successes stem from our training and advising of local forces, the “by, through and with” of Robinson’s article. Many now see the creation, training and advising of foreign militaries and indigenous forces as the future of warfare. These people are wrong.
I think this reading of the lessons of the last fifteen years is badly skewed. Firstly, any successes in these wars are not OUR successes. They belong to regional indigenous forces conducting as close to combined arms maneuver warfare as their resources allow. Whether it be IS technicals supported by a few T-72s and a barrage of VBIEDs, a similarly light YPG ground force employing the principles of surprise and maneuver to the hilt and supported by Coalition air support, or a Tiger Force column of Stora protected T-90s, BMPs, and technicals well supported by mortars, artillery and air support from Russian and Syrian Air Forces; it is these forces that bear the brunt of battle and determine success or defeat. The trainers and advisors, though important, are secondary to these combined arms maneuver forces.
Secondly, we only have to look at some of the regional failures to see that trainers and advisors are not a magical solution. In Afghanistan we have equipped, trained and advised our way to create a nationally unsustainable force of dubious utility to the government in Kabul. Our years of training and advising the Iraqi Army led to collapse and defeat in the face of the IS onslaught in 2014. And our arming, training and advising of the unicorn army of Syrian rebels is a national disgrace and embarrassment. If the stuff of a competent and capable army is not there to begin with, our equipping, training and advising will lead to nothing.
Having said that, security force assistance (SFA) will remain a significant governmental and defense function for the United States. SFA encompasses foreign internal defense (FID), counterterrorism ((CT), counterinsurgency (COIN) and stability operations. These functions should not be ignored by the Army, but they should never be considered more important or as important as combined arms maneuver warfare.
Now back to the SFAB. Many in SF see the creation of these brigades as another attempt to marginalize the SF. Some of that’s our own fault. In the years since 9/11 and even before that, many in SF listened to the siren call of direct action missions to the detriment of our skills in training, advising and conducting unconventional warfare. Even when we trained and advised conventional forces, we gave the impression that we only train and advise other SOF. Big Army and DOD encouraged this. They were also under the spell of the door kickers.
This was not always so. The 10th Special Forces Group was an important part of the USG effort to help Lebanon rebuild her armed forces beginning in late 1982. Working closely with the Office of Military Cooperation (OMC) in the American Embassy in Beirut, military training teams (MTT) from 10th Group set out to organize, train and advise a modernized and unified Lebanese Army within a factionally fractured and militia ridden country partially occupied by Israel and Syria. We set out to create nine combined arms brigades with a mixture of US and French tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery and mortars. This rebuilding was underway less than a year before all hell broke loose in late 1983. The newly formed 8th Infantry Brigade under General Aoun was rushed to the Suk al Gharb ridge to protect the Maronite Christian communities in the hills and Beirut itself from Walid Jumblatt’s advancing PSP Druze militia and the Syrian Army. While several of the newly formed brigades disintegrated and their soldiers sided with the various sectarian militias, the 8th held its ground. It is my strongly held personal belief that the Lebanese Army and Lebanon herself were saved on that ridge. In the ensuing months and years of strife, the 8th Brigade, a true combined arms maneuver force, continued to distinguish itself.
There is no reason that Special Forces cannot continue in this tradition. We should not limit ourselves to conducting UW with resistance forces or training and advising foreign commando forces. It is obvious that the relationship between Special Forces and the SFABs will be close. Army has already said that command positions within the SFABs will be open to SF officers and SGMs. I don’t see the SFABs replacing the SF Groups. I also don’t see the Army capable of fielding six SFABs. They are already having trouble manning the first one and are offering a $5,000 bonus for a one year commitment. Six fully manned SFABs will be a drain on the Army. They will remove the leadership from six combined arms maneuver brigades. That would be a terrible trade off. I’d be surprised if we get past two full SFABs and that would be fine with me. The emphasis must remain on organizing, equipping, manning and training an Army fully capable of conducting combined arms maneuver warfare against peer and near peer foes over extended periods of time. All else will follow from that.
TTG
https://www.rand.org/blog/2017/05/sofs-evolving-role-warfare-by-with-and-through-local.html
https://www.otc.army.mil/ADP3-0.pdf
CP,
In the main, correct, but a slight clarification. Roman army recruitment only very early on relied on actual Romans. Once the state moved past a certain size, the expectations that you would not use foreigners was unrealistic. But even in the Republican days, it was common practice to use auxiliaries to fulfill roles, such as cavalry or slinging, where the Romans themselves were not expert. Typically, the idea was that you would hire and recruit those who could assist you in all forms of projectile warfare, mobility, light arms, skirmishing, reconnaissance, etc., while the legions provided the core force.
This solved quite a different problem from why we use Kurds, for example. Rather, auxiliaries were part of the Romans' war of maneuver, not a substitute for it. We don’t typically use foreign forces for their skill sets, but rather in spite of them. Only very late and only in the West did the Romans rely on foreign forces, fighting independently, but by then, things had disintegrated to the point where Rome was really just a name anyway. The Eastern Roman Empire, which was where Constantine moved the capital, never used such a system.
As to recruiting Germans... the Roman legionary combat system itself was very complex and coordinated, and required much training to master and execute under fire. The legionary soldier was expected to be able to flexibly fill the role of any fallen soldier, whose responsibilities in battle might be quite different—in a huge range of scenarios. This required extensive and continual training, which meant that there were no low-skill positions in the army, and, yes, there were never enough legions.
As a result, the Roman system eventually required soldiering to be a lifelong commitment. Enlistment was for a minimum 20 years, after which the reward was land, which immediately placed the soldier in a much elevated social class. It was a very high risk, high reward system. The people drawn to it were, thus, usually pulled from more marginal classes, including foreigners living on the fringes of the empire. It didn’t make a lot of sense for landed Romans to sign up for a reward they already possessed.
As with everything in Rome, the practicalities and advantages of such a system are often ignored in favor of moral explanations.
Posted by: shepherd | 19 July 2017 at 08:24 AM
US strong points are Navy and Air Force.
US ground troops are not very impressive.
So I can not see "symmetric warfare" US vs China, I wonder if calling them peers would be correct...
The only practical war approach it seems for USA would be to lead total war on seas and air routes, destroying all Chinese naval and air trade vessels. And that perhaps is why China wants their OBOR road built.
China clearly is not "high in numbers" when about Navy and Air Force, not yet at least.
But ground invasion of US GI into China mainland? USA almost failed in Korea, failed in Vietnam, and try it again with China?
That would not do. US would try to secure some other soldiers for ground invasion - Japanese, Philippines, Vietnamese, someone. And would be logistics+CAS to them. And I wonder if China would then secure North Korea army help :-D
So, it would be either proxy war or assymetric war, when it comes to US vs China
Posted by: Arioch The | 19 July 2017 at 01:04 PM
USSR was very keen on SOF in the wake of WW2.
Like large Kiev Drills of 1935
upload . Wikimedia . org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Paratroopers_jumping_from_Tupolev_TB-3 . jpg
You know what? When USSR was caught off guard - all those SOFs were lost investment, totally.
Their light ammo and light equipment meant they can not stand again German tanks fist.
German air supremacy meant they could hardly be delivered "beyond enemy lines", and even if they were there would be absolutely no way to supply them. After such a raider group would run out of ammo and food the only thing for Germans to do would be to build a fence around them and put "concentration camp" signs over it.
So, some of those SOFs were hastily re-trained as conventional foot soldiers and some few were converted to marines, but mostly they were spent as reinforcements to patch never ending new cuts in Soviet defense lines and having neither training to equipment for conventional field warfare - vaporized without trace.
All in all, SOFs are expeditionary forces, when "white civilized man" gives a lesson to "unruly savages". In this situation of overall superiority (full spectrum dominance, a-ha) a few elite pro's with light but elite weapons and unlimited supply - they can do a lot. But if there is no total superiority, then the war balances itself to semi-equal field war, and then their weak sides can be exploited devastatingly.
Posted by: Arioch The | 19 July 2017 at 01:16 PM
Guys from Syria told that
1. Army units are much more stronger than any insurgents. But they always are late to the party. When terrorists employ hit-and-run everywhere, army units (stronger = more expensive = fewer in numbers) get exhausted just by running here an there and never getting in time. (Maybe it is similar how WW2 started for USSR, when dis-connected heavy-tanks armored units rushed back and forth trying to intercept German break-through light speedy tanks. And in the end Soviet tanks just run out of fuel and maintenance and were but all just abandoned).
2. Police units are just weapon depots for terrorists. Police is trained to deal with street burglars, and to be called to the place and choosing how and when to attack those thugs. Terrorists reverse it. Now they center around idle police stations and do all out as they choose. Police has some chances to survive, but that is at best.
3. The more advanced is civilization, the higher is pyramid of inter-dependent technologies, the more are weak joints to attack and collapse. In some desert village one would have to literally raise every shack and kill them all. In a city one can find water purifier station and let chlorium out making all the block suffocate, etc. High specialization of functions leads to strong cross-dependency and one service would not replace another.
4. People in urban environment do not structure with their neighbors, they instead structure more by professional or religious or some other non-geometric means. When push shoves, they are aliens to one another. Disconnected and confused. Ready hostages, indeed. Note, terrorists do not need to take some preset list of names hostages. If some specific person is giving resistance - they are more than okay to skip him and get next easier victim. They only need numbers.
5. Terrorists do not need to actually get to the power. Not in the first phase at least. Their goal is destruction of civilization. If they in few hours (before disappearing) deal the city damage that would take months to sort out - then they had brilliant ROI. Their initial goal is just to let the state/society bleed out. Internal war of attrition.
6. It was said, that the only practical counter-tactic was to arm and train locals into small highly-cohesive interconnected team. Their goal is like dogs at bear hunting. They are no match for terrorists, but that is not their goal. If one of them sees early stages of the attack - he takes the phone and calls all the group to the place. And there the group starts low-intensity attack on terrorists. They are not truly engaging them, but rather bog them down. They give terrorists more pressing needs than destructing the city infrastructure and they do not allow terrorists group to atomize and hide among the population. They force terrorists to hold together and defend themselves until spec-ops or army comes to finally wipe them. That was said to be more or less successful tactic, but needing very different power-to-people relation structure.
Posted by: Arioch The | 19 July 2017 at 01:59 PM
"Arioch The",
A most illuminating account. Some hard-won experience there, by the sound of it. If you were able to indicate sources that would be something quite useful to send to friends who believe that most Jihadis are a cross between social workers and community organisers.
It's off topic I'm afraid but your mention of chlorine brought some reports to mind.
Sometimes after urban fighting there are reports of a smell of chlorine gas in the streets. It has been claimed that this shows that the SAA uses chlorine as a chemical weapon. An alternative claim is that chlorine is stored domestically for water purification purposes and artillery fire sometimes ruptures the tanks.
Might I ask, are there any sources that shed light on these conflicting claims?
Posted by: English Outsider | 19 July 2017 at 03:40 PM
@ TTG
Have you seen the latest?
American-made M-ATVs and MRAPs are not included in the aid package for the SDF. Also, pictures of the M-ATVs show mounts for the Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station, or CROWs system — a remotely operated weapons system that can be controlled by troops from inside the vehicle. CROWs systems are also not included in aid to Kurdish fighters.
These vehicles have commonly been operated by U.S special operations forces in Syria. The timing and appearance of the large convoys of M-ATVs calls into question their purpose.
http://www.militarytimes.com/articles/mrap-matv-syria-raqqa-ypg-kurds
and no more CIA covert program to arm the opposition rebels
Posted by: The Beaver | 19 July 2017 at 05:22 PM
The Beaver,
Perhaps this equipment is a temporary reinforcement to capture Raqqa. I read that that offensive was paused due to increasing SDF/YPG casualties. I have no idea what is meant by large convoys. It may mean a dozen vehicles. Beyond a temporary need to reinforce the assault on Raqqa, I do not want to see the YPG/SDF flooded with weaponry. In fact, we should be planning for the inevitable need to demobilize parts of the YPG/SDF. That should be part of the political solution of reintegration into a united Syria. The Green Berets involved with these forces should be screaming about this critical phase in UW. In fact they should be rubbing CJTFOIR's and CENTCOM's noses into this. If that fails, they should shove it down their throats, jam it up their arses or whatever it takes to prevent any attempted establishment of a Coalition protectorate in northern Syria.
The news about ending the CIA's program to arm our favorite jihadis is most welcome. Trump is to be commended for this decision. Those who are screaming that Trump is doing this because Trump is Putin's puppet are full of crap. This was decided a month ago long before the two had their face-to-face talks. Now if he eventually starts withdrawing from northern Syria, he will really be on to something.
Posted by: The Twisted Genius | 19 July 2017 at 05:46 PM
Thank you, Seacoaster, that is a treasure trove of information.
Posted by: DH | 19 July 2017 at 06:46 PM
Just wondering if any of you have read and have any comments on:
“Russia’s superior new weapons”
by MG (Ret.) Robert H. Scales, Jr. (former commandant of the U.S. Army War College), 2016-08-05
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/russias-superior-new-weapons/2016/08/05/e86334ec-08c5-11e6-bdcb-0133da18418d_story.html
He concludes his WaPo op-ed as follows:
Posted by: Keith Harbaugh | 19 July 2017 at 07:19 PM
TTG,
Here is a link to a Turkish site w/ an interesting map.
http://aa.com.tr/tr/dunya/aanin-pkk-pydye-abd-destegi-haberi-uluslararasi-basinda-yanki-uyandirdi/865072
It contains a few links to redacted versions in English therein. Most in the region think that US is after a "Coalition protectorate in northern Syria" and this has the potential of causing some problems for the region, the USA, and the Kurds if USA withdraws from the area.
Ishmael Zechariah
P.s: I also do most of my auto maintenance. Last weekend's job: water pump, radiator, thermostat and harmonic balancer on 3.8L Chrysler.
Posted by: Ishmael Zechariah | 19 July 2017 at 11:05 PM
Keith Harbaugh,
I wrote two posts about Russia's impressive capability in radio-electronic combat here on SST. I'm glad to see MG Scales is taking it seriously. My guess is that the entire DOD is taking it seriously. As far as artillery goes, we have definitely let out capabilities wither. I know the 25th Division Artillery Brigade was deployed as an area command to Afghanistan rather than as an artillery brigade. I always thought we relied too much on air support rather than organic artillery for the last 15 years. It's a real shame.
Posted by: The Twisted Genius | 19 July 2017 at 11:34 PM
Ishmael,
Thanks for that. I read some short blurbs about Turkey publishing a map of US bases in northern Syria, but I didn't see any of the articles. I knew of the airfield near Hasakah that was under construction well over a year ago. I think it started as a small agricultural airfield. If we (the US) stay there, we are idiots.
I started doing all my auto work in college. There were four in my fraternity with VW bugs. We were always rebuilding an engine or two to bolt in when we needed them. I miss the simplicity of those cars.
Posted by: The Twisted Genius | 19 July 2017 at 11:48 PM
Ishmael Zechariah,
I followed the Bundy Ranch with interest but never got a handle on the background to it. Was it merely a dispute about a specific grievance, or was it a generalised sense of grievance that just happened to crystalise at that time? Either way, such occurrences don't seem to demonstrate that prerequisite for a reliable defence, a unified society with confidence in its governing elite.
Not that I think the American governing elite is any sort of unified entity, with clear goals and strategies. It looks more like ours - an arbitrary muddle with various interest groups slithering about in the decay. Or swamp, you might call it. The groups overlap and interact - the Colonel's Venn diagrams are I believe the best way of visualising those interactions - but there's not a lot of vision or purpose in the thing as a whole.
Such vision as there is would, I imagine, have been focused pretty sharply on the Bundy Ranch. I doubt the Beltway understands the background to it that well either, especially when there are State, local and agency levels interposed, but peering through the fog the primitive instinct for survival of a governing elite would be enough for that governing elite to say firmly: "We don't want any more of that".
That response was sensible enough in itself - it's common ground that there are better ways of resolving domestic disputes than waving guns around - but the follow up was wrong. It consisted, again as far as I could see from the outside, of suppression rather than concession.
I'm not being partisan here, merely looking at how such things are dealt with. When a remote governing elite is so out of touch that some grievance gets out of hand to the extent of several thousand people shaping up for a confrontation, then the elite has only two choices. Either pack them all off to the Gulag or treat them with a bit of respect. That means identifying a leader or group of leaders to negotiate with, finding out what's really behind it all, and giving a little. It's the way it's done that counts as much as this or that concession. In the perception of many involved in the incident, and it's perception that counts when a threat to social stability is in question, there was a bit more Gulag than respect.
To move from that tiny incident to the general, that's been the response of the European and American elites to the recent regrettable outbreaks of populism; they call it "populism" if ever the deplorables try to say "We're here too." Pretend it's not happening if you can. Knock it on the head if you can't. Hello, democracy.
Those elites have a broad base of political support. There's an immense supporting cast, maybe most of the middle class, so they're not going to move over in a hurry. In fact an elite + the middle class, with the deplorables grumbling away on the periphery, is a common enough model. Juncker et al would be on solid ground when they assume that the model is stable if only they weren't underestimating the forces that are lining up to test that model to destruction. In the meantime, in this period of ossification that's our condition at the moment, the governing elites are going to regard large sections of their populations as a threat to be contained rather than a force to be accommodated.
I believe that accounts for what you observe, that they are "adamant in the pacification of their populations."
Posted by: English Outsider | 20 July 2017 at 10:47 AM
That was semi-anonymous and few years ago (2013?) , so I would not have the "first source". Take it or leave it. But it sounds plausible.
> your mention of chlorine
It was just an example of urban civilization fragility, nothing more. In USSR this example was used at civil training sometimes. Meaning that in case of chemical assault one has to keep his eyes open and think. Like with some gases one has to get to the highest floors of the building, and with others one has to keep down to the ground, etc.
This particular example was disconnected from any specific situation.
Chlorine was vastly used to disinfect tap water in 20th century Europe, USSR, etc.
While today Russia moves to using hard UV radiation instead, but most inherited water preparation stations are using chlorine.
Looking how Syria uses MiG-21 obsolete jets, I think their urban infrastructure is also from 1970-s. Assuming there are chlorine consumers and chlorine producers. And all this chain, health-protecting in peaceful time, is turned into almost ready weapon as soon as someone "unhinged" enough is there.
USSR was mostly preparing itself for conventional European armies invasion, like in 1914 and 1918 and 1941, so it was expecting chlorine-using stations to be targeted by bombers and howitzers rather than jihadies on Toyotas. But the end result of their destruction is similar no matter of methods.
Give it also hot climate and general luck of water in Middle East.
In Russian rural areas one can dig well in a soil or even go to a forest swamp, and water would be consumable without any processing. But not in Middle East.
Also think that to produce chlorine one only needs electricity and salt. It is a very lo-tech weapon, there was a reason it was the first WMD in history...
-----------------------
The point of the very story I retold, though was, what made me remember that story mostly, at the first stage terrorists do not seek to threaten government or population into compliance. That would be unrealistic. They also are much less numerous and strong that the state. So their strategy is much different from what our inertia of thinking make as think.
Wasn't it breathtaking how strong state of Syria suddenly collapsed?
First months did not suggested it. Sure, some gangs making bad things here and there, but, kind of "so what? more people die in car crashes", it was expected to be a yet another strain, but no more.
Then suddenly huge parts of state were lost (given up) with no obvious high-profile trigger of reason to do it.
Then in the early 2014 SAA seemed to even almost root ISIS out and was expected to slowly retake land - but ISIS was reinforced and resupplied in Mosul and things turned really awful.
But that was the phase of open warfare. Non conventional army, but warfare was open, claims of landmasses, claims of inhabited points, etc.
Mysterious things was before, how relatively strong state obviously much more powerful than any and all gangs combined - suddenly fled away.
And this account depicts it. Phase 1 of terrorist attack is not targeted at real clash of arms, but instead at making the nation bleed out. Destroying key infrastructure objects without punishment. Destroying key people society cements around. Etc.
Slowly urban industrial cities stop being so, and no one bothers to repair, knowing anything they would fix with hard labor would just be effortlessly blasted few weeks later. And they and their families may be punished for it too. Army gets trained in the idea they can do no good than to endlessly run around until out of force/gasoline/cars. Police learns to barricade and survive inside at any noise, instead of going into the street and protect citizens. Citizens learn army is never there when you need and police does not even try. And so on.
Phase 1 is slow but relentless destruction of (any random) key points of infrastructure and key figures of society, and driving people and institutes into "learned helplessness".
Traditional anti-terrorism measures of 20th century do no good here, as they were developed to counter very different pattern and source of threat.
Traditionally terrorism is seen as demonstrative "tearing flowers apart" - finding highly visible (for media, national pride, etc)targets to attack by small force.
Counter-intelligence plus hardened security teams around those few high-profile objects can do with it.
In a sense, it is attack to the perimeter, against the surface of what nation thinks of itself it is.
Anti-state terrorism instead uses MANY disconnected teams pursuing MANY random (= unpredictable) targets, spreading state's elite force beyond their capabilities. Every target is of low visibility ( no one in his mundane casual life thinks of them ), but costs a lot to rebuild. Every action causes little visible damage, but they taken together exhaust state and nation beyond surface.
In the end, the surface is mostly intact, everything looks okay, but it is hollow inside and out of a sudden just collapse "without reason".
Posted by: Arioch The | 20 July 2017 at 11:12 AM
Regarding the very use of chlorine as WMD I have no non-partisan sources, so it is for naught.
Out of common sense though, and looking how Germany used chlorine in WW1
1) chlorine is not that hard to neutralize, for properly supplied army
2) chlorine is "area weapon", it covers some area, but does not spread around fast, and when it does - it looses concentration.
3) chlorine is heavy, tending to flow downwards
So for what I think
1) It is of little use against rural areas, where jihadi had most support. Population density is small there. You just commit a international-scale crime for depopulating a dozen or two shacks? You can just to it be bullets, with the same effect but much lesser visibility.
2) It perhaps might be of use against underground tunnels, at least temporary. To seal some end for an hour or so.
3) It might be of use in densely populated cities, but those tend to be more secular, less jihadi-friendly.
4) it is a good bonus weapon, like divert from your path to some nearby purifier plant for 10 minutes and blow it off and make this bastards around cry, then continue your way. I'd expect the more small and decentralized group is, the more unhinged it may be to pick this bonus option. So, i'd put less of it on SAA or Iranian spec-ops, but different militia groups on both sides - why not. Especially if there might be rural-origin militia, having resentments against those rich and snobbish and infidel urban-dwellers. Rural vs Urban relationships might be very complicated and unstable, within any nation.
5) But it would hardly be part of some military strategy, both by SAA/Iran high commandment or ISIS/AQ one. Either decentralized opportunists or PR events. The latter do not require real chlorine even.
6) especially since "Toyota wars" emphasize mobility. Oookay, you somehow manage to create chlorine cloud around jihadi-mobile. They just shut the windows and drive half-mile away.
Posted by: Arioch The | 20 July 2017 at 11:25 AM
Vandalism as a weapon of war. I don't think we can determine how much of the vandalism we saw in Syria was spontaneous and how much directed. I do read frequent accusations that we ourselves deliberately destroyed infrastructure in Syria - pumping stations or generating stations - in order to cause disruption. We did destroy Syrian infrastructure extensively but the justification was always, if I remember correctly, that that was a by-product of legitimate military action. I'd imagine that much of the vandalism and killing that you describe was not, however, any part of a directed strategy but the inevitable consequence of letting thugs or terrorists loose on a population, particularly when there are always elements within a population itself, as you indicate, more than willing to join in.
It's a long way from the "workers' communes" and respectable "moderate rebels" that such as the NYT would have us believe were the backbone of the "Syrian Resistance". I don't have the background to be able to follow your remarkably perceptive analysis all the way into the details, but it rings as true as the generally accepted analysis rings false.
We do, on a miniscule scale, have just a little background in such matters here. The vandalism and, fortunately, the killing was on a quite different scale. It was spontaneous and undirected so there's a difference there too. But it shows what can happen if things get even a little out of kilter:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_England_riots
What I remember from 2011 was that the average English man or woman hadn't the faintest idea how to handle themselves in such circumstances. The Turks and the Kurds did. They knew what to do and had the wit to do it. They lined up outside their shops with what looked like baseball bats and kept the rioters out. Nor is my memory of that time playing me false:-
"The mostly Turkish and Kurdish shop owners along Wood Green, Turnpike Lane and Green Lanes, Harringay, were said to have formed local 'protection units' around their shops."
"Said to have" my foot. They did. And what I suggested in my comment was that we should all of us be allowed to do the same.
Just one snag. If we were to line up outside our houses with weapons for purposes of defence in such circumstances the authorities would, as follows from what Ishmael Zechariah is saying above, be as likely to order us to be arrested as they would the rioters. Our problem, as ever, is not so much those who live alongside us. It's those who live on top of us.
Posted by: English Outsider | 20 July 2017 at 03:13 PM
> We did destroy Syrian infrastructure extensively but the justification was always, if I remember correctly, that that was a by-product of legitimate military action
1) i was tellign about terrorists aka freedom fighters aka democratic rebels aka anti-Asad Syrians. Surely, there could be some SAS officers there sometimes, but all in all that was guerilla - some small arms and mixing with citizens and pretending to be those until sudden attack and immediately after.
NATO Air Force bombing you seems to talk about, that is already Phase 2, totally another case, it was when Phase 1 worked through and Syrian state collapsed enough so ISIS could claim landmasses and declare itself new state.
Then NATO invaders came - claiming Syria de facto ceased to exist - but that was later and different story. That situation was result and purpose of phase 1, where state nominally is exist and is sovereign over all the territory, just "peaceful activists" - all locals of course - blast and kill here and there.
2) Let's put it into perspective
2a) 2014 and prior - EU loots Syrian Oil through Turkey. Photos of huge auto-cicterns caravans are everywhere. NATO refuses to destroy those caravans, because poor drivers would find no other work, and trucks are their personal property and all that "not a thread of colateral damage" unicorns-speak.
2b) end of 2015 and first half of 2016 - Russian bandits jump in and start destroying those caravans. Free world tries to reason and stop them, to no avail. Wicked Russian cynicaly say collateral damage to trucks and drives is justified by denying ISIS their international trade.
2c) second half of 2016 - as caravans mostly cease to exist, and oil looting into EU is almost stopped, NATO awakes and starts bombing... the last remaining caravans? No, oil refineries. Quoting need to deny ISIS their profits and export capabilities.
Technically 2c could be "a by-product of legitimate military action", but... not after 2a and 2b.
However, my comments was about terrorists aka local peaceful activists guerilla, not about explicit NATO invasion. Those are different issues.
> but the inevitable consequence of letting thugs or terrorists loose on a population
The terorrists are armed, trained and paid. ISIS used resources of western best PR companies, starting with their banner and to their video commercials.
And that means, their sponsors told them how to act and what to do to get their payrolls.
So, there was some kind of overall strategy. Of course, no one told them "at this specific date at this specific time three of you should take 2kg of this specific explosive and come to this specific address". That would make no sense. But terroists most probably had pricelist, what and how they can destroy to get this or that reward. And formign such a pricelist was forming the strategy, disconnected and decentralized one, which traditional counter-intelligence is helpless against.
> 2011_England_riots
"Only paranoids survive".
1) Why do you think it was not managed? Remember how Soros crashed Pound ? Market actors reaction to Soros actions was, as you say, spontaneous. But it was not random, it was - en masse - predictable. And being "in the know" Soros pued the strings and controlled the market crash. He did not issued orders to most of actors, but calculating in advance how panicked traders would react he indirectly controlled them and the whole process.
So it could be some non-state global actor just showed to UK national government what havoc he can made. And the government showed how it can or can not supress it. And after showing off, like cats show off before and instead of real fight often, they negotiated something.
Sure, there is no way to check it and no practical value in it, but still.
Also, remember recent blast made by Libyan "freedom fighter" that was protected and shielded by UK secret services no matter how much polcie tried to detooth him in advance.
Was his very act spontaneous? Quite probably. But was the situation, were a man capable of such acts be given green light and virtual immunity, the situation that was constructed through mabny years, was it spontanous too?
Remember "The Strategy Of Indirect Approach" by Liddell Hart
> the average English man or woman hadn't the faintest idea how to handle themselves in such circumstances.
Yep, and that is what hardline bandits and terrorists are go after.
Shock. Stupor. "This just can not be. I'll pinch myself and awake.".
> we should all of us be allowed to do the same.
you are allowed to know your neighbors, you are allowed to pick and own a big wooden stick. It is just people were conditioned to be too "civilized" in bad sense of it.
> Our problem, as ever, is not so much those who live alongside us. It's those who live on top of us.
Maybe we see, by Trump and Putin, how national/local elites are trying counter-offensive against globalists. Anyway, when elites are in quarrel they may turn to grunts for allies. Afterall, that is wha trevolutions always were, wannabe elites called masses to get rid of ex-elites.
Posted by: Arioch The | 20 July 2017 at 07:03 PM
Arioch The - Your account of the mechanics of social breakdown, especially when assisted from outside, is chilling and ought to be required reading for our police and intelligence here. If they don't know it already. I can't believe they walk around with their eyes closed.
On the Manchester bombing it looks now as if your explanation is the most likely. We maintained a group of Jihadis here for use abroad and some attacked us instead. But there are no irreproachable sources.
Posted by: English Outsider | 21 July 2017 at 09:30 AM
Arioch The,
A most worthwhile read. My thanks to you and English Outsider for this very informative discussion.
Ishmael Zechariah
Posted by: Ishmael Zechariah | 21 July 2017 at 10:26 AM
Forgive my curiosity but was the internal cohesion with the montagnard that made it work, or the ability of you and your brethren to apply "situation adopted leadership"? Or was it that the montagnard saw themselves as fighting for a unified cause under internal leadership they trusted? I know from business how corrosive the effect is on moral when the employees believe that the management is just there for their own enrichment.
Posted by: FkDahl | 21 July 2017 at 12:26 PM
Who when faced with Russian artillery transmits on radio from fixed battery position? The Ukr did not camouflage/shoot and scoot/use wire for the artillery positions (based off social media posts showing artillery positions and comment from US officer).
Pity for the airport though. Looked nice during the soccer championship.
In my battalion I am not sure if recon platoon or the wire laying squad worked the hardest!
Posted by: FkDahl | 21 July 2017 at 12:35 PM
FkDahl
It was all of that. We were their white friends come back from across the sea, come to defend them from all the Vietnamese. I am a member of two Montagnard tribes and joined FULRO while in my first tour. I am glad I was no longer serving with them when the end came and we essentially abandoned them I might have done something rash. "Mong capitaine, tu mort nous morts" would have been typical of them. pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 21 July 2017 at 12:39 PM