On 30 June 1950, an understrength and under-equipped battalion of 430 infantrymen, along with a 134-man artillery detachment – together known as Task Force Smith – left their cozy garrisons in occupied Japan to reinforce the line in Osan, Korea. The occupation forces sent to oppose the North Korean blitz were not the same battle hardened soldiers that had driven through Europe and across the Pacific 5 years earlier. Their training in combined arms action had been perfunctory. They faced over 30 tanks and 5000 DPRK regulars – two full infantry regiments. When the North Koreans hit them – hard – they fought as well as any men might under such circumstances before they were nearly enveloped. After three and a half hours of sustained combat, low on ammunition and with their communications cut-off, they were forced to withdraw. One isolated platoon was even forced to leave behind its equipment, their dead and even some of their more seriously wounded comrades. With characteristic magnanimity, the victorious North Korean soldiers bound the survivors hands behind their backs and shot each of them once with a bullet to the back of the head.
This wasn’t the war that they had trained for.
In the early morning hours of 20 March 2003, a US-led coalition of a little over 200,000 faced an entrenched and fortified foe of nearly 400,000 Iraqi soldiers and paramilitaries. Lacking the traditional 3:1 advantage required for offensive operations, they nevertheless shattered the Iraqi army and destroyed the Ba’athist government in three weeks.
This was exactly the war that they had trained for.
Nearly 8 years on, some are beginning to question whether those same forces – trained intensively over the intervening period on counter-insurgency operations – is ready for whatever may come next:
“There’s a belief that the president of the United States can pick up the red phone and order forcible entry operations” like the 2003 invasion of Iraq, said Army Maj. Gen. Dan Bolger, who commands the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana. “But that takes practice, and we don’t get a lot of practice.”
Since 2003, the Army and Marines have focused almost exclusively on learning and conducting counterinsurgency operations, which rely heavily on language and cultural knowledge and the ability to work with local police and tribal elders. But commanders have increasingly fretted that their troops have lost skills that the military used to practice all the time: fast-paced “kick-in-the-door” attacks across a border, with armor columns, intelligence and logistics support coordinated with artillery and air strikes.
With the drawdown of troops in Iraq, the Pentagon finally is able to begin rebuilding its strategic reserve, the battalions and brigades and equipment normally kept on standby for sudden crises. But the continuing demands in Afghanistan, where the Pentagon is sending 25,000 fresh troops in the coming months, leaves virtually no time for anything but Afghanistan-focused training.
Moreover, the two wars have seriously depleted stockpiles of combat-ready vehicles, weapons, communications equipment and other gear. So, even if troops had time to practice big-war operations, they don’t have the stuff to do it with.
Things may be looking up, however: In 2012, the Marine Corps plans to practice a major, combined arms amphibious assault using real Marines and actual ships.
Imagine that.
Didn’t the last SD ARG to deploy get their MEU (SOC) qualification? I think it was the first one in about 5 years
The Israelis learned that lesson the hard way during the Second Lebanon War in 2006. For years, they had concentrated on COIN in the West Bank and along the borders. Then they were sent after Hezbollah and made a mess of it. The new IDF CoS made his combat arms units get back up to speed in conventional warfare after that.
every army trains for the last war.
It has been said that we went into Korea with a lousy, ill-equipped Army and came out with a very good, combat-hardened, one, while the reverse was true in Vietnam. We went into Vietnam with an excellently trained and equipped Army and came out with a broken, sub-standard dispirited one–and Regan re-constituted it. Now we are in the midst of dissipating the fruits of the Regan build-up–with no future Regan in sight.
This is actually scary. I was talking with my Operations Sergeant Major over a cup of coffee this week about this very subject. I’m the only officer in my battalion (I would be the battalion commander by the way) who has ever done a movement to contact at the National Training Center. (Movement to contact is the most difficult mission in the world of high intensity conflict. It involves trying to synchronize indirect fires, close air support, attack aviation, reconaissance on the ground and in the air, with manuever. Throw in logistics, and you’ve got quite the operation, all happening at about 35 miles per hour, oh and the enemy gets a vote too.) None of my Captains have ever done one, they all joined the Army well after 9-11, my S3 and XO have never done one as they’re both fast trackers (my XO was promoted to Major with 7 years, 4 months of service…at 7 years I was just starting my second company command). My OPS SGM and Command Sergeant Major have done them as Platoon Sergeants and Company First Sergeants. My First Sergeants have done them as Tank Commanders, never as Platoon Sergeants. My Platoon Sergeants for the most part have never done them, the few who have did them as gunners or drivers. The other Battalion Commanders in my Brigade are all fast trackers, most are three to four years junior to me, a couple have done them as company commanders, the rest as platoon leaders. I’m the only officer in my Brigade who fought in Desert Storm and has done a movement to contact for real.
That high intensity conflict experience is leaving the Army in droves. We’re getting old. I’m retiring in two years, a year after I get back from my next (and last) deployment to sunny (or that Sunni?) Iraq. 24 years is enough, I’ve opted not to even compete for the War College or promotion to O6, it may be selfish of me, but I’m tired, my wife and kids are tired. I promised my wife that after 20 years we’d settle where and when she wanted to. She was kind enough to let me take this command because it didn’t mean moving, but when I get back from Iraq I either move or drop my retirement papers. My CSM has a year left, my OPS Sergeant Major has three years left.
The question is who’s going to train today’s Army to do the stuff that was the bread and butter of the pre-9/11 Army? The guys who are making O6 and commanding Brigades today are fast trackers (my new Brigade Commander was a year behind me at West Point…he never did a movement to contact or a high intensity rotation at the NTC as a Field Grade Officer). By the time 2012 (with the alleged pull out from Iraq) and 2014 (and the pull out from Afghanistan) roll around the guys commanding Brigades will have been Company Commanders and Platoon Leaders in the pre-9/11 Army. Believe it or not, I lose sleep thinking about this stuff.
It strikes me that the idea we had back in World War 2, and have continued in certain areas, is to take the best and brightest and retain them to teach the new recruits. We take valuable experience gained via time and teach it before the time portion need be put in. The recruit, in effect, learns from what we might call institutional memory, the shared experiences of those who’ve gone before.
So what prevents us from bringing back veterans on a contract basis, either to teach a course or write a manual or merely share experiences with somebody currently in the service who can build a course around those lessons learned?
Military life eventually gets to a man. You want to see those kids and retire to a house with a white picket fence and the next re-up just doesn’t appeal, but you’ve so much left to teach. Seems a strange policy to give a man a pension and have him outside and for a trifle you can retain him on an as-needed basis. And the soldier likely wants to pass on that knowledge, he’d just like to do it on his own terms in retirement.
– Max
Very good point, LTC F. Combat experience evaporates faster than most people realize. When I joined my fighter Squadron in the UK direct from SEA in 69 only approx. 25% were combat Veterans. Gradually we gained SEA returnees until at one point mid-way thru my 3 yrs tour for one six month period ONLY we had manning with 100% SEA combat experience. Thereafter we began to rotate that experience out with new people direct from plt tng, etc. until by the time I departed we were only 60% SEA combat veterans at the end of my 3 yr stint. It goes fast..
Given the manpower level we have in the services, and the optempo, it’s hard, if not impossible, not to end up with the situation we have. The morons in the adminstration don’t make things any easier.
Ask a room full of Company-grade and junior Field-grade Marine Officers, “Raise your hands. How many of you have done ALL of the following? Written a landing plan? Serial Assignment Table? Written an Echelon Plan? Helo assault landing Table?”
The number of hands in the air would be zero.
And that ain’t good. The general is right. That stuff takes practice. Lots of it.
What we have is another period in which the military is being hollowed out. We had the same thing at the end of Vietnam, followed by a period of non-benign neglect. During the Carter maladminstration, racial tensions rose to the point they were afraid to issue ammo for small arms quals in Germany as they didn’t know if the bullets were going down range or not. My brother told me that the Army in Germany during that time was really dismal. If Ivan had decided to go to Oktoberfest that year, there would have been hell to pay.
Yeah, VX, no Reagan on the horizon. We are well and truly screwed.
And the same thing after WWII, and Korea, and….
Let’s talk about a hollow Navy.
Our Navy Reserve mission is to support IA missions. That is all you would think we are supposed to do. I have spent the last 22 years as a Submariner training for Submarine operations, and in the next year I will get to go somewhere to SW Asia to perform a mission for which I have no specific training. I will make do, and do it better than anyone else, but why? What shouldthe Navy Reserve be training for now? I would think there are WESTPAC specific missions, but apparently those are not important enough.
I wonder, if we have done any thinking on how long we have had operations going on in that region of the world? If we start to look, we’ll see Persian Gulf I, Bosnia and most recently, Iraq and Afghanistan. Persian Gulf I started 2 AUG 1990 through 28 FEB 1991, then we have Bosnia. This was all before 9/11. Part of their Code, says, “You decide when you want to start it and we’ll decide when it’s over.” The Commandant of the Marine Corps, said, “The adversary always has a seat at the table.” Personally, I don’t believe either side was honorable to the US Military. If you’re going to fight a war, you need to figure out how to pay for it. Just think about how long and the type of service this Nation asked of Her Military. We have been at a very high tempo for over 20 years, this has put a very high stress on our personnel and our airframes. Then in all of those theaters of operations, you had the times we brought in the troops. As a Nation, we need to look at everything. Yes, I mean everything, track the money, who is making it, our politicians who were involved in the decision-making about the wars, should*not*be benefiting from these wars. I don’t believe anybody would agree with me on this, but I do not believe Congress should have the right to shift the power to make war over to the Executive Branch. The “Congress-Critters” should be required to become involved in the war making process. if we think about it, The Constitution of the United States of America established this kind of model. The last thing this document one to do was create a kingdom/sheikdom.