Excellence in Historical Research and Analysis
Excellence in Historical Research and Analysis
Nicely prepared article that just reinforces my last post on the subject: Trump Mulls US Troop Surge in Afghanistan
We await a decision, but expect that it will be to increase U.S. troops levels (and keep on keeping on).
This was the person who turned down the job: Robert_Harward
There were two other names floated by the administration, including the acting National Security Advisor: Keith_Kellogg and the more famous David_Petraeus. Patraeus was a four-star general while Harward and Kellogg were three-stars (Vice Admiral and Lt. General).
I don’t recall another case of someone ever turning down the offer to be National Security Advisor, although there may be. But, it is probably best for the administration to make sure that they have a clear “yes” from the candidate before they announce/leak him as a candidate. Harward was offered the job on the 14th and turned down the job two days later. Lots of speculation out there of exactly why he turned down the job, but not a whole lot of people seem to be willing to accept his response that it was for “personal reasons.”
Now things are getting interesting: pentagon-considering-recommending-combat-troops-in-syria
Hard to imagine that it would not be tens of thousands, as one has to provide a supply route and have enough force to engaged ISIL (which has been estimated to be at 20,000 or more guerillas). I gather the area of operations would cover half of Syria, parts of Northern Iraq (at least to Mosul) and the supply routes would be probably have to go through Turkey.
Of course, the Assad government in Syria has troops there, along with Hezbollah, Iranian volunteers, Kurdish volunteers and Russia. This could get very complicated.
No new rhyming headlines, but NSC Director Lt. General Michael T. Flynn has resigned. He now holds the record for the shortest serving NSC Director, having only held the seat for 24 days. The longest serving holder of that office lasted 2478 days (Henry Kissinger).
With Flynn having been fired by the previous administration and resigned from this one, I suspect this ends his career in government. He might end up as a news commentator.
The acting NSC Director is another U.S. Army Lt. General Keith Kellogg. His Wikipedia page is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Kellogg
Oh…and we still don’t have a Secretary of the Army (Robert M. Speer is acting secretary).
As Chris mentioned last week, Lieutenant General Stephen J. Townsend, the Commanding General of Combined Joint Task Force – Operation INHERENT RESOLVE, which is working with Iraqi, Kurdish, and Syrian forces to defeat Da’esh, expressed optimism that the campaigns to retake Mosul and Raqaa, the Da’esh stronghold in Syria, would conclude successfully within the next six months. The recapture of Mosul has been a standing objective for the Iraqi government since the city fell to Da’esh militants in 2014. While the liberation of Mosul may be a foregone conclusion at this point, it seems unlikely to mark the end of political turmoil and violence in that country.
A New Sunni Insurgency?
The Institute for the Study of War recently warned that there are signs that that a post-Da’esh insurgency is brewing in Iraq among neo-Bathist Sunni groups and the lingering al-Qaeda (AQ) presence in the country. Da’esh militants also continue to perpetrate attacks in liberated eastern Mosul, as well as outside the city, and will likely transition back to insurgent tactics.
The absence of a political settlement among Iraq’s Shi’a, Sunni, and Kurdish political factions continues to feed the ongoing sectarian conflict driving the insurgent violence. AQ and the Neo-Bathist groups are positioned to exploit Sunni fears of Iranian influence over the Shi’a majority government and the Iranian-supported Shi’a militias (Hash’d al Shaabi).
Trump Administration Policy In Flux
The administration of Donald Trump has had little official to say regarding U.S. policy toward Iraq. However, recent comments by the president that the U.S. should have “kept” Iraq’s oil and the inclusion of the country in his travel ban have roiled Iraqi politics and undercut embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. Some Iraqi lawmakers have demanded that al-Abadi reduce cooperation with the U.S., limit U.S. troop deployments there, and impose a reciprocal travel ban on U.S. citizens. Hashd members have threatened to retaliate against U.S. troops in Iraq should Iran be attacked.
In a conversation with al-Abadi last week, Trump promised greater U.S. assistance against terrorism. While Trump has expressed a clear intent to ramp up efforts to destroy Da’esh, accomplishing that goal would have little effect on the underlying political divisions afflicting Iraq. Given Iraq’s military dependence on Iranian assistance, increased tensions between the U.S. and Iran would place al-Abadi’s government in an even more difficult position.
By the way, there is a still a war going on in Afghanistan, by most accounts, it is not going that well; and we probably need to increase our troop levels. On Thursday General John Nicholson, commanding general of NATO forces in Afghanistan, told congress “I believe we are in a stalemate.”: nato-shortfall-troops-afghanistan-us-general
Also: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/u-general-calls-more-troops-003147055.html
I have no reason to quibble with that assessment. Victory is certainly not just around the corner.
Some data from these articles:
Needless to say, General Johnson has recommended that we increase troop levels there. He has asked for several thousand more. We did have around 100,000 troops there in 2011, now we have less than 10,000.
Mystics & Statistics reader Stiltzkin posed two interesting questions in response to my recent post on the new blog, Logistics in War:
Is there actually a reliable way of calculating logistical demand in correlation to “standing” ration strength/combat/daily strength army size?
Did Dupuy ever focus on logistics in any of his work?
The answer to his first question is, yes, there is. In fact, this has been a standard military staff function since before there were military staffs (Martin van Creveld’s book, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (2nd ed.) is an excellent general introduction). Staff officer’s guides and field manuals from various armies from the 19th century to the present are full of useful information on field supply allotments and consumption estimates intended to guide battlefield sustainment. The records of modern armies also contain reams of bureaucratic records documenting logistical functions as they actually occurred. Logistics and supply is a woefully under-studied aspect of warfare, but not because there are no sources upon which to draw.
As to his second question, the answer is also yes. Dupuy addressed logistics in his work in a couple of ways. He included two logistics multipliers in his combat models, one in the calculation for the battlefield effects of weapons, the Operational Lethality Index (OLI), and also as one element of the value for combat effectiveness, which is a multiplier in his combat power formula.
Dupuy considered the impact of logistics on combat to be intangible, however. From his historical study of combat, Dupuy understood that logistics impacted both weapons and combat effectiveness, but in the absence of empirical data, he relied on subject matter expertise to assign it a specific value in his model.
Logistics or supply capability is basic in its importance to combat effectiveness. Yet, as in the case of the leadership, training, and morale factors, it is almost impossible to arrive at an objective numerical assessment of the absolute effectiveness of a military supply system. Consequently, this factor also can be applied only when solid historical data provides a basis for objective evaluation of the relative effectiveness of the opposing supply capabilities.[1]
His approach to this stands in contrast to other philosophies of combat model design, which hold that if a factor cannot be empirically measured, it should not be included in a model. (It is up to the reader to decide if this is a valid approach to modeling real-world phenomena or not.)
Yet, as with many aspects of the historical study of combat, Dupuy and his colleagues at the Historical Evaluation Research Organization (HERO) had taken an initial cut at empirical research on the subject. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dupuy and HERO conducted a series of studies for the U.S. Air Force on the historical use of air power in support of ground warfare. One line of inquiry looked at the effects of air interdiction on supply, specifically at Operation STRANGLE, an effort by the U.S. and British air forces to completely block the lines of communication and supply of German ground forces defending Rome in 1944.
Dupuy and HERO dug deeply into Allied and German primary source documentation to extract extensive data on combat strengths and losses, logistical capabilities and capacities, supply requirements, and aircraft sorties and bombing totals. Dupuy proceeded from a historically-based assumption that combat units, using expedients, experience, and training, could operate unimpaired while only receiving up to 65% of their normal supply requirements. If the level of supply dipped below 65%, the deficiency would begin impinging on combat power at a rate proportional to the percentage of loss (i.e., a 60% supply rate would impose a 5% decline, represented as a combat effectiveness multiplier of .95, and so on).
Using this as a baseline, Dupuy and HERO calculated the amount of aerial combat power the Allies needed to apply to impact German combat effectiveness. They determined that Operation STRANGLE was able to reduce German supply capacity to about 41.8% of normal, which yielded a reduction in the combat power of German ground combat forces by an average of 6.8%.
He cautioned that these calculations were “directly relatable only to the German situation as it existed in Italy in late March and early April 1944.” As detailed as the analysis was, Dupuy stated that it “may be an oversimplification of a most complex combination of elements, including road and railway nets, supply levels, distribution of targets, and tonnage on targets. This requires much further exhaustive analysis in order to achieve confidence in this relatively simple relationship of interdiction effort to supply capability.”[2]
The historical work done by Dupuy and HERO on logistics and combat appears unique, but it seems highly relevant. There is no lack of detailed data from which to conduct further inquiries. The only impediment appears to be lack of interest.
NOTES
[1] Trevor N. Dupuy, Numbers, Predictions and War: Using History to Evaluate Combat Factors and Predict the Outcome of Battles (Indianapolis; New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1979), p. 38.
[2] Ibid., pp. 78-94.
[NOTE: This post was edited to clarify the effect of supply reduction through aerial interdiction in the Operation STRANGLE study.]
This article came to my attention by a facebook post from a friend who follows our blog. It is long, but is an excellent article about an Iraqi police unit and their fighting in Mosul. Worth reading: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/06/the-desperate-battle-to-destroy-isis
OK, we now have a new timeline for the taking of Mosul (and Raqqa): us-commander-mosul-raqqa-retaken-6-months
A few highlights:
Anyhow……keep waiting for the point when ISIL realizes that an insurgency can’t hold ground forever against a conventional force and decides to go back to being an guerrilla force. This offensive is taking a very long time.