Tag Irregular warfare

Are Russia And Iran Planning More Proxy Attacks On U.S. Forces And Their Allies In Syria?

Members of the Liwa al-Baqir Syrian Arab militia, which is backed by Iran and Russia. [Navvar Şaban (N.Oliver)/Twitter]

Over at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Jennifer Cafarella, Matti Suomenaro, and Catherine Harris have published an analysis predicting that Iran and Russia are preparing to attack U.S. forces and those of its Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) allies in eastern Syria. By using tribal militia proxies and Russian mercenary troops to inflict U.S. casualties and stoke political conflict among the Syrian factions, Cafarella, et al, assert that Russia and Iran are seeking to compel the U.S. to withdraw its forces from Syria and break up the coalition that defeated Daesh.

If true, this effort would represent an escalation of a strategic gambit that led to a day-long battle between tribal militias loyal to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad, Syrian government troops, and Russian mercenaries and U.S. allied Kurdish and SDF fighters along with their U.S. Marine and Special Operations Forces (SOF) advisors in February in the eastern Syrian city of Deir Ezzor. This resulted in a major defeat of the pro-Assad forces, which suffered hundreds of casualties–including dozens of Russians–from U.S. air and ground-based fires.

To support their contention, Cafarella, et al, offer a pattern of circumstantial evidence that does not quite amount to a definitive conclusion. ISW has a clear policy preference to promote: “The U.S. must commit to defending its partners and presence in Eastern Syria in order to prevent the resurgence of ISIS and deny key resources to Iran, Russia, and Assad.” It has criticized the U.S.’s failure to hold Russia culpable for the February attack in Deir Ezzor as “weak,” thereby undermining its policy in Syria and the Middle East in the face of Russian “hybrid” warfare efforts.

Yet, there is circumstantial evidence that the February battle in Deir Ezzor was the result of deliberate Russian government policy. ISW has identified Russian and Iranian intent to separate SDF from U.S. support to isolate and weaken it. President Assad has publicly made clear his intent to restore his rule over all of Syria. And U.S. President Donald Trump has yet to indicate that he has changed his intent to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria.

Russian and Iranian sponsorship and support for further aggressive action by pro-regime forces and proxies against U.S. troops and their Syrian allies could easily raise tensions dramatically with the U.S. Since it is difficult to see Russian and Iranian proxies succeeding with new Deir Ezzor-style attacks, they might be tempted to try to shoot down a U.S. aircraft or attempt a surprise raid on a U.S. firebase instead. Should Syrian regime or Russian mercenary forces manage to kill or wound U.S. troops, or bring down a U.S. manned aircraft, the military and political repercussions could be significant.

Despite the desire of President Trump to curtail U.S. involvement in Syria, there is real potential for the conflict to mushroom.

Should The Marines Take Responsibility For Counterinsurgency?

United States Marines in Nacaragua with the captured flag of Augusto César Sandino, 1932. [Wikipedia]

Sydney J. Freedberg, Jr recently reported in Breaking Defense that the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), led by chairman Senator John McCain, has asked Defense Secretary James Mattis to report on progress toward preparing the U.S. armed services to carry out the recently published National Defense Strategy oriented toward potential Great Power conflict.

Among a series of questions that challenge existing service roles and missions, Freedberg reported that the SASC wants to know if responsibility for carrying out “low-intensity missions,” such as counterinsurgency, should be the primary responsibility of one service:

Make the Marines a counterinsurgency force? The Senate starts by asking whether the military “would benefit from having one Armed Force dedicated primarily to low-intensity missions, thereby enabling the other Armed Forces to focus more exclusively on advanced peer competitors.” It quickly becomes clear that “one Armed Force” means “the Marines.” The bill questions the Army’s new Security Force Assistance Brigades (SFABs) and suggest shifting that role to the Marines. It also questions the survivability of Navy-Marine flotillas in the face of long-range sensors and precision missiles — so-called Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) systems — and asked whether the Marines’ core mission, “amphibious forced entry operations,” should even “remain an enduring mission for the joint force” given the difficulties. It suggests replacing large-deck amphibious ships, which carry both Marine aircraft and landing forces, with small aircraft carriers that could carry “larger numbers of more diverse strike aircraft” (but not amphibious vehicles or landing craft). Separate provisions of the bill restrict spending on the current Amphibious Assault Vehicle (Sec. 221) and the future Amphibious Combat Vehicle (Sec. 128) until the Pentagon addresses the viability of amphibious landings.

This proposed change would drastically shift the U.S. Marine Corps’ existing role and missions, something that will inevitably generate political and institutional resistance. Deemphasizing the ability to execute amphibious forced entry operations would be both a difficult strategic choice and an unpalatable political decision to fundamentally alter the Marine Corps’ institutional identity. Amphibious warfare has defined the Marines since the 1920s. It would, however, be a concession to the reality that technological change is driving the evolving character of warfare.

Perhaps This Is Not A Crazy Idea After All

The Marine Corps also has a long history with so-called “small wars”: contingency operations and counterinsurgencies. Tasking the Marines as the proponents for low-intensity conflict would help alleviate one of the basic conundrums facing U.S. land power: the U.S. Army’s inability to optimize its force structure due to the strategic need to be prepared to wage both low-intensity conflict and conventional combined arms warfare against peer or near peer adversaries. The capabilities needed for waging each type of conflict are diverging, and continuing to field a general purpose force is running an increasing risk of creating an Army dangerously ill-suited for either. Giving the Marine Corps responsibility for low-intensity conflict would permit the Army to optimize most of its force structure for combined arms warfare, which poses the most significant threat to American national security (even if it less likely than potential future low-intensity conflicts).

Making the Marines the lead for low-intensity conflict would also play to another bulwark of its institutional identity, as the world’s premier light infantry force (“Every Marine is a rifleman”). Even as light infantry becomes increasingly vulnerable on modern battlefields dominated by the lethality of long-range precision firepower, its importance for providing mass in irregular warfare remains undiminished. Technology has yet to solve the need for large numbers of “boots on the ground” in counterinsurgency.

The crucial role of manpower in counterinsurgency makes it somewhat short-sighted to follow through with the SASC’s suggestions to eliminate the Army’s new Security Force Assistance Brigades (SFABs) and to reorient Special Operations Forces (SOF) toward support for high-intensity conflict. As recent, so-called “hybrid warfare” conflicts in Lebanon and the Ukraine have demonstrated, future battlefields will likely involve a mix of combined arms and low-intensity warfare. It would be risky to assume that Marine Corps’ light infantry, as capable as they are, could tackle all of these challenges alone.

Giving the Marines responsibility for low-intensity conflict would not likely require a drastic change in force structure. Marines could continue to emphasize sea mobility and littoral warfare in circumstances other than forced entry. Giving up the existing large-deck amphibious landing ships would be a tough concession, admittedly, one that would likely reduce the Marines’ effectiveness in responding to contingencies.

It is not likely that a change as big as this will be possible without a protracted political and institutional fight. But fresh thinking and drastic changes in the U.S.’s approach to warfare are going to be necessary to effectively address both near and long-term strategic challenges.

Details Of U.S. Engagement With Russian Mercenaries In Syria Remain Murky

UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, SYRIA (May 15, 2017)— U.S. Marines fortify a machine gun pit around their M777-A2 Howitzer in Syria, May 15, 2017. The unit has been conducting 24-hour all-weather fire support for Coalition’s local partners, the Syrian Democratic Forces, as part of Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve. CJTF-OIR is the global coalition to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Matthew Callahan)

Last week, the New York Times published an article by Thomas Gibbons-Neff that provided a detailed account of the fighting between U.S-advised Kurdish and Syrian militia forces and Russian mercenaries and Syrian and Arab fighters near the city of Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria on 7 February 2018. Gibbons-Neff stated the account was based on newly obtained documents and interviews with U.S. military personnel.

While Gibbons-Neff’s reporting fills in some details about the action, it differs in some respects to previous reporting, particularly a detailed account by Christoph Reuter, based on interviews from participants and witnesses in Syria, published previously in Spiegel Online.

  • According to Gibbons-Neff, the U.S. observed a buildup of combat forces supporting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad in Deir Ezzor, south of the Euphrates River, which separated them from U.S.-backed Kurdish and Free Syrian militia forces and U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) and U.S. Marine Corps elements providing advice and assistance north of the river.
  • The pro-regime forces included “some Syrian government soldiers and militias, but American military and intelligence officials have said a majority were private Russian paramilitary mercenaries — and most likely a part of the Wagner Group, a company often used by the Kremlin to carry out objectives that officials do not want to be connected to the Russian government.”
  • After obtaining assurances from the Russian military chain-of-command in Syria that the forces were not theirs, Secretary of Defense James Mattis ordered “for the force, then, to be annihilated.”
  • Gibbons-Neff’s account focuses on the fighting that took place on the night of 7-8 February in the vicinity of a U.S. combat outpost located near a Conoco gas plant north of the Euphrates. While the article mentions the presence of allied Kurdish and Syrian militia fighters, it implies that the target of the pro-regime force was the U.S. outpost. It does not specify exactly where the pro-regime forces concentrated or the direction they advanced.
  • This is in contrast to Reuter’s Spiegel Online account, which reported a more complex operation. This included an initial probe across a bridge northwest of the Conoco plant on the morning of 7 February by pro-regime forces that included no Russians, which was repelled by warning shots from American forces.
  • After dark that evening, this pro-regime force attempted to cross the Euphrates again across a bridge to the southeast of the Conoco plant at the same time another pro-regime force advanced along the north bank of the Euphrates toward the U.S./Kurdish/Syrian forces from the town of Tabiya, southeast of the Conoco plant. According to Reuter, U.S. forces engaged both of these pro-regime advances north of the Euphrates.
  • While the Spiegel Online article advanced the claim that Russian mercenary forces were not leading the pro-regime attacks and that the casualties they suffered were due to U.S. collateral fire, Gibbons-Neff’s account makes the case that the Russians comprised at least a substantial part of at least one of the forces advancing on the U.S./Kurdish/Syrian bases and encampments in Deir Ezzor.
  • Based on documents it obtained, the Times asserts that 200-300 “pro-regime” personnel were killed out of an overall force of 500. Gibbons-Neff did not attempt to parse out the Russian share of these, but did mention that accounts in Russian media have risen from four dead as initially reported, to later claims of “perhaps dozens” of killed and wounded. U.S. government sources continue to assert that most of the casualties were Russian.
  • It is this figure of 200-300 killed that I have both found problematic in the past. A total of 200-300 killed and wounded overall seems far more likely, with approximately 100 dead and 100-200 wounded out of the much larger overall force of Russian mercenaries, Syrian government troops, and tribal militia fighters involved in the fighting.

Motivation for the Operation Remains Unclear

While the details of the engagement remain ambiguous, the identity of those responsible for directing the attacks and the motivations for doing so are hazy as well. In late February, CNN and the Washington Post reported that U.S. intelligence had detected communications between Yevgeny Prigozhin—a Russian businessman with reported ties to President Vladimir Putin, the Ministry of Defense, and Russian mercenaries—and Russian and Syrian officials in the weeks leading up to the attack. One such intercept alleges that Prigozhin informed a Syrian official in January that he had secured permission from an unidentified Russian minister to move forward with a “fast and strong” initiative in Syria in early February.

Prigozhin was one of 13 individuals and three companies indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller on 16 February 2018 for funding and guiding a Russian government effort to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

If the Deir Ezzor operation was indeed a clandestine operation sanctioned by the Russian government, the motivation remains mysterious. Gibbons-Neff’s account implies that the operation was a direct assault on a U.S. military position by a heavily-armed and equipped combat force, an action that all involved surely understood beforehand would provoke a U.S. military reaction. Even if the attack was instead aimed at taking the Conoco gas plant or forcing the Kurdish and Free Syrian forces out of Deir Ezzor, the attackers surely must have known the presence of U.S. military forces would elicit the same response.

Rueter’s account of a more complex operations suggests that the attack was a probe to test the U.S. response to armed action aimed at the U.S.’s Kurdish and Free Syrian proxy forces. If so, it was done very clumsily. The build-up of pro-regime forces telegraphed the effort in advance and the force itself seems to have been tailored for combat rather than reconnaissance. The fact that the U.S. government inquired with the Russian military leadership in Syria in advance about the provenance of the force build-up should have been a warning that any attempt at surprise had been compromised.

Whether the operation was simply intended to obtain a tactical advantage or to probe the resolution of U.S. involvement in Syria, the outcome bears all the hallmarks of a major miscalculation. Russian “hybrid warfare” tactics sustained a decisive reverse, while the effectiveness of U.S. military capabilities received a decided boost. Russian and U.S. forces and their proxies continue to spar using information operations, particularly electronic warfare, but they have not directly engaged each other since. The impact of this may be short-lived however, depending on whether or not U.S. President Donald J. Trump carries through with his intention announced in early April to withdraw U.S. forces from eastern Syria.

TDI Friday Read: Links You May Have Missed, 23 March 2018

To follow on Chris’s recent post about U.S. Army modernization:

On the subject of future combat:

  • The U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has issued a new report emphasizing the need for developing countermeasures against multiple small unmanned aerial aircraft systems (sUASs) — organized in coordinated groups, swarms, and collaborative groups — which could be used much sooner than the U.S. Army anticipates.  [There is a summary here.]
  • National Defense University’s Frank Hoffman has a very good piece in the current edition of Parameters, “Will War’s Nature Change in the Seventh Military Revolution?,” that explores the potential implications of the combinations of robotics, artificial intelligence, and deep learning systems on the character and nature of war.
  • Major Hassan Kamara has an article in the current edition of Military Review contemplating changes in light infantry, “Rethinking the U.S. Army Infantry Rifle Squad”

On the topic of how the Army is addressing its current and future challenges with irregular warfare and wide area security:

Initial SFAB Deployment To Afghanistan Generating High Expectations

Staff Sgt. Braxton Pernice, 6th Battalion, 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade, is pinned his Pathfinder Badge by a fellow 1st SFAB Soldier Nov. 3, 2017, at Fort Benning, Ga., following his graduation from Pathfinder School. Pernice is one of three 1st SFAB Soldiers to graduate the school since the formation of the 1st SFAB. He and Sgt 1st Class Rachel Lyons and Capt. Travis Lowe, all with 6th Bn., 1st SFAB, were among 42 students of Pathfinder School class 001-18 to earn their badge. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Noelle E. Wiehe)

It appears that the political and institutional stakes associated with the forthcoming deployment of the U.S. Army’s new 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB) to Afghanistan have increased dramatically. Amidst the deteriorating security situation, the performance of 1st SFAB is coming to be seen as a test of President Donald Trump’s vow to “win” in Afghanistan and his reported insistence that increased troop and financial commitments demonstrate a “quick return.”

Many will also be watching to see if the SFAB concept validates the Army’s revamped approach to Security Force Assistance (SFA)—an umbrella term for whole-of-government support provided to develop the capability and capacity of foreign security forces and institutions. SFA has long been one of the U.S. government’s primary response to threats of insurgency and terrorism around the world, but its record of success is decidedly mixed.

Earlier this month, the 1st SFAB commander Colonel Scott Jackson reportedly briefed General Joseph Votel, who heads U.S. Central Command, that his unit had less than eight months of training and preparation, instead of an expected 12 months. His personnel had been rushed through the six-week Military Advisor Training Academy curriculum in only two weeks, and that the command suffered from personnel shortages. Votel reportedly passed these concerns to U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley.

Competing Mission Priorities

Milley’s brainchild, the SFABs are intended to improve the Army’s ability to conduct SFA and to relieve line Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs) of responsibility for conducting it. Committing BCTs to SFA missions has been seen as both keeping them from more important conventional missions and inhibiting their readiness for high-intensity combat.

However, 1st SFAB may be caught out between two competing priorities: to adequately train Afghan forces and also to partner with and support them in combat operations. The SFABs are purposely optimized for training and advising, but they are not designed for conducting combat operations. They lack a BCT’s command, control and intelligence and combat assets. Some veteran military advisors have pointed out that BCTs are able to control battlespace and possess organic force protection, two capabilities the SFABs lack. While SFAB personnel will advise and accompany Afghan security forces in the field, they will not be able to support them in combat with them the way BCTs can. The Army will also have to deploy additional combat troops to provide sufficient force protection for 1st SFAB’s trainers.

Institutional Questions

The deviating requirements for training and combat advising may be the reason the Army appears to be providing the SFABs with capabilities that resemble those of Army Special Forces (ARSOF) personnel and units. ARSOF’s primary mission is to operate “by, with and through” indigenous forces. While Milley made clear in the past that the SFABs were not ARSOF, they do appear to include some deliberate similarities. While organized overall as a conventional BCT, the SFAB’s basic tactical teams include 12 personnel, like an ARSOF Operational Detachment A (ODA). Also like an ODA, the SFAB teams include intelligence and medical non-commissioned officers, and are also apparently being assigned dedicated personnel for calling in air and fire support (It is unclear from news reports if the SFAB teams include regular personnel trained in basic for call for fire techniques or if they are being given highly-skilled joint terminal attack controllers (JTACs).)

SFAB personnel have been selected using criteria used for ARSOF recruitment and Army Ranger physical fitness standards. They are being given foreign language training at the Military Advisor Training Academy at Fort Benning, Georgia.

The SFAB concept has drawn some skepticism from the ARSOF community, which sees the train, advise, and assist mission as belonging to it. There are concerns that SFABs will compete with ARSOF for qualified personnel and the Army has work to do to create a viable career path for dedicated military advisors. However, as Milley has explained, there are not nearly enough ARSOF personnel to effectively staff the Army’s SFA requirements, let alone meet the current demand for other ARSOF missions.

An Enduring Mission

Single-handedly rescuing a floundering 16-year, $70 billion effort to create an effective Afghan army as well as a national policy that suffers from basic strategic contradictions seems like a tall order for a brand-new, understaffed Army unit. At least one veteran military advisor has asserted that 1st SFAB is being “set up to fail.”

Yet, regardless of how well it performs, the SFA requirement will neither diminish nor go away. The basic logic behind the SFAB concept remains valid. It is possible that a problematic deployment could inhibit future recruiting, but it seems more likely that the SFABs and Army military advising will evolve as experience accumulates. SFA may or may not be a strategic “game changer” in Afghanistan, but as a former Army combat advisor stated, “It sounds low risk and not expensive, even when it is, [but] it’s not going away whether it succeeds or fails.”

1st Security Force Assistance Brigade To Deploy To Afghanistan In Spring

Capt. Christopher Hawkins, 1st Squadron, 38th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade, middle, and an interpreter speaks with local national soldiers to gain information about a village during an enacted military operation on urban terrain event at Lee Field, Oct. 23, 2017, on Fort Benning, Ga. (Photo Credit: Spc. Noelle E. Wiehe)

The U.S. Army recently announced that the newly-created 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB) will deploy to Afghanistan under the command of Colonel Scott Jackson in the spring of 2018 in support of the ongoing effort to train and advise Afghan security forces. 1st SFAB personnel formed the initial classes at the Military Advisor Training Academy (MATA) in August 2017 at Fort Benning, Georgia; approximately 525 had completed the course by November.

The Army intends to establish five Regular Army and one Army National Guard SFABs. In December it stated that the 2nd SFAB would stand up in January 2018 at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

The Army created the SFABs and MATA in an effort to improve its capabilities to resource and conduct Security Force Assistance (SFA) missions and to relieve line Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs) of these responsibilities. Each SFAB will be manned by 800 senior and noncommissioned volunteer officers with demonstrated experience training and advising foreign security forces.

Specialized training at MATA includes language, foreign weapons, and the Joint Fires Observer course. SFAB commanders and leaders have previous command experience and enlisted advisors hold the rank of sergeant and above. As of August 2017, recruiting for the first unit had been short by approximately 350 personnel, though the shortfall appears to have been remedied. The Army is working to address policies and regulations with regard to promotion rates and boards, selection boards, and special pay.in order to formalize a SFAB career path

New U.S. Army Security Force Assistance Brigades Face Challenges

The shoulder sleeve insignia of the U.S. Army 1st Security Forces Assistance Brigade (SFAB). [U.S. Army]

The recent deaths of four U.S. Army Special Forces (ARSOF) operators in an apparent ambush in support of the Train and Assist mission in Niger appears to have reminded Congress of the enormous scope of ongoing Security Force Assistance (SFA) activities being conducted world-wide by the Defense Department. U.S. military forces deployed to 138 countries in 2016, the majority of which were by U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) conducting SFA activities. (While SFA deployments continue at a high tempo, the number of U.S. active-duty troops stationed overseas has fallen below 200,000 for the first time in 60 years, interestingly enough.)

SFA is the umbrella term for U.S. whole-of-government support provided to develop the capability and capacity of foreign security forces and institutions. SFA is intended to help defend host nations from external and internal threats, and encompasses foreign internal defense (FID), counterterrorism (CT), counterinsurgency (COIN), and stability operations.

Last year, the U.S. Army announced that it would revamp its contribution to SFA by creating a new type of unit, the Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB), and by establishing a Military Advisor Training Academy. The first of six projected SFABs is scheduled to stand up this month at Ft. Benning, Georgia.

Rick Montcalm has a nice piece up at the Modern War Institute describing the doctrinal and organizational challenges the Army faces in implementing the SFABs. The Army’s existing SFA structure features regionally-aligned Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs) providing combined training and partnered mission assistance for foreign conventional forces from the team to company level, while ARSOF focuses on partner-nation counterterrorism missions and advising and assisting commando and special operations-type forces.

Ideally, the SFABs would supplement and gradually replace most, but not all, of the regionally-aligned BCTs to allow them to focus on warfighting tasks. Concerns have arisen with the ARSOF community, however, that a dedicated SFAB force would encroach functionally on its mission and compete within the Army for trained personnel. The SFABs currently lack the intelligence capabilities necessary to successfully conduct the advisory mission in hostile environments. Although U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley asserts that the SFABs are not Special Forces, properly preparing them for advise and assist roles would make them very similar to existing ARSOF.

Montcalm also points out that Army personnel policies complicate maintain the SFABs in the long-term. The Army has not created a specific military advisor career field and volunteering to serve in a SFAB could complicate the career progression of active duty personnel. Although the Army has taken steps to address this, the prospect of long repeat overseas tours and uncertain career prospects has forced the service to offer cash incentives and automatic promotions to bolster SFAB recruiting. As of August, the 1st SFAB needed 350 more soldiers to fully man the unit, which was scheduled to be operational in November.

SFA and the Army’s role in it will not decline anytime soon, so there is considerable pressure to make the SFAB concept successful. Yet, in light of the largely unsuccessful efforts to build effective security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, it remains an open question if the SFAB’s themselves will be enough to remedy the Army’s problematic approach to building partner capacity.

Predictions

We do like to claim we have predicted the casualty rates correctly in three wars (operations): 1) The 1991 Gulf War, 2) the 1995 Bosnia intervention, and 3) the Iraq insurgency.  Furthermore, these were predictions make of three very different types of operations, a conventional war, an “operation other than war” (OOTW) and an insurgency.

The Gulf War prediction was made in public testimony by Trevor Dupuy to Congress and published in his book If War Comes: How to Defeat Saddam Hussein. It is discussed in my book America’s Modern Wars (AMW) pages 51-52 and in some blog posts here.

The Bosnia intervention prediction is discussed in Appendix II of AMW and the Iraq casualty estimate is Chapter 1 and Appendix I.

We like to claim that we are three for three on these predictions. What does that really mean? If the odds of making a correct prediction are 50/50 (the same as a coin toss), then the odds of getting three correct predictions in a row is 12.5%. We may not be particularly clever, just a little lucky.

On the other hand, some might argue that these predictions were not that hard to make, and knowledgeable experts would certainly predict correctly at least two-thirds of the time. In that case the odds of getting three correct predictions in a row is more like 30%.

Still, one notes that there was a lot of predictions concerning the Gulf War that were higher than Trevor Dupuy’s. In the case of Bosnia, the Joint Staff was informed by a senior OR (Operations Research) office in the Army that there was no methodology for predicting losses in an “operation other than war” (AMW, page 309). In the case of the Iraq casualty estimate, we were informed by a director of an OR organization that our estimate was too high, and that the U.S. would suffer less than 2,000 killed and be withdrawn in a couple of years (Shawn was at that meeting). I think I left that out of my book in its more neutered final draft….my first draft was more detailed and maybe a little too “angry”. So maybe, predicting casualties in military operations is a little tricky. If the odds of a correct prediction was only one-in-three, then the odds of getting three correct predictions in a row is only 4%. For marketing purposes, we like this argument better 😉

Hard to say what are the odds of making a correct prediction are. The only war that had multiple public predictions (and of course, several private and classified ones) was the 1991 Gulf War. There were a number of predictions made and we believe most were pretty high. There was no other predictions we are aware of for Bosnia in 1995, other than the “it could turn into another Vietnam” ones. There are no other predictions we are aware of for Iraq in 2004, although lots of people were expressing opinions on the subject. So, it is hard to say how difficult it is to make a correct prediction in these cases.

P.S.: Yes, this post was inspired by my previous post on the Stanley Cup play-offs.

 

Assessing The Battle For Eastern Mosul

Mosul, Iraq (Institute for the Study of War)

Alexander Mello and Michael Knights have published an assessment of the urban combat in eastern Mosul between Iraqi Security Forces, supported by U.S. and other allied forces, and Daesh fighters.

From the abstract:

The Islamic State’s defense of Mosul has provided unique insights into how the group has adapted its style of fighting to dense urban terrain. While the Islamic State failed to mount an effective defense in the rural outskirts and outer edges of Mosul, it did mount a confident defense of the denser inner-city terrain, including innovative pairing of car bombs and drones. The Islamic State continues to demonstrate a strong preference for mobile defensive tactics that allow the movement to seize the tactical initiative, mount counterattacks, and infiltrate the adversary’s rear areas. Yet, while the Islamic State has fought well in Mosul, it has also been out-fought. Islamic State tactics in the final uncleared northwestern quarter of Mosul are becoming more brutal, including far greater use of civilians as human shields.

The article is in the latest edition of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point’s CTC Sentinel.

Army Creates Security Force Assistance Brigades and Training Academy

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Brandon Blanton, center, a trainer with Company A, 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, Task Force Strike, assists Iraqi army ranger students during a room-clearing drill at Camp Taji, Iraq, July 18, 2016. The new Security Force Assistance Brigades will assume these types of missions in the future. (Photo Credit: 1st Lt. Daniel Johnson)

With much of the focus of the defense and national security communities shifting to peer and near-peer challenges, the Department of the Army’s recent announcement that the first Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB) will begin standing up in October 2017 comes as an interesting bit of news. The Army will also establish a new Military Advisor Training Academy at Ft. Benning, Georgia to train officers and non-commissioned officers to staff what are projected to a total of six SFABs with 500 personnel each.

The Strategic Role of Security Force Assistance

Security Force Assistance (SFA) is the umbrella term for U.S. whole-of-government support provided to develop the capability and capacity of foreign security forces and institutions. SFA is intended to help defend host nations from external and internal threats, and encompasses foreign internal defense (FID), counterterrorism (CT), counterinsurgency (COIN), and stability operations.

The use of military aid to bolster allies is a time-old strategic expedient; it was one of the primary weapons with which the U.S.waged the Cold War. SFA has assumed a similar role in U.S. policy for countering global terrorism, as a cost-effective alternative to direct involvement in destroying or deterring the development of terrorist sanctuaries. The efficacy of this approach is a hot topic for debate in foreign policy and national security circles these days.

Organizing, training, equipping, building, advising, and assisting foreign security forces is a time and resource-intensive task and the best way of doing it has been long debated. One of the Army’s justifications for creating the SFAB’s was the need to free line units from SFA taskings to focus on preparing for combat operations. The Army is also highlighting the SFABs dual capability as cadres upon which combat-ready U.S. Army Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs) can be quickly created in a national emergency with the addition of junior personnel.

Advise and Assist: SOF vs. General Purpose Forces?

The Army believes that dedicated SFABs will be more effective at providing SFA than has been the case with recent efforts. This is an important consideration in light of the decidedly mixed combat performance of U.S.-trained and equipped Afghan and Iraqi security forces. The dramatic collapse of Iraqi Army units defending Mosul in 2014 that had been trained by conventional U.S. forces contrasts with the current dependence on U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF)-trained Iraqi Counterrorism Service (CTS) forces to lead the effort to retake the city.

This apparent disparity in success between the SOF advise and assist model and the more generic conventional force SFA template is causing some angst in the U.S. Army Special Forces (ARSOF) community, some of whom see training foreign security forces as its traditional institutional role. Part of the reason conventional forces are assigned SFA tasks is because there will never be enough ARSOF to meet the massive demand, and ARSOF units are needed for other specialized taskings as well. But the ultimate success of the SFABs will likely be gauged against the historical accomplishments of their SOF colleagues.