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Irregular Regulars

Pentagon directive pushes irregular warfare capabilities. About time. Washington Post: 

The Pentagon this week approved a major policy directive that elevates the military’s mission of “irregular warfare” — the increasingly prevalent campaigns to battle insurgents and terrorists, often with foreign partners and sometimes clandestinely — to an equal footing with traditional combat.

The directive, signed by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England on Monday, requires the Pentagon to step up its capabilities across the board to fight unconventionally, such as by working with foreign security forces, surrogates and indigenous resistance movements to shore up fragile states, extend the reach of U.S. forces into denied areas or battle hostile regimes.

The policy, a result of more than a year of debate in the defense establishment, is part of a broader overhaul of the U.S. military’s role as the threat of large-scale combat against other nations’ armies has waned and new dangers have arisen from shadowy non-state actors, such as terrorists that target civilian populations.

“The U.S. has considerable overmatch in traditional capabilities . . . and more and more adversaries have realized it’s better to take us on in an asymmetric fashion,” said Michael G. Vickers, assistant secretary of defense for special operations/low-intensity conflict and interdependent capabilities, and a chief architect of the policy.

Designed to institutionalize lessons the U.S. military has learned — often painfully — in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001, the policy aims to prepare the military for the most likely future conflicts and to prevent the type of mistakes made in the post-Vietnam War era, when hard-won skills in counterinsurgency atrophied.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has lobbied outspokenly for such a shift.

“Think of where our forces have been sent and have been engaged over the last 40-plus years: Vietnam, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa and more,” Gates said in a recent speech at the National Defense University. “In fact, the first Gulf War stands alone in over two generations of constant military engagement as a more or less traditional conventional conflict.”

Great move. One problem. China and Russia … North Korea, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan for that matter … still pose significant conventional challenges. Conventional baby shouldn’t be thrown out just because they’re changing the bath water. Hate to sound like a broken record, but the conventional ground forces still need to be bigger, missile defense still must be pursued, and nuke capabilities updated. Economic hardships and Dem domestic chicken/pot stuffing be damned.  

Meanwhile, here’s how it works:

A major thrust of the policy is for U.S. troops to do less of the fighting themselves and instead build the capabilities of foreign militaries and security forces.

Indeed, Vickers said he envisions that the Pentagon’s primary vehicle for carrying out irregular warfare operations will be a global network — already underway — made up of the U.S. and foreign militaries and other government personnel in scores of countries with which the United States is not at war. The network is designed to wage “steady state” counterterrorism operations. The directive also requires the Pentagon to develop capabilities to conduct larger-scale irregular campaigns, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The goal of the network, Vickers said in a recent speech, is ambitious: “to create a persistent, ubiquitous presence against our adversaries . . . and essentially to smother them over time.”

The directive “should have a big impact on resources” as well as military planning, Vickers said.

Specifically, as irregular warfare is more manpower-intensive, it is likely to shift more resources toward training the Army and Marine Corps, which are undergoing significant growth, in skills such as language learning and advising foreign militaries, he said.

The policy also supports continued growth in Special Operations forces — elite troops such as Army Green Berets skilled in partnering with foreign forces and civil affairs soldiers who conduct nation-building.

As irregular warfare is likely to be conducted by Special Operations forces, the policy directs the U.S. Special Operations Command, based in Tampa, to “develop capabilities for extending U.S. reach into denied areas and uncertain environments by operating with and through indigenous foreign forces or by conducting low visibility operations.”

In terms of equipment, the directive supports the expansion of intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance assets, as well as aviation assets for irregular warfare, Vickers said.

While we’re on the subject, if you’re looking for some good groundviews, the irregular as practiced by today’s regulars in a world at war, you’re looking for Mudville’s Dawn Patrol. If you want a little irregular deepthink, Small Wars Journal is your site.

Topics: military

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 1:45 pm on Thursday, December 4, 2008

2 Responses to “Irregular Regulars”

1. RebeccaH Says:
   December 4th, 2008 at 2:50 pm

   Of course our conventional capabilities shouldn’t be abandoned or neglected, but it’s good news that the Pentagon wants to also involve foreign nations in their own defense, reducing the drain on our own resources and smothering the pervasive idea that America is a “policeman” at the beck and call of the world.

2. Grimmy Says:
   December 4th, 2008 at 7:34 pm

   The US military has been doing this sort of thing for a long long time. Nothing really new here.

   Fine tuning maybe, but not a new concept or practice.

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