I chose this article as it gets to the heart of a problem in communication that leads to confusion and mis-communication within the Army, DOD, and when dealing with other government agencies. While the Army indeed has its own way of speaking, this is further exacerbated by the unique acronyms contained within the Army Special Operations community.  Some times I think our acronyms are meant to keep others outside our community instead of being for brevity in communication.  Additionally, the last ten years has seen an explosion of new terms as we have rediscovered counter insurgency and developed Irregular Warfare operating concepts, plus many other additions to FM 1-02.  Each new term seemingly leads to many new acronyms. Frankly, the military academic and think tank community tend to birth terms with each new article and book published, which … Read entire article »

Is it too cliche to mention that counter insurgency is not one size fits all? To even point this out is on par with the much repeated comment made in Iraq post 2005 that “All the dumb ones are dead”. So I am going to put a couple spins on this in the hopes that it will provide some sense of originality and maybe even generate some “over a beer” discussions. First of all COIN strategy is “one size fits all” in the sense that there are universal principles which guide it. Whether it is conducted in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Antarctica, etc. you are always going to want to separate the population from the insurgency, win hearts and minds, etc. etc. What changes are the local considerations. To sum up Counter insurgency strategy contains a foundation … Read entire article »

I think we can all agree that defense is a legitimate function of the federal government. We may disagree on other programs, departments etc. but it is generally recognized that complete privatization of defense would probably be a bad idea. That is why I find it interesting that when determining what can be cut from the federal budget the first thing advocated by some politicians is defense. Apparently we don’t spend enough tax dollars on things like replacing guard rails around empty lakes or repaving back up runways at empty airports but defense during a time of war…yeah we can cut that. Now I want to be careful here, I am in no way suggesting that there isn’t wasteful spending associated with defense, far from it. I am merely pointing out that wasteful spending on a legitimate function of government should be reallocated to more efficient spending on legitimate functions of government. It’s not as if … Read entire article »

It wasn’t that long ago that a friend of mine, still on active duty told me that an SF officer had told a battle space owner that SF doesn’t do village security operations, SF is there for direct action. Now this is the sort of absurd impression one might expect a brand new 18X just starting the Q Course would have; but to think that an officer could hold to such nonsense is troubling. It also helps to explain just how in a time when SF should be at the pinnacle of its modern history, it seems to be struggling for relevance and trust within the military. When conventional army soldiers would ask me about SF I would tell them it’s not about being “Rambo”, its about trying to be like Lawrence of Arabia. It … Read entire article »