Tag Archives: Command and Leadership

The Long Tomorrow

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Yes, I know…on Thursday, I said I’d start listing the characteristics of the contemporary environment ‘tomorrow‘…but between twins, sick animals and wife being home for the weekend, some things got nudged off to the side…the first instalment will come off the slips tonight…promise…

This is cool

mountain moto 2010

Following through on my resolve to renew old contacts, I rippled off a number of LinkedIn connection requests to LinkedIn members in my email address book. One of them runs a Christchurch-based company, FX Bikes which manufactures and distributes “…the world’s lightest off-road motorcycle, a superlight dirt bike that crosses over between motocross and mountain bike to form a totally new category of ‘mountain motorcycle’…” with an all-up weight of only 57kg – I’ve carried packs weighing that much!! I first came across the Mountain Moto in 2004 when the FX Bike New Zealand marketing tour came through Waiouru…as a former despatch rider on the trusty old XL250, many was the time when a ditch, log, fence or other easily climbable obstacle became a real war-stopper so I saw a real appeal in this new design from the start…unfortunately, I was somewhat alone in those thoughts and FX got a fairly cool reception from capability managers back then “…it’s just a mountain bike with an engine…!” Thus it is quite satisfying, five years on, to see that this is now “…Under evaluation by NZ Special Forces and Police Search and Rescue, under consideration by US Army…”

The California Office

Man dogs

Michael Yon, has (finally) given up on bashing and gotten back into serious writing.

Two days ago, there was a series of coordinated IED attacks in Kandahar City “… Details still sketchy but the “Consolidated SITREP” indicates multiple explosions at 1937hrs. 1) BBIED at al-Jidad Market, vicinity Indian Embassy; 2) VBIED at Sarpoza prison incl SAFIRE/RPG; 3) SVBIED at Red Mosque; 4) VBIED Police HQ approx 20 KIA incl 12 ANP, 8 Unkn; 5) Attack PSS (type attack unkn); Total approx 30 KIA incl approx 20 ANP and 10 LN. 97th MPs responded. No known Coalition Casualties. HWY 1 closed to civilian traffic until further…” The bill to date stands around three dozen civilians and ANP – Afghans killing Afghans…

His latest Dispatch Man Dogs provides an interesting commentary on the technological contrasts of this conflict (with some stunning imagery) and also upon the true nature of suicide bombing…the abuse of fellow Afghans and Muslims by their own…this is not a ‘nice’ war as much as we try to distance ourselves from the realities and create a ‘no eggs broken’ omelette…

One comment on the Facebook page raises some interesting issues regarding metrics and combat indicators “…So sad – lives lived to kill or be killed. I’ve read Afghan women and their young daughters, in case of being raped and they survive, keep rat poison handy to commit suicide rather than endure humiliation…I’m also aware of use of a wide variety of drugs by the insurgents/suicide bombers to perpetuate Man Dog behaviors: epinephrine to embolden the bomber/shooter and squeeze out the last drop of blood in a “hyper”-pumping, dying heart, narcotics to dull the pain, speed, cocaine, etc…
Michael, the troops and you have encountered numerous weapons caches and young human shields on housetops. Any comments regarding drug caches and abuse among insurgents that pose an even more asymmetric aspect of war our honorable, decent troops face?…” While we focus upon the IED trail to the left and right of the BANG, and the obvious components of bomber, bomb components, initiation devices, etc it may be that the dishonour/drug combination can be added to the list…

…and on NATO…

“…Guaranteed that many troops who have served here will have sharp feelings/thoughts about some Coalition partners. Some partners get accolades — others would be better off at home. It’s not one big happy family over here. A lot of partners simply do not pull their weight, and you will see complaints do not always involve U.S. I’ve seen Italians complain about Spanish, and French complain about Italians, for instance. The Dutch say the Germans don’t pull their weight. (But the Dutch are leaving while the Germans are sending more troops.) We are lucky that NATO never faced a serious enemy because, fact is, we have very few credible partners. Most of the partners cannot fight. The Taliban will crush nearly all of them. If we left, and the rest of NATO gave it their very best effort, the Taliban likely would be driving captured NATO vehicles through Kabul within a couple years. The Taliban would blast these bases to smithereens if the U.S. were not defending against the rocket/mortar attacks. (Saw that in Iraq — U.S. bases got hit, but partner bases got pounded like pinatas.) This war has been an eye-opener. Most of our partners are weak. Pitifully weak...”

Portable books

I’ve been an Audible subscriber for almost 10 years and  been a believer in portable reading for a long time. One of the problems I have been grappling with for a while is the sheer bulk of information that comes across my desk these days. I find myself continually tempted to print out reports, articles, papers etc for reading away from the PC and so have a growing mountain of paper that can only be searched the old-fashioned way. Dean @ Travels with Shiloh is trying out a ‘nook‘ and so far it seems to be working well. I’d tried this with both iMate and Blackberry and found the experience of reading a PDF on such a small screen somewhat unsatisfying – I’ll be watching Dean’s experiment with interest…

Marines ‘get it’

Hardly any surprises there. Neptunus Lex comments on the Marines’ approach to COIN in Afghanistan where they are apparently creating some ripples in the pond of the ‘nice’ war…”…CENTCOM’s strategy is to protect population centers using the “oil spot” strategy of Baghdad. The Corps, on the other hand, is seeking to minimize the Taliban’s freedom to maneuver through vast swaths of otherwise uncontested battlespace outside the cities as they did in Anbar…” Good to see that at least someone sees the folly of the CENTCOM ‘Cursed Earth‘ strategy…

Old doctrine never dies…

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Over the weekend both Neptunus Lex and Small Wars Journal have commented on the address by ADM Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, at Kansas State University which has been heralded as the death of the Powell Doctrine which dominated US military policy from the 1991 Gulf War. The Lex item links to a LA Times article Top U.S. military official outlines tempered approach to war which doesn’t quite get the right end of the stick in opening with “…The U.S. military must use measured and precise strikes, not overwhelming force, in the wars it is likely to face in the future, the nation’s top uniformed officer said Wednesday in outlining a revised approach to American security…” That’s not quite correct – the full text of ADM Mullen’s address is online and what he is actually advocating re overwhelming force is “…We must not try to use force only in an overwhelming capacity, but in the proper capacity, and in a precise and principled manner…” That is not discounting the overwhelming force option at all – he is saying the force and the approach should be customised to the threat – and inline with a philosophy of comprehensively employing all instruments of national power where they can have the best effect.

The SWJ item is actually a CNP of Robert Haddick’s article Foreign Policy The Long Death of the Powell Doctrine; unfortunately this story has been combined with another story re the potential for Myanmar to build a clandestine breeder reactor on behalf of the North Koreans and/or other bad  people – didn’t they learn from one visit from John Rambo…? The Mullen story is significant of a column all its own, more so when it appears that many are only drawing what they want in isolation from the entire speech. SWJ has a robust discussion on the speech.

The ‘Mullen Doctrine’ which supplants the ‘Powell Doctrine’ rests upon three principles:

The first is that military power should not – maybe cannot – be the last resort of the state.  Military forces are some of the most flexible and adaptable tools to policymakers.  We can, merely by our presence, help alter certain behavior.  Before a shot is even fired, we can bolster a diplomatic argument, support a friend or deter an enemy.  We can assist rapidly in disaster-relief efforts, as we did in the aftermath of Haiti’s earthquake.  We can help gather intelligence, support reconnaissance and provide security. And we can do so on little or no notice.  That ease of use is critical for deterrence.

No arguments there – this finally goes someway to closing the artificial gap between peacetime engagement and operations…there should only really be two types of military operations (always under a national policy framework a la Clausewitz): stability operations which counter any destabilising influences (irregularity) in national areas of interest (domestic or offshore), and war-fighting where specific and intense use of force has become necessary.

Force should, to the maximum extent possible, be applied in a precise and principled way.

I would be more comfortable with this point if it stated ‘military options’ in lieu of ‘force’ as all actions should be applied in a precise, principled AND tailored way.

Policy and strategy should constantly struggle with one another.  Some in the military no doubt would prefer political leadership that lays out a specific strategy and then gets out of the way, leaving the balance of the implementation to commanders in the field.  But the experience of the last nine years tells us two things:  A clear strategy for military operations is essential; and that strategy will have to change as those operations evolve.

I’m not sure that I agree with this last point – the wrangling between senior US military and government officials since 2003 has absorbed and diverted national focus and effort from the job at hand. Perhaps what ADM Mullen means is that the military and government need to have a clearer idea of where each is coming from. We don’t want a military that blindly follows policy without discussion, nor government that blindly ignores concerns from professional operators (this applies in government departments other than the military). The real issue arising from both high level policy strategy is knowing the answer to two key questions:

Why are we here? Clear objectives and the means by which to measure when they have been achieved.

What’s our plan for getting out? Apply the Princess Leia Doctrine “…when you broke in here, did you have a plan for getting out?” A clearly-defined exit strategy, based upon best and worse cases, that is developed as part of initial planning and robustly and regularly reviewed…

What does my boss expect me to achieve and why?

What freedoms enable me?

What constraints restrict me?

Has anything changed since I last thought about this?

My first thought when people start talking about the death of a doctrine is that doctrine never dies – it just gets filed for future reference. This first came home to me at  doctrine working group in Australia in 2006. There was a call from a number of operators and schools for doctrine NOW on convoy escort, roadside IEDs and other pressing contemporary topics and there was certainly a feeling that ‘someone’ had dropped the ball (not New Zealand as it wasn’t a World Cup year) in this regard. One of the things that the Aussies did then – and which I hope they still do – was to have a representative from the Army History Unit attend such working groups; when this call for contemporary doctrine was made, the elderly gentlemen from the AHU called for some semblance of order and advised all assembled that the Australian Army already had such doctrine “…ask your dad, young XXX [the officer who raised the original inquiry] , when he was in Vietnam…none of those topics is new and we have been here before. I suggest you review what’s in the archives and go from there…” In Australia, the Centre for Army Lessons is the default archive for retired doctrine (strangely, not the Doctrine Centre) and over the space of a coffee break, had located a number of Vietnam-era publications that certainly provided a useful start point for contemporary TTPs. I think is because of this, that the NZ Army’s Doctrine Centre (based not far from here in sunny Waiouru) maintains a doctrine library with publications that extend back to between the (world) wars classics like MAJGEN Charles Gwynn‘s Imperial Policing (strangely the only Wikipedia entries on this publication are in Spanish and German).

In last month’s The CoGs in the war go round and round… I discussed the applicability today of some of Napoleon’s writings in his Maxims as part of a broader piece on the Centre of Gravity construct. In this forum, doctrine as defined as what we teach on courses, expand and develop in collective training, and apply with judgement (implied in the real world, not solely on operations) so the traditional ‘out’ that doctrine is only a discussion of fundamental philosophies does not apply here. In purist terms, the Powell Doctrine will not die – the closest it may come is to be quietly filed away until such time as circumstances cause it to be dusted off and reviewed. That so many US pundits are joyous at its ‘death’ is indicative of the urge in the US to disassociate itself from the false beliefs in overwhelming technology, ‘shock and awe’, and adversaries who would cooperatively fold when confronted with the immutable logic of the manouevrist approach that ultimately drew them into the seven years of pain in Iraq.

I selected an image of Trafalgar as the header for today’s post because it is illustrative of both dogmatic application of doctrine (perhaps the  first lesson in any course on doctrine is to emphasise the difference between dogma and doctrine?) and the application of doctrine with judgement. In 1805, it was a capital offence for any captain or commander to not rigidly adhere to the Fighting Instructions in vogue at the time which essentially required opposing fleets to close up in parallel lines and hammer the living bejesus out of each other until a victor emerged or it got too hard due to weather, wind or nightfall…Looking back, this is really not too much different from our approach to state v state warfare where we lined up on respective sides of borders or other lines drawn in the sand until someone pushed the button. Certainly I believe that this linear approach dominated our thinking for the past four to five decades and to a large extent still does as we wrest with the geometrically more complex environment of today.

Nelson opted to disregard the Fighting Instructions at Trafalgar and break the French and Spanish lines in order to defeat them in some detail. Trafalgar was a hard-fought battle and the issues was in doubt for some time – certainly neither the French nor the Spanish were so devastated by this tactic as to strike their colours immediately; if they were devastated by anything it was good British gunnery…It is this ability to appreciate a specific situation, draw from relevant historical and personal experience, and develop a plan tailored to the current situation that we need to (re-)develop and foster amongst our planners and operators. In an area where the military is but just one of a number of instruments of national power, the growth must be applied across government…

Things are Blowing up but no more than usual

Coming Anarchy has an independent view of the progress of the elections in Iraq that is not polluted by the mainstream media’s need for sensationalism and loud noises…it would be nice to think that all the casualties and loss since 2003 will have a positive outcome…

Woof!

The Ironman 2 trailer will screen after the Academy Awards today

Bridgegate

Still waiting for Michael Yon’s Dispatch resolving the Tarnak Bridge episode and publicly apologising to Canada’s GEN Daniel Menard…as his tempo of releases has not slowed, it seems that it is easier for Mr Yon to get rounds of accusation in the air than it is to equally publicly tidy up the mess he makes when he gets it wrong – interestingly still no US or ISAF PAO comment on this story…

On learning

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(c) Peter Hodge @ The Strategist

This amazing photo was on Peter’s latest post @ The Strategist…my only comment is WOW! To learn more, click on the image…

This post also carried a link to a recent Business Day article Unhappy workers the key to corporate culture which states organisations that wish to learn about themselves,  for example, what’s working and what’s not, could do worse things that seek out and listen to “…malcontents and marginalised workers in the firm…” Often these people are marginalised or malcontent because they are frustrated in their efforts to improve or progress their work environment. As I commented on Peter’s post, so often I have “…seen a visiting reviewing, audit, info gathering team sat down with the happy-happy joy-joy people in an organisation when they really need to to be getting together with those who have issues (real or perceived) with how the organisation operates…”

Most organisations have a fundamental expectation that equipment and processes and staff will function as advertised. To be continually told that this is occurring really achieves little except perhaps a warm fuzzy feeling in the executive washroom. What organisations really need to know is what is NOT functioning as it should, or where things could be done smarter…you won’t get this from the mindless clones of the happy-happy joy-joy brigade. This is the foundation of any Lessons Learned or organisational learning process of system: to get over fear of bad news and actually welcome and seek it out. All to often though, the catalyst for this cultural shift is a king-size punch in the nose.

The most notable example of such cultural change is the US Army in the year from the end of the official war-fighting phase in May 2003 until the true scope of the insurgency was grasped in 2004. In no more than a year, this organisation of 500,000 plus was transformed from one where it was not cool to advertise screw-ups in your area of responsibility to one where it was no longer acceptable NOT to share what went wrong on your patch in order that others might learn and lives be saved…if the pie-in-the-sky plans of Rumsfeld, Cheney et al had actually worked and Iraq had snapped into a functioning democracy as soon as Saddam was toppled, I don’t think that even a quarter of the issues identified in the various post-Phase One AARs would have been addressed, and certainly any cultural shifts arising from those issues would have been incremental at best.

The first step in any Lessons Learned system is to consistently and continuously and honestly capture what’s not working and what could be done better. We found that the format for this is:

What happened? A simple statement that defines the problem or issue, e.g. boot laces keep snapping.

What does it mean? I.e. the ‘so what?’ factor…you can not assume that everyone else will perceive the same or any issues arising from the ‘what happened’ so this needs to be explained. e.g. affects soldier’s mobility as boots don’t fit properly until such time as laces are replaced or repaired – this is not always immediately possible i.e. at night (light discipline) or if spare laces are not available/accessible.

What do you think should be done about it? This is the originator’s recommendation from their perspective and may often serve only as a start point for investigation and bear no resemblance to the final solution e.g. replace the current crap boots with a new brand.

This was an OIL that we came across through direct contact with some of the afore-mentioned malcontents and marginalised who expressed their frustration that this problem was prevalent and nothing seemed to be happening about it. When we pulled on a few threads, we found that higher levels were prone to removing such low-level ‘trivia’ as reports drifted up the hierarchy, based on a misperception that high-level issues should be disseminated up to high levels. The response back down was more than often the good old ‘harden up!’

Investigating the actual issue was very frustrating because there was a continual stream of ‘no fault found’ with every test conducted on the laces held in stock. It was only in examining the boots that it was found that the fault was not in the laces but in a batch of lace eyelets that had an exceptionally sharp inner edge – the action of pulling a lace tight also pulled the lace over this edge which cut into the fibres of the lace. Murphy’s Law of laces states that they will always give way at the least convenient time, typically 0300 on a frosty no-moon night on a patrol in the tussock.

The solutions that were put in place were to:

Withdraw the affected boots and have them repaired by the manufacturer.

Review Quality Assurance processes for future boot shipments.

Review the defect reporting process.

Discuss with headquarters staffs the importance of NOT attenuating reports as they rose through the chain of command, including those issues that perhaps they could actually resolve at their own levels. By keeping these to themselves they constrain the ability of others to learn from them.

Man’s Best Friend

Neptunus Lex has a touching story about a boy and his dog…things you wouldn’t see your cat doing for you…

Bridgegate

Still waiting on Michael Yon’s Dispatch in which he winds up the Tarnak Bridge drama AND apologises to Canadian general Daniel Menard…

Getting out of the square

Travels with Shiloh discusses the need for intelligence operators to have training in snapping out of conventional squares to consider problems in the complex environment. I agree and think that his 2007 suggestion of using movies like John Carpenter’s The Thing as the basis for scenarios to achieve this has considerable merit. I had a similar idea in the early 90s when i was just getting into PC gaming that young officers could be given certain games to play that would broaden their problem-solving thought processes…TacOps springs to mind immediately but for some reason Megafortress springs to mind – will have to see if I can find my old notes on this…to add a pain/risk factor, it was suggested that they play for places (or not) on the monthly duty/orderly officer lists…

I also agree with Dean’s comments re using tactical decision-making games (TDG) – the Marines have been using them for years – I think they still publish one at the back of each issue of the Marine Corps Gazette? – but everyone else seems a little slow on the uptake. The zero defects people seem very cool on the idea unless each TDG comes with a 17 page ‘white’ sheet that details all the possible permutations and variations of solutions so that the supervising staff would be put on the spot and find their own knowledge and or capabilities challenged. I think this is a fundamental lack of understanding of what TDGs are for which is to allow students and instructors to explore the application of principles and considerations in different environments and scenarios and to totally NOT focus on any perceived need for the solution to be a thing that Norman Schwarzkopf would be proud of…

The double standard of nice war

Coming Anarchy discusses the drone ‘war’ in Pakistan. The acceptance of civilian casualties in this campaign against the Taliban seems to be in stark contrast with ISAF’s squeamishness in engaging Taliban hiding behind civilians in Marjah. Maybe it’s only OK to kill civilians in a war zone by accident where you (and the media) can’t see the bodies…? It’s probably all the same to the dead…

A rank outsider?

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Many moons ago, I mentioned how much I enjoyed District 9, both as a movie in its own right and for the deeper themes within it. I’ve been following the District 9 Facebook page for a few months now and was rapt to see last night that it has been nominated for Best Picture for the Academy Awards this weekend…

Congratulations to producers PETER JACKSON & CAROLYNNE CUNINGHAM on their Academy Award™ Nomination in the category of BEST PICTURE for DISTRICT 9!

Did you know? Peter Jackson was originally going to produce Director Neill Blomkamp’s vision of HALO, but when that fell apart, he offered Blomkamp $30 million dollars to make any movie we wanted. District 9 was that movie.

District 9 is also up for Oscars® in the categories of Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing, and Best Visual Effects. Watch the 82nd Academy Awards™ THIS SUNDAY March 7th!

The FB item links to this article Oscar shocker: Could ‘District 9’ win best picture?

“It would be nice if the Academy surprised us. They don’t surprise us very often,” says Betsy Sharkey, film critic for the Los Angeles Times.

“If something unexpected walked away with an Oscar this year, particularly in the Best Picture category, it would say volumes to the industry,” says Sharkey.

“That Best Picture prize sets the tone for whole Oscar show. An unexpected win would get people talking and make the Academy Awards more relevant than they have been in a long time,” she says.

I, for one, would really like to see an adventurous enterprise like District 9 pip the big studios at the post this weekend – not only would it send a message to Hollywood (although whether Hollywood is actually listening is another issue) that we do actually want original innovative and entertaining movies not endless rehashs and remakes of someone else’s good ideas but it is another score on the board for the New Zealand film industry and the magic Mr Jackson. I haven’t seen Avatar – it been a while since I have been in a city big enough to have a 3D screening of Avatar with time on my hands to go to the movies and Carmen’s description of it as “…Fern Gully on steriods...” hasn’t really motivated me that much – or The Hurt Locker yet but I think my second choice for Best Movie would have to go to The Hurt Locker if for not other reason than its topic and setting.

Bridgegate totters toward resolution

Michael Yon Facebook ‘Bridgegate’ posts in the last 24 hours…

#1

After the Monday attack, the Generals are avoiding responsibility for security of the Tarnak River Bridge. Worse, nobody is claiming responsibility for the bridge this morning. Tarnak River bridge, three miles from me, is a strategic artery. The Commanding Generals failed on Monday. They are failing today. Confidence in RC-South and TF-K leadership is plummeting. Dark clouds for the upcoming Kandahar offensive.

#2

U.S, considers Afghan command structure changes. (While they are at it, they might consider getting some generals down to Kandahar who know how to secure a little strategic bridge.)

This item links to an article on “…The United States and its allies are considering setting up an American-led command in southern Afghanistan to oversee operations in a key battleground province, U.S. officials said…” This is interesting and aligns with comments made when I was in the UK last year that the US war machine is very powerful and superbly organised to operate with itself and when you get right down to it, it doesn’t really need (from an operational perspective) much help from anyone to get the job done. Blistering coalition elements into US organisations often only creates unnecessary and drag-inducng friction, more so when those elements do not or will not (hello, UK, are you there?) read from the US playbook. While sharing command across other coalition members may make for a nice stand of flags in the higher headquarters and a strong ‘feel good’ factor for senior coalition staff, it is not an efficient nor an effective method of WARFIGHTING…”We’re not in PSO-ville now, Toto…”

#3

Got a call out of the blue from the office of Brigadier General Ben Hodges. We will meet in 90 minutes at his office.I have only two questions. 1) Which Coalition partner was responsible for the security of Tarnak River bridge on Monday, before the explosion. 2) Which Coalition partner is in charge of security at Tarnak River bridge now.

That’s it. If the answer is fuzzy, the answer is that nobody was in charge of a vital bridge. Otherwise, the answer will be that X was in charge on Monday while X1 is in charge today. Simple questions, simple answers. We’ve got 20 minutes. Should take less than five.

It’s been astonishing that it has taken from Monday to Thursday afternoon. Meanwhile, there remain combat leaders whose soldiers cross that bridge every day, who do not know who is in charge of not letting their soldiers get blown up.

#4

Summary of meeting with Brigadier General Ben Hodges: The result was unexpected. General Hodges courageously accepted full responsibility. My respect for him doubled in about 30 seconds. Henceforth, Strykers will “own” the bridge. Bottom line: problem solved. BREAK. Something very important came up tonight, so will give accounting Friday. The accounting will include an apology from me to General Menard.

#5

Working on dispatch with more details about the Tarnak River Bridge. There are many assumptions flying in comments — often talking (incorrectly) about assumptions made here. Surprises are coming. Suggest cease fire until facts are presented. Some folks are wedging into corners by making assumptions about ‘assumptions.’The detailed dispatch will contain email traffic. After facts are presented, it will be a simple matter for pros to check the trail. (Many pros on this FB.) Remains amazing that MSM missed the fact that a strategic bridge was hit, and instead focused so much on hockey.

Have meetings today with Special Forces and others re ongoing matters. Further details on Tarnak River Bridge will not be published today. Will present ASAP.

Yon’s final Dispatch on this topic should be released today and I expect that it will make for interesting reading…

Travels

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I was on the road the last couple of days on job-seeking activities: had what certainly felt like a very good interview in Taupo on Thursday, and a very interesting day yesterday exploring some alternatives that are closer to my heart, including a couple of left-field initiatives that had me buzzing the whole drive home.

I stopped for dinner, well, fish’n’chips anyway, at the Fastlane Takeaways in Waiouru which we used to frequent regularly when we were living there: sorry, guys, but that was YUK!!! Even the dogs weren’t too sure about the muddy-tasting fish…so you’re OFF the Eating Out list and I’ll be transferring my allegiance to the shop in Ohakune next to the Information Centre…

Hitting the target

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Dartboard

Ironically, the Intentional Development website (edit 4 Feb 13: removed the link as it was dead as the proverbial door nail – managed to recover the image via the power of the Wayback Machine) from which I took this image specialises in…

Freeing the embedded wisdom of an organization’s most valuable assets (human resources) currently constrained by titles, roles, politics and procedures.

Mobilizing personnel at all levels to truly participate, become involved, and internalize objectives as their own so they willingly and eagerly contribute to solving their organization’s challenges.

Creating the circumstances and the environment to facilitate change.

Possibly there’s a job for them in Kandahar…?

The Canadian National Post has published Canadian Forces comment in response to Michael Yon’s criticism this week of security arrangements around an important bridge that was damaged in an attack near Kandahar this week. Interestingly, it is Michael Yon who disseminated the link to this article via his Facebook Page.

The release points out that “…all the land surrounding the airport has long been the responsibility of the Royal Air Force Regiment, a British infantry unit that specializes in protecting airports from attack. Most road checks in the area are carried out by Afghan National Police while sweeps for improvised explosive devices on the major highways in Kandahar are done by a U.S. Army Stryker brigade or by U.S. combat engineers attached to them...”

Although a whole three people have commented on the National Post Article, hundreds have offered comment on Yon’s items on his Facebook page, including this one on the RAF regiment in Kandahar…

Never seen this bridge Michael, but as a lowly British Inf NCO, am I making a fair assumption that as a natural/man-made choke point, this should have been identified as a weak point, in oh I don’t know…2 seconds? Therefore reinforced/defended accordingly?

On a slightly related note, there was some talk of the RAF Regt and their role. I personally have no love for them, being Infantry, but they do carry out a role that frees up our Army reservists who can get out and do their jobs. The RAF Regt’s mission is base/airfield protection and security up to 8km from the airfield. I believe this bridge was 10 miles out or something? Far from passing the buck, it should be asked then why this was not identified as an issue, and who was responsible for providing the security for a known high value choke point?

The article then goes on to link the Yon items with “…a growing frustration on the part of some Americans that NATO has put four U.S. battalions under Canadian command in Kandahar…the Americans answer to a Canadian who answers to a British major-general who in turn answers to an American. This is coalition warfare at its best…” At its best, huh? Sounds like an overly-complex recipe for buck-passing and gaps you could drive a LAV (or a VBIED) through…one mother’s comment on Yon’s Facebook page “…This was coalition warfare at its worst…a bridge was blown up! They should have to place the calls to us mothers…“

Funnily enough, after presenting the current command and control  environment around Kandahar as hunky-dory, the National Post concludes “…the issue of who commands what in Kandahar is particularly sensitive at the moment, with NATO planning a major offensive in the province later this spring…“

Meanwhile back in Kandahar…Michael Yon remains on the offensive… submitting two questions yesterday to Task Force Kandahar regarding the Monday bridge attack:

1) When will the bridge become fully operational?

2) What measures are being taken to prevent such attacks in the future?

A few hours later…Task Force Kandahar just answered the two questions I submitted yesterday. The TF-K answers beg for follow-up, which has just been submitted. Will publish in full when this is over. Something fishy going on.

And about an hour ago (all times are pretty lose as the Facebook clock leaves a lot to be desired)…

Bridge Update: Much information flowing. Just went through long conversations with key people. BLUF: the bridge has become an Orphan. TF-Kandahar says TF-K is not the father. We are waiting for U.S. Brigadier General Ben Hodges to say who is responsible for the bridge. BG Hodges is the Deputy Commander for RC-South. The British command RC-South. The Commanding General is Nick Carter.

My gut, based on what am seeing all over, is that this is between RC-South and TF-Kandahar. TF-K clearly has responsibility, as does their parent command RC-South. While the British command RC-South, the Canadians TF-K. The US is just sort of here under an obtuse command structure that can’t guard a strategic bridge ten minutes from the front gate of one of the biggest bases in Afghanistan.

Bridge situation — This smells like rotten fish. At a bare minimum, someone(s) at General Officer level dropped the ball. Going to take more time to sort this out and get the facts straight. One certainty: it’s not pretty.

A few minutes later…

Menard vs. Carter

Bridge failure heating up: TF-K has, for all intents and purposes, blamed RC-South for allowing the bridge to be attacked on Monday, resulting in the death of a US soldier and serious damage to a vital bridge. The controversy has reached the respective Generals at TF-K and RC-South. For those who understand the dynamics here, Brigadier General Daniel Menard (TF-K boss) has shifted the blame to Major General Nick Carter (RC-South boss).

This has become a dinosaur fight — Menard vs. Carter — wherein little people can get crushed.

If nothing else, ‘Bridgegate’ sends a clear message to ISAF that it needs to seriously up its Information and Influence Operations game…it is probably too broad a stretch to imagine that the Taliban planned or even anticipated this spatting between coalition partners but they must be loving it. It is a pretty simple question: who is responsible for the security of this bridge? Surely it must be in a clearly defined Area of Operations assigned to a specific formation or unit? That ISAF has resorted instead to bureaucratic tap-dancing and not released any comment on the issue is perhaps indicative of deeper rifts within the coalition. Jim Molan recounts in Running the War in Iraq that, prior to the final battle for Fallujah GEN Casey directed him “…in no uncertain terms to ensure that there was no more than a one-hour turnaround between an allegation appearing in the media and our response being fired back…the information fight required less physical courage and sacrifice, but was just as important as the combat on the ground…”

Certainly from many of the comments on Yon’s Facebook posts, there is considerable anger in the US at Canada’s stated intention to withdraw from Afghanistan and at those NATO partners who do not pull their weight (which would probably be most of them). This latter issue was a theme in Yon’s posts last week before the bridge attack and I do wonder if the US, or some in it, are not running their own IO campaign to expose those who are not holding up their end of the stick…?

New word of the day

Thanks to Dean at Travels with Shiloh for today’s new word ‘fobbit’, replacing ‘poug’ and ‘REMF’ as a term of endearment for those personnel that spend the larger proportion of their deployment in camps and bases. This is not to say that these personnel do not perform valuable and vital functions in support of operations nor that it is their fault that higher minds decide to introduce as many home comforts as possible into these facilities. I do think however that it behooves such individuals to always remember where they are, why there are there and who they are supporting before bemoaning the quality of the GoatBurger at BK-Kandahar…

Edit: Oh, the joys of working in the information age!! Just as I was writing up ‘fobbits’ and hit the publish button, Michael Yon posted this link to a great description of the Life of a Fobbit in Afghanistan. Although humorous in nature, it is a reminder of the vital role that ‘fobbits’ play and I think that this blog, on the adventures of staff in a currently deployed Forward Surgical Team will be well worth watching…

Acronym of the day

From Michael Yon’s posts, BLUF = Bottom Line Up Front, not to be confused with that ultimate hearts and minds tool, the BUFF:

b-52-bomber-2.jpg

BUFF

Hoping, wishing, praying…

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In More on Risk-based decision making in Homeland security, Dean introduces hope-based decision-making “… Hopefully the most significant threats are the ones you’re already focused on.  As long as they are, you’re ok.  When they aren’t, you stand by…and say to everyone who will listen ‘No one could have predicted this’.”

Remember that time when you were four, and that big plate glass window in the lounge kinda got broken and even though you were the only person in the lounge playing with Dad’s golf clubs, you still hope a whole lot that your invisible friend is going to materialise and take the rap? Fast-forward thirty years to when your boss says ‘we’ will carry the risk – you really hope that he really does mean ‘we’ and not ‘you’? Or that time you decided to invade Iraq and hoped that a. a lot of WMD would turn up really quickly and b. that the UN would get over itself and follow-on with civil aid and reconstruction programmes? Each of these scenarios has three things in common:

You have a nagging feeling how things are really going to turn out.

Those consequences are probably going to hurt.

When you think about it, you really knew better.

This week, Neptunus Lex published an item for aviators The ‘Possible’ Turn which discusses the options available to a pilot when an engine fails on take-off. The commonly held truism is that any attempt to turn back to the recently departed runway is doomed to fail – doom in the worse possible sense of the word – one of those manouevres based more upon hope than physics. Lex argues in aviation speak that this might not actually be the case for a suitably experienced pilot – equipped with an ability to make practical decisions fast. Also in the mail this morning was an article discussing the proposed shift in focus of the PRT in Afghanistan to a more civil focus at a time when surge-inflicted chaos may boil over into other provinces. I wondered about this too In the Ghan.

When we established our joint headquarters in 2001, many suggested that each external door should have a big sign ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE. For different reasons, they were probably right: hope has no place in any organisation where lives are at stake.

So why do we do it so often? There are three factors:

Partly it is simple laziness – we’ve always done it like this and it’s always been OK before.

Another part is simply sticking with what we know – after decades of peacetime engagement and peacekeeping, it is difficult to shed that mindset for that necessary for operating in and around a warfighting environment where the threats are very really and unlikely to be assuaged by an umpire with a blue rag tied around one arm.

The third factor is that making good decisions has to be practiced regularly – and that includes being able to quickly sift through all the available information to extract the key points, digest them and then make the call.

Supporting good decisions is a firm ethical and cultural foundation based upon three key qualities:

The Competence to understand the environment and the issues.

The Courage to promote an unpalatable or unpopular line of reason.

The Integrity to see the issue through when the going gets tough.

Regularly we see news items when agents of government at all levels fail to display one or all of these qualities. And every time, the parent agency trots out its Code of Conduct, duly signed by all employees “Hey, look – it’s not our corporate fault!” And why isn’t it ‘our’ fault? Because it’s too hard for the HR Nazis to snap out of their nice objective competencies and consider applying some subjective qualitative assessments on potential recruits? It is interesting to note that those agencies where people are more likely to work collectively as opposed to as individuals are more likely to have a sound organisational ethos and culture – the two that spring to mind immediately are the military and the Fire Service; law enforcement to a far lesser extent because they tend to function as individuals not collective teams (STG, HRS, SWAT, etc being exceptions but only a small percentage of their respective agencies.

But developing, fostering and embedding an ethos and culture based on these qualities into an existing organisation is doable. We’re running an interesting ‘experiment’ here where the new Head of Customs is a highly-regarded former two-star who is doing exactly that. But what he’s brought to Customs is not so much thirty odd years of military experience – it is too easy to fall into the trap that ex-military staff have all the answers; they can have a lot of the problems too – but good old-fashioned command and LEADERSHIP.

So in terms of our discussions regarding decision-making in homeland security, the very first thing that we need to consider is raising the bar of competence. That means introducing more than just training, more than just practicing what we preach; it means that we need to set and conform to some basic standards of performance, weed out those who are more social than team members. I was once posted to a base that is quite isolated and where there was some institutional resistance to being posted there. Most of this was of the “well, everyone says it’s a bad place so it must be a bad place to go” variety and as a result, anyone volunteering to be posted there was usually snapped up. When I arrived, there was some debate raging over this posting policy and after about two weeks on the job, I feel firmer in to the camp of “‘it’s better to have a gap than to fill it with a warm body that does nothing; at least when you have a gap, you know you have a gap and can work around it. When the chair is filled, you keep kidding yourself that the incumbent may one day surprise you and actually do something useful – but it never happens”.

The flip side of competency is training, training that is relevant and current for the job at hand because it takes knowledge to fend off hope – yep, that’s right, Hope, we don’t want you here!! and this is where doctrine, lessons learned, organisational learning, knowledge management and all those other good things come together…to…get the right information…to the right people…at the right time…and ensure that they know what to do with it…

It all comes back to that…

Standing firm

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(c) http://www.militaryimages.net/

Last week I was asked how I thought one might develop and implement a homeland security agency here. Dean’s initiative with the Homeland Security Round Table this year is proving an ideal catalyst for forming and shaking out those ideas…

In Risky Business, lunghu identifies a key factor in homeland security risk management and mitigation, that of personal self-preservation aka CYA. He also alludes to the flip side of this coin which is the hair-pulling cat-fight whenever there is any credit or praise due. The CYA factor is pure human nature and one of those things that has to be programmed out of people…organisations like the Marines do it especially well at the same time they embed the ethos of the Corps into each and every recruit. It doesn’t always need Gunny Leanin-Mean and a Smokey the Bear hat to do this but the points to take away are

  • that they do it.
  • they believe it is important to do it.
  • that they do it at the very beginning of a recruit’s career in the Corps.
  • those who don’t ‘get it’ are cycled out.
  • they do it as a part of embedding Marine Corps ethos and culture.

This is in stark contract to most, if not all, government agencies where there is little or no effort applied to developing and maintain a formal organisational ethos and culture to mitigate CYA and self-preservation instincts.

Overnight in a place I once worked, a series of  flyers appeared  on almost every vertical surface. I can’t remember the exact words now but they were along the lines of “Imagine how much we could achieve if we cared less who got the credit”. Of course, outrage erupted across the organisation the next morning and various delegations stormed through the new Chief of Staff’s door, demanding he “do something about it!” He responded that he fully intended to otherwise “…it’d be a waste of my time pinning them all up…” There was much gnashing of teeth, tearing of hair and whiny-babying around the coffee machine but he was as good as his word and drove a ‘we, us, ours‘ stake through the ‘I, me, mine‘ heart of that organisation, totally transforming it. Today I still cringe when I hear senior staff launching forth on ‘I, me, mine‘ soap boxes.

One of the fundamentals that feel out of our (←see?) work on COIN doctrine in the last few years is the importance of a well-embedded individual and collective culture and ethos across the organisation. When the heat is on in the real world i.e. on a broader front that purely ‘on operations’, we find that time and again the real driver behind a decision is not the formal consequences for any particular action e.g. the full force of The Law, be it civil, DM 69, UCMJ or other authorities; all the more often the driver behind a decision is the personal ethos of the individual. There are those who ethos will take them down the comfortable expedient path of least resistance; there are others who will take a stand. I think it was in Lucifer’s Hammer that Jerry Pournelle wrote “…the hardest decision is usually the right decision…”

A number of years ago, some rocket scientist decided that Police didn’t need commanders, it needed managers. Fair enough you might think after looking up the Oxford English definition of ‘manage’, and so all Police district commanders became district managers. One day, the hard working Police officers in one such ‘managed’ district decided they had enough evidence to raid a suspected drug operation in the back blocks. To be successful, they needed helicopter support…but…it was getting near the end of the financial year and district managers had been promised a hefty bonus if they ended the year a certain percentage under their budgets.  So “…sorry, lads, can’t approve any choppers for this op…” The ‘lads’ however, being resourceful and highly PO’d with the concepts of management, arranged for a neighbouring district, still flush with $, to provide the necessary helicopter support – apparently there was some greyness regarding district boundaries – so the operation could proceed. It was a massive success and the ensuing media coverage brought out some interesting side stories…needless to say, Police here now have district commanders again…

Every organisation already has an ethos and a culture but they might actually be working against the aims and objectives of the organisation, in the manner that lunghu describes and others. Ethos and culture is a little more than signing off on the corporate code of conduct. At the very least, that code of conduct needs to be relevant to the organisation and practical in its application. It is more than anti-harassment, health and safety, and equal rights. To hit it with a very broad bat, it is ‘doing the right thing‘, standing firm under adversity. While that may mean a great many things to a great many people (including both readers of this blog), knowing where the delineation between personal and organisational interests lies is a good start point.

At Travels with Shiloh, Dean goes (IMHO) a little over the top in his initial comments on Accepting Risk the other day – if only he knew how worried I was that I might not make the grade for Round 1 of the HLS Round Table discussions. I always felt we were pretty much on  a par with each other and one of the reasons I added Travels with Shiloh to my blogroll was that I thought it set a standard for me to aspire to.

Anyway, Dean identifies another weakness in the current US HLS structure: in order to share in the post of federal gold allocation to HLS, many agencies, especially those that are smaller and less-resourced, have to proclaim a disproportionate degree of interest in big picture HLS issues. I’m reminded of the scam perpetrated in The Closer when, in order to keep all the detectives in the team to investigate homicides (real now problem) the team have to take time out to train in various counter-terrorism functions (may be, one day possibility). I’m sure that this was not pure fiction and also that it was not based upon an isolated incident.

I think it was Peter Drucker who said (possibly in On Management) that organisations should stick to their core functions: for example, churches should focus on saving souls and less on social services; the military should focus on ‘winning our wars’ and not upon saving troubled youth from themselves (unless said youth can make it through the recruiting process); lawyers should focus on the law and less on accountancy (might keep a few more of them from going behind bars too!), etc etc. Most of the agencies that make up the vast conglomerate known as HLS are pretty good at their core functions, not perfect perhaps but adequate. One might ask then what value HLS the actual organisation actually offers to either the individual agencies at one end of the scale or overall homeland and national security at the other?

I’m saving Dean’s comments re hope-based decision making for another post as it is  a good point but one which I’d like to tie into some other work.

Curzon on Government

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Lord Curzon of Kedleston as Viceroy of India (wikipedia)

A couple of weeks ago, Coming Anarchy posted this item Curzon’s Dunbar. I had no idea who Curzon was apart from being the nom de plume of one of the Coming Anarchy authors (you can find out more on Wikipedia). We went to my parents’ in Oamaru for Christmas, and Mum had boxed up some books for me to take back as part of her project to declutter the house (project completion date sometime around 2030). As we were flying, I only grabbed a small selection for my check-in bag and one of those was Curzon – End of an Epoch (Leonard Mosley, Readers Union, 1961)

“…His attitude towards the common people was that of a benevolent patrician. He did not even believe that Englishmen, let alone Scotsmen, Welsh, Indians and other lesser breeds, had earned the right to equality with those who had spent their lives and their brains in learning to rule them. To the masses he was fitting himself to control and direct he determined to bring food sufficient for their needs, the opportunity of health and decent lives, and every freedom thery desired except the freedom to rule themselves. To Balfour’s dictum that ‘people only too often prefer self-government to good government’ he had on one reply: ‘More fools they! They should not be encouraged to encompass their own doom’… “

Curzon also voted against a move in the House of Commons to give Members of Parliament a small salary “…it will bring into the House shallow and ambitious careerists bent on making a business of the duties and obligations of Government…” One wonders if this is what eventually led to Pournelle’s Iron Rule of Bureaucracy:

“…in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions…“

Hands up anyone who HASN’T seen any the cancerous application of this rule across national and local government…

But anyway, Curzon’s thoughts on global governance seemed quite topical as we slap a few more billions worth of Band-Aids on Haiti, knowing full well that once the current disaster is cleaned up, it will revert back to type in less than a year; as the number of failing and at-risk states continues to rise; as more and more experiments in self-government flounder in unimaginable debt and growing populations dependencies; as we focus more on the ‘now’ than the future…

One of the topics for discussion in the recent Cheeseburger Gothic discussions on the next iteration of the Axis of Time Birmoverse was how a forewarned timeline might manage post-WW2 colonies, in particular those sitting on resource deposits. I wonder if the Anglosphere (US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, possibly South Africa and Rhodesia) might not have adopted a more ‘involved’ strategy where colonies become ‘territories’ under control? Of course, this is just blatant Imperialism but, when you sit down over a good coffee and think about it, how many of those former colonies are better off under their own rule? I’d suggest that success stories like India, Singapore and Malaysia are very much the exceptions and the Haitis, Zimbabwes, and Myanmars are very much the rule.

Are we getting to the point where aid now comes not so much with conditions but with escalating forms of compulsion and accountability? I asked the same question on To the Stars… but regarding global warming – at what point do protests and sanctions become compulsion for the greater good…? Maybe not so much the global nanny-state but certainly stepping towards benevolent dictatorship…or just do haves unite in self-interest and let the have-nots, specifically the won’t-help-themselves to their own devices. Sooner of later we need to start making some tough calls as no nation can afford to repeatedly bail out those who can not succeed…in other words, let’s start getting real. How real it is to expect that we will be able to do much about small island nations that are slowly disappearing beneath rising waves (regardless of cause)? Build a Waterworld-like wall around them – noting that the original sank anyway…?

Perhaps Curzon was right after all and it is time to start learning from a century of mistakes; however well-intentioned, mistakes nonetheless…is it now time to start developing rulers once more…?

To the stars…

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@ The Geek, John Birmingham lashes the global warming denial crew i.e. the big business that stands to lose so much if unrestrained pollution and reliance on fossils (from under the ground and in office) continues unchecked. Money talks and twice as loud when Al Gore is the leader of the opposition. To paraphrase Barnesm’s comment “…this way of life is unsustainable, but after millions of years of evolution and hundreds of years of science and engineering the best we can come up with is “Ride bicycles everywhere, grow and eat only local vegetarian food and essentially go back to living like we did before the industrial revolution”. This is not how you build a star spanning civilisation…” Barnesm goes on to list some technologies that they think could advance both the global warming cause and that of general civilisation. You’ve got to admit, we have become a bit stagnant and stuck in the rut over the last two to three decades…a little too focussed on the now and not the future…if I was to classify myself (while still able to tell you stuff without self-terminating), it would probably be as more a technological utopiast than a ‘grow more veges’ sort of greenie…

At the Chief of Army’s Seminar at Massey last year (note that the Massey site has a ‘less is less‘ approach to pushing information out – hardly doing its bit to win the information battle) , Dr Adrian Macy, the NZ Ambassador for Climate Change,  spoke on New Zealand’s approach to global warming in the international arena. The question that only popped into my head on the drive home afterwards, and noting that this presentation was at a defence forum, was “At what stage might we need to start considering compelling compliance with global warming accords?” Perhaps the NZDF might consider what part it may play in actively saving the planet… After all, we do only have the one…

Had more to say but it’s a beautiful day outside already so I’ll be back later – off now to flea bomb the house, let the goats and sheep loose on the back garden (fitted, of course, with state of the art methane filters), spray more buttercup, and mow the front lawns…