Credit where credit’s due

Posted on 23 November 2009 by SJPONeill

The Strategist has really made a job of his rethink of that chap Lind’s 4GW idea and come up with a really robust and supportable model that he has called ‘cohorts of war‘. Not to steal any of Peter’s well-deserved thunder, but for purposes of enlightenment a cohort is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as:

an ancient Roman military unit

a band of warriors

persons banded or grouped together, esp. in a common cause

Works for me…I’m not so sure about the links to the Rand papers on swarming that are referred to in some of the comments but will, of course, withhold judgement until I have had a chance to read them…

I do feel though that the Fifth Cohort does need a little more polishing as I think that the key binding relationship is one of profession, guild almost; and that, depending on their structure and motivation, insurgent groups can be fitted comfortably into one of the other cohorts. Still, well done that man, and I hope to see many references back to this model in the next months and years…

Microcosms

Posted on 1 November 2009 by SJPONeill

Chalet in Springtime 002

This was the Chalet on Thursday morning, not much short of idyllic, blue skies, birds singing…what more could you want. On Friday morning, the Chalet was much the same, albeit slightly overcast. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Mountain, it was:

Waiouru in Springtime

This got me thinking about micros…cosms, ecosystems, stuff…it’s about 70km from home to Waiouru. In that distance it’s not unusual to experience three, maybe even four, distinct microclimates ranging from blue skies through rain and sleet to a foot of snow on the ground – I almost drove Little Red on Friday, without the hard top – which, as it turned out, would have been interesting with the broken zip on the back window of the soft top…

Once upon a time, we knew when it was Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn – it was all quite logical and simple – you couldn’t set your watch by the seasons but not far off it – nowadays…who knows? How many of us had to repopulate our vege gardens these year after a false spring disappeared in a flurry of hail and snow not so long ago? What sort of mitigating mechanisms do we develop to get around this growing uncertainty?

My point in this is that we should be getting used to complexity and uncertainty whether it’s the weather, ACC levies, mortgage rates, etc, etc; if we go back far enough (and it probably won’t be that long a trip) in talking with our parents and grandparents, we’ll probably find that this is nothing new – complexity and uncertainty are more likely constants than new phenomena. Could it be that until we got back into actual warfighting (“You’re not in peace support anymore, Dr Ropata!!”again on a large scale, the decades of the Cold War since Vietnam had lulled us all into a nice safe Fulda Gap sense of complacency?

If that is the case, surely the draft Capstone Concept for the US Army needs to be leading far further forward than where we are today? I’m still so disappointed in the draft – if I had the time, I would give it a crack myself – if 20-25 pages is the aim, if 2016-2028 is the game, and Interbella is the tool, then where might we be in 2028? What then will be causing us to lose sleep

The Small Wars Council is linked into my Facebook page and this article from the New York Times this morning’s post really got me going – this opinion and the subsequent comment are setting the scene for a withdrawal from Afghanistan. While I have my own concerns regarding the benefits of any troop surge (the situation is totally different from that addressed by the surge into Iraq) and the lack of detailed campaign strategy, I don’t believe that apathy is a good enough reason to just bail.

Ultimately, if ‘the people’ of Afghanistan are not interested in buying into this war and/or democracy – and there’s not much to suggest that they are – then we are not going to achieve much in tactical-level combat with the Taliban. Maybe we would be better off leaving the ‘government’ of Afghanistan to muddle through on its own and to direct our support to anti-Taliban (or should our focus really be on anti-AQ) elements in Afghanistan, probably at the tribal level…?

Subscribers will have noticed the lack over updates over the past two days. Partly this is due to actually having to do some work but also because I got handed a review copy of the UK’s new Joint Combat Operations Virtual Environment (JCOVE – a bit of an odd name although I have known some Joint coves in my time!)
JCOVE Lynx HMA

I’ve still only scratched the surface of it but was impressed right from the outset at the standard of presentation and development of the package, especially in comparison with the ADF version I got to review a few months ago (which lost me in the first ten minutes with a clumsy interface and lack of situational awareness. JCOVE (it is only the Lite version) is very slick with a comprehensive range of training, single player and multi-player missions plus a decent mission editor. It replicates just about every bit of equipment that the UK might currently bring to a land battle and the only significant omissions so far are any maritime platforms (ships for the uninitiated!) although the promo videos included on the DVD imply a maritime capability, as does the presence of the Lynx HMA.8 above…

I’m very keen to see VBS2 (the underlying game engine) go fully joint as that will add a richness and depth to training that we only dreamed of back in the late 90s when we first started to experiment with off the shelf games to support training…possibly more to follow in a few days when I drill into it in more depth…

Viewing the future through the lens of Interbella

Posted on 29 October 2009 by SJPONeill

My mission yesterday was to review the US Army Capstone Concept (another ACC) and feed some comment back in through the Small Wars Council. I got to page 38 just before 5pm (mercifully the last dozen or so pages are just summaries and glossaries). The ‘mercifully’ comment is probably a clue that I was less than happy with the result – correct. There isn’t very much comment on the Small Wars discussion thread for this document – probably because it is a chore to work through and is somewhat of a disappointment:

It reads as though it has been written by a team of writers who are probably not even in the same part of the country let alone the same building or room. Parts of it are quite disjointed and it does not flow as smoothly as a key capstone publication must – if you actually want anyone to read it. Possibly, hopefully, the publically released draft is an early one and the current draft is more polished and advanced.
Most of the writing is rather verbose and clumsy with overly complex sentences and long, sometimes almost incoherent, paragraphs.
At 55 pages including glossaries, indexes etc, it is too long. All the key concepts are in the first 10-20 pages and I believe you could turn out a good product in no more than 30 pages.
An essential quality for the author of a Future Operating Concept has to be an imagination. After a not too bad start, the draft document reverts to describing current not future scenarios. There is ample open source material available to analysis to get a feel for what a future force for 2016-2028 have to face and then reverse engineer back into the capabilities and qualities that force may need.
It needs a catchy name like the Complex Warfighting, and Adaptive Campaigning developed by the Aussies or even our own Precision Manouevre.

What really gets me is that drafting a futures concept isn’t hard…yeah, sure, you have to think and bit and maybe get out of the square…look at the Australians, it wasn’t even two months ago that they had John Birmingham out to Pucka to chat about what 2020 warfare might look like (which reminds me I must chase that up and see if anyone at FDG took any notes from that session)…even TRADOC which owns the COIN Center had Josh Wineera present the Interbella [link goes to the Powerpoint] model, again no more than a couple of months ago…you need a couple of people with a bit of imagination…I just did a bit of a blogjack and suggested on Cheeseburger Gothic that JB and those who contributed to his future war thread might want to contribute to the US Complexity and Uncertainty document…

We were talking about Interbella [link goes to the article in Colloquium] products yesterday, while Josh chunks away at his broader thesis; specifically a play-book in three parts, targeting strategic, operational and tactical levels, focussed on managing complexity and uncertainty; no more than 25 pages and written in simple practical terms…oh, like a Marine Corps publication, you say? Yep, simple, concise and cuts to the chase…

So on the drive home last night I started to think about what might happen if you applied the Interbella model to the Future Operating Concept that the US Army is developing. Even though, Interbella uses a solar system analogy, it’s not rocket science…it might look like this:

What is the sun, or may be suns, that everything rotates around?
What are the things we know, that we’re pretty sure will stay the same…the planets perhaps?
Toss in some dark matter…things we think are there or that may occur but we just can’t prove it at the moment…
What happens perhaps when some of these factors, possibly innocuous on their own, align?
Consider what might be the rogue comets…things perhaps that may be less likely but most dangerous…911, Pearl Harbor, topping ArchDuke Ferdinand, collapse of the Berlin Wall…
Consider the broad approaches and strategies that might mitigate these factors…

Uh-oh, suddenly, we’re almost there…a fledgling FOC…

The discussion on Jim Gant’s Tribal Engagement Team strategy continues on Steven Pressfield’s blog. I like his comment today regarding the way that Jim Gant has produced this paper…no one asked him or compelled him to write…but by doing so and placing it out there in the webspace, it has attracted a degree and depth of comment and feedback that would be unlikely if it had to worm its way through a formal hierarchical structure…go the Information Militia!! When I think about it, Interbella is another example of the same sort of initiative…someone just got off their bum and did something…

I’m in Waiouru today and it’s snowing quite heavily…if I had remembered the cable for my camera , I would post an image of Waiouru In Springtime!!

London calling….

Posted on 26 September 2009 by SJPONeill

…obviously made it safely to the other side of the world with a painless passage through London Heathrow at 0555 this morning…first thing I need to do is address my my bad from last night and post the link to Josh’s Interbella brief from the other night….and here be the original Interbella paper published in Colloquium in June…[note: in its infinite wisdom, the US Army has taken down the excellent website that was the COIN Center and its journal Colloquium – a great body of work lost…]

Have already developed a healthy dislike for UK roundabouts but other than that have settled into new digs for the next 10 days or so – is quite nice but not a stellar room; the mess is good and the bar looks promising. I expect things will start to warm up once the other contingents arrive tomorrow and Sunday – will be good to catch up with oppos from Aussie and Canada again.

What am I doing here again? It’s this thing called the CLAW which stands for Coalition Lessons Analysis Workshop. What does a CLAW do? Over the next week, reps from the ABCA network review and analyse interoperability-related observations, issues and lessons (aka OIL – yes, it’s all about OIL!) from the last twelve months to identify trends, themes and insights for further work…It’s a pretty good process and has been running since 2005 – it is still the only robust and consistent lessons analysis process which I think really works in evolving OIL into actions required…

Plan A to actually do some real Top Two Inches work in my spare time here is looking pretty good and even having coffee after lunch found a couple of good cues in a couple of magazines for The Thursday-Friday War – they reinforce the idea that success is about being in for the long haul and also of the dangers of allowing old wounds to fester.

In the UK papers today, there is a new spin on the UK MP Troughgate scandal as it has now been linked to the UK Government’s unwillingness to invest in decent kit for its soldiers in Afghanistan – even more embarrassing when it comes out that soldiers have been moonlighting as security guards in the very office responsible for censoring the files on MPs’ accounts and it was apparently their comments over smoko that led to the original leak. This topic takes up the first five pages in one of today’s papers and is in stark contrast to the big front page write up in the DomPost last week or the week before on all the new personal soldier equipment our Government has just invested in…

While YOU were sleeping…

Posted on 25 September 2009 by SJPONeill

Amir stirred at his post and sat up…he always hated this last stint before Salatu-l-Fajr…with the Americans, bad things always seemed to happen when it was dark. All the faith in the kingdom couldn’t overcome their cursed technology.

A faint rumbling filtered through the mist. Probably the brothers in the next valley getting a bounding from NATO aircraft again – he hated the German Tornados with their time-expired MW-1s that scattered a deadly rain over the fields for a kilometre or more. A intermittent groaning rose through the rumbling – it sounded nearer. That, whatever that was, wasn’t in another valley, it was here!

He should wake the others but what would he say? What if it were only the wind – they would laugh at him and make him do more sentries, like the time he had mistaken chickens for soldiers crawling towards their position. He squinted thought he could make out a dim shape, or was it just a shadow? There, again!

A squat shape emerged from the mist, carrying the distinctive H antenna of the New Zealanders. Had they deployed a new secret weapon? Over the sandy camouflage, he could barely make out a word stencilled on the hull: What in Allah’s name was Interbella? A head that could have come off a Roman coin 2000 years ago emerged from a hatch. The devil El Josh! He had heard whispers of this wily foe from the elders but it looked like that day had come….

The Kiwis had deployed their Think Tank…

In a war of ideas and ideologies you have to come to the party armed. There is also no monopoly on good ideas and the US Army in particular has realised this. As a result it was a Kiwi conducting an online presentation to a COIN Center audience at 0300 this morning…the topic? An alternative method of considering issues and influences in the complex environment we now live in…

It’s name? Interbella…

And now the embarrassing bit – I’m in Singapore at the moment and have just realised that I brought the wrong flash drive with me so don’t have a copy of the presentation to post here – will fix this as soon as I can get a new copy sent up…

Normal services have been restored

Posted on 21 September 2009 by SJPONeill

Well, laughter MIGHT be the best medicine but that’s the last time I’ll try to laugh off a virus!! I’ve pretty well been on my back since 9 September and only really felt human again yesterday – and this from someone who normally fills up with Panadol and Dispirin, has a crappy night and bounces back in the morning…so if anyone tells you that this swine flu thing is just another ploy by the big pharmaceuticals, please give them a poke in the eye with lots of love from me…

So what’s been happening in my world in the fortnight or so since transmission was so rudely cut-off? The mancave has proven stable on its piles but roofing will have to wait til I get back from the UK next month: just shifting the roofing iron down from the top of the house drive to the site put me on my back gain last week – so much for trying to get out and about in the fresh air. Replaced the spouting along one side of the guest house today and felt quite sprightly about it so am really hoping the bug is gone for good – has been a great day for that sort of thing – looks like the weather is about to go down the gurgler tomorrow but that’ll allow for a decent systems test of the new fittings. And the spurt of water from the downpipe when we ripped away the rusting spouting is a good sign re the water levels in the tank – especially leading into spring and summer when tank levels can become kinda problematic.

The UK…really had hoped that the virus might have been my way out of this trip but couldn’t bring myself to BS the doc on Thursday when she cleared me to travel pending another 3-4 restful days…so while the lessons workshop will be professionally enlightening and possibly even challenging, the travel plan means I get to miss both the Interbella presentation at Ft Leavenworth on Thursday morning Kiwi time and tDavid Kilcullen’s presentation in Wellington next month. Still such is life and hopefully (not for the lack of pleading and hint-dropping on my part) both will be recorded for enjoyment at a later date.

And on the topic of flu, avian this time not swine, what is it that possesses chickens? We have 7 (down from 10) chicken who have 1.1 hectares over which to free range at the moment. If Darwin was right, then the nature of the surviving 7 is a real insight into why ‘birdbrain’ is quite definitely an insult of the highest order…all this space over which to roam, chock full of seeds and bugs and other chicken delights and the Death Wish Chickens (DWC) would rather stray on this side of the fence where the canine forces of darkness roam…if nothing else, I don’t think we have to fear global takeover from chickens anytime soon…

We watched The Rock (Dwyane Wassissname)’s version of Walking Tall on telly the other night. I have to ask myself why would you bother? The original story is so much better, if you have to remake it as a platform for some up-and-comer, why not just remake it? Like the old folk are always saying, if it ain’t broke, it don’t need no fixin’ – how to take a great true story and degrade it into a crappy beat’em up in an hour and a half – anyone who is interested should Google for Buford Pusser and read up on the real Walking Tall story…it’s worth it…

I really struggle with this predilection so many have with taking something old and trying to make it better for the modern day and just so totally dropping the ball on it…the original The Four Feathers is a true classic, even in grainy black and white, the triumph of a man over his environment and himself – does he need a trusty native helper? No! So why bother…newer is NOT always better and 9 time out of ten, I’d probably go for the source, the original…

The superficiality of many modern productions seems to echo the lack of deep thought we see so often in other areas – just skim the surface and hope she’ll be right – so ironic when in the 30s, 40s and 50s when so many of the classics were produced, life actually was pretty simple. Now we up to our ears in complexity and our main philosophical approach to it is the embrace blandness….

In terms of the rare one in ten, I would have to rated the ‘re-imagined’ Battlestar Galactica as a plus plus success, not so much a replacement for but a great complement to the original 70s series – Lorne Greene will always be the best Adama (probably all that experience with wagon trains and Indians from Bonanza) whereas Edward James Olmos, while very gritty, is still the small team leader, Castillo, from Miami Vice…

Unlike the original which left fans hanging for decades (the less said about the second season the better), this story does come to a definite conclusion. What it is you will have to sit through Series 4 to find out – and the preceding series – otherwise it will make little or no sense so no cheating sneak peeks – it does mean though that I will have to go back to the drawing board for a back story for my epic as other writers keep beating me to the draw on getting my ideas out in the open; really just a case of great minds….I have a new spark that I hope to flesh out while overseas, probably in some dodgy 600 year old pub where my muse will appear through the bottom of a pint (or a number of them)…

Having now restored normal services, the plan is to keep up daily updates using the combination of Blackberry email to blog tools once we go wheels up on Wednesday…