One of the books I am currently reading, How Wars are Won, discusses the need to restructure the Army to better meet the needs of todays battlegrounds. It seems to suggest that overall the Army is still structured for a large direct confrontation with an enemy who fights a regular type of war. As a civilian, and one with limited knowledge of the actuality of the situation, from what I have seen, this seems to be true. The speed and decisiveness with which we took down the regular troops supported by the regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq seems to demonstrate our ability to fight a conventional war, one with established objectives and fronts.

This level of success has not been reflected by our stay-behind force. I am not saying that I think we are losing, or even that we arent doing any good, I am simply saying that perhaps there are other methods that may be more successful in dealing with an enemy who is unwilling to fight a regular war. The book discusses a method in which the Army isnt structured with such a top-heavy hierarchy, one with military brass making frontline decisions. It gives more independance to small unit commanders to make decisions regarding their AO. I believe they called it a Pod system. Basically, a couple of platoon strength units would form a pod, and these pods could assemble quickly to perform an attack, and then disperse, making themselves less of a target.

The way I understand it, each pod, or smaller groups, would have a specific area in which they would operate. They would then A) be less of a target, B)be able to better locate and identify enemy targets. They could coordinate with other pods, whether it be air support or ground troops, and quickly strike a target, then quickly redisperse and look for more targets.

I dont know if this strategy is applicable in the context of our current engagement, particularly with the amount of time needed to make such a fundamental change in the structure of the Army. I was just wondering if perhaps those with a more intimate knowledge of our tactics and strategies would see any disadvantages to our current mode of operation, and perhaps see ways to make it better.

Most of these books are based on what is regarded as proper wars, in which I mean you have a known enemy, a known objective and once you had defeated the enemy the war was over and every thing went back to normal. Since the end of WW2 there have been countless battles with terrorist, you don't have a known enemy, you can't conquerer his territory as he does not have any, they don't wear any uniform and after attacking you will they will just blend in with the local population. Which leaves some one fighting a very long and bloody war with no end in sight. does this remind you of any thing.

Originally Posted by LeEnfield 2

Most of these books are based on what is regarded as proper wars, in which I mean you have a known enemy, a known objective and once you had defeated the enemy the war was over and every thing went back to normal. Since the end of WW2 there have been countless battles with terrorist, you don't have a known enemy, you can't conquerer his territory as he does not have any, they don't wear any uniform and after attacking you will they will just blend in with the local population. Which leaves some one fighting a very long and bloody war with no end in sight. does this remind you of any thing.

Which is why I posed the question I did. HOW do we retool the military to cope with the changing face of warfare, or more aptly called conflict.

You don't, you have to treat each and every one in a different manner You can't always work to a fixed plan on these sort of things. This one of Americas weaknesses that they always want a fixed plan to deal with a problem and this does not always work. The thing is you got to give junior officers far more responsibility to take action and follow it through.

The idea I have had would be to create a new branch of the millitary that is designed specifically for peacekeeping. This branch would be reservists who would be trained much like police and SWAT officers. I imagine many of its NCOs as being active SWAT-type members.

There would be a need to learn a foreign language also with the idea being that in any platoon you have a few people who can communicate at least in a rudimentary fassion anywhere on the globe. So some guys would learn russian, others would learn koran and others farci... not fluently but enough to get by if deployed.

You could then arrange a low-intensity combat situation where the reserve corps beefs up indigenous police and nat'l guard units as the scalpel and the army retains its job as the broad sword.

... you have to treat each and every one in a different manner You can't always work to a fixed plan on these sort of things. This one of Americas weaknesses that they always want a fixed plan to deal with a problem and this does not always work.

I agree with this, there is no quick fix or easy soloution to deal with our modern armies inadequacies against terrorists. However i believe a reorg of modern infantry structure IS long overdue. I know Australia has something new in the works, replacing its 9 man sections with 4 man ones. Where 4 men has a greater advantage in urban combat and recon style tasks etc.. and two 4 man sections can easily combine to form a patrol.

you don't have a known enemy, you can't conquerer his territory as he does not have any, they don't wear any uniform and after attacking you will they will just blend in with the local population. Which leaves some one fighting a very long and bloody war with no end in sight.

This is the bottom line. I doubt there is any way a conventional military force can completely defeat a guerilla style force on their own ground, short of annihilating entire populations.

An ongoing project since about 1997 is "Army After Next", which deals with pretty much all of the issues mentioned above. The Army is changing, and if placed in a historical context, changing rather quickly, even if it does not seem so in our 7 second sound bite world. "AAN" papers and such are spread far and wide over the internet, and most of it is pretty dry and or technical, but its worth a read if you want to know what is going on. Here are a couple of the thousands of links:
http://www.dod.gov/execsec/adr98/army.html

http://cpof.ida.org/PARAMETERS,%20US...umn%201998.htm

http://migrate-anteon.anteon.com/off...ex.aspx?id=502

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/army/...p98/index.html

Originally Posted by Whispering Death

The idea I have had would be to create a new branch of the millitary that is designed specifically for peacekeeping. This branch would be reservists who would be trained much like police and SWAT officers. I imagine many of its NCOs as being active SWAT-type members.

Originally Posted by Whispering Death

There would be a need to learn a foreign language also with the idea being that in any platoon you have a few people who can communicate at least in a rudimentary fassion anywhere on the globe. So some guys would learn russian, others would learn koran and others farci... not fluently but enough to get by if deployed.

You could then arrange a low-intensity combat situation where the reserve corps beefs up indigenous police and nat'l guard units as the scalpel and the army retains its job as the broad sword.

This sounds kind of like the B movie version of US Army Special Forces groups. Their bread and butter mission is FID (forgien internal defense). What that means is they go in, get some good rapport going and help train local militia, military and security forces. Population security is also a mission of theirs, once the local security forces are trained they assist them in suppressing insurgencies and with counter-terror missions. They're also well trained in UW(unconventional warfare) and DA (direct action). All are NCOs and all have been to DLI to learn a target language.

There is also the Army's new Asymmetrical Warfare Group.

Yeah, the idea is similar to what the green berets do but it's less intense and more broad in mission. Like how the green berrets learn 2 or 3 foreign languages fluently a guy in this reserve corps would only need to learn one decently enough to make communication.

Think of this corps more like a middle ground between police officer and soldier. They would be the guys on the street corners of baghdad to respond to looting while the army is smashing insurgent strongholds in Fallujah and stopping foreign fighters on the syrian boarder. They would also have a smaller footprint so you don't have bradley's and M1A2s roaming around the neighborhood.

This corps wouldn't be a long-deployed force either. It's more something that's designed to give a larger force presance, keep the peace, and endear the local populace to our side. I think the idea of having the "nice" americans who keep the peace and the "badass" army that kills insurgents and eats them for breakfast would also help keep the peace instead of forcing hard-nosed grunts to try and be ambassadors one day and trained killers the next.

I see what you mean. Have guys trained in police work, civil affairs, and trained to interact with the local community and culture, all the while still trained to fight and be part of the military structure.

Oh, wait.......