Producing Victory: Rethinking Conventional Forces in COIN Operations
Sunrise over Baghdad finds a maneuver battalion executing several missions Two platoons are on patrol, one sweeping a main supply route for improvised explosive devices (IEDs) the other escorting "Team Trash" a dump truck and bucket loader through a poor Shi'a neighborhood. A third platoon is still at the brigade detention facility in processing several insurgents captured the previous night, while a fourth escorts the battalion medical platoon for a medical outreach in one of the battalion "s assigned neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the battalion commander and a company commander prepare to attend a neighborhood council meeting; the executive officer updates the agenda for the weekly fusion cell meeting; and the operations officer meets with the district police chief and an Iraqi Army representative to discuss security for an upcoming holiday. Shift change is taking place for both the American platoons and the Iraqi Security Forces guarding the US. forward operating base (FOB) and the American military liaison officer an assistant operations officer accompanies a squad sized Iraqi patrol to clear the FOB's perimeter. The headquarters company commander and the battalion logistician are negotiating a local contract for a crane to help reposition barrier materials in the neighborhood to respond to an emerging threat. The battalion intelligence officer (S2) reads the previous night's patrol reports before meeting his Iraqi counterpart for tea at the FOB's civil military operations center (CMOC) Later in the day, the civil affairs team leader and a company executive officer will join the assistant S2 and a local sheik at the CMOC to discuss the merits of a proposed reconstruction project. Finally, yet another platoon prepares to conduct a precision raid against an insurgent cell after dark, based on intelligence gathered from a walk in informant and confirmed by a local cleric's security chief So begins another day in Baghdad. OUR THESIS IS SIMPLE: The combined arms maneuver battalion, partnering with indigenous security forces and living among the population it secures, should be the basic tactical unit of counterinsurgency (COIN) warfare. Only such a battalion a blending of infantry, armor, engineers, and other branches, each retrained and employed as needed can integrate all arms into full spectrum operations at the tactical level. (1) Smaller conventional forces might develop excellent community relations, but they lack the robust staff and sufficient mass to fully exploit local relationships. Conversely, while brigades and divisions boast expanded analysis and control capabilities, they cannot develop the street level rapport so critical for an effective COIN campaign. Unconventional forces are likewise no panacea because the expansion of Special Operations Command assets or the creation of stability and reconstruction or system administration forces will not result in sustainable COIN strategies. (2) Recent experience in Iraq affirms previously forgotten lessons: "Winning the Peace" requires simultaneous execution along the full spectrum of kinetic and non kinetic operations. (3) While political developments in Iraq and the United States might have moved past the point at which our suggested COIN solution would be optimal, we argue that the maneuver battalion should be the centerpiece of the Army's future COIN campaigns. This paper examines why the maneuver battalion is the premier organization around which to build COIN doctrine, and it identifies current obstacles and future improvements to such a battalion centric strategy. Back to the Future Upon returning from Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) we began to search older works on COIN, hoping to find hints of a larger framework in which to ground our observations. The work we both (independently) found indispensable was Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, a 1964 book by David Galula. Based on his firsthand knowledge of insurgencies in China, Greece, Southeast Asia, and Algeria, Galula derives numerous lessons, several of which reflected our own experiences.