Intel Dump - Relearning war's timeless lessons
By Phillip Carter
"Don't forget nothing."
-- Rogers' Rangers Standing Orders (Major Robert Rogers, 1759)
soc.mil
Dan Baum has an excellent piece titled "Battle Lessons" Message 20933176 in the January 17 New Yorker on the lessons being gathered, compiled, shared and disseminated by junior military officers in the Iraq war. The piece describes the elaborate ways in which tactics, techniques and procedures are being passed from each iteration of Iraq war vets to the next, and how these lessons are being incorporated into Army doctrine. There's a great story to be told here, about how small groups of dedicated officers like Don Vandergriff, Nate Allen and Tony Burgess, seized the initiative to act as change agents and innovators within the Army. (Reminds me of another generation of officers, chronicled by James Kitfield in Prodigal Soldiers.)
Mr. Baum does a good job of telling the story, although I think he overstates the argument against the Army establishment at times. In my opinion, the New Yorker staff does the Army (and the story) a disservice with its subtitle "What the generals don't know". In fact, the generals do know exactly what's going on, and they choose to allocate time and resources to these pursuits because they know how well these learning systems help their units succeed. I do believe that the majority of the fighting in this war is being done at the battalion level and below, and thus, the majority of the salient lessons learned are being gathered by captains, lieutenants and sergeants. Nonetheless, I think these lessons are being fed back into the Army OODA loop, at least at the tactical and operational levels. |
