Bluesman

If you understand everything that was written in this post, you'll understand our world much better than you did before. If you do NOT get what this guy is saying, you're not going to understand current events.

Military professionals, this guy has something important he wants to say to us. I believe there are key concepts here that make us better in our work if we accept and understand them.

Read it all, for enjoyment and growth.

__________________
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
- George Orwell

glyn

__________________
Semper in excretum. Solum profunda variat.

svs

Great article.

zraver

First off let me state I get the need to stay one step ahead of the enemy and never surrender the freedom of action and initiative.

Now on to the unabashed air force rules ground force drools (with the snide comments about ground commanders meant to look like compliments) hit piece.


So Pope John re-invented the wheel. Guess what See-decide-attack~ Hartman 352 confirmed kills

Patton designed the armor patch in WW1 tracks for mobility, cannon for firepower, and lightning bolts for the shock those two induce when situations like Cambrai, Cobra, Barbarrossa, and Desert Storm demonstrate when tanks are used effectively.

MacArthur at Inchon, Patton in North Africa, Ike at Bastonge, Swarchzkopf in 91 so on and so forth Army commanders no the need to be the one shaping the battlefield- not being shaped by it.

I dare say the Army and America owes more to the legacy of Abrams and his ideas than to a fighter jock- any fighter jock. So the USAF forgot about need for dogfighting skills before Vietnam. The Army on the other hand never forget the need for agility. Even when LBJ was micro-managing the war from Washington via a crony Westmorland the Army itself was using vertical envelopment, fire, communications, and logistics to win every fight they fought and every fight they were allowed to fight. An army geared for combat in Europe went to the jungle and won militarily.

Shek

Sorry Blues, but I wasn't that impressed with the article. I think that Boyd is an interesting character that at some point I will look into more, but he tends to be placed upon a shrine by many 4GW folks, which makes me wary to an extent.

He totally gets Franks wrong - Franks plan was to create FOBs around Baghdad and then use targeted raids to complete regime collapse. It was 3ID and the division (MG Blount) and brigade (COL Perkins) commanders that pushed the idea of the Thunder Run to the Republican Palace up the chain. Additionally, the Israeli experience among others had demonstrated that armored assaults were effective in urban terrain and that it wasn't quite the bogeyman that this article makes it out to be.

Next, his Stryker rant is ridiculous. The information is out and has been out there about the slat armor. In fact, if he had been a member of WAB, he would have known this a long time ago.

He misses the boat about Afghanistan. The success of the SOF in toppling the Taliban regime is certainly striking, but to not mention the Northern Alliance and extensive use of proxies is remiss (although probably not a suprise since I suspect his concentration is more on air power). Without the Northern Alliance, there wouldn't have been success by SOF only.

Lastly, it misattributes the success of the Anbar Awakening. The Anbar Awakening didn't come about because of GEN Petraeus. The groundwork was laid in late 2005 by 3/6 Marines out in Al Qaim and culminated with 1/1 AD in Ramadi in late 2006. Far from requiring swordlessness, it required a lot of sword to demonstrate that the Marines were a stronger tribe than AQIZ. In essence, it combine using the sword and swordlessness to achieve the desired tactical and operational success. Where GEN Petreus comes in is in taking this out of Anbar and using it as part of a coherent, nationwide COIN campaign.

So, while the rant touches on some interesting topics that could be explored to a more fruitful outcome, other than being a feel good piece that grossly simplifies a lot of things, I don't give it high marks.

__________________
"So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

zraver

On a side note- if the article was not so unabashedly pro-airpower it would be a textbook Mike Sparks piece.

Gun Grape

Ouch!!! Sparks is a Boyd fan. And keeps talking about the "Spinney death spiral" You may not be so far from the truth with your statement.

If this guy had only mentioned Gavins


Boyd was a good learning tool in the 80s when trying to describe the purpose behind Air Land Battle and Maneuver warfare.

Not much of an article

Blademaster

Ok I read the piece and can't really say anything about it except that I learned a few things. However I do not agree with his conclusions. Looking at the comments and how the author treat the comments that doesn't agree with him, he is falling into the same trap that he accuses others of falling into.

I have to say one thing: Bill Whittle sure sounds a like like Bluesman. Perhaps they know each other?

Bluesman

Sorry y'all didn't get out of it the same things I did. Couple points:
He didn't miss anything about the Northern Alliance. SWORDLESSNESS. He got it.
It wasn't any kind of a hit piece. It was HONEST.
And the old guys y'all mentioned that you credit as being the harbingers of Boyd would've been schooled by the guys that learned what he wanted to teach 'em, and then went on to spank the students of the OLD method.

Bluesman

Nah. Don't know him. Was that a weak backhand there?

Bluesman

Never read anything BY Sparks, but read a bunch ABOUT Sparks. Seems like a total tool. But if he 'gets' Boyd, he may at least have stolen a march on the crew up in here.

And I rate that as a GREAT article.

Blademaster

Nope, just noticing similar thoughts and attitude towards warfare and yes incidentally on how to approach opposing views. Yes I am being blunt.

Bluesman

Me, too. It's all good, friend.

Shek

Blues,

If you search the article, there is nothing about the Northern Alliance. And if you reread it, SWORDLESSNESS as he defines it doesn't describe the Northern Alliance at all. However, I think this example among many is emblematic of the piece. Some good insights (although many are recycled) coupled with either no context, poor context, or just the wrong context.

In the case of Afghanistan, the take away based on his piece is that SOF coupled with precision airstrikes can topple a regime. This is an air power friendly conclusion, and one that is greatly misleading. Without the Northern Alliance working as a proxy side by side, you wouldn't have seen the toppling of the Taliban in such short order with such a relatively smooth transition to local power. To not mention this, whether an error of omission or comission, is just plain dangerous.

Now, back to SWORDLESSNESS. I could have gained the exact same insight by reading Sun Tzu, but without faulty context clouding the point. In the time it took to read this piece, I could have re-read Sun Tzu, and I would have gotten to SWORDLESSNESS while this piece was still talking about desert.

In the end, the piece's context in trying to apply Boyd's insight is too distracting.

Shek

There was a point in the article where I was beginning to wonder if it was a Mike Sparks or Mike Sparks inspired piece, but the lack of a clue about the slat armor on the Stryker (no longer open for criticism since the M113s use the same slat design!) provided confirmation that it wasn't him. Having not read any of the author's other writings, I don't know if I'd go so far as to make it out as an extreme pro-airpower, although it certainly comes through a lens of airpower. I think the most likely reason for the slant is that the author simply isn't knowledgeable about ground power - anybody that throws accolades on GEN Tommy Franks like this piece did just isn't read into OIF.