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Military Adaptation in Complex Operations U.S. Marine with Afghan boy during renovation planning visit at school in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, August 2009 DOD (William Greeson) DOD (William Military Adaptation in Complex Operations BY DAVID W. BARNO he U.S. military today is engaged globally in the most demanding set of combat and stabil- ity tasks seen in over a generation—a host of challenges that have been called complex Toperations. The military faces these challenges side by side with its partners in the diplo- matic and development communities—the Department of State and U.S. Agency for International Lieutenant General David W. Barno, USA (Ret.), is Director of the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University. From October 2003 to May 2005, General Barno served as overall commander of U.S. and coalition military operations in Afghanistan. PRISM 1, no. 1 FEATURES | 27 Development (USAID)—as well as a myriad of the evolving face of conflict and adapt our other interagency and international partners. highly structured military as an institution to Such operations demand integrated whole- complex operations that may be largely at odds of-government approaches to address the vex- with our innate military culture. ing problems of instability, insurgency, terror- ism, and irregular warfare. Unfortunately, these How We Got Where We Are requirements bear scant resemblance to the From soon after World War II until the worldview of military and security experts just end of the Cold War—a period of nearly half 10 years ago. This new set of requirements has a century—the U.S. military was animated by challenged the fundamentals of how the U.S. the specter of global war with the Soviet Union. military operates in the world—from an outlook For land forces, the primary battlefield was seen where some in the past argued, “We don’t do as Western Europe, where the threat was clear windows” to an approach where others today and present: Warsaw Pact armored formations may contend, “We own it all.” Inherent in this lined up along the borders that defined the “Iron Curtain” separating the occupied post- not only did the enemy have a name; it war satellites of the Soviet Union from the free also had observable military formations, states to the west. The danger was obvious: tens of thousands of Warsaw Pact tanks and armored advanced weaponry, and highly vehicles in readiness, thousands of combat air- developed doctrines of battle craft at the ready on airfields, and further to the east, intercontinental ballistic missile fields, tension is the overarching question of the pur- strategic bombers, and the Russian deep sea pose of military forces in a world much different fleet with nuclear-armed ships and submarines. from the 20th century. This threat not only included a visible adversary Do militaries now exist simply to deter of known intentions to energize what would conflict and fight nations’ wars when deterrence become the North Atlantic Treaty Organization fails? Or in an age of transnational terrorism, (NATO) and its defense planning, but also was nonstate actors, and irregular warfare, do larger utterly convincing to the taxpayers of the West purposes obtain? Is our present era truly a gen- who would have to foot the bill for some of the erational spell of “persistent conflict”?1 And if largest peacetime expenditures on defense in so, how does the military leverage its substan- modern memory. tial capacity to contribute effectively to what For the U.S. military during this 50-year has become unalterably a whole-of-government period, war was not hypothetical; the poten- fight? Finally, can the military move beyond the tial for a real war to be fought against a known core of its conventional warfare culture to grasp adversary on clearly defined terrain was ever the deeper security needs of this era and truly present. Moreover, not only did the enemy have deliver on the massive security investment that a name (the Warsaw Pact); it also had observ- it represents in ways relevant to this century? able military formations, advanced weaponry, These challenges are worthy of deep and highly developed doctrines of battle—all debate, and the consequences of error will be of which became the subject of intense study severe. At root, our challenge is to understand among the militaries of the United States and 28 | FEATURES PRISM 1, no. 1 its allies. Predictability and an unusual degree predictability attached to the Soviet threat dove- of certainty—in enemy, location, equipment, tailed well with the Army’s search for its cultural tactics—became an expected norm for mili- footing following its failure in Vietnam’s irregu- tary planning. Uncertainty was reduced to lar war. Refocusing on a major war in Europe nuances of when, where, and how to apply the offered to heal the painful scars of failed coun- “knowns” of doctrine, tactics, and equipment terinsurgency. A new doctrine called AirLand that the Warsaw Pact employed. Complex oper- Battle (ALB) became the conceptual driver of ations were no more than how to best employ the Army during the 1980s, a doctrine explicitly combined arms—infantry, tanks, and artillery developed to conventionally defeat a massive together with airpower—to defeat the Soviets Soviet armored invasion of Western Europe by on the European battlefield.2 attacking all echelons of the invading force in None of this should suggest that the U.S. the close and deep fight simultaneously.3 military in particular saw its NATO mission as With the advent of ALB doctrine, the Army the only potential zone of conflict. During the had found its concept of war. It also pioneered decades of the Cold War, the United States a system of integrating and embedding the ALB intervened with small forces in a number of doctrine into every aspect of the force, driving countries ranging from Lebanon in 1958 to everything from procurement of new equip- Panama in 1989. Major conflicts were also ment to training and leadership development. fought out on the periphery of the Cold War in This system remains deeply ingrained in the Korea (1950–1953) and Vietnam (1960–1973), Army’s institutional culture today. Typically, it is resulting in tens of thousands of casualties. Yet known by the particularly unwieldy acronym of each intervention was in fact viewed by the U.S. DOTLMP–F, which stands for doctrine, organiza- military as an excursion from the most danger- tion, training, leadership, materiel, personnel, and ous fight—an all-out war in central Europe. facilities. This was in many ways a revolutionary In the painful aftermath of failure in approach and went far in rationalizing all efforts Vietnam, irregular warfare and counterinsur- within the Army toward this common target. gency were simply tasks the Army no longer The rigorous, across-the-force application performed—or even thought about. Small-scale of the DOTLMP–F systems approach deeply contingencies were the purview of airborne institutionalized a capacity for large-scale con- troops and a growing force of special operators, ventional war in Europe into every corner of but “real Soldiers” rode to battle in armored Army culture. It not only ensured that the best vehicles—again, a massive reorientation toward weapons systems for conventional war against the central European battlefield. Complex oper- the Soviets got top priority, but it also matched ations involving host-nation forces (beyond them with organizational changes to optimize NATO), police, USAID, or diplomatic person- their performance in battle (a new infantry nel were beyond the ken of the military estab- and armor battalion organization), a rigorous lishment—certainly at the tactical level. self-critical training methodology (including The wars of 2009 and beyond exhibit few massive free-play armored force-on-force laser characteristics in common with the conflicts battles), advanced ranges and training simula- hardwired into the U.S. military’s DNA over the tors for mechanized warfare, and perhaps most last 50 years. The extended period of Cold War importantly, the recruitment and leadership PRISM 1, no. 1 FEATURES | 29 of extraordinarily high quality personnel who today is in a sense operating without a concept were bright, motivated, and superbly trained to of war and is searching desperately for the new make best use of the emerging new concepts “unified field theory” of conflict that will serve and high-tech equipment being fielded. These to organize and drive military doctrine and innovations that grew out of the massive infu- tactics, acquisition and research, training and sion of resources in the 1980s remain the cor- organization, leader development and educa- nerstone of the Army as an institution today. tion, materiel and weaponry, and personnel and Their long-term influence on Army culture and promotion policies in ways that could replace institutional preferences cannot be overstated. the legacy impact that Cold War structures still exert on all facets of the military. Today, no Today’s Conflicts agreed-upon theory of conflict drives all of these Yet conflict today has evolved dramati- critical vectors toward a commonly understood cally from the conventional “big war” environ- paradigm; the result is a profusion of disparate ment of the ALB world of the 1980s. Rather outlooks leading toward the risk of professional than a nation-state adversary armed with con- incoherence. The confidence of civilian leaders ventional military capabilities that very much and the population they serve that our military mirrored our own, today we are dealing with a will continue to prevail in conflicts regardless of world of asymmetrical threats—fighting shad- their complex nature may be in jeopardy. owy adversaries often operating at the murky Some characterize the nature of the nexus of terrorism, transnational crime, and nontraditional threat today as irregular war- illicit global money flows.
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