Archive for the 'Marine Corps' Category

U.S. Marine Cpl. Brian Knight, of Cincinnati, Ohio, with the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, 1st Battalion 5th Marines, pauses briefly in the heat to rest with his heavy pack filled with mortar equipment, ammunition, food, and water in the Nawa district in Afghanistan’s Helmand province Saturday, July 4, 2009.

This Marine is carrying his backpack filled with food, hydration system, clothing, etc., and is also carrying ammunition, weapon, body armor, and other equipment.  He is likely going “across the line” at 120 to 130 pounds.  He is suffering in heat and with heavy battle space weight.  For weight lifters like me, let’s put this in terms we can understand.  This is like putting three York 45 pound plates in a backpack and humping it for ten or fifteen miles in 100+ degree Fahrenheit weather.

Battle space weight is a recurring theme at The Captain’s Journal, and will remain so.  Money should be devoted to the weight reduction of SAPI plates in body armor and other low and even high hanging fruit.  The weight of water is decided by God and cannot be altered.

Another salient point bears down on us.  This is why women are not allowed in Marine infantry (or Army Special Forces), and why women suffered an inordinately high number of lower extremity injuries (leading to ineffective Russian units) when they deployed with the Russian Army in their losing campaign in Afghanistan.  Just like God decides the weight of water, He also decides the physiques of men and women.

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The Huffington Post links our Operation Khanjar category in their coverage of the most recent Marine Corps operations in the Helmand Province, as well they should.  We have extensively covered, analyzed and commented on the campaign in Afghanistan for several years now, including detailed coverage of Marine Corps operations in Garmser and Now Zad for about a year (and beginning with reports that couldn’t be found in the MSM).

One Twitter post is interesting: “It is cool that the new Afghan operation is named “Khanjar“, an Arabic word. Anyone else think this will drive the right-wing media crazy??”  Drive the right-wing media crazy as it did with Operation Al Fajr, or Operation Alljah?  Seriously?  Does anyone know any media analyst or reporter, right or left wing, who is driven crazy by the names of operations?

But continuing with our main point, the commenters extend the love to the U.S. Marines.

I’ve said before that our combat Marines are doing a job that 99.99% of us are either unwilling or incapable of doing ourselves. They’re doing a great job and I hope their mission is successful …

Get some, Marines!  I wish I could be there with you …

Hooah! …

Maybe, finally my friends and neighbors will rest in peace …

There are a few dubious comments too.  But another Huffington Post article early in 2008 (linking the LA Times) cited Marine Major General Gaskin saying that the gains in Anbar were permanent.  Essentially, mission accomplished.  No comments, except one asking if we were “Tired of the NeoCons getting away with their crimes?”

Some of this love would have been nice in 2004 – 2008 when more than 1000 Marines perished in the Anbar Province of Iraq.  Ah, but that wasn’t Obama’s war, was it?

As for Obama’s war, Jules Crittenden has linked and commented on a Washington Post article that is stunning in its revelation about how the Obama administration sees this and similar Afghanistan operations.

During the briefing, (Brig. Gen. Lawrence) Nicholson had told Jones that he was “a little light,” more than hinting that he could use more forces, probably thousands more. “We don’t have enough force to go everywhere,” Nicholson said.

But Jones recalled how Obama had initially decided to deploy additional forces this year. “At a table much like this,” Jones said, referring to the polished wood table in the White House Situation Room, “the president’s principals met and agreed to recommend 17,000 more troops for Afghanistan.” The principals — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; Gates; Mullen; and the director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair — made this recommendation in February during the first full month of the Obama administration. The president approved the deployments, which included Nicholson’s Marines.

Soon after that, Jones said, the principals told the president, “oops,” we need an additional 4,000 to help train the Afghan army.

“They then said, ‘If you do all that, we think we can turn this around,’ ” Jones said, reminding the Marines here that the president had quickly approved and publicly announced the additional 4,000.

Now suppose you’re the president, Jones told them, and the requests come into the White House for yet more force. How do you think Obama might look at this? Jones asked, casting his eyes around the colonels. How do you think he might feel?

Jones let the question hang in the air-conditioned, fluorescent-lighted room. Nicholson and the colonels said nothing.

Well, Jones went on, after all those additional troops, 17,000 plus 4,000 more, if there were new requests for force now, the president would quite likely have “a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment.” Everyone in the room caught the phonetic reference to WTF — which in the military and elsewhere means “What the [expletive]?”

Nicholson and his colonels — all or nearly all veterans of Iraq — seemed to blanch at the unambiguous message that this might be all the troops they were going to get.

So much for the love from the Huffington Post to the Marines – they only love them sometimes.  And it appears that Obama doesn’t share the same love, at least in terms of supplying them with troops … even if they ask for more.

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Prior to launch of the operation:

U.S. Marines from 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, RCT 2nd Battalion 8th Marines Echo Co. run to a new position as they take enemy fire during the start of Operation Khanjari on July 2, 2009 in Main Poshteh, Afghanistan.

About 4000 U.S. Marines have been unleashed from Camp Leatherneck into the Helmand Province, Afghanistan.  The Marines have been in the Helmand Province, home of the indigenous insurgency, for more than a year, in both the districts of Garmser and Now Zad.  But Operation Khanjar – “strike of the sword” – is the largest one time systematic deployment of U.S. Marines since Vietnam.

There are various (perhaps slightly conflicting) narratives.  On the one hand, “Our focus is not the Taliban,” Nicholson told his officers. “Our focus must be on getting this government back up on its feet.”  But it will be a long, long time before the Afghanistan government is on its feet and relatively free of corruption, and perhaps even longer before the Afghan National Army is not deeply affected by drug use and addiction, even during patrols and other operations.  It is also believed that at the battle of Bari Alai the Afghan Army was treacherous in their behavior, even colluding with Taliban fighters to kill help U.S. troops.

It has also been said of the new operations that “the measure of success will not be enemy killed. It will be shielding the Afghan population from violence.”  But population-centric counterinsurgency suffers from a singular focus rather than allowing many different focii in the campaign, including killing the enemy.

Fortunately, we have the words of Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson to help us wade through the various narratives.

Our job is to get in there and get it back [from the Taliban] … We don’t want to give the enemy one second to think about what he’s going to do. Because we’re going to be pushing so goddamn hard on the enemy. Our job is to go in there and make contact with the enemy — find the enemy, make contact with the enemy and then we’ll hold on. This is an enemy that’s used to having small-scale attacks and having the coalition pull back. There is no pullback. We will stay on him, and we will ride him until he’s either dead or surrenders …

There’s a hell of a lot of IEDs out there. As we get in there, we’re going to get a better feel for who these people are who are putting them out. We’re going to work the networks. And we’re going to kill the guys that have a chance to go out there and lay them …

We’ll kill and capture a hell of a lot of enemy over these next couple of weeks, I’m confident of that. And I hope the enemy does try to go chest-to-chest with you. It would be a hell of a big mistake …

Good.  The Marines come from their experience in the Anbar Province, Iraq.  Stay out of their way, don’t burden them with excessive red tape, provide them with logistics, and just sit and watch.  The story is about to get interesting.

We have been covering and analyzing U.S. Marine Corps operations in Now Zad, Afghanistan, for nine months, ever since our friend Major Cliff Gilmore (USMC) sent us a direct and unpublished report on his visit to Now Zad.  Three months ago we observed that Now Zad was abandoned, and questioned the strategic significance of holding it.  More than two months ago we got our answer: the Marines were working to shape the battle space by moving insurgents into disposable positions.

Insurgents are there even though the population isn’t.  There is major combat action in Now Zad as demonstrated by this video.  We discussed the fact that there aren’t enough troops to clear and hold, and as it turns out, Now Zad was being used as a place for R&R for insurgents.  Now this AP video gives us an even clearer description of the need for additional Marines.

This is simply remarkable.  Much of the time conducting counterinsurgency is devoted to extracting and isolating the insurgents from the population and protecting the population from violence from insurgents.  It is costly, requires patience, and is very expensive and inefficient.  But every once in a while the insurgents do us a favor and isolate themselves from the population.  These are the instances for which we pray.

Yet when the 2/7 Marines deployed to Now Zad in the spring only to find no noncombatants, it was as if an apology was necessary.  “They saw what they wanted to achieve but didn’t realize fully what it would take,” Task Force 2/7’s commander, Lt. Col. Richard Hall, said at the time. “There were no intel pictures where we are now because there were few or no coalition forces in the areas where we operate. They didn’t know what was out there. It was an innocent mistake.”

Mistake or not, the Marines hit a gold mine, with the possibility for significantly increased productivity in kinetic operations and kill ratio as compared to the alternative.  But while Now Zad is important enough to take, it isn’t important enough to hold significant portions or even kill all of the insurgents in the AO.  Why wouldn’t more Marines be deployed to the area to kill insurgents before they return to their own area of operations to wreak havoc?

Enter population-centric counterinsurgency doctrine.  Rather than seeing protection of the population as one potential line of operation or line of effort in the campaign, it is the sole focus of the campaign.  Rather than killing insurgents, we hear a constant parroting of the meme that for every insurgent we kill, greater than or equal to one insurgent pops up in his place (we’ll call this the dilemma).

Obviously we cannot deny that in some instances the dilemma presents itself, because denying it would be doctrinal stubbornness and inflexibility.  But also just as obviously, this does not obtain in every situation.  There were a huge number of indigenous insurgents killed in the Anbar Province, and if greater than one replaced every dead insurgent, the campaign wouldn’t be over.  While Captain Travis Patriquin was courting the tribes in Anbar, U.S. forces were targeting his smuggling lines by killing smugglers and shutting down his means of transit with kinetic operations.  In some cases, it would seem, nothing is a better inducement to negotiate than seeing dead friends and family members.

But the proponents of population-centric counterinsurgency doctrine, i.e., those who proclaim that it should be the sole focus of the campaign, have been so effective that the U.S. Marine Corps is apologizing for being deployed in an area of operations where they can kill the enemy unimpeded, and then refusing to deploy more Marines there because the population cannot be protected.

In fact, nothing would lead to better protection of the population than killing insurgents who will later go back to their area of operations and kill, maim, extort and threaten their own countrymen.  But our population-centric COIN experts are so blinded by ideological commitment to a set of axioms that they cannot see the value of kinetics even when the insurgents give us the option of doing it without even so much as a single noncombatant loss.

Doctrinal stubbornness and inflexibility.  It might just be our undoing.

Friend of The Captain’s Journal Colonel Gian Gentile is well known for his arguments that the traditional warfighting skills should not be allowed to atrophy.  He strikes back at those who simplistically claim that this means turning the clock back a quarter century or more.

Arguing for rebuilding the Army’s capacity for conventional operations does not mean taking the Service back to 1986 in order to recreate the old Soviet Union so we can prepare to fight World War II all over again in the Fulda Gap. Such accusations have become the standard—and wrongheaded—critique that purveyors of counterinsurgency dogma like to throw at anybody who argues for a renewed focus on conventional capabilities. The Army does need to transform from its antiquated Cold War structure toward one that can deal with the security challenges of the new millennium and one focused primarily on fighting as its core competency (italics mine).

U.S. Marine Corps Commandant Conway apparently agrees, at least as it pertains to skills he sees being at risk to atrophy.

The Marine Corps hopes to give Marines 14 months at home after deployments by mid-2010, Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway said Thursday.

Currently, Marines spend seven months deployed and seven months home, but that could change now that the Corps has grown to 202,000 ahead of schedule, and with almost all Marines expected to leave Iraq next spring, Conway said.

“That’s going to be very helpful, we think, for our families,” he said. “We think that young Marines who maybe haven’t had a chance to meet someone are going to be afforded that opportunity.”

Marines will also use that extra time to train for amphibious landings and to fight conventional wars, two types of skill-sets that have deteriorated as the Corps has focused on counterinsurgency, he said.

“We believe very strongly in this capacity of the Marine Air Ground Task Force,” Conway said. Its core competency is maneuvering under its own fires and rolling up on an enemy just as the smoke lifts. We used to do 10 of those [exercises] a year at Twentynine Palms. Today we do none.”

The importance of Marines getting back to their traditional warfighting skills is underscored by current tensions on the Korean peninsula, he said.

If a conflict broke out, Marines would likely be called upon to launch amphibious operations, he said.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates implied in April that amphibious landings might be a thing of the past, noting that the Corps’ last major landing was in 1950.

Asked about Gates’ comments later that month, Conway said the Corps had launched amphibious operations since then, most notably when Marines helped to evacuate U.S. citizens from Lebanon in 2006.

Conway quickly added Thursday that the Corps would be able to do the job eventually.

“But I’m simply arguing we can do it better when we’re trained to it, and that’s the value of this 1:2 deployment to dwell: to give us the opportunity to give those young Marines more time with the families and more time to, again, relax at home, but also to get on these training fields and get back some of these core competencies that have withered over time,” he said.

Analysis & Commentary

It’s very difficult to imagine a near-peer or even a nuclear-armed state (whether near-peer or not) settling for massive human casualties in a conventional war without invoking the nuclear option (which is not quite the same thing as saying that it’s hard to imagine a conventional campaign in the future).  Contrary to what many think, the best use for nuclear weapons is not using them – it is in creating a situation in which they don’t have to be used.

There is also no question that while counterinsurgency involves the application of soft power, it also includes quite conventional warfighting skills at times (as these two videos show).  We have discussed the Taliban tactic of massing troops against smaller units of U.S. forces, up to and including half-Battalion size engagements.  The lessons learned from one such engagement with a Marine Force Recon company was to remember the tactics taught in School of Infantry, because they will be used in such fights.

Involvement in counterinsurgency campaigns has brought U.S. forces to the point of being the most combat experienced fighters on earth, contrary to the example of the appalling performance turned in by the Russian troops against the Georgian Army (an Army, by the way, which had come back from Iraq with recent experience).

It is also very difficult to imagine that the Marine Corps will ever launch another large scale amphibious assault involving high numbers of casualties.  Other ways will be found – and should be found – leading us to recommend replacement of the EFV and the notion of sea-based assault with more air power and delivery aboard Amphibious Assault Docks.

Either way, talk of amphibious assaults clouds the main point, and it is one on which both Colonel Gentile and the Commandant have settled.  We must not let our warfighting skills atrophy.  With the Commandant, The Captain’s Journal also believes very strongly in the concept of the Air Ground Task Force, as well as teaching all Marines to perform squad rushes and other conventional tactics as well as the room clearing and constabulary operations more focused on counterinsurgency.

Quite obviously, if the Marines are not performing these field exercies and maneuvers, then it’s high time to get back to them.  This is equally true for the Army.  One need not posit the near-peer conflict in order to see the usefulness of warfighting skills if these very tactics are being used in the counterinsurgency campaigns in which we are now engaged.

Given the obvious importance of the ring road to our campaign in Afghanistan, it’s good to see the U.S. Marines engaging the local Afghans in activity that will both keep them away from the Taliban and help them earn some of their own money.

Next is a video of combat action in and around Now Zad.  There is some dumb propaganda at the beginning based on a bad rendering of Psalm 23.  Rightly understood, the Marines should fear no evil because our lives and times are in God’s hands.  A good antidote to this poor rendering of Psalm 23 can be found here.  That said, this video shows a useful contrast to the softer side of counterinsurgency found in the first video.

CSM on the insurgency in Southern Afghanistan.

US and Afghan security officials say that in Afghanistan’s eastern provinces, border police training has been going on for much longer.

“We’ve only been focusing on the border police in the south for nine months,” says Hix. Until now, the focus in Afghanistan’s violent south has been on building the region’s district police forces, and “there just weren’t enough resources to train the border police,” he explains.

It took longer to begin training programs for border patrol officers in the south, because the fight here is viewed by US military commanders as less of a commuter’s war. Kandahar is the birthplace of the Taliban movement, and, unlike the northern and eastern regions of Afghanistan, homegrown insurgents are plentiful.

“In the east, they have a much bigger Pakistan problem than we do,” says Hix, referring to Pakistan’s tribal areas across the border. where militants enjoy safe haven and can enter Afghanistan freely. “Down here, a lot of the enemy is local. In the south, the enemy is enabled by forces in Pakistan, not dependent on Pakistan.”

As for corruption, he says that “there will always be smuggling. Always has been, always will be, as there is in every country in the world. But coalition monitors tell me that pilferage here is less than the percentage of pilferage that has been documented at some Western ports of entry.”

Afghan security officials understand all too well the problems facing the ABP.

“I believe in the border police’s efforts, and I believe they’re capable,” says Brig. Gen. Shermohammed Zazi, who commands the Afghan National Army’s 205 Corps in Kandahar. “But they don’t have enough personnel to cover a 1,000-plus kilometer border, and they don’t have proper equipment.”

And of course, the border has two sides. Some ABP officials complain that their Pakistani counterparts, though better funded, are less effective than the Afghans are.

Still, resources for the border police on the Afghan side are what most concern coalition forces here.

In southern Afghanistan, district-level police number between 6,000 and 7,000, about twice the size of the border patrol. Money for the ABP comes out of the larger police budget, making it difficult to gauge the exact cost of the program. Hix has promised to provide Hakim with up-armored Humvees and other equipment once it becomes available.

The six-week training currently offered by the coalition is less about police work and more about how to survive contact with insurgents. Unlike district police, the border guards operate in small units on far-flung outposts, with little backup.

It’s a dangerous job, and the training includes an emergency medical care component to help stem casualties.

While Afghan and US security officials are optimistic about the program, the ABP has a long way to go.

“Here,” says Hix, “hope is in degrees.”

In the Northern and Eastern reaches of Afghanistan we are fighting the Tehrik-i-Taliban and the Haqqani network of fighters, both of whom find safe haven in Pakistan.  But it’s important to remember that the Afgan Taliban have their leaders and headquarters just across the Pakistan border in Quetta.  200 Afghan Border Police cannot possibly hope to accomplish this mission.  But there is hope on the way.

Some 7,000 new U.S. troops ordered to Afghanistan by President Barack Obama are fanning out across the country’s dangerous south on a mission to defeat an increasingly violent Taliban insurgency.

Marine spokesman 1st Lt. Abe Sipe says 7,000 troops from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade are now in the country. The brigade is based at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

The Marines represent the first wave of 21,000 troops ordered to Afghanistan this summer. Most of the buildup will take place in Helmand and Kandahar.

The two southern provinces lie at the heart of the insurgency and are close to the border with Pakistan, where the Taliban’s top leadership is believed to be based.

The lot appears to be cast for the U.S. Marines.  While Army, Army SOF and the CIA are taking on the border regions with Northern Pakistan, the Marines have been assigned to the indigenous insurgency in the South.

This is what’s called close air support (CAS).  Warning: graphic language.

From Government Executive:

The Marine Corps is pursuing a number of initiatives to give its units more fire support and more mobility to meet operational demands, with one near-term project being a less-sophisticated version of the Air Force’s powerful AC-130 gunship, Gen. James Conway said on Friday.

The Marine Corps commandant said the service is working on a longer-term proposal to use the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships to provide high-volume fire support for Marine forces ashore. In addition, Marines are looking to modify their Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected vehicles to enable them to operate in Afghanistan’s rugged terrain, Conway told a Center for Strategic and International Studies forum.

Conway said the Marines “have lusted for years” over the AC-130’s capability but could not afford the sophisticated Air Force gunships. Instead, they are taking advantage of their KC-130J transport-tankers in a program called “Harvest Hawk,” he said. It consists of a “roll-on, roll-off package” that can be installed in hours and gives the KC-130s the ability to fire a 30mm rapid-fire gun and Hellfire missiles in support of ground forces, Conway said. “I think you’re going to see one in [Afghanistan] before the end of the calendar year.”

A Marine spokesman said later that “this is not intended to be a gunship” but a response to an urgent need of Marines in Afghanistan who want persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities. “The ISR is the priority, but we also want the capability to use some weapons against targets we can see,” the spokesman said.

The commandant said he has an agreement with Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations, to examine use of a “box of rockets” that could be installed on an LCS to provide fire support for Marines ashore. It could replace the capabilities the Marines expected from the Advanced Gun System developed for the DDG-1000 destroyer, whose production is being stopped at three ships.

LCS is designed to accept a variety of “mission packages,” which include weapons, sensors, controls and operators that enable a ship to perform a variety of combat assignments. A Marine fire-support package was not one of the three original missions developed for LCS but has been discussed recently.

One proposal has been to use the non-line-of-sight launch system being developed as part of the Army’s Future Combat Systems. But that system does not have the range the Marines would need, Conway said. Systems that would have the range could not provide the volume of fire needed, he added. He did not provide any indication of when a satisfactory system could be available.

Commentary & Analysis

The Commandant has been in a fight with the Navy for a while now over the issue of its refusal to go closer to shore than 25 miles – the horizon – and thus his call for support of the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle.  In order to do forcible entry, Marines need to project firepower on shore, and this vehicle must be able to function on both the land and sea.

But The Captain’s Journal has opposed the EFV for reasons going beyond its design and maintenance problems and cost overruns.  Basically, this vehicle will never be used as a staple of land operations.  Its primary use will be from sea to shore and then slightly beyond.

The Littoral Combat Ship is anything but a combat ship.  It has a small crew and essentially no forward force projection capability.  It is a horrible platform for support of the Marines or a Marine Expeditionary Unit, and backfitting it with a “box of rockets” will likely prove to be problematic and not what the Marines were after.

Let’s assume that as a policy position we need forcible entry from the sea.  Delivery of Marines without heavy firepower is probably not a good idea, and we have recommended a delay in the retirement of the CH-46 (from which Marines can fastrope) and investment in a new generation of Marine attack helicopters.  The Navy must be pressed to be more involved in the delivery of heavy equipment (such as MRAPs, tanks, armored personnel carriers, etc.) after the Marines have accomplished forcible entry and if the strategy involves a protracted engagement.

We have also recommended a new generation of Marine vehicles similar to the Army Stryker.  Heavy investment in a generation of vehicles, fighting or otherwise, that has as its sole use operation in littoral waters is probably not a wise investment of limited resources.  No one intends for protracted land use of the EFV, and that itself is a telling observation.  It is basically a useless platform without the necessity for forcible entry or the threat of it.

As for the air transport turned gunship, the Marine spokesman’s words are confusing and probably unnecessary.  A gunship is exactly what is desired and needed.  This kind of adaptive innovation is to be commended, and the Marines in Afghanistan will benefit from this improvisation.

Concluding, TCJ doubts that the LCS can successfully deliver high volume fire in support of Marines on shore, doubts the necessity for a fighting vehicle that has as its sole use operation in littoral waters, and has recommended other means of forward force projection (such as use of the F-35 off the deck of the Amphibious Assault Docks, additional Navy involvement to land heavier vehicles, and a new generation of Marine attack helicopters).  All of the above would seem to be a better use of limited monies that either the EFV or the modified LCS.

As for the necessity for forcible entry from the sea, it was Colin Powell who observed that:

Lying offshore, ready to act, the presence of ships and Marines sometimes means much more than just having air power or ship’s fire, when it comes to deterring a crisis. And the ships and Marines may not have to do anything but lie offshore. It is hard to lie offshore with a C-141 or C-130 full of airborne troops.

Nice words, but a very expensive way to level threats at other nations.  A Battalion of Marine infantry sitting on board an Amphibious Assault Dock for seven to nine months doing nothing is an awful waste of resources (and also a sitting duck for land-based surface to surface missiles).  The expeditionary concept should be applied sparingly and with frugality.  The capabilities of the Marines are needed across the globe in real time active and ongoing operations, not “could be,” “would be,” “maybe” and “we want it not to be” operations.

Prior:

Arguments Over the EFV and V-22

Navy and Marines to Part Ways Over Expeditionary Strike Groups?

Kill the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle