Blogger's Roundtable Interview with Colonel Robert Abrams, Deputy Commander, CAC.

Christian Lowe, who writes for Military.Com lead off with a question that has been making the rounds in the news, the milblogs, and for me, around the office - has the emphasis on counterinsurgency and urban combat been overemphasized to the point that the ability of the Army to conduct full scale major combat operations been compromised?

I'll let Colonel Abrams speak for himself:

"To be good at full-spectrum operations -- offense, defense and stability operations -- of which COIN, counterinsurgency, is just one component of, you have to be good at all three. And you know, that's -- that's kind of our bumper sticker. We're full-spectrum. And so it is. And you know -- and some of you, I think if I read correctly last night -- some of you have been downrange. A lot of you are exmilitary. You know, as a commander your first priority is to protect the force.

And we protect the force by giving them the confidence in their own ability to survive and conduct operations on the battlefield. And so that starts at individual, but at the platoon, company -- and even at the task force level -- we still continue to stress combined arms, high intensity -- what we would historically call, what you and I would call high- intensity-type training, platoon live fires -- but the difference now is is we've added a twist.

You know, when I was a brigade commander, when I first took brigade command, we were doing very austere typically platoon battle runs: infantry, armor, separate, not a lot of dismounted operations, certainly no consideration for an urban environment or civilians. Now, what we're doing at home station is we're doing that same sort of high intensity, but we've really ratcheted up the conditions a notch, because now we realize we're not doing anything without
dismounts -- both armor and infantry formations mixed together or you've got some armor formations mixed together or you've got some armor formations that have armor crewmen dismounted who are now motorized. That's the level that we've gone to and in fact, we're doing more of it at the platoon and company level than we ever have before."

Christian came back with a good question - an excellent question, since I've had friends who assumed Division Artillery commands only to find themselves commanding Infantillery and POW units... he asked about basic skillset maintenance. I.e., When an artillery battalion finds itself doing light infantry ops in urban areas, just how good an artillery battalion is it? To me, a related question is - just how good a light infantry unit is it?

Again, I think I'll let Colonel Abrams answer the question.

"The big war -- what we're focused on right now as an army is preparing units to go back to the fight. And it's well documented, you know, what our tempo is. I mean, it's not a secret what our, you know, our battle rhythm is in terms of 15-month deployment and a year back. And so we are preparing units for their next mission.

Now, having said that, you know, to answer your question if their -- if that unit is going to be -- part of their mission set is going to do -- involve a lot of indirect fire shooting in their next mission, the answer is yes, they are. And so -- and I'll use an example of a unit that's downrange now and I won't get into the specific name of it but it is in support of Task Force
Baghdad.

That artillery battalion knew before they would deploy that one of their artillery batteries would be used quite extensively in support of kinetic operations, and so as a consequence that battalion commander was afforded the opportunity to train those skills at a very high level and he did not spend a lot of time doing what we would consider other COIN tasks, convoy procedures, motorized patrol procedures and so forth. And as a consequence they're doing
fantastic downrange conducting kinetic operations.

But if you have an artillery battalion, let's say, who is given the mission that they're going to conduct security force mission along a main supply route, I mean we clearly have to focus that unit's training to get them ready to go to the fight.

Now, what I think you're asking is well, what about in the long term if we have missions after Iraq and Afghanistan that are going to require those high-end skills, and my response to you is is that at our training base, for instance in artillery at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, they still retain and
train all of those tasks and we retain that core competency. Will there be some startup costs for that next fight if we were directed or prepared to, you know, get units ready for general warfare there would be a slight startup cost.

But -- for instance, I just sat in -- I got a briefing last week on a Rand study that's been ongoing out at the national training center with regards to skill atrophy -- high-end skill atrophy. And what you're talking about is documented in a couple of specific areas. But at the end though what they'll all tell you is is that because of our core training base here in TRADOC will there
be a small startup cost? Yes. But we retain that capability."

All of this is true enough, as far as it goes. The flip side to the question is - can we fight the big combined arms fight, like we did in the March Upcountry, or Gulf War I? An even better question - have we cracked the code to be able to truly train full-spectrum ops - *especially* after Iraq winds down, the threat is perceived to have retreated, and the federal budget reorients?

What Colonel Abrams just described would also fit the pre-WWII Army, where the basic core skills were preserved, and the people with those skills became the core cadre upon which the bigger Army was built. And his answer also could have come from an officer talking from back in the Vietnam war. With an important exception - TRADOC was created after Vietnam to try to look forward and to manage these things in a way that we haven't in the past.

What Colonel Abrams also didn't say was - there is an underlying assumption we aren't going to need those types of skills in a sudden peer/near-peer competitor war. We'll have the time to reshape and realign those skills. And given that the budget, the force, the mission, and *time* itself are all limitations, you have to make choices and prioritize.

Jason, from one of Ry's favorite contrarian hangouts, the Armchair Generalist, asked about FM 3-0 (the Army's capstone combat doctrine manual) was going to be published. While not Abrams' lane per se, he did have an answer in that General Casey, the new Army Chief of Staff wanted to look it over and make sure his vision and that of the manual were in synch - which has caused a delay in going final on the FM. From the perspective of TRADOC and CAC, Colonel Abrams added this:

"...one thing that's going to come out of that is is the chief of staff of the army's training and leader development strategy is going to come directly from that and you're going to see a purposeful shift in our aim point in terms of the collective training conditions that we're going to put the force under, and it'll get everybody's attention."

Andrew Lubin asked Christian Lowe's question - but from the other side of the coin. If an artillery battery is doing Civil Affairs stuff one week, and shooting the next, and then doing CA stuff again, and then shooting again, should their skill set stay current? To me, the question isn't as much about individual skillsets or crew drills, but more about the over-arching mission of a field artillery battalion to plan and coordinate fires overall.

Colonel Abrams had this to say.

"Yeah, but I think really the point is is that,we don't have a standard template for what every, type unit is doing downrange. Not every artillery battalion as part of their core tasks are shooting artillery. For instance, and I'm just guessing now but my guess is is that inside Task Force Baghdad that we have artillery batteries that because of rules for the escalation of force and what's an appropriate response to indirect fire I'm sure there's batteries that haven't fired any artillery.

And so, you know, they may be conducting other sort of counterinsurgency operations, fixed point security, and what not and so you could have units that will lose those basic skill sets for delivering predictive and accurate fires.

However, what I will say that we lose in those skills, what we are gaining out of it -- that we can't replicate anywhere, to include our Combat Training Centers no matter how hard we try -- is combat experience. And that, as you know, is -- it's almost hard to put a price tag on.
And so even though they haven't fired a lot of artillery, they've got a tremendous amount of combat experience, which will do them very, very well for all future types of conflicts and operations that we may or may not have to conduct.

And the same could be drawn for tank platoons. For instance, in my own Brigade Combat Team when I was in Iraq, I was only authorized to take about a third of my combat power. I deployed in March of 2004, and at that point we had thought we were going to transition to a -- very much stability operations, and that all kind of changed on the 4th of April of 2004.

But as such I had motorized tank companies who never saw a tank for the 12 months that we were down-range. And what skills -- tank skills that might have atrophied, I can tell you it's far outweighed by the combat experience that those soldiers and leaders gained while conducting
full-spectrum operations.

So, you know, that's kind of where I stand on it.

That's the meat of it. A little peak inside of CAC and collective training. To me, it was illuminating, and an interesting view inside of the head of the beast that is CAC - and if you work there inside of Army training, there's probably some nuggets you can chew on.