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Random theory I have (hopefully some HN-ers with actual military knowledge can weigh in): modern militaries need less technology and more manpower. It seems sin

by IsaacL 13y ago

Random theory I have (hopefully some HN-ers with actual military knowledge can weigh in): modern militaries need less technology and more manpower. It seems since I was a kid politicians have been saying that armed forces should become smaller and more high-tech. That means less bodies sent home in coffins and also more contracts for BAE Systems, so it's a popular message. That all works well (very well) when you're invading countries. Doesn't work so well when you decide you need to build a new country out of the ruins. Maybe we'd do better if instead of spending billions on flying robot assassins to fight tribal hill-farmers, we simply enlisted more humans to take command. The only other option I can see is to start running the American empire British-style - they ran very efficient colonies by exploiting existing tribal divisions, usually by recruiting some existing elite as their colonial administrators. Not trying to implement democracy in tribal regions that don't yet have stable institutions or the rule of law would probably also help.

skore 13y ago
> modern militaries need less technology and more manpower An interesting thought! One of the most interesting conclusions I drew from this documentary is that the Afghan Military needs both - more technology and more manpower. But the trouble, as shown, is that you need the intelligence to handle so much manpower, the social contracts to retain that manpower and the education to handle that technology. So what you're saying about the balance might be an interesting point for the US military might work for them, but it doesn't even start to help out with the Afghan forces. As for going "British-style" - I think that stuff simply doesn't work in the modern, connected world. British colonialism took advantage of isolation and division. Doesn't work so well if the country you invade is reasonably well connected globally.
- rdl 13y ago
  The US has a really bad track record of picking local partners. Mostly because during the Cold War, the "good" local people were more innately socialist, which the Communists exploited, so we got stuck with some pretty horrible people (either ineffective or outright evil) by default. I don't believe it's feasible to occupy a medium sized country which actively resists using modern militaries. It's certainly not worth it. I'd just focus on keeping a limited presence to rain death from above (like we do in Pakistan, Yemen, etc.) or via limited JSOC strikes (Somalia, Afghanistan before 2007 or so, etc.), and then using armed but civilian organizations to interface with the populace and government. In a place like Somalia or Afghanistan, foreign organizations should run important infrastructure and logistics services for the local government and population, with the cost subsidized by international donors. i.e. a local Afghan should be able to buy electricity at 0.10/KwH, sell their pomegranates at the world price, and have clean water, Internet, cellphones, etc., without any other focus on building the government (since that's probably hopeless). The organization providing that infrastructure needs self-defense capability, but you don't need much beyond what Blackwater had to do this.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - skore 13y ago
    > In a place like Somalia or Afghanistan, foreign organizations should run important infrastructure and logistics services for the local government and population[...] That's what I thought as well - The documentary left a pretty bleak picture of the Afghans ability to build, extend or even maintain basic infrastructure, but it's desperately needed if they want to get anywhere with education. The country needs at least a good dozen generations to heal the most serious wounds so it can find its own interest in the kind of social development that makes it resistant to terrorism taking root over and over again. Hand-holding throughout that time is what is required. But that's probably the most costly thing, I would guess. Then again, those drones and all that ammunition sure don't come cheap either. But the US has sunk far too much money into that failed path to turn around and do the other one now. And even then - the problem is that the citizens are already tired of conflict and both sides, the international troops and the taliban, are trying to exploit that. Just giving them great infrastructure might make it easier for the international troops, but it would probably do the same for the taliban. Whatever the solution, it sure won't be a quick one. My best bet would be to exploit the countries natural resources and push all the money made from that into infrastructure and security. But that's just the kind of "socialism" that nobody in the west wants to pick up.
    - rdl 13y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagons_New_Map http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagons_New_Map from Thomas PM Barnett is probably the "official" version of this -- a small, lethal military designed to win wars, and a "SysAdmin force" designed to build nations after the fact. I'm not sure how well this theory has held up (it's from 2004...), or how much support it has. I think what happened is we got lucky in Iraq in 2007-2010 using the old British strategy of allying with semi-enemies against real enemies (Sons of Iraq and the other Sunni tribes, and non-aggression with the Shia militias), eked out a borderline draw in Iraq while calling it "a victory for COIN", applied the "COIN" model rather than the "British" model to Afghanistan with the surge and all, and have proceeded to lose from 2009-now in Afghanistan.
EliRivers 13y ago
Well, that depends on what kind of operations armed forces are for. The opposite conclusion can be drawn from Operation Unified Protector, the NATO mission in Libya. Very, very few humans deployed into Libya. High-tech operations involving aircraft from carriers and airstrips in Italy supporting locals on the ground, with a set of naval vessels providing maritime support (embargo enforcement, some mine-hunting capability and no-fly-zone enforcement, as I recall). Afghanistan and Iraq were anomalous in terms of the kind of war (or rather, the kind of post-war) the most warlike nations (USA, UK and chums) expect to fight nowadays. The appetite for that kind of nation-building has shrunk considerably following the experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan.
VLM 13y ago
I was in the .mil until right before 9/11, like I got my final honorable discharge papers in dec 2000. So I'm older, but not totally ancient (like, say, my grandfather who flew B-17s and B-24s in WWII). And I also have a cousin who did peace corps time in one of the South African townships in the early 80s. My cousin and I are, um, kind of different in outlook, lifestyle, equipment, training, attitude... The fundamental problem is sending the army to do the peace corps job. Even worse, the same army that did the "pacification". A simple analogy is if you ordered a navy destroyer crew and my army ordnance company to swap jobs, it end up as a hilariously ineffective reality TV show (Hmm, this might actually lure in viewers...). Something even more extreme like assigning an infantry platoon to peace corps work is going to be even more of an epic fail. There is another interesting issue that the peace corps is not supposed to accomplish any major long term changes. So if they had a mission there, with the same results, they'd be considered to be doing "great". The S.A. township my cousin served in, remains a morass of poverty and crime and ignorance, maybe a little better than it would otherwise be, but no one has any crazy illusions that his 2 year term or whatever it was would result in the township turning into "leave it to beaver"-ville. On the other hand its considered a military disaster to spend decades basically accomplishing nothing. So you need a perspective change. For a bunch of soldiers doing someone else's job, they're about as successful as the correct set of workers would be. Interestingly to the best of my knowledge the peace corps still considers hand chalk to be appropriate technology. If you want to do nationbuilding you send in guys with chalkboards and excellent native language skills and maybe some special technical skills (or maybe not).
yk 13y ago
Probably, there is a old TED talk by Thomas Barnett [1], where he argues quite similarly. He argues, that one needs a force for projection of force and a force for stabilizing the country. And because of the tension between trying to be as small as possible, when defeating the opponents army, and the need for boots on the ground for defeating insurgents these two need very different organizational structures. [1]http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_barnett_draws_a_new_map_for_peace.html http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_barnett_draws_a_new_map_for_... (Hope the link works, I have somehow managed to break the TED site...)

by IsaacL 13y ago

skore 13y ago

> modern militaries need less technology and more manpower An interesting thought! One of the most interesting conclusions I drew from this documentary is that the Afghan Military needs both - more technology and more manpower. But the trouble, as shown, is that you need the intelligence to handle so much manpower, the social contracts to retain that manpower and the education to handle that technology. So what you're saying about the balance might be an interesting point for the US military might work for them, but it doesn't even start to help out with the Afghan forces. As for going "British-style" - I think that stuff simply doesn't work in the modern, connected world. British colonialism took advantage of isolation and division. Doesn't work so well if the country you invade is reasonably well connected globally.

rdl 13y ago
The US has a really bad track record of picking local partners. Mostly because during the Cold War, the "good" local people were more innately socialist, which the Communists exploited, so we got stuck with some pretty horrible people (either ineffective or outright evil) by default. I don't believe it's feasible to occupy a medium sized country which actively resists using modern militaries. It's certainly not worth it. I'd just focus on keeping a limited presence to rain death from above (like we do in Pakistan, Yemen, etc.) or via limited JSOC strikes (Somalia, Afghanistan before 2007 or so, etc.), and then using armed but civilian organizations to interface with the populace and government. In a place like Somalia or Afghanistan, foreign organizations should run important infrastructure and logistics services for the local government and population, with the cost subsidized by international donors. i.e. a local Afghan should be able to buy electricity at 0.10/KwH, sell their pomegranates at the world price, and have clean water, Internet, cellphones, etc., without any other focus on building the government (since that's probably hopeless). The organization providing that infrastructure needs self-defense capability, but you don't need much beyond what Blackwater had to do this.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- skore 13y ago
  > In a place like Somalia or Afghanistan, foreign organizations should run important infrastructure and logistics services for the local government and population[...] That's what I thought as well - The documentary left a pretty bleak picture of the Afghans ability to build, extend or even maintain basic infrastructure, but it's desperately needed if they want to get anywhere with education. The country needs at least a good dozen generations to heal the most serious wounds so it can find its own interest in the kind of social development that makes it resistant to terrorism taking root over and over again. Hand-holding throughout that time is what is required. But that's probably the most costly thing, I would guess. Then again, those drones and all that ammunition sure don't come cheap either. But the US has sunk far too much money into that failed path to turn around and do the other one now. And even then - the problem is that the citizens are already tired of conflict and both sides, the international troops and the taliban, are trying to exploit that. Just giving them great infrastructure might make it easier for the international troops, but it would probably do the same for the taliban. Whatever the solution, it sure won't be a quick one. My best bet would be to exploit the countries natural resources and push all the money made from that into infrastructure and security. But that's just the kind of "socialism" that nobody in the west wants to pick up.
  - rdl 13y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagons_New_Map http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagons_New_Map from Thomas PM Barnett is probably the "official" version of this -- a small, lethal military designed to win wars, and a "SysAdmin force" designed to build nations after the fact. I'm not sure how well this theory has held up (it's from 2004...), or how much support it has. I think what happened is we got lucky in Iraq in 2007-2010 using the old British strategy of allying with semi-enemies against real enemies (Sons of Iraq and the other Sunni tribes, and non-aggression with the Shia militias), eked out a borderline draw in Iraq while calling it "a victory for COIN", applied the "COIN" model rather than the "British" model to Afghanistan with the surge and all, and have proceeded to lose from 2009-now in Afghanistan.

EliRivers 13y ago

Well, that depends on what kind of operations armed forces are for. The opposite conclusion can be drawn from Operation Unified Protector, the NATO mission in Libya. Very, very few humans deployed into Libya. High-tech operations involving aircraft from carriers and airstrips in Italy supporting locals on the ground, with a set of naval vessels providing maritime support (embargo enforcement, some mine-hunting capability and no-fly-zone enforcement, as I recall). Afghanistan and Iraq were anomalous in terms of the kind of war (or rather, the kind of post-war) the most warlike nations (USA, UK and chums) expect to fight nowadays. The appetite for that kind of nation-building has shrunk considerably following the experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan.

VLM 13y ago

I was in the .mil until right before 9/11, like I got my final honorable discharge papers in dec 2000. So I'm older, but not totally ancient (like, say, my grandfather who flew B-17s and B-24s in WWII). And I also have a cousin who did peace corps time in one of the South African townships in the early 80s. My cousin and I are, um, kind of different in outlook, lifestyle, equipment, training, attitude... The fundamental problem is sending the army to do the peace corps job. Even worse, the same army that did the "pacification". A simple analogy is if you ordered a navy destroyer crew and my army ordnance company to swap jobs, it end up as a hilariously ineffective reality TV show (Hmm, this might actually lure in viewers...). Something even more extreme like assigning an infantry platoon to peace corps work is going to be even more of an epic fail. There is another interesting issue that the peace corps is not supposed to accomplish any major long term changes. So if they had a mission there, with the same results, they'd be considered to be doing "great". The S.A. township my cousin served in, remains a morass of poverty and crime and ignorance, maybe a little better than it would otherwise be, but no one has any crazy illusions that his 2 year term or whatever it was would result in the township turning into "leave it to beaver"-ville. On the other hand its considered a military disaster to spend decades basically accomplishing nothing. So you need a perspective change. For a bunch of soldiers doing someone else's job, they're about as successful as the correct set of workers would be. Interestingly to the best of my knowledge the peace corps still considers hand chalk to be appropriate technology. If you want to do nationbuilding you send in guys with chalkboards and excellent native language skills and maybe some special technical skills (or maybe not).

yk 13y ago

Probably, there is a old TED talk by Thomas Barnett [1], where he argues quite similarly. He argues, that one needs a force for projection of force and a force for stabilizing the country. And because of the tension between trying to be as small as possible, when defeating the opponents army, and the need for boots on the ground for defeating insurgents these two need very different organizational structures. [1]http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_barnett_draws_a_new_map_for_peace.html http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_barnett_draws_a_new_map_for_... (Hope the link works, I have somehow managed to break the TED site...)