General Robert W. Cone Commanding General United States Army - - PDF document
2013 Operationalizing Strategic Landpower General Robert W. Cone Commanding General United States Army Training and Doctrine Command 27 June 2013 Landpower is the ability by threat, force, or occupation to gain, sustain, and exploit
General Robert W. Cone Commanding General United States Army Training and Doctrine Command 27 June 2013 Landpower is the ability – by threat, force, or occupation – to gain, sustain, and exploit control over land, resources, and people.
Commanders Planning Group Headquarters, United States Army Training and Doctrine Command, 950 Jefferson Avenue, Fort Eustis, VA 23604
7/3/2013
Operationalizing Strategic Landpower 2 Introduction The Commanding General of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command was invited by the British Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Peter Wall, to participate in the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Land Warfare Conference as a keynote speaker. On 27 June 2013, General Robert W. Cone delivered a presentation entitled "Operationalizing Strategic Landpower", discussing the ideas behind Strategic Landpower and how the U.S. Army is translating them into action.
Operationalizing Strategic Landpower 3 Opening Remarks CGS [Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Peter Wall], fellow general officers, distinguished guests, I am really honored to be here today. I am going to talk about strategic landpower from the U.S. Army’s perspective. Jacko1 has granted me more time so I will take two to three hours or whatever it takes to share our ideas. [laughter] I would like to start with some context of where we are. As some of you may know the Army has just entered into a partnership with the U.S. Special Operations Command and the U.S. Marine Corps, creating the Office of Strategic Landpower. Some of you may be wondering why our Army is exploring this idea at this point in time. Why is it important and what is its purpose? I am going to lay that out for you and how we are operationalizing this across the force. Easy War Theories I want to talk about the road to strategic landpower. I would say that one of the most disturbing themes for those of us in the ground force is the current analysis of the lessons learned from the last 12 years of war. It normally starts out with a statement that, “the last alternative is putting boots on the ground.” Our lessons learned from Iraq and Afghanistan were about the horror of putting ground forces in, and we never want to do that again. At one point in my life, during the first two years of the war, I ran the lessons learned program for the U.S. Department of Defense. We collected a lot of lessons, so I would like to take us back. Avoidance of ground operations may be a lesson if you entered the argument in 2004-2005. But I think you have to go back beyond that to 2001-2002 to see what we were attempting to do. Those ideas, Net-Centric Warfare, Rapid Decisive Operations, etc., fall into a
1 LTG Jacko Page - Commander, Force Development and Training, British Army
Operationalizing Strategic Landpower 4 category of what I would describe as “easy war theories.” I noticed that in your welcome packets you have a great paper by General Huba Wass de Czege, USA, Retired, which talks about the fallacy of those arguments. As we discuss these ideas, one point I would make is that I was part of this process or problem, so I can talk about it. When I was a Lieutenant Colonel just out of squadron command, I was selected by the Army to go to the Naval War College and study under Admiral Arthur Cebrowski to understand the details of Net-Centric Warfare. I then served as the G3 (Operations Officer) of the first digital division and then the commander of the first digital brigade, so we could implement those ideas in ground warfare.
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The Road to Strategic Landpower
Network Centric Warfare
intelligence
decision nodes
systems collapse
Digital Divisions
Network Centric Warfare to ground combat
Warfighting Experiment
Iraq – Rapid Decisive Ops
key node
collapsed
from achieved
Nature of War
clash of wills
human
human aspects
adaptation Relearned importance
tribal dynamics
And haven't we learned that when you go to war, the outcomes are unpredictable? And anybody who says, - It's gonna be clean. It's gonna be neat....it'll just be swell. Well, most wars aren't that way.
I think many of you know this theory. It describes viewing the enemy as a complex system, identifying critical nodes, and then striking those critical nodes. This causes the systemic collapse of the adversary, leaving the adversary with little choice but to surrender. Again, the idea is the power of precision strike to achieve those objectives.
Operationalizing Strategic Landpower 5 I don’t want to be dismissive of the other domains. I am a joint guy. I believe the power
minimizing the importance of precision strike. No one wants the best air force and best navy in the world more than a Soldier. But the fact of the matter is there are certain fallacies in this “easy war” theory. I would say one of the things we definitely did in Iraq was apply Rapid Decisive Operations and Net-Centric Warfare. Remember how the war started in 2003 – Shock and Awe. We were going to collapse the air defense systems, collapse the command and control systems, collapse the logistical systems and the maneuver systems and what was supposed to happen was enemy capitulation. As a matter of fact, some of us were there in Kuwait and attended the capitulation rehearsal about how the Iraqis were going to hand over their weapons and then essentially work for us. Well, how did that work for us? Many of us spent much of the next eight years in
forces, and basically focused almost entirely on a targeting list and an order of battle. We lacked a complex understanding of this adversary, the language, culture, tribal dynamics, and the history – what would their reaction to this be? This enemy did not capitulate. Essentially the enemy reacted initially by abandoning its positions, etc., but then quickly morphed and found ways to continue the struggle. The Human Nature of War--Strategic Landpower So, I think that one of the key points here is to understand that war is inherently a human
Operationalizing Strategic Landpower 6 One of our biggest lessons learned from this, again I think, comes from our Special Operations brethren. One of the things I look back at from my involvement in Iraq and in Afghanistan is the partnership that formed between the Special Operations community and the conventional community. As an armored cavalry officer, the greatest thing I learned from them is the value of the human dimension and the human domain. I learned they start this discussion by understanding people and cultures and then develop their understanding of technology and
The initiative in strategic landpower stems from our Special Operators saying to us at TRADOC that as we look at the lessons learned, if we don’t change the way we see war - the lenses, our doctrine, whether we have the human domain, whether we need the 7th Warfighting function, the structural imperatives by which we see warfare – we are likely to make the same
go back to our corner as we deal with the reality of budget cuts and decreasing resources, and that we will lose this lesson. So from that came the decision to form a partnership through the Office of Strategic Landpower.
Operationalizing Strategic Landpower 7
The Human Nature of War
enterprise – a clash of wills
immutable
human objective
governments, & militaries
land, cyber & human domains
most often occurs in the land domain Employing Strategic Landpower
sustained operations among the people
physical, temporal, and psychological advantage
Strategic Landpower
Landpower is the ability – by threat, force, or occupation – to gain, sustain, and exploit control over land, resources, and people
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Strategic Landpower is the application of landpower towards achieving strategic outcomes across the range of military operations
I think this is very interesting. On the left side of the slide are the six points we make in a seven page whitepaper. In fact, these are the key points in regard to the fundamental recognition
participants in August. We will continue what I think will be about a five-year effort to focus
define our arguments and better focus on the contributions of landpower, both in the past and into the future. One of the points I make is that this is fundamentally a human enterprise, a clash of wills and that there is an immutable human dimension within the nature of conflict. Again, we win wars on land – that is a key factor. It is about the continuation of politics by other means; compelling an adversary to achieve an objective. This chart on the lower right-hand side of the slide really talks about these activities: support, influence, and compel. You have realized the
Operationalizing Strategic Landpower 8 importance of increasing our activities in the engagement phase to support and influence, much as we’ve done with the Iraqi Army and Afghan Army in the last 12 years. But the fact I’d like to make about “compel” was best said to me by Lieutenant General David Morrison, the Chief of the Australian Army. One of his comments to me when we were talking about greater U.S. influence in the Pacific was: “Yes, we will welcome your partnership to come in. We know the neighborhood. We will introduce you to folks. But always remember
you don’t have the competent forces, if you don’t have the well-trained forces, and if you do not have the ability to win as a ground force, people are less likely listen to you.”2 Operationalizing Strategic Landpower The key elements of operationalizing strategic landpower are really a number of best practices that we have generated in the last 12 years. I think the first one is how do we gain a sophisticated understanding of the environment we are going into. The challenge here, I would say, is it took a long time to get beyond the order
analysis, to the level that allows man-hunting for specific people. We have an entire intelligence corps, including analysts at the battalion and brigade level, who are trained to that level of analysis today, and they do not want to stop that. Anything less than investing in that in the future will be a huge step backwards for us. So we put some mechanisms in place. One you probably have heard of is the Asymmetric Warfare Group. This is a tremendous organization that literally went inside theater, advised units, essentially watched enemy tactics, techniques and procedures down to the details.
2 This is meant to be an accurate but not perfect articulation of LTG Morrion’s comments.
Operationalizing Strategic Landpower 9 They then passed that information back, and in training at home station were able to imbue that information while units were preparing to go to war.
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Operationalizing Strategic Landpower
Producing combat power that can support, influence or control populations, governments and militaries
Understand the Environment
Organized for Global Engagement
access/area denial strategies
Rapidly Field the Right Equipment
– Evaluate capabilities every 6 months – Field evaluation by Soldiers early & often in the process – Bring industry, testers, developers, & Soldiers together
Why stop this when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan end? The fact is we will continue to do this. We have already placed the Asymmetric Warfare Group forward – we call them our global scouts – on the battlefield, gaining detailed understanding of likely hotspots we might fight in. We will continue the program of placing those advisors with units that are scheduled for deployment rotations around the world. The second point is really the mechanism by which we can keep an Army engaged. I think it is important to understand that in the Cold War years we were a forward-based Army, and we knew the terrain. We did the terrain walks out on the old border, we knew the culture, and we knew everything, essentially because we lived there. But now we are moving to an Army that is in a large part based within the Continental United States. There are some in the American Army who say, “Well, you know you could go anywhere, so why focus on any
Operationalizing Strategic Landpower 10 particular place. Just fight the Krasnovians or Baloneyians or the Plywoodieans – our fake adversaries – and you will be OK.” Well, I will tell you why: this young generation of American Soldiers is used to expending its significant intellectual capital on solving real-world problems. They are not interested in going back to solving pretend problems. So we have decided to align each of our units with one of our combatant commanders, through the Army Service Component Commander, and begin the significant intelligence feeds, the significant training focus and preparation for an area of the world. This will then create a pool of units and Soldiers to be involved in this forward engagement process, the shaping
academic experience with on-the-ground realities. Some people say, “Well, General, you will never get that right... it’s a big world, you just can’t.” Let me tell you something, if we can just get the first four brigades on the ground, anywhere we go, to be conversant in language, culture, and networks, then we will be far ahead
model – again, it is the Special Forces model that the U.S. Army Special Operations Command
But it is more than just a relationship. It is saying that if you are a professional Soldier in the United States Army, you have a responsibility for studying parts of the world to which you are about to deploy into and that we can’t lose those talents we developed in the last twelve years. Rapidly fielding the right equipment. I know there is a lot of discussion here about the acquisition process writ large in the United States Army. We have had challenges on the high
Operationalizing Strategic Landpower 11 end of our acquisition process but some of our great successes are the 17 systems we have
and others that contributed directly to the near-term challenges of the warfight. So the vision here is to use the Asymmetric Warfare Group, who is stationed forward around the world, looking at other armies and what challenges they face. They pass that information back and we use our Network Integrated Evaluation, a battle laboratory that we run in the desert around El Paso, for the purposes of developing those technologies. When we do deploy, the first unit to go into Africa, or any contingency you could name, we are already developing tailored solutions within our acquisition process to support them. Developing Leaders for Strategic Landpower I think the biggest point I would make here is the power we have seen in our leaders. Let’s face it, we didn’t have it right when we went into Iraq and Afghanistan. But the people who adapted very quickly were the leaders on the ground at the point of attack. The key here is an investment in leader development can often mitigate your failures if you don’t have it right with equipment or if you don’t have it right in terms of the enemy you are
thinker, can overcome almost anything. So there has been a significant effort here. The number one priority for the Chief of Staff of the United States Army is leader
years at war, isn’t there a lot of leader development?” Yes there is, but it is experiential leader
have to prepare leaders through other means besides pure experience. We will go back to relying upon the institution, specifically the classroom, education, training, and experiences other than
Operationalizing Strategic Landpower 12 combat to prepare leaders. Will it work? Of course it will work. That is how we prepared leaders out of contact for the war in Iraq. We have done a lot right, but this generation will require a different set of leader competencies approached in a different way based on how the Millennials learn.
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Developing Leaders for Strategic Landpower
Strong enough to Win, Smart enough to Prevent, Influential enough to Shape – Adaptive Leaders Capable in Any Environment
Mission Command
Doctrine
adaptable
across the Army
Education
emphasized
Army Profession
culture
de corps
and discipline
Training
world scenarios
human domain
technology
Experience
array of experiences
One of the base pieces we have is the Army profession – an Army-wide assessment of where we stood and where we continue to stand. This survey goes out every year, but it has given us a very good feedback. We asked our Soldiers the question, “Are you a member of a profession?” About 90 percent of them said, “Yes, we are.” Then we asked, “What does that mean?” and they listed off all the classic characteristics of a profession – certification, competencies, and trust – basically the ability to perform a unique body of professional knowledge. Then we turned around and asked them, “How do you think we are doing?” The United States Army did a self-critique of where it stood. It was in fact brutal and it has driven us to
Operationalizing Strategic Landpower 13 make a lot of changes, not only from their perspective, but from the perspective of the Army and its supporting systems. For instance, doctrine. Here we have a young generation where I would argue doctrine perhaps failed them when they arrived in Iraq. We were debating whether it was an insurgency
and they probably put it on a website that is outside the United States Army. We can’t have that if we are to be a profession. We have got to redesign the mechanisms, rewrite the fundamental doctrine, and get the Army refocused on our own doctrine. We have completed at least the first round of that. The top thirty manuals of the United States Army are rewritten – the immutable principles of our profession. The delivery of what we call tactics, techniques and procedures are now institutionalized in wiki-like system that Soldiers can access when at home station or at each of our schools and centers. When a unit comes back from the field, they share their best practices and another unit can go there. Like I say, we want them going within our profession not outside of our profession.
the majority of us look to things like attending graduate school, fellowships, and operating
cutting these are likely to be the first things that go. We have made a deliberate effort to increase the number of what we call “broadening opportunities” for our leaders who we believe will become strategic leaders. Our fully funded graduate education programs, our fully funded fellowship programs and reinvesting into a number competitive fellowships across the globe are part of that effort.
Operationalizing Strategic Landpower 14
learning characteristics of a very combat experienced generation. Frankly, I struggle to bring in faculty members who can match my students in regard to the amount of operational experience. That leads to a different approach in the classroom that is very much consistent with the “how to think” and not the “what to think” paradigm. And then finally training is probably the most exciting area. If you look at our emerging doctrine in Army Doctrine Publication 3-0, 6-0, 7-0, we are really asking this generation to do everything we did over the last 10 years in terms of understanding language, culture, battalion level targeting boards, etc. And, by the way there's a pretty good chance that we might see conflict on the higher end of the spectrum. So you need to be good at combined arms maneuver as well as all of the subsidiary competencies of wide area security. How are we going to do that in an era of diminishing resources? The good news is this generation is digitally literate. They do not have all of the baggage that guys like me have about hands on training – all we want to do is go out and drive tanks around and bust caps. They understand the cognitive domains of decision-making and how they can get at that through simulations and wargames. They know they still need to physically do it
The good news is the state of technology in regards to low overhead, high fidelity, massive multi-player online games is really pretty exciting. The problem I have is whenever I talk about this, defense contractors come to me with massive plans to spend millions of dollars to build a huge structured system. What I am really looking for is a system much like many of your children play, these online games where basically they become a squad leader. Again the vision is that of the Soldier sitting in the
Operationalizing Strategic Landpower 15 barracks room, or down in the motor pool sitting in a vehicle, with hand-held devices, can basically be involved in a number of training exercises. We are working those ideas. We have the integrated training networks we are putting out into our installations and we think they will be the backbone that will enable such training. Finally mission command. This is one of the greatest dangers we see for the leadership environment in our units as budgets constrict for units in garrison. We do not want to see a return, heaven forbid, of what we call micro-management. That is epidemic at times within the military, the dress-right-dress, line it up, kind of leadership that you do not see in our most effective units in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq in its hey-day and Afghanistan today, emphasized leaders who are empowered by commander's intent and a superior understanding of the
subordinates to operate. I will just tell you, all of the conditions are right to undo much of the goodness in terms of the leadership paradigms we have operated on and developed in our most effective units for the last 12 years. I have talked a little about how we got to strategic landpower, our conceptualization of it, and then essentially what are some of the methods by which we are going to operationalize that. I look forward to your questions. [applause]