Now that the Afghan Surge is Over

 

 

Vincent J. Curtis


 21 September 2012

 

 

The month of September saw the last of the 33,000 surge troops leave Afghanistan, in accordance with President Obama’s directive of eighteen months ago.  Some 68,000 U.S. troops remain.  These are scheduled to leave by the end of 2014.  The question is what will happen to Afghanistan afterwards.

 

By 2014, the U.S. will have spent a dozen years developing Afghan society, building infrastructure, training Afghan police and military, and encouraging democratic governance in that country.  It would be wrong, however, to suggest that the U.S. has staked its prestige in a successful Afghanistan after 2014.  At some point, the Afghans have to take care of themselves.

 

If the history of war is any guide, the crucial factor in keeping the government of Afghanistan out of the hands of the Taliban will be morale.  If the Taliban are not seen as the inevitable victors after an American withdrawal, if Afghan forces do not regard the Taliban as their superiors on the battlefield, then the chances are better than even that the regime in Kabul that America leaves behind in 2014 will survive.  It will survive even the departure of current president Hamid Karzai.

 

This is not to say that the contours of the region of control by Kabul will not change from what they are now, with U.S. troops present.  The area in which the writ of Kabul runs ought to shrink from what it is now.  But this is no reason for despair; it is simply a recognition of the geography of the country and the loss of offensive power backing the Kabul regime occasioned by the departure of U.S. forces.

 

The loss of some space will lead to a crisis of morale – for some.  If the regime and the Afghan armed forces which support it are able to dominate the crisis, then one of two possible outcomes will occur.

 

The first possible outcome is a new equilibrium.  Afghanistan will settle down into a loosely knit country dominated in the hinterland by local warlords, of which the Taliban will be one of several; and the capital area will be controlled by a regime nominally like the one left behind.  Such was the nature of the country from its founding in the 1747 to the 1973 revolution.

 

The second possible outcome is that the Taliban decide to square off with the Kabul regime and fight a real war on real battlefields for control of the entire country.  This they will find difficult to do.  The Taliban, throughout its existence, has never had to fight a battle that required the coordination of battalions of troops, the accurate delivery of firepower, and logistical resupply of ammunition.  They seized power in the 1990s due to a collapse in morale of their opponents, who feared individual retribution; and they lost power in 2002 because of the coordination of U.S. air power with the Northern Alliance troops, who simply showed up.  The speed of the Taliban collapse in 2002 surprised many - they lost both Kabul and Kandahar in a single campaign season - but such is the effect of a sudden loss of morale.

 

While the Taliban may be able to locally outnumber Afghan troops in the mountains, the major cities and population centers are on plains.  The semi-trained Afghan forces greatly outnumber the untrained ragtag forces that the Taliban at the best of times are able to put into the field.  The Taliban can train a dozen for a single operation – as evidenced at Camp Bastion – but putting together the platoons and companies and battalions required to fight a stand-up battle with the Afghan National Army (ANA) and to resupply them are likely beyond their capacity.  The Taliban can dominate here than there with small numbers through threats against individuals.  But when enough Taliban bunch together they become a visible target, hittable even by ANA forces.

 

This is where morale comes in.  If the ANA believes that the Taliban are unbeatable, if the ANA commanders are incompetent or lazy, if the Taliban are able to undermine the morale of the ANA by threats and assassinations, and if the Kabul regime is so corrupt that it fails to look after the soldiers protecting it, then threat alone can cause a collapse of the ANA despite the disparity in offensive power between the ANA and the Taliban.

 

Afghanistan is a large country with rugged terrain – ideal for small guerrilla bands to dominate here and there.  The big picture, however, is that the Kabul regime is favored by geography to control the most space and the large population centers.  The Kabul regime can survive if its morale holds up, and if that confidence is transmitted to the forces that protect it and to the population it governs.

-30-

 

Vincent J. Curtis is a free-lance writer who was embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2010, and reported on behalf of the Buffalo News.  A version of this piece was published in the Buffalo News.

Conservative Defense Strategy Goes Kaput

 

 
 
Vincent J. Curtis  


12 July 2012

 

 

First reported in the pages of Esprit de Corps, DND informed the government that the Canada First Defense Strategy was “unaffordable.”  Strange formulation, that.  It is supposed to be the government telling DND that their plans are unaffordable, not the other way around.

 

It turns out this strange formulation was a kabuki theatre way of DND saying that the government can’t have the Strategy – a promise for long term, predictable, and consistent funding for twenty years - and the spending cuts in the Defense budget.  Government speak with forked tongue.

 

The Canada First Defense Strategy is a twenty one page document issued by the Harper government in 2008.  Two pages worth of CFDS are allocated for substantive matters and the rest are filled with self-congratulation.

 

MND Peter MacKay says “[the Canada First Defense Strategy] fulfills the Government’s commitment to provide enhanced security for Canadians and gives the military the long-term support it so critically needs and deserves, now and in the future.”  Perhaps he meant the mere publication of the document fulfilled the Government’s commitment, since the actual fulfillment of the substance was a twenty year endeavour.  The satire writes itself.

 

From start to, now, finish the CFDS was an exercise in blowing hard.  The title itself suggests that somehow previous governments had let the defense of Canada cease to be the primary purpose of the CF (if I may still use that term), and that the new Conservative government were going to set the priorities back to their proper order.  Then, the Army is designed to fight in Afghanistan again!

 

Since the defense of Canada, as a first priority rather than a second or third priority, is the aim of the CFDS, what in those two pages of substance enhances the striking power – the “combat-capability” - of the CF?  What makes the CF better in the defense of Canada?

 

For the Air Force, the fighter aircraft fleet which once consisted of 138 CF-18 Fighters – since shrunk to 77 – will be reduced to 65 aircraft once the acquisition of the F-35 is completed.  Since stealth capability is not required for the defense of North American air space, the actual striking power of the RCAF would be less under CFDS than it was under the Trudeau government of the 1980s and even the Chretien-Martin government of the 90’s and early 00’s.

 

The RCN was offered replacements for its existing fleet, and fifteen ships to replace the existing destroyers and frigates were set aside for the navy.  Newer missiles and more effective guns on the new ships might enhance the striking power of the modernized navy marginally, but a qualitative improvement in the form of a “big honking ship” was never in the offing.

 

The army had the real opportunity to enhance the striking power of the CF in the defense of Canada.  There is talk of Leopard II tanks in CFDS, but the current army operational doctrine Adaptive Dispersed Operations: The Force Employment Concept for Canada’s Army of Tomorrow categorically rejected the employment of battle tanks, despite the lesson of OP MEDUSA.  The army is by this doctrine “a medium-weight force”, and “medium-weight” is a euphemism for “without tanks.”  The euphemisms for going without tanks were repeated in the 2011 Designed Canada’s Army of Tomorrow paper, endorsed by LGen Peter Devlin, CLS no less.

 

So even if tanks are given the army, the army has no plan to use them.

 

What the army is interested in is a “close combat vehicle.”  What is a CCV except a half-assed tank?  The original concept of the Sherman tank was as a CCV for the infantry, and it was employed as such throughout World War II.  The Sherman was fast, mechanically reliable, and was armed with three machine guns and a 75 mm main gun.  What the army wants is a Sherman tank on wheels, an engineering paradox.

 

Likewise there is no mention in ADO or CFDS of the acquisition and deployment of new artillery, such as the M777 system used in Afghanistan, or airborne or airmobile forces.  The latter, however, might be buried in the SOF regiment, whose operations would be mightily enhanced by the acquisition of a couple of AC-130 Spectre gunships, but these also go unmentioned in the CFDS and ADO.

 

The only real weapons system that would enhance the striking power of the army against all enemies, whether asymmetric Taliban-like or symmetric peer-to-peer, and be light enough to be rapidly transportable, is an attack helicopter.  The one proposal out there for the acquisition of attack helicopters for the army does not come from DND.

 

The CFDS proffered nothing more than a slight reduction in the striking power of the CF.

-          XXX –

 A version of this appeared in Esprit de Corps magazine.

 

No Pilots? What is wrong with the RCAF?

 

 

 

Vincent J. Curtis                                                           4 July 2012

 

 

            News item: “While Canada is poised to begin taking delivery of 15 new Chinook CF-47F heavy lift helicopters… a crippling shortage of trained aircrew means that even if Boeing delivers them all on time, it will take until June 2017 before the RCAF will have the fleet fully operational.  Earlier this year, the commander of the RCAF, LGen André Deschamps, briefed a Senate committee on the fact that Canada has had to recruit foreign pilots (mostly British RAF) to assist with the training of new pilots.”

 

If there ever was an argument to transfer rotary aviation from the Air Force to the Army, this is it.

 

From among the ardent thousands who staff the RCAF, it will take five years starting from now for LGen Deschamps to find a couple dozen of them to pilot this new aircraft.  Perhaps these new people are currently in the enrollment process and it will take an estimated five years to complete.

 

It is not as if the arrival of these new helicopters comes as a news flash to the Air Force. The contract with Boeing was signed in August, 2009, and so it will be eight years from the time the Air Force was officially notified to the time it is completely ready for action.  Lucky for us their forbears in the RCAF were a little quicker off the mark: eight years is the difference in time between the Mk I Spitfire and the Vampire jet.

 

Previously I’ve argued that the Air Force should postpone purchase of the F-35 for twenty years in order to give the jet a chance to mature technologically and for costs to become more affordable.  To fill the gap, we would purchase 65 modern F-16 fighters, still in production and currently in Block 60 plus of development, and 65 AH-64D Apache Longbow helicopters.  The combined cost of each pair of aircraft is $10 million less than a single F-35 jet if purchased according to original government estimates, now, ahem, a little out of date.  After twenty years, the F-16 would be ready for retirement and the then-current F-35 can be purchased at costs reasonable and predictable at that time.  The RCAF does not need new capabilities in its fighter jets, what it needs are new airframes.

 

The bonus to the CF (if I may still use that term) is the additional combat power all these modern attack helicopters would provide that would not be available even if the F-35 were operational now.  Of course, that new combat power would be used tactically and often in support of embattled ground troops, which is something the RCAF has historically not done.  And since the Apache flies, by rights it should belong to the Air Force.

 

The revelation that the Air Force cannot even manage to come up with a couple dozen pilots until eight years after notification obviously puts paid to the idea that they could come up in any reasonable time with a hundred or so ardent young men who would love to fly an Apache Longbow, with all its whiz-bang technology, in combat.

 

Thus if the Army wants to have the speed, range, and firepower of attack helicopters to compliment the doctrine of Adaptive Dispersed Operations it will have to take on the task itself.  There is nothing sacrosanct about helicopters being an Air Force thing: rotary aviation belongs to the Army in the United States military, and the Americans are more into rotary aviation than anyone else.

 

The old doctrinal Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group used to have a squadron of Griffon helicopters assigned to it, so in theory at least the brigade commander had at his disposal all the basic necessities of rotary aviation under his tactical control.  It just so happened that the helicopter squadron folks wore blue and were administered through the air element command.  It would not be so hard conceptually to put all these folks in green instead, and to expand the tactical and operational capabilities of the rotary assets at the disposal of the brigade commander.  One could even substitute one for one an attack helicopter squadron for an armoured squadron in the brigade.  It would be easy also to include the heavy lift capabilities of the Chinook helicopters in that modernized doctrinal brigade group.

 

Competition is what makes free enterprise the most cost efficient way to run an economy.  Competition is what makes individuals work harder to get ahead, and produce a better organization.  Perhaps competition in the aviation field is what the Air Force needs to shake itself out of its doldrums.

-         XXX –