By W. Patrick Lang
According to George Casey, General, US Army, commander of US Forces in Iraq, Iraqi forces are declining (at the moment) in terms of combat ready battalions of infantry:
In June, the Pentagon told lawmakers that three Iraqi battalions were fully trained, equipped and capable of operating independently. On Thursday, Casey said only one battalion is ready.
“It doesn’t feel like progress,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.
Despite the drop, Casey hailed significant progress in training Iraqi security forces and noted that U.S. troops are embedded with more Iraqi units in mentoring roles than before. “Have we lost ground? Absolutely not,” Casey said.
Casey said the Pentagon’s standard for what constitutes a fully capable Iraqi battalion is high and that it’s been difficult to ensure logistical support for Iraqi units. “I understand how it could be perceived as disappointing,” he told Collins. Associated Press
It doesn’t feel like progress, Senator, because it is not progress. The Army loves to do matrix type measurement of various things with lots of little boxes on spread sheets, and numerical values assigned to things that often are not measurable with numbers. Rumsfeld loves this. (metrics) A proclivity to do this is bred deep into the officer corps and …
When I taught there, I once watched them pick a civilian professor for a tenured job using this method. Interestingly, all the little numbers in the boxes indicated that this was the best person. They picked him. We all knew at the time that this man would be a terrible teacher, and he was, but the numbers came out that way and so they picked him.
Continued BELOW:
A proclivity to do this is bred deep into the officer corps and probably has something to do with the engineering school nature of West Point.
Therefore, I am not altogether sure that Casey’s NUMBER means a lot. It may just be a NUMBERS drill, perhaps by one of my former eleves. But, neveretheless, it is not good news.
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you posted this. I saw it on the news this morning, and thought “How do these guys keep getting away with this shit?” The longer we stay there, the worse things get.
And just how many soldiers make a battalion anyway?
And just how many soldiers make a battalion anyway?
When I was at my Infantry unit we were supposedly considered “combat ready” at all times… But only by a numbers game.
You had many officers and Seargents that were doing double duty in certain key positions for the unit on top of their regular job of being an Infantry soldier, something that fills out duty rosters for the numbers game, but is impossible to sustain if you are out in the field of a real world situation.
Many units are counted as “combat ready”, but then just before any unit deployed to a real world mission, like a peace-keeping mission, etc., they would fill out the rosters with transfers from other units and as many new recruits (just out of basic) as possible to make them truly “combat ready”.
It is all a numbers game.
As for how many soldiers in a battalion:
Depends on what kind of unit you are talking about?
Cavalry? Light Infantry? Mech? etc. … Each is unique in it’s particualr staffing requirements. But they all play numbers games. Numbers games for staffing and for training.
I went over to Pat’s blog — where, by the way, there are some truly fascinating comments from soldiers/veterans — and asked him. He says:
Susan
In most armies:
Squad = 9 men
Platoon = 45 men
Company = 150 men
Battalion = 650 men
Brigade = 3500 men
Division = 15000 men
(One of us should make a note of this somewhere … i’ll try to save it where I can find it, because I often wonder what #s make up a platoon, a company, etc.)
I meant to add the direct link to the comments at Pat’s blog:
LINK
The numbers Pat gave you are common for Infantry units like the 82d Airborne, 101st Air Assault, and 10th Mountain Divisions.
A tank platoon, OTOH, consists of 4 tanks with 4 people in each tank. A tank company will consist of 3 platoons (3 x 16 = 48), plus the company command element (another 12 people or so) for a total of only 60 people. At the higher echelons, battalion, brigade, and division you start to add in all sorts of specialized support units.
That said, for the topic at hand, Iraqi units, Pat’s numbers are a good start. The Iraqi military will essentially be truck based light infantry. They’ll have very few tanks, armored personnel carriers, attack helicopters, and other modern weapons that will allow them to pick a fight with the neighbors. The Iraqi Army is being built as an internal security force with a focus on riflemen to keep the population in line. A perfect option for a future Iraqi despot.
They’ll also be denied these more advanced weapons because there is a tremendous fear that they’d be utilized against us.
So why on Earth would you support the continued presence of American troops in a land that no one wants them in?
The Iraqi Army is not even liked by it’s own government. They don’t want them. They want the Peshmerga and The Badr Brigade and Iranian trained troops to protect them. The Iraqi Army is controlled by the US…the Iraqi’s have almost no say.
It’s my understanding when they want to show the Iraqi Army fighting they use the Peshmerga.
I’m glad too … last night on Charlie Rose (PBS) — Jim Hoagland, the reporter for the Washington Post, talked a lot about this Senate armed services committee hearing.
Hoagland said, first of all, that it was very confusing testimony … he repeated the word confusing several times.
He also discussed the difference between having three battalions and having only one battalion that could be self-functioning.
He also said that the administration may HAVE some good news coming out of Iraq, but if it does it sure doesn’t know how to highlight it.
Metrics helped MacNamera at Ford but it didn’t work very well in Viet Nam, because you don’t have the same kind of management control system you had at Ford, among other reasons. Same old / same old. Garbage in / garbage out.
And how the heck can you have a single proficient battalion given the need for interdependence?
Man, good thing it’s Friday.
Progress by corpse-count indicates a complete inattention to the strategic goal by generals satisfied with an A for effort.
Progress by ally-strength presumes a cohesive ally bent on independence, which, by circular reasoning, is what ally-strength is suppose to germinate. Instead, we have sprung a dependent proxy permanently pursuing an A for effort.
Where is Powell, and what happened to his “doctrine”?
But, but!
Rummie is on my teevee and he just said that “by every MEASURE the enemy is losing!”
I’ll be danged.
If we keep moving forward at this rate, they may miss their chance to get our troops out in time to declare victory, just before the 06 elections.