Teaching and Learning Counterinsurgency at the Armor Captains Career Course

“This is a game of wits and will. You’ve got to be learning and adapting constantly to survive.” — General Peter Schoomaker As the U. S. Army transforms to prepare for the current and future fight, its professional military education system is transforming along with it. Over the past nine months, the cadre of the Armor Captains Career Course (ACCC), soon to be reformed as the Maneuver Captains Career Course (MCCC), has made significant efforts to enhance the study of counterinsurgency (COIN) in its warfighting curriculum. Lessons learned from this effort may be of use to units conducting professional development programs, as well as to formal officer and noncommissioned officer educational institutions. The cadre of the ACCC constantly assesses the curriculum to ensure it meets the needs of the force and that the course provides current and relevant instruction. The ACCC conducts extensive after-action reports with students and instructors throughout the course. The course also conducts surveys with students six months after their graduation. Results from student surveys have revealed an increasing desire for even more COIN instruction. As all of the instructors at the course have operational experience, many wholeheartedly agree. It is important to note, however, that we must temper this with the fact that we cannot predict the future fight and must stay grounded in the core competencies of armor and infantry officers. Today, ACCC instructors are keenly aware that we must strike a balance between preparing our captains to fight the next high-intensity fight and preparing them to defeat insurgents in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan. COIN is an enormously difficult subject; the new COIN Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency, notes that it is “War at the graduate level.”1 In a recent lecture at the ACCC, Dr. David Kilcullen, chief strategist of the Global War on Terrorism at the State Department, said, “Simply put, today’s fight is a competition to mobilize the population.” This is the overarching theme of the COIN educational program at the ACCC. Every effort in this program is designed to help students discover and share tactics, techniques, and procedures for conducting operations among the people while defeating the insurgent’s attempts to gain support of the populace. To help ACCC captains understand the complexities of this kind of war, we have developed a five-pronged approach. Captains at ACCC write reviews of books from the ACCC professional reading list, read and present oral reports on articles from the ACCC “professional articles” list, participate in COIN and cultural understanding seminars, participate in a visiting COIN experts lecture series, and participate in practical exercises on COIN — 15 operations. This article briefly references each subject. Counterinsurgency Professional Reading Program Students at ACCC read a book from the course reading list (Figure 1) and write a two-page summary of how the book applies to company commanders in the contemporary operating environment. The goal of this program is to introduce students to a self-paced study environment so that they become comfortable with individual educational development programs throughout their careers. While at the course, the reading program is the heart of the students’ COIN study. The course cadre reviews and updates the reading list quarterly, or as necessary. Units wishing to use the ACCC reading list as a template for their own professional reading lists are invited to download the list from the Captains Career Course website on Army Knowledge Online (AKO), or the Mounted ManeuverNet Professional Forum on the Battle Command Knowledge System. Counterinsurgency Articles Students at ACCC read articles from the “professional articles” list (Figure 2) during selected weeks of the course. Students then write executive summaries of the articles, which are subsequently graded as part of the writing program. Students then lead discussions of the articles in a small-group seminar. The articles serve as drivers for discussion, which is where most of the learning is done. The ACCC is small-group centric, and the impact of class discussions on the individual officer’s educational experience cannot be overstated. In addition, these assignments reinforce the importance of effective written communications skills for commanders and staff officers. Subject-Matter Expert Lecture Series The ACCC has hosted a number of noted COIN theorists and practitioners, such as Dr. Kalev Sepp, designer of the Multinational Force I Campaign Plan and author of “Best Practices in Counterinsurgency;” Dr. David Kilcullen, author of “Twenty-Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company Level Counterinsurgency;” Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, author of Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife; and Colonel T. X. Hammes, author of The Sling and the Stone, to discuss their thoughts and ideas with ACCC students.2 Authors are willing to come and discuss their ideas if asked; so far, there has been no shortage of authors and subject-matter experts who are willing to contribute to the education of our captains. The course will continue the lecture series on a quarterly basis over the long term. Cultural Understanding Program Based on lessons that the Army has learned and relearned in the past five years on fighting an insurgency, a cultural understanding program has been added to the COIN educational program. In 4th Quarter, FY05, the Combined Arms Center directed that 13 hours of cultural understanding be added to the programs of instruction for all captains career courses. The main goal of the program at the Armor School is not necessarily to create subject-matter experts on any particular culture, but to give our students an appreciation for how cultural understanding in their future companies and troops will affect their operations. The cultural understanding program is built on three pillars: classroom small-group instruction using the 2007 Iraq, Afghanistan, and Islam cultural training support packages, created at the U. S. Army Training and Doctrine Command’s Culture Center at Fort Huachuca, Arizona; briefings with international military student officers and international liaison and exchange officers on post; and classroom time to conduct self-paced Rosetta Stone language training. The intent is not to teach a language during the five-month ACCC, but to get captains started on the path to learning a second language, as well as expose them to a valuable training tool on AKO to use in preparing their future companies and troops for deployment. As has been proven in past deployments, the ability to speak another language and understand Course Reading List Learning to Eat Soup with A Knife, Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam by Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, Updated edition, September 2005 The Sling and the Stone: On Warfare in the 21st Century by Thomas Hammes, September 2004 On Combat by Dave Grossman and Loren Christensen, September 2005 The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power by Max Boot, May 2003 A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam by Lewis Sorley, September 2000 Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice by David Galula, Updated August 2006 The Philippine War, 1899-1902 by Brian Linn, October 2002 Islam: A Short History by Karen Armstrong, August 2002 The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror by Bernard Lewis, March 2004 Insurgency and Terrorism: From Revolution to Apocalypse by Bard O’Neil, 2d Edition Revised, August 2005 Figure 1 Professional Articles List “The Fall of the Warrior King” by Dexter Filkins, New York Times, October 23, 2005 “Twenty-Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-Level Counterinsurgency” by Dr. David Kilcullen, Washington, D. C., March 29, 2006 “Changing the Army for Counterinsurgency Operations” by BG Nigel Aylwin-Foster, British Army, Military Review, November-December 2005 “Winning the Peace: The Requirement for Full Spectrum Operations” by MG Peter Chiarelli and MAJ Patrick Michaelis, Military Review, July-August 2005 “Winning the War of the Flea: Lessons from Guerrilla Warfare” by Robert Cassidy, Military Review, September-October 2005 “Best Practices in Counterinsurgency” by Dr. Kalev Sepp, Military Review, May-June 2005 “Patterns of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency” by Dr. John Lynn, Military Review, July-August 2005 “Relearning Counterinsurgency Warfare” by Robert Tomes, Parameters, Spring 2004 “The Current Revolution in the Nature of Conflict” by Chris Donnelly, The Defense Academy of the United Kingdom, Advanced Research and Assessment Group, September 2005 “Learning Counterinsurgency: Observations from Soldiering in Iraq” by LTG David Petraeus, Military Review, January-February 2006 Figure 2 16 — other cultures has a positive impact on our ability to create a positive impression on the local populace and accomplish our mission. In the coming months we also plan to integrate the tactical language trainer. Counterinsurgency Exercises As we near the pilot date for MCCC, we have integrated several new practical exercises into ACCC. One of the primary differences in the new course is that students conduct practical exercises on realistic terrain using a variety of organizational platforms. In the past, all of our practical exercises have been based on Germany, National Training Center, or Fort Knox terrain. In the new course, we will conduct practical exercises on terrain in Iraq, Korea, and Kosovo, with a few exercises based on Fort Knox and combat training center terrain to facilitate training exercises without troops (TEWT) and computer program exercises. The ACCC began creating this new material some 12 months ago, with the bulk of the work for MCCC being in the past six months. The most notable of these exercises is the Louisville TEWT, where students receive a task force operations order and are tasked to develop plans for four companies conducting raids, cordons and search, and deliberate attacks in an urban stability and reconstruction operations (SRO) environment against an insurgent threat. Students develop and brief their plans prior to the small group traveling to each of the objectives. Once on the ground, the learning opportunities are endless; students discuss various training topics, such as how to avoid sniper and improvised explosive device (IED) contact en route to objectives, how to enter and clear rooms and buildings, and how to handle civilians in and around target houses. The Louisville TEWT is just one example of how students are applying knowledge to tactical operations. As mentioned earlier in this article, ACCC cadre strive to strike a balance between high-intensity and COIN training; however, one difference is that now both cultural understanding and COIN are common themes, which students consider in all the practical exercises, regardless of terrain. Even during National Training Center exercises, students are forced to consider civilians on the battlefield and small population centers in their intelligence preparation of the battlefield. While in theory, this should be no different than what we have always done at the schoolhouse, in reality, those parts of the training have often been paid lip service in the past. With 98 percent of our students and 100 percent of our instructors having operational experience in the post-9/11 world, not talking about the current fight and the treatment of civilians on the battlefield would be a difficult task. Continuing to Improve our Fighting Position The ACCC COIN program greatly benefits armor captains because it teaches them how to think through a difficult way of war. We rely on student feedback, which is uniformly and enthusiastically positive, to ensure we are training all aspects of the current operating environment. We are constantly re-examining our programs to determine what we may do better. Critical to the success of this mission is sharing ideas with other institutions and operational units. We are in daily contact with other centers and schools and subject-matter experts throughout the Army, Department of Defense, and State Department, sharing new ideas about how to train and educate this Nation’s officers. Leaders who wish to create their own COIN professional development programs are invited to make full use of the Army’s numerous online training sites, such as the Battle Command Knowledge System, companycommand.com, and the Captains Career Course Forum available on AKO. We must share our ideas to make the Army a true learning organization. The Armor Captains Career Course is adapting to the demands of the contemporary operating environment, creating adaptive leaders for our Army and our Nation. These adaptive leaders will be on point as we take the fight to the enemy — and win. Notes 1Headquarters, Department of the Army, U. S. Army Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency, U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C., June 2006 (Final Draft). 2Kalev Sepp, “Best Practices in Counterinsurgency,” Military Review, May-June 2005; David Kilcullen, “Twenty-Eight Articles, Fundamentals of Company-level Counterinsurgency,” paper, Washington D. C., March 2006; Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife, Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, University of Chicago Press, 15 September 2005; and Thomas Hammes, The Sling and the Stone: On Warfare in the 21st Century, Zenith Press, 12 September 2004. Major John M. Grantz is currently serving as course manager, Maneuver Captains Career Course, Fort Knox, KY. He received a B. A. from James Madison University. His military education includes the Infantry Captains Career Course. He has served in various command and staff positions, to include small group instructor, Armor Captains Career Course, Fort Knox, KY; commander, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 502d Infantry (1-502 IN), 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, KY; commander, C Company, 1-502 IN, 101st Airborne Division, Mosul, Iraq; assistant S3, 1-502 IN, 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell; senior platoon leader, Infantry Officers Basic Course, Fort Benning, GA; and support platoon leader, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division, Schweinfurt, Germany. Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl is currently serving as commander, 1st Battalion, 34th Armor, Fort Riley, KS. He led a tank platoon in the 1st Cavalry Division during Operation Desert Storm, taught national security studies at the U. S. Military Academy, and served as the operations officer, Task Force 1st Battalion, 34th Armor, Khalidiyah, Iraq. “The intent is not to teach a language during the five-month ACCC, but to get captains started on the path to learning a second language, as well as expose them to a valuable training tool on AKO to use in preparing their future companies and troops for deployment. As has been proven in past deployments, the ability to speak another language and understand other cultures has a positive impact on our ability to create a positive impression on the local populace and accomplish our mission.“ — 17