Longer Deployments: Supporting Army Operations in an Era of Persistent Struggle

The popular media and military and political leaders continue to measure the military’s performance in the global war on terror, specifically in Iraq but increasingly in Afghanistan. Some even claim that U. S. performance has not been successful and the time to withdraw troops has passed.1 One problem is the GWOT’s expense. So far, executing the GWOT is far more costly and complicated than initially predicted. The solution to this problem isn’t to reduce troop strength but to increase the time soldiers spend in theater. The Army currently uses time-based troop rotations (six to 12 months, with some units reaching 15 months during the “surge”). The military needs to commit to longer deployments, harnessing the benefits accrued only through long-term immersion in these regions. Longer deployments provide the military with the following advantages:

• Increased expertise, or “institutional knowledge,” in a specific area of operations;

• Increased efficiency in the allocation of resources to units as well as skill training to soldiers; and

• Increased stability in the civilian communities in which U. S. forces are operating. Current rotational deployments, based on time, remove troops from the fight when they gain the necessary familiarity, cultural skills and intimate knowledge of both the population and the enemy to fight the “long war” against insurgents effectively. Despite the obvious challenges of treating post-traumatic stress disorder, lessening the turbulence of deployments to military families and administering an all-volunteer force, military leaders must implement longer deployments to increase expertise, efficiency and stability.2 Expertise Multiple tours to different locations create generalists, not specialists.3 Eliminating temporary deployments in an AO can develop professionals with the ability to conduct successful counterinsurgency or stability operations. The military can then tailor courses of instruction to troops based on their particular AO. Distributing general skills useful in multiple AOs across the force, as the Army currently does, dilutes the skills necessary for separate operations. For example, the Army stations soldiers in diverse locations, including Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans, the Horn of Afri-Longer Deployments: Supporting Army Operations in an Age of Persistent Struggle by CPT Ken Quail The answer to criticism about the military’s performance in Iraq and Afghanistan isn’t to reduce troop strength but to increase the time soldiers spend in theater.

ca or even in a friendly host like Germany or Korea. Language training for every soldier for every region isn’t feasible in terms of time or resources. Conversely, a brigade combat team assigned to Iraq with specific requirements for a handover of responsibility to the local government could receive language, cultural and tactical instruction tailored specifically to their mission. More troop training in stateside training battalions can occur with the language skills necessary for that area. Every task, from training local police forces to building roads, becomes easier with a working knowledge of the local language and customs. Elementary language and social skills will enable soldiers to build inroads with the local people and demonstrate U. S. forces’ commitment to remain in the region for an extended time.4 This will counteract the entrenched Taliban fighters’ repetitive message that the United States will eventually abandon its Afghan partners, which currently stymies operations in Afghanistan.5 The ability of soldiers to communicate, understand and live among the population allows them to form bonds at the lowest level, thus signaling U. S. intentions to the population in away that top-down press releases can’t. These bonds with local partners and civilians further separate insurgents from the population. This gives U. S. units a soft power that prevents more violence than any other force multiplier. Critics may argue that PTSD will eventually overtake the gains of longer deployments. Prima facie evidence suggests that rotating troops lessens the burden on the individual soldier. However, it actually creates greater friction by repeatedly causing them to bounce between the stability of home life in the United States and the harrowing experience of life in a combat zone, testing the soldier’s mental resilience in myriad ways. A soldier’s time away from combat is undoubtedly therapeutic and necessary. However, each new deployment brings anew mission-set with an unfamiliar unit in anew AO. The soldier faces repeated shocks to his psychological system. The effect of shorter deployments leads to many periods of great stress. Since every deployment is unknown, a soldier’s third or fourth deployment is the psychological equivalent of the third or fourth iteration of a “first deployment.” In contrast, longer, more predictable deployments to the same AO distribute the psychological stress over time, create more certainty and allow better adjustment.6 COIN or stability-focused deployments do not experience nonstop, high-intensity combat. Troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan for stability operations do not face daily operations like the Normandy invasion or the Battle of the Somme. Firsthand knowledge of and experience in a familiar AO empowers and supports troops, decreasing the likelihood of negative psychological consequences. Efficiency Longer deployments allow soldiers to be efficient in two ways. First, this proposal affords a proper allocation of resources by focusing material and training in a very specific problem set. An intimate knowledge of the physical and human geography allows commanders to reduce the footprint of installations, thereby providing a smaller target to the enemy. It also tailors forces in theater based on a better understanding of known threats gained by firsthand experience there. Equipping a force for operations in Afghanistan is very different, both geographically and demographically, from equipping a force for operation in Iraq or the Horn of Africa.7 Assigning a specific unit to a specific AO for a protracted time can eliminate redundancy. Consequently, planners can refocus resources into better equipping, preparing and sustaining units already deployed. The improved warfighting skills stemming from specifically tailored equipment in turn lead to less reliance on technology, thus driving the cost of stability and security operations down even further.8 Longer tours allow soldiers to gain the trust of the local population, which is necessary in stability and security operations. A finite tour encourages soldiers and leaders to maximize the time devoted to hunting down insurgents. By removing the limitation of a calendar-based deployment cycle, there’san incentive for troops to embed in local communities.9 Leaders can thereby shape the message that the United States is an honest broker. Constant interaction with the community will accomplish this goal. Visiting schools, taking part in local celebrations and becoming an asset to the community are shaping operations that make stability operations successful. Familiarity with local political, religious and military leaders is just as important as knowing the physical terrain. Acceptance into the community generates intelligence and facilitates knowledge of the social landscape that may be even more important than knowledge of the physical landscape. Once U. S. forces dispel the community’s perception of them being “commuters,” they’ll prove their usefulness to it; this intelligence also leads to increased force protection. The U. S. Army learned this lesson during the Philippines occupation: Particularly important were the small garrisons. Their ability to eliminate local resistance pacified regions and kept them peaceful. … [L]argely isolated from higher-echelon control, [they] lived and worked in communities. They tracked and eliminated insurgents, built rapport with the populace, gathered intelligence and implemented civil works. The process was slow, but once an area was pacified, it was effectively denied to the insurgency.10 In any region in which U. S. forces work and fight alongside local nationals, personal relationships are of paramount importance and have a didactic purpose. First, as stated above, they reaffirm U. S. long-term commitment to the people of that nation. Second, longer deployments allow enough time for military personnel to develop personal relationships within the community. The second-order effects of developing personal relationships are gaining more accurate intelligence and increasing force protection, both of which are necessary for mission accomplishment. The U. S. Marine Corps employed this strategy with the Combined Action Program in Vietnam. Squads of “CAP Marines” lived in villages with Vietnamese National Defense Forces. Marines ate the same food, used the same equipment and went on the same patrols as the NDF. CAP Marines went on daily patrols in squad-sized elements of one to three Marines and the rest of the squad composed of NDF. They weren’t afraid to move among the civilian population as two-man groups, shopping at local markets, attending local ceremonies and making friends within the population. While Viet Cong insurgents controlled the countryside elsewhere and kept conventional U. S. forces hostage in their own firebases, CAP Marines enjoyed remarkable success, rivaling Army forces in the Philippines. Clearly, a large part of winning the hearts and minds of a population was simply day-today physical presence among them.11 American soldiers develop a “street sense” when dealing with the same people and places over a period. Knowing the civilian landscape allows leaders to know which local officials, police and army they can trust and when they can decrease their own force protection based on the tactical reality. Soldiers and leaders know when a two-man patrol with local forces is enough or when they need to travel more heavily armed, based on threat analysis. Two or three U. S. soldiers traveling with three or four Iraqi police through a crowded market is a powerful message to the citizens and police that U. S. forces will share the risk. It’s also a powerful 18 message to insurgent forces that the U. S. Army isn’t afraid. This physical presence must not only be complete but enduring. Longer deployments mitigate the inefficiency and danger inherent in frequent “battle handovers” or “reliefs-in-place.” The point at which a unit turns over responsibility of its AO to another unit is the most vulnerable time for friendly forces. Insurgent groups look to repeatedly exploit this opportunity because the incoming unit doesn’t have the intimate understanding of the region the outgoing unit had developed. During the U. S. occupation of the Philippines, historian Brian McAllister Linn said, “For the civil government to work, officers had to maintain close personal relations with the municipal officials.”12 An outgoing unit can’t sign over experience or personal relationships as it would vehicles or an installation. Effective stability operations require trust, which develops over time. Insurgents seek to exploit this weakness and divide U. S. forces from the population. In current operations, this chance occurs with clockwork precision. The hand-off often undoes the good work done by the outgoing unit and forces the incoming unit to repeat the work already completed, rather than building on prior success.13 Stability The U. S. military must extend the length of troop deployments to stabilize our forces. Stabilizing personnel within units is an enduring theme in military reform – the U. S. government has attempted stabilization 10 times since 1899.14 Stabilizing forces within a unit contributes to the unit’s effectiveness on warfare’s tactical level, while stabilizing units within a location creates stability on warfare’s operational and strategic levels.15 Leaders are currently looking rebuild a “bench” of units, ready for commitment to warfare but not earmarked for commitment – thus the unit is able to focus on the full spectrum of combat tasks it’s likely to confront. However, creating a predictable deployment schedule is only half the prerequisite to creating a more effective unit. The time that “strategic depth” gives to a unit that’s not constantly reequipping to get back in the fight (a problem seen in the year-on/year-off approach of the last decade) gives it more preparation for a certain AO. MAJ Donald Vandergrift points out in Path to Victory that personnel turnover degrades combat readiness. Cohesion developed when individuals and units train together for long periods allows superiors to understand the capabilities of subordinates and mitigate their shortcomings. It also develops a sense of kinship between soldiers that increases the overall effectiveness of the unit. The British experience at colonial administration in India and Asia, and the American department-and-district system in the Indian Wars and the Philippines, suggest that it’s just as important to tie soldiers to one another as to bind a military force to a specific AO. Similarly, high unit turnover in a specific location creates on a large scale the turbulence that personnel turnover creates within tactical units. For example, the British colonial system of the 18th and 19th Centuries created the need for a constabulary military force to support regional stability.16 By tying the training battalions at home to specific overseas battalions, the British were able to create and maintain institutional knowledge about a region such as India or Malaya. By stabilizing units, not just individuals, the British were able to create units that understood the physical and human geography of their AOs as well as the strengths and weaknesses of their fellow soldiers.17 The results led a contemporary military critic to declare, “The real Army is in India.”18 The British were not alone at developing specialized forces capable of colonial administration.19 For more than a century before World War II, the American army focused on pacifying Native American tribes in the continent’s interior. Small garrisons lined the frontier and acted autonomously in an attempt to set the conditions for regional stability. The U. S. Army then took these techniques – pacification of the rebellious Southern states during Reconstruction – overseas in the wake of the Spanish-American War. According to Linn, “The key to pacification was learning the identities and securing the weapons of those who continued armed resistance, and this could not be done without troops living among the population for some time.”20 While one understands intrinsically and from data sets that unit stabilization works, the inference that rotating stabilized units into AOs also works is erroneous. The unit itself gains increased proficiency at tactical collective tasks, but deploying to a different location causes the unit to lose proficiency operationally in relation to the region in which it is operating. In a COIN, it’s not enough to know the capabilities and personality of one’sown unit; one needs to know the capabilities and personality of local fighters, too. In essence, the current force rotation model gives an advantage to the enemy. The largest obstacle critics may cite to prolonging deployments is that recruiting and retention of an all-volunteer force under these conditions would be impossible. However, nine years into the struggle, new soldiers still enlist in large numbers.21 The number of newest enlistees – many of whom were eight years old Sept. 11, 2001 – suggests a society that is coming to terms with the “Long War.” Many young Americans are still eager to serve their country and will do so under the long-term-deployment system. 19 American soldiers develop a “street sense” when dealing with the same people and places over a period. Knowing the civilian landscape allows leaders to know which local officials, police and army they can trust. (U. S. Army photo)

For a nation no longer willing to deploy units the way it did in the Philippines, the world wars or Korea, a compromise may already exist. The model set by the last two forward-deployed duty stations, Germany and Korea, may point the way to mitigating the turbulence of rotational deployments. In both these stations, junior soldiers rotate out in a one- to three-year window while senior noncommissioned officers and officers tend to stay for several years. The turnover is slower and provides continuity on the ground for the people who need it most. Platoon leaders, platoon sergeants and company commanders can maintain the institutional knowledge and local relationships that a winning COIN strategy requires. Concurrently, the junior soldiers, who have limited interaction with the local population, often serve as security while senior leaders are working out operational details with their host-nation counterparts. There would have to be adjustment to the current system, to include longer morale leave for junior soldiers and increased incentive pay for service members who volunteer for these assignments. Each of the major Army component commands would have to make changes as well. For example, U. S. Forces Command would have to decide which BCTs are assigned to Iraq, which are assigned to Afghanistan and which are to hedge against the future by focusing on high-intensity conflict with less specialized training in area-specific operations. U. S. Army Training and Doctrine Command would have to develop at least three approaches to training: one for Iraq, one for Afghanistan and one for the contingency force. Training battalions stateside that are manned by soldiers, NCOs and officers from that forward-deployed BCT’s parent division can incorporate much of this training. TRADOC schools can also serve to cross-pollinate ideas throughout the force by allowing soldiers, NCOs and officers to see how their counterparts operate. U. S. Army Human Resources Command would have to revamp the criteria for evaluating recruits in a subjective way, to evaluate where to assign them essentially for the rest of their military careers. All these issues are politically charged as commanders vie to lead a unit in combat, but independent preferences must be subjected to the efficacy of the force and the well-being of individual soldiers. The suggestion of measuring tours of duty in terms of years or goals rather than months isn’t likely to be a popular one. However, as shown by U. S. and British examples, it does have a historical precedent. Critics cite increased mental trauma and the effects long tours will have on military families as reasons to shorten tours rather than lengthen them, but policymakers must decide the purpose of the U. S. armed forces.22 If the armed forces are an instrument of national will, then they must be capable of carrying out that will. Policymakers are recklessly risking American lives if they are unwilling to do what is necessary to succeed in stability and security operations while deliberately preventing the military from achieving real marks of success. If a military force deploys at all, it must be to win – and history shows “winning” means staying until the job is complete. CPT Ken Quail is the deputy brigade operations officer for 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division (Stryker), Joint Base Lewis-McChord, WA. He has served in command and staff positions in Korea, Iraq and the United States, including commander of C Troop, 1st Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, Diyala Province, Iraq; executive officer for both Headquarters and Headquarters Company and Company D, 1st Battalion, 72nd Armor Regiment, Camp Casey, Republic of Korea; platoon leader in Co. D, 1-72 Armor; and future operations planner, 3-2 SBCT, Joint Base Lewis-McChord. He is a graduate of the U. S. Marine Corps Expeditionary Warfare School, Ranger School, the Cavalry Leaders Course and Mounted Officers Basic Course. His civilian education includes a bachelor’s of arts degree in political science and history from Rutgers University and a master’s of arts in security studies from Georgetown University. Notes 1McGovern, Sen. George, and Polk, William R. Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006. 2For the purposes of this article, “rotational” deployments are those with a set timeline of six to 15 months, while by contrast a “long-term” deployment is goal-oriented, with a unit committed toward an objective; along-term deployment could be measured in multiple years. 3The current system is based on an egalitarian concept that the burden of combat or stability operations should be distributed evenly, but this notion is wrong on two counts. First, these operations aren’t spread evenly over the American population, only over the armed forces, a small segment of the population. Within the armed forces, a small segment of the force also shoulders the burden of COIN operations. 4Training can also be extended to courses of study on religion and regional history, creating subject-matter experts at all echelons of the military. For more on types of training needed on the 21st Century battlefield, refer to MAJ Donald Vandergriff in Raising the Bar: Creating and Nurturing Adaptability to Deal with the Changing Face of War, Washington, DC: Center for Defense Information Press, 2006. 5COL Thomas Lynch, federal executive fellow, the Brookings Institute, interview by author Dec. 17, 2007. COL Lynch cites repeated print and video broadcasts of the U. S. withdrawal from South Vietnam as one example of the message to potential allies that the U. S. doesn’t honor its commitments. 6Critics who cite PTSD as a reason for not increasing operational tours often refer to the levels of PTSD in U. S. veterans of World War II. This is an erroneous comparison because World War II was a high-intensity set-piece battle and exactly the opposite of the Operation Iraqi Freedom / Operation Enduring Freedom conflicts this article addresses. 7Kaplan, Robert D. The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War. New York: Vintage, 2001. 8Although I address the issue of recruiting and retention above, it’s also worth noting that eliminating the cost of shuttling troops into and out of theater will create a cash surplus that can then be used to increase pay and benefits. This will drive both recruiting and retention. 9Weinberger, Sharon. “When Anthropologists Go to War,” WIRED Magazine Online, July 16, 2007, http:// blog.wired.com/defense/2007/07/when-anthropolo. html, accessed Dec. 15, 2007, Page 1. 10Deady, Thomas K. “Lessons from a successful counter-insurgency: The Philippines, 1899-1902,” Parameters, Spring 2005. 11Goodson, Barry L. CAP Mot: The Story of a Marine Special Forces Unit in Vietnam, 1968-1969. Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press, 1997. 12Linn, Brian McAllister. The Philippine War: 1899-

1902. Lawrence, KS: Kansas University Press, 2000. Page 201. 13Robson, Seth. “As 2nd ID’s Casualty Toll Rises, Troops in S. Korea Fear for Friends’ Safety,” Stars and Stripes Pacific Edition, Nov. 22, 2004. Section A. Pan, Esther. “Iraq: U. S. Troop Rotation,” Council on Foreign Relations, Feb. 10, 2004, http://www.cfr.org/publication/7673/iraq.html. 14Vandergriff, Donald E. The Path to Victory: America’s Army and the Revolution in Human Affairs. New York: Presidio Press, 2002. 15Ibid. 16Barua, Pradeep P. Gentlemen of the Raj: The Indian Officer Corp, 1817-1949. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2003. The Cardwell System, named for Edward Cardwell, secretary of state for war, required soldiers to enlist for 12 years. A soldier served the first six of these years overseas in a colonial possession, at which point he could either serve the rest of his term there or return home to man a training battalion dedicated to training replacements for the colony in which he had served. 17For more on how length of service in a specific unit strengthens both the unit and the individual, refer to the German system in Bruce I. Gudmundsson’s Stormtroop Tactics: Innovation in the Germany Army, 1914-1918, Westport, CT: Praeger, 1989. 18Barua. 19According to both John Nagl and Linn, it wasn’t until well into the 20th Century that the U. S. military defined its mission in terms of conventional set-piece battles. 20Linn, Pages 199-200. 21Lopez, C. Todd, “Army Meeting 2008 Recruiting Goals,” Army News Service, Jan. 31, 2008, http:// www.army.mil/-news/2008/01/31/7221-army-meeting-2008-recruiting-goals/, accessed Feb. 16, 2008. 22MAJ Vandergriff interview with the author. AO – area of operations BCT – brigade combat team CAP – Combined Action Program COIN – counterinsurgency GWOT – global war on terror NCO – noncommissioned officer NDF – National Defense Forces PTSD – post-traumatic stress disorder TRADOC – (U. S. Army) Training and Doctrine Command 20 Acronym Quick-Scan