Editor's Foreword

18 The MiliTAry BAlANce 2010
that the combined Iraq–Afghanistan requirements for
2010 and 2011 would keep up to 15 brigade combat
teams (BCTs, each 3,000–4,000 strong), plus many
support units, engaged and deployed, in contrast
to more than 20 at the height of the Iraq War surge,
and 17 or 18 in 2003–06. These levels, coupled with
an increase in military personnel and overall BCT
numbers, mean US ground forces will likely settle
into roughly a 1:2 ratio, matching General Casey’s
preference.
Training
Most soldiers and marines still have little time to do
anything other than deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan,
return, rest and then prepare to go back (see The
Military Balance 2009, p. 15), and training other
than for the current conflicts is necessarily being
neglected. Indeed, recent efforts have been aimed
at improving preparation for these current missions
through improved coordination across agencies
and other refinements of training and operations
(as reflected, for example, in the US government’s
Counterinsurgency Guide released in January 2009).
Over time, however, the ground forces will need
to consider how to balance their development of
different skills.
Other developments
The Counterinsurgency Guide is an attempt to devise
a whole-of-government approach to an area of operations
that had hitherto been addressed in scholarly
literature or in single-service or departmental
doctrines. The guide says it is the ‘first serious U.S.
effort at creating a national counterinsurgency framework
in over 40 years’ and is designed to prepare
policymakers for the kinds of tasks they might have
to carry out if the decision were taken to engage in a
counter-insurgency. The guide is an example of the
many doctrines being developed in the US military,
some in reaction to the lessons that have been drawn
from current operations and likely future contingencies.
January 2009 also saw the release of a Capstone
Concept for Joint Operations (CCJO), which discusses
broad potential threats to US security through reference
to the ‘Joint Operating Environment 2008’ and
how US joint forces should operate in response to
such threats. The CCJO ‘envisions a future characterized
fundamentally by uncertainty, complexity,
rapid change, and persistent conflict’, a theme
which has also been echoed in the work that the US
Army’s Training and Doctrine Command has been
carrying out to produce a new Capstone Concept
entitled ‘Operational Adaptability – Operating
Under Conditions of Complexity and Uncertainty in
an Era of Persistent Conflict’. This Capstone Concept
is intended to provide guidance to senior leaders as
they seek to balance the current army so that it can
prevail in current conflicts, while also shaping the
army of 2016–18 so that it can address a ‘combination
of hybrid threats, adaptive enemies, and enemies in
complex operating environments’. The document
is intended to build on the 2005 Capstone Concept,
which retained substantial focus on manoeuvre operations
and network-enabled capacities, as well as
the other documents noted above. In this document,
assisting foreign security services is highlighted as
a key requirement, while there is emphasis on the
need to produce a force that can operate effectively
under conditions of uncertainty, with the concept
arguing that the way of improving this is to reinforce
the importance of understanding situations in
depth, decentralisation under the concept of mission
command, and the ability to ‘develop the situation
through action’. The concept also emphasises the
importance of leader development and education.
The army is also fielding concepts derived from
the lessons of recent campaigns. One example is
the Advisory and Assistance Brigade (AAB). These
brigades, according to Gates, have ‘three main functions:
traditional strike capabilities, advisory roles,
and the enablers and command and control to
support both functions’. Some are already deployed
in Iraq, after the Combined Arms Center dramatically
reduced the doctrinal cycle, and developed and
fielded the AAB doctrine in only a few months. (The
intent is that they will comprise the entire US Army
operation in Iraq by the end of 2010.) Much of the
army’s doctrine is now in ‘wiki’ format so those with
recent operational experience can access and update
the relevant manuals.
The Military Balance 2009 noted the on-going
debate over aspects of the FCS programme, with
General Chiarelli saying that the army needed to
‘better explain the revolutionary potential’ of the
FCS ground-vehicle segment. As noted, this component,
including eight manned FCS vehicles and the
non-line-of-sight cannon, was cut in Gates’s budget
proposals. The army has adapted to this change by
speeding the migration of FCS capacities to infantry
soldiers, including tactical and urban unattended
ground sensors, the non-line-of-sight-launch system,
the Class I UAV, the small unmanned ground vehicle