It doesn't take a library: TTPs for pre-deployment reading

If there's one thing the military blogosphere loves, it's reading lists. Pre-deployment reading lists. Commander's reading lists. Professional reading lists. Lists of reading lists. This post is going to focus on the first. All of the pre-deployment lists out there provide for some good, interesting, and useful reading. But let's face it - you only have so much time when you're getting ready to deploy. You don't need to read 10 books on counterinsurgency, for instance, when one or two will do. So here are some recommendations on how to focus your reading in that limited time for those of you getting ready to go anywhere for any reason. It's not so much a list, per se, but a guide to manage all of that reading by genre.

Books on the country/region. Don't get bogged down in this too much. Pick two or three from the reading lists that already exist. Try to find those that are at the top of most lists. I say don't get too bogged down, because it's important to get the top view of the country, its culture, and its history. But once you have that, it's important to remember that no book will give you the feel and taste of a place - you can get that on the ground once you've done your basic homework - and you have a lot to read.

The latest doctrine. Military types need to make sure they're up on their doctrine. If you know what your mission is generally going to be, bone up on it. Re-read those manuals you haven't touched since your basic course, read the latest updates, SOPs and AARs from units who have just left where you're going, and articles that talk about doctrine. Since this is work-related, feel free to do this on company time (it worked for me at least). [If your boss gives you a rash about doing this, tell him/her you're doing it for an OPD/NCOPD - and then do the PD.] Spend plenty of time on this.

Technical/User Manuals. If you think you're going to go outside the wire at all, read your dash 10s on your vehicles, radios, and weapon systems. You never know when this refreshed knowledge will come in handy and save your life or the life of someone else - this may be one of the most important things you can do and it's often the most neglected because it's bloody boring. Know how to take care of your stuff and keep it working. And don't forget gunnery and weapons manuals. [Run out of smoke grenades? There's a great section in the M240 manual on starting brush fires with tracer rounds.] This is probably reading best done during your time enroute to your destination (such as in Kuwait) when you have ready access to your equipment.

Military History. Most military types do this anyway. My recommendation is to read a couple of books in this genre that are about the country you are going to and/or within two echelons of your rank (on both sides). You know what doesn't help you prepare that much for a deployment as a platoon leader in Iraq? Reading Patton's memoirs. Officers should already have a bunch of these great captains histories under their belt - focus on books that you can relate to.

Books that increase your understanding of the world. Other than field manuals and TMs, the books I got the most out of before a deployment were not specifically related to my upcoming deployment. I was big on reading philosophy: Nietzsche, Plato, Hobbes, Saint Augustine, etc. I doubt that these are everyone's cup tea, but reading anything that expands how you see and understand the world will do. Psychology, politics, non-military history, religion, or novels. Whatever it is that you would enjoy and would still learn from. Spend plenty of time on these - and I'd recommend bringing plenty of these along with you to read during the deployment.

If things haven't changed much in the past couple of years and unless you're an exceptionally voracious reader, I assume you have time for about 12 books in the 8 months to a year between deployment notification and getting on a plane. Assuming your boss will let you read FMs and TMs on the clock, I'd divvy these up as follows: 3 books on the country you're going to, 3 books on military history, and 6 about the world at large. This is where those reading lists come in handy - to help you determine how to whittle down to those dozen books you actually have time for. If you read that fast that you can get through 3 or 4 book lists, then great. But for the rest of us mortals who also have other things to do before going away for year, prioritization is key. And this is how I did it.

Lies, damn lies, etc.: "The Army is Tapped Out"

An interesting post ran this afternoon on Time's "Battleland" blog, entitled "The Army is Tapped Out." I've noticed it's getting a lot of attention on Facebook and Twitter, so I wanted to clarify some stuff about the "two really interesting things" that its author, Ron Capps, claims to have learned from a recent RAND report (pdf)  on Army deployment data for OIF and OEF.

Here are the two "interesting" revelations:

1. Despite making up only 50% of the Armed Forces' active-duty end-strength, the Army is responsible for 75% of the individual deployments to the Box. This apparently surprises some folks, in spite of the fact that those deployments are in support of two manpower-intensive land wars. You know, the sort the Army is designed to fight.

2. "Second, and more importantly," according to Capps, "the Army is operating at full capacity... So the Army can't do more unless it deploys the Corps of Cadets." This is a serious misreading of the data. Let me explain.

First of all, this report was published last year at the request of the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army. One problem: the VCSA requested it in 2008. The data used in the study is only accurate up to December of that year, so keep that in mind.

Second: the report is about individual soldier deployments. It's not about unit deployments, and it's not about rotational readiness. It's about how many of the actual individual soldiers in the Army have deployed to a combat zone, how many times they've done so, how many folks haven't gone, and so on. It's not about readiness.

So where did this "full capacity" conclusion come from? Here's how the RAND report finishes up:

Since the beginning of OIF, the active-duty soldiers who have deployed have operated at a BOG:Dwell ratio of approximately 1:1. Almost 67 percent of the soldiers in the Army in December 2008 had deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of these soldiers were working on their second or third year of cumulative deployed duty. 

Most of the remaining soldiers (about 20 percent) were new to the Army and still engaged in individual, collective, or unit training. Of the remainder, 7 percent are in key specialties supporting current operations or are deployed to Korea or Europe. Therefore, the active-duty Army is almost completely (about 94 percent) utilized and therefore retains very little unutilized capacity to deploy additional active-duty soldiers.

As you can see from the text, we're dealing with a semantic issue here. I'm not sure if "unutilized capacity" means something specific in some particular academic context, but here it's wildly misleading, and it's easy to understand how Capps made this mistake... if he hadn't just read an entire report dealing with individual deployments.

What the 94% figure represents is the portion of the force that either has deployed, has not deployed as a result of a specific set of operational or professional circumstances, or hasn't been in the Army long enough to deploy with a unit. When the report's authors write that "the Army is almost completely utilized and therefore retains very little capacity to deploy additional active-duty soldiers," they mean that there's no massive uniformed pool of active duty, never-deployed fresh meat available for the Army's needs. Which, frankly, is not a terribly useful statistic, and doesn't tell us much of anything meaningful at all. The only thing "the Army can't do more" of is go through the rolls, find more than about 31,000 "unutilized" soldiers -- those who have never deployed and don't have a particularly good reason -- and stick them on the next plane to the Box.

As I noted on Twitter when I first read the post (but before having taken a look at the cited paper), the Army can, in fact, do a whole lot more from a readiness perspective... even without deploying the Corps of Cadets. It would require taking on additional risk, bypassing standard operating procedures, and shortening the train-up time that units receive prior to deployment, but it could be done. Here's how.

Army brigades train, deploy, and reset on a rotational cycle called Army Force Generation. (Check out the reg (pdf) if, uh, that's your thing.) In optimal conditions, that's a 36-month cycle with what's called a 1:3 BOG to Dwell ratio: nine months available for deployment; at least six months resetting equipment, turning over personnel, and reacquainting with family; and then 18-21 months in the Train/Ready phase getting set to be deploy (or at least be available for deployment) again. At present, the Army's just working on getting to 1:2 (12 months deployed, 24 months dwell time), which represents the service's capacity to surge forces to meet the needs of higher operational tempo.

What this means is that only one-third of the Army's pool of modular brigades is in the "available" phase at any one time, while the other two-thirds is resetting equipment or going through the training cycle. In the steady state -- normal, non-surge circumstances -- the Army can make available one corps headquarters, four division headquarters, 15 Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs), and about 75K enablers. In a surge scenario, that goes to 1/5/20/90 -- a yield of an extra five BCTs, or about 17,500 extra combat troops.

Ok, who cares, right? Well, nobody had a rotational cycle in World War II. We pretty much fielded everything we had, with units rotating out of the line for a few weeks at a time to rest and reset. The ARFORGEN cycle spits out a third of the total Active Component brigades as "available," which means they've had the requisite amount of training to deploy at full capability. But if the balloon went up and all of a sudden we were in The Big One, there are 30 more combat brigades -- more than 100K combat troops -- at some stage of readiness. (Remember during the Iraq surge, when deployments were extended to 15 months instead of 12? That was to keep units in the "available" phase of ARFORGEN for longer so as to be able to field more brigades at a time. If the Sovs come through the Fulda Gap, the Army would solve the problem of force availability with 48-month "deployments.") And we haven't even talked about the Reserve Component, which brings another 28 Army National Guard BCTs to the table.

All of which is a long way of saying: I know the whole thing about West Point was a joke, but let's not start talking about the Battle of New Market, ok?

2/101 set for Afghanistan next summer

As Tintin noted in comments a couple of weeks ago, 2nd BCT of the 101st Airborne Division is headed to Afghanistan next summer, along with 2,400 additional support troops. The DoD just made the announcement today. This brings us to (I think) 22,000 personnel identified out of the additional 30,000 the president announced on December 1st.

Send Me...

The 2d Brigade Combat Team of the 3d Infantry Division is deploying back to Iraq in the coming weeks. This is the Brigade's fourth year-long rotation in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (in six and a half years of the Operation - for those of you keeping score at home) and while there are other (conventional) units that have as much time in theater as this Brigade, I don't believe there are any that have more. The Spartans did the Thunder Runs, overwatched the national elections, were the last surge brigade, and many, many other things and now go to do whatever it is that we're doing these days in Iraq. But most importantly they've fought their asses off because that's what Soldiers do. This Division isn't called the Rock of the Marne because of their ability to hand out HA (which they also do very well...).

So Godspeed to COL Sexton, CSM Martin, and the thousands of other Spartan Soldiers going once more into the breach. Rock of the Marne. Send Me.

1/10 Mountain "off-ramped" from Iraq deployment

The First Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division has been "off-ramped" from its previously-scheduled deployment to Iraq, expected to take place in January of next year. They've yet to receive a new mission tasking, but this announcement is fueling speculation that the brigade is being made available for a potential escalation in Afghanistan.

The 10th Mountain is light-infantry and has a ton of experience in Afghanistan -- 1st BCT went as 1/87 Infantry in 2001, then again as 1st Brigade in 2003 (along with the division HQ), then after modularization to Iraq in late 2005 as 1st BCT -- not to mention being the only division in the U.S. Army that's purpose-trained for combat in mountains and harsh climes.

New French Brigade and Special Forces in Afghanistan

Over at Secret Defense, Jean-Dominique Merchet has news on the French deployment to Afghanistan. Since JDM is usually well-informed, I'm going to do my usual translation job (Alma might have to take over on this front for the next month though, since I'll be traveling for work).

Ok, here we go again.

Starting in November, the French deployment will be significantly reorganized, with the creation of a French brigade, which will be baptized Lafayette...The Americans will appreciate the recognition to a French hero of the American war of independence but the British might not feel the same [this is JDM not me! back to the actual point].

This La Fayette brigade will be responsible for Surobi and Kapisa districts, which are already under French responsibility. The brigade will be commanded by a General, with headquarters in Nijrab. The brigade will have two joint tactical groups. One will mostly be the 13th battalion of chasseurs alpins and the second will be the 2nd foreign parachutist regiment.

Each group, other than its command, will have support elements and three combat companies. In total, six combat companies were to be deployed. It was therefore necessary to find two more than we have today but without looking like we were increasing the numbers deployed.

The guard for Warehouse Camp in Kabul will be transferred to the Georgian Army which will free up the French company currently assigned there. For the second, the general staff will no longer count the sailors deployed in the Indian Ocean with OEF, thereby allowing the deployment of 150 men to the theater.

Similarly, the 150 gendarmes assigned to train the Afghan police will not be counted....because they are on a different mission. The ten helicopters will remain at the Kabul airport.

Second, still at Secret Defense, this time here, French Special Forces are returning to Afghanistan. Apparently, approximately 150 troops would be deployed. What would be their role? Merchet says this remains to be determined because it's hard to explain exactly what makes operations special in COIN.

In any case:

The special forces would be under commander of the Lafayette Brigade commander and would work closely with allied special forces, especially American forces...Since their return from Afghanistan [in 2007, French special forces were deployed during Operation Ares at Spin Boldak and briefly in Jalalabad], French Special forces suffer from not being used in what they view as the main operational theater for the French Army. General Georgelin, who leaves his post in February, was reluctant to send the forces to Afghanistan.

Ok, this time I'm done...