Army stands up six new brigades
The Army announced Thursday that it will devote 3,000 troops to the creation of six new brigades dedicated entirely to the training of foreign forces. Called Security Force Assistance Brigades, these new units will actually be battalion size in personnel strength yet organized as brigade combat teams stripped of their lower ranks and staffed for the most part by officers and more senior NCO’s. It will be the foreign forces making up those lower ranks when these SFAB’s are functioning as intended. A new Military Advisor Training Academy is being established at Fort Benning to train the members of the SFAB’s for their missions.
This is a major break from the traditional use of Army combat units being assigned to part-time missions for training foreign forces, an unneeded distraction from their readiness preparation for their primary missions. The Army says a further advantage to this concept is that should the country need new brigade combat teams on the quick, the lower ranks of these brigades could be fleshed out with American privates and specialists who could be quickly molded into a fighting force without needing to dog-rob existing BCT’s for leaders and cadre, the hardest personnel to come by when standing up a new combat arms unit.
This is a smart move as Ol’ Poe sees it but with the catch being that it is imperative to keep rotating fresh combat experienced NCO’s in and rotating the old trainers back into ready units to keep the edges sharp on the trainers themselves.
Opinions, TAH?
Category: Army News
“it is imperative to keep rotating fresh combat experienced NCO’s in and rotating the old trainers back into ready units to keep the edges sharp on the trainers themselves”
That is the method of keeping things “real” within the Ranger Training Brigade. NCOs are there for 3 years while officers are rotated every 2 years. They teach the same format, but with “fresh blood”.
I’ve know many NCOs to spend 18 out of 20 years in Regiment
“in Regiment”? Which regiment? The Ranger Training Brigade is not part of a Regiment, but a part of “The Infantry School”. In the Ranger Training Brigade, (where Ranger Training is done), NCOs spend 3 years per assignment, while officers spend 2 years. Many of them come back after a tour or two elsewhere, but I don’t know of any staying beyond the 3 or 2 year periods, consecutively.
good army idea, now the “lower ranks”, the foreign soldiers can attack our troops from within…yeh, great idea!
Poe, I agree with your assessment that this would answer those questions you raised. I don’t know if I like the underlying principle. My fear is we are simply training the soldiers we will face on the battlefield in the future.
I
First???
Don’t overlook “equipping”. Look at what happened in Iraq with ISIS. The US equipped them through a surrogate in the no balls Iraq forces. How many times have our own supplied weapons been used to kill US forces?
We are already doing this. The difference is we rotate other units for the function or use SF units.
This would create dedicated units to do things we are doing with or without the units.
Perfect mission for the Guard and Reserve
Which have already made up the bulk of the ETTs and OMLTs the last 15 years
Did this in 2012 with NY ARNG in a SFAT. Two weeks at shake and bake course at Polk, then off to see the Kandak. I like this idea better, but wonder about long term career effects. Up side is we had no time wasted with shenanigans – all had been around the block several times with at least 10 years in. Things got done quickly with no explanations or supervision needed. Only problem we had was with so many senior officers and NCOs, once we got into Afghan the major commands tended to poach personnel for other duties – BN sized element and command structure should take care of that.
Unless these new ‘Brigades’ aren’t going to have any vehicles, weapons, equipment, food or any other supplies, how in the hell are they going to operate without any junior enlisted personnel? It is junior enlisted that do all of that heavy lifting.
I doubt there are any SSG/SFC out there that want company supply clerk on their NCOER.
Smitty that’s why I put that “for the most part” in there. The issue was not addressed in the article but it is the reality as we all know.
Look at the TDAs of the USAR Training Brigades
That’s likely what they’ll resemble in personnel makeup and org structure
You’re talking “battalions” made up of 25 Lieutenant Colonels, Majors and Master Sergeants
We had that – was fun in meetings when 15 former BN Commanders argued about things “based upon my experience”. If this is any indicator officer led meetings take about 10x as long as NCO ones.
I’m in a Reserve OC/T BN, we have 87 positions with one for E4. A few E5’s and the rest are E6-8.
All support functions get handled by the full time staff, the supply is run by the S4, an O3 an E6 and an E4.
When we need something more than copying paper, they coordinate with other units to borrow, next month we are borrowing 40 rifles to do our annual qual, S4 acts as the BN ordering for the down trace units that only consist of NCO’s and junior Officers.
There is not much need when your entire fleet is two vans and a civilian trailer. (Big change coming from an Route Clearance Company)
Most supply NCO’s at the BN level are E6’s
“S-FABs?” Bummer of an acronym.
*runs, bobbing and weaving*
I hear their first choice was to call them Security Force Assistance Groups but the acronym was deemed insensitive.
Todays students – Tomorrow’s targets!
Manuel Noriega was an Honor Grad of SOA at Ft. Benning.
Winner, AlGore Interweb quip of the week. Your entry is automatically entered into the monthly contest. Congrats.
Where are all these cadre folks coming from? Do we currently have an excess of experienced officers and senior NCOs?
Who, specifically, are these units going to train? I assume the Army has some actual current need for these units, given that they are always complaining about the shortage of personnel and funding.
Who currently trains military advisors? Isn’t that a Special Forces mission.
“500 senior officers and noncommissioned officers who will have the proven expertise to train and advise foreign security forces from small units up through ministerial levels,”
Sounds like a bit more than just a brigade cadre to me.
Bingo.
A cynic could easily say that this is merely a way to justify – and thus preserve – higher-grade “slots” while cutting overall troop strength
below that which would justify that number of higher grade officer/enlisted personnel.
The idea may well have merit – in particular, it does preserve a cadre of experienced personnel that could be used to create new combat forces quickly in a crisis. But I’m nonetheless a bit wary.
And as others have observed: it does rather put us in much the same position as a Colonial power training and in some respects leading a native army in one of their colonies. That often didn’t work out so well in the long run.
I can’t think of too many times it has worked out well, and I’m going back to ancient Greece looking at examples.
“A cynic could easily say…”
Heh. Ya got me. Passed over twice? Not to worry–you, too, can make your twenty. Have a little problem your friends can’t hide? No sweat, we’ve got a slot for you! Etc. The word “sinecure” comes to mind (my mind, anyway).
What we need is a new combat force comparable in make-up to the French Foreign Legion. We could even call it the American Immigrant Legion or something. Have it led by our experienced officers and NCO’s with the lesser ranks foreigners who wish to become US citizens, which would be granted after 10 years of honorable service. Keep it stationed abroad, where the language skills and cultural knowledge can be utilized. The Romans did it, but then in the end it didn’t work out for them. Apparently, because they entrusted too much of their military security to soldiers from cultures foreign to Roman culture and values.
What has to be realized and placed front and center of the concept is this….
We are in effect offering to provide the Leadership to conscript armies around the world.
In the 17th and 18th century such organizations were called “companies” and were merely nationalized mercenary enterprises (such as the Hessian units in the American civil war).
Advising our allies is one thing. Hiring out as leadership for them is another.
What could possibly go wrong?
As history has shown, for some reason no matter how much we train other nation’s troops, the minute we leave they forget everything, drop their weapons, shed their uniforms and head back to the farm. You can’t train courage and the desire to fight for freedom to anyone. Just my thoughts.
First you have to give them something to fight FOR, not just against. Very few men want to die for a government that does things like kidnap your son to be a “teaboy”.
You guys nailed this in the comments. Funny how experience and common sense factor into wisdom.
This makes sense.
Well, if this idea makes sense to you, then it’s now confirmed to be as fucked up as Hogan’s Goat from the git go.
Yeah, if there was doubt, it’s gone now.
Here is a command I would not want.
Anyone besides me ever hear of the Sepoy Mutiny? Anyone? Bueller?
AKA “The Indian Rebellion of 1857.” Didn’t work out well at all for the East India Company.
Which brings to mind:
Oh, yes! Sean Connery before he was a sub commander. Mmm, mmm, mmmm!
Not exactly the point I was attempting to make, Ex, but what ever floats your boat.
*grin*
Just another step in the process of “nation building”.
If you took one of these “Brigades” and put them in Iowa and had recruiters go out and find “volunteers” that were screened at a low level ( in other words not given the ASVAB, checked for background or sent to recruit training) I have no doubt within a year you would have an actual Brigade that could function as part of a larger unit.
However, having them go into a foreign country with such a vast cultural difference will make the odds of that minimal.
Training foreign troops? Holy Sheep Dip, can you say “Green On Blue Attacks”?
We’re going to have these missions whether we like them or not. It’s not really an SF mission- they can obviously do it, but it is sort of a waste of their talents- they are optimized to go into semi or non permissive environments and train irregulars, not go into a ‘friendly’ nation and train the regular army.
This will also keep some quality NCOs and officers in the Army, and the structure creates an instant BCT (just add privates). In case of war you can ‘grow’ junior enlisted and 2LTs pretty quickly, but it takes years to make a seasoned leader. Infantry OSUT is 14 weeks long; it takes 5 years to make an Infantry Officer and about 4 to make an E-5- longer for captains, staff sergeants, field grades, and Top 3 NCOs that know what they are doing.
” instant BCT (just add privates)”
It’s bit more complicated than that, unless you want to use the traditional Soviet system, where enlisted and juniors are basically expendable cannon fodder. That’s why the Soviets (and the Russians?) had officers doing the work done by enlisted in western armies.
An RTO (E-4?), for example, does a bit more than just carry a radio for the commander, and requires more than the usual training.
True, but it only takes a few months to train a private (with a few exceptions). Most trigger pullers are trained and reporting for duty in less than 20 weeks.
A 25C goes through 10 weeks of BCT and 13 weeks of AIT- about 5 months. It’s an important job, but we can train them relatively quickly. It’s the leaders that can’t be mass produced.
A specialist (E4) is a bit more seasoned, but it’s not the same as an NCO
I suppose it’s job security for some, but as some of the cmts above reveal, it’s a useless exercise. Training those who would kill our people and educating them regarding tactics and weaponry may not be the best or wisest use of our experienced military personnel.
Well, I guess this means the Army will be looking for more language seats at the TRAP next week
CTIC(SS)
My first thought was a Skywalker quote “I’ve got a bad feeling about this…” On the other hand, from what I have read elsewhere, the average soldier in that part of the world is certainly no less brave or hardy than us, or others. The leadership, however, is absolutely appalling. Officers effectively loot their non-tribal subordinates in mixed units and same-tribe units fight as a tribe, often with heightened sensitivity to 1st “tribal” brigade casualties, versus those other guys over in 2nd “other tribe” brigade. Thus, led by outsiders who don’t give a flying flup about tribe, they might actually make a pretty good unit. On the gripping hand, what is the goal here? Janissaries? We have no need. We do the expeditionary force thing quite well, and don’t make a habit of conquering to add to ourselves, although we do intervene all over the place. Stable local forces that -don’t- overthrow the local government? that was my assumption, as it seems to serve stated goals. However, unless the local culture mutates radically (sci-fi movie radical) they will revert to type about ten minutes after we rotate out the non-tribal types. Hmm. Such a unit, focused outward, say against the absolute loons of the Caliphate, might be relatively stable. Effective and non-predatory leadership, and no direct attack on any member tribes. The violence focuses on a shared enemy. As long as tribal casualties are evenly distributed, and rather low, and perhaps compensated much like we do our own folks, this might actually work. If, and only if, we can identify locals with the same non-tribe attitudes, or at least grow them, and put them in effective long term control, then maybe this thing works long term. Otherwise we are going to be creating a large pool of weapons-grade combatants for a civil war to seize control by tribe. I am thinking that the above paragraph is wishful thinking, and is making the usual assumption that folks will think like us once they see the advantages of it. Generally, no. The ones that do -move here- and do so. The ones… Read more »
We trained them in basic military procedures – PMCS, accountablity of equipment, leadership, etc. The US supplied them with brand spanking new vehicles and equipment (better than ours, in many cases), but didn’t supply them with maintenance knowledge, for example. That’s where we came in (this was in an Engineer Kandak). Tendency was to run equipment until something broke and then wait for months for the extremely inefficient bureaucracy to ignore a part or repair request. Often forgotten in military culture is the fact that high tech and low tech equipment needs to be maintained and operators trained, and the support from the wrench turners to depots just wasn’t there. That’s where we came in.
” the average soldier in that part of the world”
That is what I am still wondering about–Which part of the world? Where is the current need? 6 additional training brigades is a substantial commitment, and I cannot think of a country(s) I would be willing to make that commitment for.
I reemphasize CURRENT need. If it is for some unknown future need then I expect to hear no more whining about insufficient budgets and so forth.
Well I asked for opinions, and this being TAH, I got ’em. And while I see the merit in most of the negative observations, my own thinking tends to be like that of Reddevil, that we’re likely stuck with this job whether we like it or not so we might as well do it in such a fashion as to give an assist to our own mission?
As Red notes, it certainly can’t hurt to have six potential brigade combat teams already manned with experienced cadre should we need a quick buildup. Think about it, with that experienced training cadre already in place they could do their own OSUT. Imagine a unit going into combat with the same officers and NCO’s who conducted their BCT and AIT. That could build some top rate unit cohesion.
Another thought occurred: while Congress might be reluctant to approve the costs of standing up six new fully-manned BCT’s, they have apparently bought into this stripped down structure. It just could be that our Army brass is slipping one past the pols with this new concept. Have any of you considered that?
Poe,
This looks to be US Cadre TRAINING foreign forces. Actually taking them into combat would be something altogether different.
I don’t see any reason to risk our soldiers lives making them lead and fight beside Syrians, Afghans or Iraqis with questionable motivation, especially if the unit is going to be 90% Foreign.
I can see training the unit with each US Soldier having a counterpart or “shadow” that will actually fill in the Units T/0 when it goes into combat.
At that point the US presence in the Unit should be a few “advisors”, if that.
No, no, Dog, you missed my point. I’m talking about filling out the skeleton brigades with US recruits in a crisis. Hell no, I don’t want them leading foreign troops into combat! That goes back to the hessian references above.
Give me a bunch of Kurds, Sikhs or Gurkhas instead of US recruits, and I will conquer the world with one of these ‘brigades’.
I never had much experience with Kurds or Sikhs, but I’ll go outside the wire ANY DAY alongside Gurkhas, my Section did a few missions with some of them in A-stan, talk about balls-to-the-wall hard-fighting life takers!
From what I have seen, they all seem to be cut from the same cloth
The difference I observed between Peshmerga and regular Iraqi Army personnel was night and day, and that was just in attitude and appearance.
That’s actually the real motivation behind this. It’s what we’ve been calling ‘reversibility’- the ability to rapidly reverse the trend to downsize the Army in the case of war.
It’s pretty well accepted that the nation and its political leadership are more willing to provide and maintain a Navy while only ‘ro raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years’. There are a lot of reasons (and reasons for debate- we’ve continuously funded an Army except for a one day period since before we were a nation, while the Navy was actually disbanded for a period).
However, one of the biggest reasons is that an Army, unlike a Navy or Air Force, IS the people, and it’s hard to see. You tell someone that we have a 440 ship Navy and they can imagine it. You tell the same person that we have 430,000 Soldiers in 33 BCTs and they have no idea what you mean.
On top of that, The Army is expensive- you are paying a bunch of folks to sit around, eat, work out, and train, and if they do their job right you never have to use it.
It is sort of an axiom in Army strategic planning that we downsize the Army after every major war, then we have a debacle at the beginning of the next war. In Army circles we say ‘No more Task Force Smiths’.
However, to Congress they say ‘well, aside from the horrible loss of life and battlefield defeat, it worked out well in the end’. In their horribly misguided (and I think immoral) view, it is actually cheaper to shortchange the Army, lose the next first battle, and then build a strong Army from scratch every time.
This is what we’re trying to avoid with the SFABs.
I think the “quick buildup” is wishful thinking. Anyway, that’s what the reserves and NG are for.
we did it after the Revolution, 1812, WW1, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War. It was at great. Pat to Soldiers lives, but we did it.
Observer Controller teams have already been doing this in Germany. I was a OC with the Warhogs OC-T team in Hohenfels. We deployed to Jordan and Georgia, other teams went elsewhere. The concept is sound, its been working. Figure, in JMRC for example, we were structured to OC a Brigade Combat Team. We had trainers, both officers and SRNCOs, for all levels down to platoon and every support and staff job you could think of. This is just building on what has already been learned and formalizing as opposed to doing it adhoc as we’ve been doing in the past. I’m not taking away from the SF-A teams and their skill set, but when you want to train and Armored BDE, SF-A guys may not be the best fit. Not to say they can’t, but others can do it also. We had to hire translators and the like, but if you build the structure and capabilities into the unit, it’ll make the job easier. I really enjoyed training foreign army’s both in their host country and all the times they came through JMRC. We’re not reinventing the wheel, just using a wheel that is designed for the task.
I can vaguely recall the Regional Training Brigades of the late 1990’s preparing for a mission such as this. I was in the wonderful 5th Regional Training Brigade at Ft Carson, CO from 1997-1999 and the unit consisted of E6-E8 and O3-O5, all combat arm MOS’s with the main intent of training the ARNG, it came around for me full circle with a trip to OIF on a BTT (Border Transition Team)in Sinjar and the Syrian border in 2006-2007.