It is arguably one of the best essays I have read so far. I am pleasantly inspired and surprised by the insight that it shows. Okay, not that surprised... I wish I could see this level of determined analysis on more than one level. He is probably going to be a good teacher.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Afghanistan

This essay is interesting in that it describes an effort that for all its success was limited to an extremely small (and disproportionately resourced) line of operation. The author portrays this as an inclusive endeavor while it was decidedly not inclusive in many respects. My experience in working with the General's Task Force is that it was the most difficult organization to work with in theater and it only functioned as a network if you or your organization were willing to completely subordinate yourself, your resources and your mission to his very narrow line of operation. Most of the time his line of operations, while very important, was not the primary or most important line in the country or region. In the end establishing the Iraqi government as legitimate and enabling its organs to function as designed proved to be the decisive operation. Resources and expertise for Regional and Provincial efforts to pressure networks and establish local governance were found wanting as these limited resources and capabilities were overwhelmingly pooled in support of the General's network efforts to the almost complete exclusion of the rest of the important efforts throughout the country. I can honestly say that regional efforts were significantly degraded due to the overwhelming amount of collection and analysis assets that went to supporting this one effort in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The point of my post is not to say that the General's former unit does not have a vital role to play and that his idea of the network did not work or is not important; just that I argue the US security apparatus needs to balance its resources and network development to deal with the larger specter of both regional and global threats. Networks that rely on huge unsustainable budgets and do not include in a real way our local and regional partners might not achieve the desired effect. I would argue for the formation of another type of network that would complement the General's; it would be composed of longterm regional experts who would over time develop lasting relationships with local populations and organizations of regional influence. That being said an article by McChrystal that I would greatly look forward to reading would outline his lessons learned in leading in a network/inter-agency environment. I think his experience in this realm would be very interesting and useful for officers in the military and network managers world wide. Thanks

There appears to be several parallels between this essay and FMFM-1, Warfighting.
There doesn’t appear to be new concepts, just different packaging.

Would anyone have other readings on how to tackle decentralized 'network' style operations?

One of the take-a-ways from Moises Naim's _Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy_ is that regardless of the cargo (narcotics, organs, slaves/humans, DVDs et al) the underlying -network- of agents, methadology, protocols, etc is the same.

Now that is was pointed out to me, it seems really, in hindsight, that you can add warfare to the same list.

Excellent article, as one would expect from someone involved in every aspect of the fight in Afghanistan.

However, it leaves out one important point, the reason why his former enemy is so different from, say, Germany in WWII. Germans were excellent fighters and were well-trained. They knew that failure to follow orders would be brutally supressed. But in the final analysis, they were only soldiers. Eventually they faced insurmountable odds and many surrendered in large groups.

In Afghanistan, each and every soldier believes fervently in his mission; they believe in Islam and jihad. This is completely different than any enemy the West has ever faced. Sure, in WWII there were SS groups which fought to the death, but this was the exception. Even in fights against Communists, often true believers in their cause, prisoners were still taken in large groups. How often are Islamic fighters taken prisoners in large groups? In conventional battles, we only need to reduce the enemy's units to a point where they became severely inefficient, but with true believers, we need to kill each and every one.

If you want to read about the "network" further, and in particular the way McChrystal brought Iraq back from the brink go buy "Task Force Black". great book.

The difficulties in adapting to this different way of enemy warfighting dempnstrate the fundamental weakness of the American military. We are incapable of adapting, believing that what got us to victory before will do so again, until proven otherwise. Bureaucracy, deferrence to rank rather than knowledge, and limited communication capabilities are all to blame. The first 2 of these problems can only be changed by a shift in organizational culture. That may take a generation or more to fix. What can be fixed more readily is the sorry state of affairs for military communication links. Awhile back there was an article in Proceedings with a title something like "Acelerate your life, decelerate your access." If I remember it had something to do with how the young people joining the navy today are accustomed to instantaneous communication capability but are signing up with a company that struggles constantly with bandwidth limitations and antiquated com systems. What does it take to get the bosses to realize that bandwidth today is as relevant as beans or bullets were to earlier generations?

Totally agree with BRRCDR, the US thinking is still glued to an outdated paradigm, and has not adapted to the modern networked world, hence its military thinking, its political and legal system, and its media landscape are all outdated. How did Facebook become so popular and worth so much in such a short time- more than Boeing, FFS ? Open your eyes and your minds, US! The same networking system was used in Vietnam-and the US lost- did they not learn anything?

First, if you want to read about networks in a defence form, go to the US DoD Command and Control Research Program website and download any number of books and articles dealing with military networks. Also consult John Arquilla's work on networks from several books.

Second, it's time for intelligent commenters to get smart on science... and math. The challenge for any counterinsurgent force to "out-network" an insurgent network is the same challenge for that same force to "out-system" an insurgent system. This means applying Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety (from cybernetics.) We must have more variety in our behaviors than the enemy's in order to "control" (i.e. F3EA) the enemy. That observation informs us why it takes an enormous amount of effort and information to accomplish this for even a narrow band of counterinurgent activity - as someone above has already perceptively commented. The implication of this follow-on observation is that the US has a force mix inversely proportionate to what it needs to conduct irregular warfare (e.g. counterinsurgency.) The US needs far more integrated sensors/interpreters (of the HUMAN variety) than shooters. The critical key is system/network integration, not merely quantity.

And here's the kicker. Such integration, the breaking down of institutional and behavioral barriers, means "de-compartmentalization" of security efforts - precisely the opposite direction of American security programs today. One wonders what the good General, in charge of so many security compartments at the time, thinks of that.

GEN McChrystal is exactly right. And what is remarkable about his conclusions is that they come from an unlikely character, i.e. the former commander of the most kinetic unit in the U.S. Armed Forces. GEN McChrystal is simply an unlikely advocate for network/population-centric warfare. To the conventional military faithful, he is indeed a heretic in Church, so to speak. His insights are gained from hard-fought battlefield experience and knowledge. But as can be evidenced from the comments following this essay, such insights also threaten the intellectual assumptions and underpinnings which belie the enormous, expensive and unecessary modern conventional U.S. military from where such critics hail.

And for those of us willing to read between the lines of this essay, we can glean some important facts about the past, current and future operating environment and how our armed forces once created for a cold war conflict with the former Soviet Union are simply not trained, organized or equipped to do counterinsurgency, foreign internal defense, and population-centric warfare. A U.S. military which is adept at studying failure and "learning lessons" remains steadfast in avoiding the core lessons of population-centric warfare which still haunt us from not-so-recent losses in places Vietnam and Nicaragua and persist from our current failings in Iraq and Afghanistan. In short, our armed forces are a sledge hammer of a tool -- and it's hard to convince the populous to trust and like you when you are swinging a sledge hammer at them. As our nation continues to buckle under the weight of its own debt and decades of misguided foreign policy, we circle the drain of failed empires. And if we are honest, that debt was incurred to fuel the world's largest and most politically active military industrial complex, something about which President (and former 5 star general) Dwight Eisenhower so prophetically warned us more than 60 years ago as he spoke for the last time as President. As long as our elected Members of Congress and the executive branch allow the military industrial complex to control the narrative and keep us addicted to the corrupting influence of the defense lobby, "jobs in home districts" and, of course, cheap oil, we'll continue to avoid such important lessons and fail to organize, train and equip America's Armed Forces to properly conduct network and/or population-centric warfare.

McChrystal could have won his battles more easily by reflecting on what fits into the definition of "our enemies." Certainly, they are not my enemies, nor are they the enemies of America. They are the enemies that have been defined by policymakers, and the crafting of these policies is not something Americans are privy to. McChrystal is operating in his own very insular world of a military man. Outside of that world, many of his statements and attitudes come over as grotesque characterizations. What an incredible embarrassment.

To "win," McChrystal must redefine his objectives. He would best "win" by renouncing his role in the Middle East conflicts, and preparing to testify before the many war crimes tribunals that will undoubtedly spring up in the aftermath of America's decade-long debacle in the Middle East. He ought more often to have pictured himself before such venues than to have worried about establishing networks to kill "our enemies."

I know McChrystal means well, but articles like this, strangely, remind me of ones I read by experts in the old Soviet Union or Eastern Bloc nations about how their central planning authorities were finally on the cusp of creating their own Silicon Valleys. The technology used by the Taliban might be new, but the problems faced by US forces attempting counterinsurgency are as old as the hills. In a nutshell, there is just no way people in the US military will ever care about Afghanistan in the same way as people who will spend their entire lives there. We're visitors. They know that.

Given that the cost of the US military deployment is basically 5-10 times the GDP of the whole country, this conflict is going to continue until the money runs out. If the US wants a favorable outcome, however, it needs to realize that it's betting everything on the success of Karzai and his government (ie. the people who are native to the country and have similar stakes--if, at this point, they still do).

McCrystal's article spells out the front-line actions of modern counter-insurgency, though those who fought in places like Vietnam already understood this type of network-centric approach (though in a more primitive form). It does ring true that to tackle such opponents our military organizations have to be more "flat" with initiative resting with company and platoon commanders in the field, and not in far away command posts. There also has to be much, much more effort to field human intelligence and to integrate ourselves with the locals.

Unfortunately all of the progress we can make in Afghanistan is pointless if we let the Taliban have sanctuary in Pakistan. The enemy's not a vapor cloud: they have substance and a center of gravity in Pakistan's northwest frontier. Despite all of the effort we make toward "network-centric" warfare it's pointless unless we cross the border in force, go into where the Taliban's commanders and supporters live, and burn it all down and keep burning until they give up. We'll never win otherwise.

While some mud is slung and the book is written by a journalist, 'Task Force Black' provides a very informative look into the American and British counter terror operation in Iraq. The stats provided, if accurate, are very impressive and make it clear that forces organized in this manner achieve disproportionate results that cannot be argued with.

I get the feeling that McCyrstal committed the crime of being obsessively focused on results in a conventional organization consumed with process and internal competition.

http://www.amazon.com/Task-Force-Black/dp/1408702649

Let’s assume your half Crusader/half Plains Indian politico-military-organized crime network remained up and running despite the best efforts of the West Point/Ivy League Protective Association and its Media/Congressional/Supreme Court/Presidential (oh hell, everybody with money) puppets. Public magical thinking from on high is the in-thing, these days – to replace rational thought which is out of TV fascion (Get it? Fascist and fashion?…).

You, like everyone from President Obama, Gates and etc. on down, have chosen not to declare your victory conditions. You know, those conditions which, if they ever occurred in nonmagic space-time, would allow you to fold up your very, very expensive tentage and wend you quasi-interplanetary way home? “Next war: Mars Then we'll be talking REAL money!” What might those victory conditions be?

Here are a few humble suggestions. Mix and match as you see fit (the more impossible the victory, the better, as far as the power that be are concerned).

Every potential Af-Pak and neighborhood rebel accepts unilateral, unconditional surrender, simultaneously and forever.

You can statistically prove that every leadership element of the opposition network has either been killed or suborned by your own, including all elements as yet unborn.

750,000 Afghan Army, Police and self-defense Militia have their uniformed hands out for American military aid, indefinitely. They even have a stealth jet Air Force, and landlocked though they be, a four-carrier Navy and, of course, Marine Corps. How do you say Semper Fi in Pashto?

A steady flow of minerals, natural gas and opium garner Western bottom lines into the indefinite future (already hard at work on that one).

All Afghans convert into pacifist anarchist Jains. No exceptions, unless they become card-carrying Republicans.

Afghanistan declares its national sport is badminton, instead of mountain/desert/urban warfare against any and all comers and themselves during the brief interims when no outsider is stupid enough to try.

Afghans discover American television and agree to stop thinking ever again, thus adopting the American Way of Life. Afghanistan invades Madagascar in its eternal war against "Sadness."

The country of Pachunistan is ripped from Afghan and Pakistani authority, and all the Taliban go home to run for public office and murder each other in the streets (à la Republic of Ireland, circa 1920s).

All the Pachtuns become organized, Ghandian non-violent protestors (no, that was successfully accomplished around 1912, and sabotaged quite handily by the Brits and the Muslim Brotherhood, for the one and only time in total cooperation with each other). Besides, the Western media wouldn’t be allowed to consider this a “victory.” Not Republican enough...

Pakistan and India have an atomic war, and Afghanistan is sterilized by the resulting radioactive cloud blowing in the wrong direction (the natural one being onto the American Mid-West).

Ok, those are some of my suggestions, off the top of my head. Got any of your own, in this war deliberately set up to go on forever, smart guy? A war profiteer’s wet dream and a tactician's nightmare. Please append the date of projected end-of-conflict and final evacuation of neocolonial forces, from among the four that follow: 2111, 2211, 3111, the next Ice Age.

Russia, Iran, China and India offer to garrison Afghanistan with a million men each, thus placing a rifle platoon on every water point and mountain top in-country. NATO pumps up its determination to offer an additional million troops, just for fun. They sit there, doing nothing much but terrorizing the countryside, for the next century, then leave. Start over from scratch.