Advising Indigenous Forces

The Army has recently embarked on massive advisory missions with foreign militaries in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere around the globe. This historical study examines three cases in which the U.S. Army has performed this same mission in the last half of the 20th century, In Korea during the 1950s, in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, and in El Salvador in the 1980s. The Army thought it learned: The need for U.S. advisors to have extensive language and cultural training, the lesser importance for them of technical and tactical skills training, and the need to adapt U.S. organizational concepts, training techniques, and tactics to local conditions. These lessons are still important and relevant today. This is a print on demand report.

The Army has recently embarked on massive advisory missions with foreign militaries in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere around the globe. We are simultaneously engaged in a huge effort to learn how to conduct those missions for which we do not consistently prepare. Mr. Robert Ramsey's historical study examines three cases where the US Army has performed this same mission in the last half of the 20th century. In Korea during the 1950s, in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, and in El Salvador in the 1980s the Army was tasked to build and advise host nation armies during a time of war. The author makes several key arguments about the lessons the Army thought it learned at the time.Among the key points Mr. Ramsey makes are the need for US advisors to have extensive language and cultural training, the lesser importance for them of technical and tactical skills training, and the need to adapt US organizational concepts, training techniques, and tactics to local conditions. Accordingly, he also notes the great importance of the host nation's leadership buying into and actively supporting the development of a performance-based selection, training, and promotion system. To its credit, the institutional Army learned these hard lessons, from successes and failures, during and after each of the cases examined in this study. However, they were often forgotten as the Army prepared for the next major conventional conflict.

CSI Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) Occasional Paper (OP) 29, Advice for Advisors: Suggestions and Observations from Lawrence to the Present could not be timelier. While always a mission for some Army units, advising indigenous forces has become a major task for many Army units and for thousands of Soldiers, both Active and Reserve. CSI published this occasional paper as a supplement to Occasional Paper 18, Advising Indigenous Forces: American Advisors in Korea, Vietnam, and El Salvador. In that important study, Mr. Robert Ramsey distilled the insights gained by the US Army from its advisory experiences in Korea, Vietnam, and El Salvador. In this anthology, Mr. Ramsey presents 14 insightful, personal accounts from those who advised foreign armies in various times and places over the last 100 years. Unlike most of the monographs in the GWOT Occasional Paper series, this volume is an anthology. The articles are from past and present advisors, and they are presented without editing or commentary. Each one presents valuable lessons, insights, and suggestions from the authors' firsthand experiences. Readers will thus make their own judgments and analysis in support of their unique requirements. CSI believes GWOT OP 19, like OP 18, will be of great value to Soldiers and units who are preparing to embark on an advisory mission and to those training organizations who are preparing Soldiers for this difficult and vital task.~

PRINT FORMAT ONLY NOTE: NO FURTHER DISCOUNT FOR THIS PRINT PRODUCT--OVERSTOCK SALE-- Significantly reduced list price while supplies last Presents fifteen papers from the 2007 Conference of Army Historians. Examines irregular warfare in a wide and diverse range of circumstances and eras. The papers selected for this publication are not only the best of those presented, but they also examine irregular warfare in a wide and diverse range of circumstances and eras. Together, they demonstrate how extremism was intimately connected to this type of warfare and how Americans have, at different times in their history, found themselves acting as insurgents, counterinsurgents, or both. The titles of the papers themselves reflect how often the U.S. Army has engaged in such irregular operations despite a formal focus on conventional warfare. Using imperial British and Italian examples, several presentations also underline how the ease of conquering lands is often no indication of the level of effort required to pacify them and integrate them into a larger whole. Historians, especially military historians, strategic military analysts, and students pursuing introduction to defense history or military science classes may be interested in this volume.

From U. S. Government Bookstore Website: Presents fifteen papers from the 2007 Conference of Army Historians. Examines irregular warfare in a wide and diverse range of circumstances and eras.

Security force assistance (SFA) is a central pillar of the counterinsurgency campaign being waged by U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan. This monograph analyzes SFA efforts in Afghanistan over time, documents U.S. and international approaches to building the Afghan force from 2001 to 2009, and provides observations and recommendations that emerged from extensive fieldwork in Afghanistan in 2009 and their implications for the U.S. Army.