U.S. military's troop deployment

How to rethink the U.S. military's troop deployment policy

Rotating soldiers every few months is a recipe for failure. Here's a better way.

By John Spencer

Baghdad Iraq 2008. I could see the resentment in the police chief’s eyes. He greeted me with subtle contempt. Don’t blame him. I was the eighth American commander he had met in the past five years.

Over the past 15 years, Iraqi and Afghan police, army, tribal and government leaders have had to build relationships with new military leaders every three, six, nine, or 12 months. Each new soldier comes in, introduces himself and says “I’m here to help.” The words are genuine but the frequent rotation of U.S. military personnel means the trust, rapport and progress are short-lived.

With his recent announcement that 8,400 soldiers will remain in Afghanistan in 2017 and further troop increases in Iraq, President Barack Obama is certain to leave a significant on-the-ground military presence in the Middle East. As a new president enters office and assesses the U.S.’s military strategy, it’s time to reevaluate our deployment schedule for U.S. soldiers. How is a military built around 12-month rotations able to retain knowledge about the local area and build relationships overseas?

Memory is the most essential requirement of learning. It is how we both store and recall information for later use. Research shows without a memory there is no learning. This applies to people as much as organizations. Memory, as the military expert Richard Downie notes, is “what old members of an organization know and what new members learn through a process of socialization.”

As a new company commander in Baghdad I was given responsibility of three neighborhoods. I quickly went around and met all of the key players in each area. These included an Iraqi Army commander, local government council and two police chiefs. I also had to learn the physical terrain of the area—what roads lead to a dead end, where were the neighborhood hangouts. Oh, and also where the bad guys were.

By now most Americans are familiar with the mantra that information and relationships in counterinsurgencies are as, if not more, important then finding bad guys to kill or capture. But despite that, U.S. military forces have never changed the method or technique of organizing and manning units to maintain continuity of information and relationships.

For example, when U.S. combat forces rotate in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan they do so mainly as groups of approximately 4,000 soldiers. Each time this rotation happens, the outgoing soldiers take about two weeks to show the new guys around. This includes going around and meeting all the key leaders in their area. When the old crew leaves they not only take everything they brought—weapons, computers and luggage—but also everything they learned. It is literally like hitting the reset button every nine to 12 months. For Iraqis or Afghans, it must seem like being stuck in a real-world version of the movies "Groundhog Day" and "Memento."

The military also keeps no record of the individual knowledge or relationships built by soldiers. A soldier’s records will include only the city and country they were deployed to—such as Baghdad, Iraq. There is no record of who they worked with or the specific areas with which they become intimately familiar. Since each area has its own key players and intricacies, maintaining records of only city and state is like only knowing someone worked in New York City.

There are multiple alternatives to switching hundreds to thousands of soldiers out of Iraq and Afghanistan at a time. Think of the difference between changing out individual players in a basketball game compared to line changes in a hockey game.

While a member of the 2006 Iraqi Study Group, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates recommended that military battalion commanders and above not rotate out of the combat zone during critical periods of a campaign. Commanders at multiple levels could be switched out on different rotations rather than the larger groups of soldiers with the goal of minimizing the disruption to the units.

An alternative to switching everyone out as a large group is switching soldiers out individually. Opponents say such a change would hurt unit cohesion and small group performance, as happened during the Vietnam War.

But the intimate bonding between soldiers that leads to increased combat performance happens at the small group level of nine to 40 soldiers. It does not happen in groups of thousands. Depending on the mission, the same can be said for collective training and readiness certifications.

The level of cohesion, training and readiness of small groups shouldn’t be the sole guide to rotational policies. But the question of how to maintain information, relationships and progress must be included in the calculation.

There is precedence for maintaining units in critical areas for long periods. In South Korea, for example, where tens of thousands of U.S. forces are deployed, a single command and unit was stationed for almost 50 years with soldiers rotating in and out of the base on an individual basis. This rotation policy allowed the unit to retain and transfer important collective knowledge between rotating soldiers and arguably made it more effective.

To be sure, the length of combat deployments comes at a high cost to soldiers and their families. Dragging out individual soldiers’ tours of duty longer is not the solution. But the structure and methods by which we deploy soldiers into combat should be reassessed.

There must be a middle ground of individual replacements to complete unit replacements that allows for the maximum continuity of information and relationships. If we keep hitting the reset button, we will make little progress in these wars.

This September marks 15 years since the attacks of 9/11. There is a popular saying that “we haven’t fought the wars overseas for the past 15 years. We’ve fought them one year at a time for the past 15 years.” Learning without retaining memories is a recipe for failure. If we do not change the way we deploy our forces, the next 15 years will look much the same as the past 15.