The L.A. Times piece that Josh cites take a rather breathless view of the U.S. military's efforts to transform. I don't think it tells a complete or accurate story about what's really going on. The Times article on adviser training was preceded a few days earlier by a much more detailed piece by Greg Jaffe of the Wall Street Journal [ed.: behind their subscriber firewall] which critically examined the military's slowness to embrace the advisory mission. It is true that the Army has stood up a new advisory training program at Fort Riley; it is true that it may eventually reach a throughput of 2,000 advisers/month. But we're 3 1/2 years into the war, so I wonder how much of a contribution this center will make, and why it took the Army so long to develop institutional processes for the creation of adviser teams?

There is certainly much hay to be made by arguing that the focus on advisory teams has been far too slow in coming. Has it? Sure. But if we weren't engaged in Iraq, would the Army have established the center at all? No way. Some might say that's fine, since we wouldn't need it. But my overall argument has to do with adapting to irregular warfare in general, both within the current framework of the war in Iraq, and in expectation of future conflicts. Any endeavors geared toward this are likely to pay dividends, and I believe a broad understanding of military advisory issues is one such endeavor. Phil continues:

The testing of V-shaped hulls is nothing new; R&D has been going in this area for decades, and in earnest since the Bosnia mission highlighted the need for mine-resistant vehicles. What matters more, in my opinion, is that the military has yet to actually launch a major procurement program for any of these vehicles. A few of these vehicles are used in Iraq on specialized missions... but I think this is just a blip.

This is true. V-shaped hulls are not a new concept invented by the US. What I argued is that their use is new to the US military, recently anyway, as I'm no expert on the history of such vehicles. My argument may have been better served by drawing more attention to the progenitor of this benefit rather than the vehicles themselves: in other words, is it not a sign of adaptation that something called The Joint IED Defeat Task Force exists, with a budget of several billion dollars to boot? One can argue over the effectiveness of V-shaped hulls, but it's hard to deny that a joint, well-funded organization geared towards reducing the impact of improvised explosives -- read, irregular warfare -- isn't a positive move for the DoD. Phil has more:

And finally, the piece about language accurately reports on the military's Rosetta Stone program. But c'mon... 64,000 total downloads in a total force of a couple million? And how many of those actually reached proficiency? I think this online language software is a cop-out for the military; a Band-Aid to cover the fact that no meaningful language instruction is conducted prior to deployment.

You can definitely argue the negative here: not everyone in the entire military is fluent in another language. But if that's your metric for success, well . . . it's going to be a long time. Still, I see signs of progress. I've used Rosetta Stone for Arabic myself and found it to be a fantastic little program. Moreover, let's assume only 30% of those using the program are studying Arabic. That's 19,200 people. Let's assume that only half of them attain any meaningful understanding or basic proficiency in the language. Still though, this is an accomplishment for two reasons: first, Arabic proficiency in the military is miniscule. Even adding a few hundred people who show both interest and ability adds to the density of Arabic speakers available, and helps identify those who would benefit from more in-depth follow-on instruction. Second, I argue that even superficial attempts to understand a language usually result in learning about the culture which it inhabits as well. Even a small amount of cultural knowledge can have a force multiplier effect in a counterinsurgency environment, though obviously the more, the better. Phil finishes:

So can any of these be counted as examples of meaningful institutional learning?

I don't believe so. There are other indicators which people point to, such as Gen. George Casey's creation of a Counterinsurgency Center for Excellence in Iraq which trains incoming officers and NCOs on the rudiments of counterinsurgency and advising. And, of course, there's the new field manual on counterinsurgency. But even if we take these things into account, I don't know that you can credit the U.S. military with being a true learning and adaptive organization.

Josh is right that it takes an adaptive and flexible organization to win at counterinsurgency. At its core, counterinsurgency is basically a problem-solving exercise writ large. On one day, the problem may be security. The next week, the problem may be sewage. Nimble, adaptive, flexible, decentralized organizations tend to do better in these kinds of operations than hierarchical, ponderous, over-bureaucratized organizations. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the U.S. military (and U.S. government generally) still falls largely in the latter category.

I think Phil and I mainly disagree in terms of degrees. I see small signs of hope that the military is learning about irregular warfare and its importance both now and for the future. Phil sees the same things and is skeptical. I certainly agree with his last two sentences though. I never tried to argue that the military has suddenly become flexible and decentralized, shedding its ponderous and over-bureaucratized DNA. Instead, I just see small signs of progress -- a progress that will undoubtedly evaporate if we leave Iraq suddenly or too soon.