Thursday, March 23, 2006

Operational Competence

Strategypage notes the current status of the Iraqi army:

About 75 of the Iraqi Army's battalions are more or less capable of conducting operations without excessive oversight, though still needing logistical, heavy weapons, and other technical support. Maybe 8-10 brigade headquarters are up to coordinating multi-battalion operations. But only one or two of the ten or so divisions are good enough to conduct large scale operations. The main problem is the lack of trained and experienced senior officers.


I would like to point out that in 1980 when Iraq invaded Iran, the Iraqi army was not capable of coordinating more than a brigade in a single operation. Four Iraqi divisions made the initial invasion of Khuzestan but the various brigades acted on their own. So even now when the Iraqi military is still developing as a de-Baathified force, it has surpassed one measure of competence of the pre-Gulf Wars (1980-1988, 1990-1991, and 2003) Iraqi army.

We have a lot more work to do build an army to suppress the enemy and then change that army to one capable of defending Iraq's borders, but we are making progress.