{"id":47891,"date":"2020-11-04T21:47:50","date_gmt":"2020-11-04T21:47:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/armytimes\/uncategorized\/2020\/11\/04\/shuttering-asymmetric-warfare-group-and-red-team-is-the-wrong-direction-retired-army-three-star-says\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T04:03:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T04:03:10","slug":"shuttering-asymmetric-warfare-group-and-red-team-is-the-wrong-direction-retired-army-three-star-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/armytimes\/news\/your-army\/2020\/11\/04\/shuttering-asymmetric-warfare-group-and-red-team-is-the-wrong-direction-retired-army-three-star-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Shuttering Asymmetric Warfare Group and Red Team is the \u2018wrong direction,\u2019 retired Army three-star says"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Army\u2019s decision to close some key innovation programs closely associated with the Afghanistan and Iraq wars is ill-advised, according to retired Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, who led coalition forces in Afghanistan<\/a> from 2003 to 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Units like the Fort Meade-based Asymmetric Warfare Group<\/a>, composed of seasoned soldiers and tasked with expediting new tactics and equipment to battlefields, \u201cneed to be empowered\u201d and “given more authority, because they have been proven to be successful,\u201d Barno said Monday at the Association of the U.S. Army.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Larger bureaucratic structures in the Army will find it difficult, if not impossible, to deliver those creative solutions, according to Barno, who visited the Asymmetric Warfare Group while researching his book, \u201cAdaptation under Fire: How Militaries Change in Wartime.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[The Army\u2019s] deactivating the Asymmetric Warfare Group \u2026 The Rapid Equipping Force is now going away,” Barno said. “The Red Team at Fort Leavenworth has now been notified they\u2019re going to be shut down. These are moves in the wrong direction. You\u2019ve got to have those pioneers out there breaking the ice. \u2026 Stripping them out of the system is not going to make the system more nimble. It\u2019s going to have, I\u2019m afraid, the opposite effect.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Rapid Equipping Force, headquartered at Fort Belvoir, found ways to use commercial products to address urgent requirements around the globe. And the Red Team, also known as the University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies, was tasked with teaching ways for Army leaders to avoid \u201cgroup-think\u201d and to view dilemmas through multiple perspectives, sometimes finding problems they didn\u2019t know existed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The closures are casualties of the Army\u2019s shift away from counter-insurgency and towards large-scale warfare against near-peer enemies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThose organizations exist[ed] because the regular structures didn\u2019t do what they needed to do under extraordinarily difficult circumstances,\u201d said Nora Bensahel, a defense policy scholar who co-authored \u201cAdaptation under Fire.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re both very disappointed, although perhaps not surprised, that when those circumstances change and budgets get tighter, that they\u2019re going to be on the chopping block, because they exist to circumvent the regular system,” she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barno and Bensahel\u2019s book deals with how militaries can prepare for future wars without fully knowing what those conflicts will look like.<\/p>\n\n\n\t