Learning the Lessons of War

An IED blast rips apart a Humvee, and those inside it, near Baghdad.  A tribal elder approaches a military officer in the war-torn city of Ramadi.  A Marine places the stock of his M-16A4 against his shoulder and fires at a target on a shooting range in the Al Anbar Province, teaching the Iraqi soldier standing next to him by example.

Cause and effect.  Problem evolves into solution.  But in the case of Operation Iraqi Freedom how are the lessons of war extracted from the bullets and bombs of the battlefield?  You would need experts who view the combat zone as a classroom.

Enter the Marine Corps Center for Lessons Learned.

“My job is to make sure that gets recorded for posterity at Headquarters Marine Corps [in Quantico, Virginia],” explains one of those experts, Col. Michael Crites, from his office aboard Al Asad Air Base in Iraq’s Al Anbar Province.  He describes his job as “a mixture of consultant and reporter.”

Crites is the Marine Corps Center for Lessons Learned (MCCLL) Liaison to Multi-National Force – West (MNF-W), the force that covers western Iraq which includes all of Al Anbar Province and the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah, to name two.  That’s a massive area.  Iraq is about the size of California and Anbar is the size of North Carolina. “The command (MNF-W) is the source,” Crites says. “They’re going to guide me into what lessons they want recorded, what lessons they’ve learned, according to their operations.”

As if writing an encyclopedia of war, the Marine Corps records and learns from every operation.  “In our history, we’ve built host nation armies, like in Central America in the 20’s.  We’ve participated in the occupation of Japan, a security kind of mission,” Crites says.  Those lessons include, “Key leader engagements.  Building that host military capability.  Civil action projects borrowing from what we learned in Vietnam with the civil action platoon and successfully being able to retrograde and leave [Iraq] in the hands of its own security forces reasonably peaceful.”

Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) has resulted in reams of recommendations and life-saving changes.  Crites highlights a specific example from Iraq that’s also made its way to Afghanistan. “Improvised Explosive Devices became the weapon of choice of the enemy.  We’ve gone through, learned all kinds of lessons and, in fact, transformed our vehicle force since we began in Iraq.  The MRAP, [Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle] is created to withstand an explosive device.  So that’s something that is continuing to evolve and be used in Afghanistan.”

By accessing MCCLL’s secure web site, Marines make a record of combat-related events by filling out an After Action Report.  The information is collected and analyzed.  The lessons learned from that particular battle or event are extracted and published once a week.  “This is the first war where we had a fully functioning system of knowledge management, where information can be gathered, accumulated, studied, and analyzed,” Crites says, emphasizing how the lessons are also passed on to the next fighting force.  “A Marine that comes to war studies Lessons Learned, studies what his predecessor did before him, and that’s how he gets ready for deployment.”

The battlefield is a fluid classroom.  Imagine a teacher who keeps changing the lesson plan.  The enemy is also constantly changing.  “Just as we improve our tactics, force protection measures, the enemy tries to think of a way to defeat us,” Crites says.  “So it’s a constant learning process.”

His replacement will collect information on the drawdown of forces and equipment in Iraq, lessons certain to be applied one day to Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in Afghanistan.

“Marines are famous, I think, in strength and physical courage and intellectual ability,” Crites says.  “But now I think we’re showing more intellectual prowess overall because of the effort of Marine Corps Center for Lessons Learned.”