Enabling Others to Win in a Complex World: Maximizing Security Force Assistance Potential in the Regionally Aligned Brigade Combat Team

Beginning in 2013, the U.S. Army began an effort to "engage regionally and respond globally." A central tenant of this strategy, building upon National strategic guidance, is the necessity to build partner capacity. Army units, through the regionally aligned forces concept, may find themselves conducting security force assistance (SFA) missions across the globe as a means to achieve these results. However, after examining the Army's SFA mission in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM from 2003-2010, it becomes apparent that institutional and organizational shortcomings plagued the Army's initial efforts in this critical aspect of the campaign. Many of these shortcomings remain in the Army today, particularly within the Army's core formation: the brigade combat team (BCT). This monograph examines the Army's role in conducting SFA in Iraq, drawing key lessons from the Army's experience there, and then provides recommendations on how the Army can better optimize the BCT to conduct SFA, while still retaining its core mission to fight and win America's wars.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LIAM WALSH is currently a student at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leaven-worth, KS. He was commissioned as an infantry officer after graduating from the U.S. Military Academy in 2006. His first assignment was at Fort Campbell, KY, from where he deployed as a platoon leader to north-west Baghdad for 14 months in support of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM during the "surge." After comple-tion of the Maneuver Captains Career Course in 2010, he was assigned to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, WA, where he twice deployed in support of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM to southern Afghanistan; in 2010 as an assistant operations officer and in 2012 as both a Stryker rifle company headquarters and headquarters company commander. From 2013 to 2015, Captain Walsh attended graduate school at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He holds a bachelor's degree in military history from West Point and a master's degree in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School.