Advising Foreign Security Forces

The United States Army has a long history of advising foreign security forces with its general purpose force, despite a perception that its special force is the primary force with which it undertakes advisory efforts. Ad hoc selection and assignment and inadequate training of Army general purpose force advisors in Iraq and Afghanistan led to a rediscovery of lessons learned. Despite the Army's 110 years of advisory experience with its general purpose force, problems encountered in the Korea and Vietnam advisory efforts regarding advisor training, advisory group organization, and advisor assignments point to the Army's need to institutionalize advisory capability and capacity within its general purpose force. The relevance of general purpose force advising in Korea and Vietnam, however, place a specific light on contemporary advising efforts and demonstrate the Army's need to adapt the manner in which it prepares the general purpose force personnel to advise foreign security forces. With the elevation of the concept of 'building partner capacity' to the level of national security doctrine in 2010, the Army finds itself behind its sister services with respect to institutionalizing advisory capacity and capability within its general purpose force. The resistance by Army senior leaders to divert what they perceive as limited resources within the conventional force conflicts with its anticipating future operations increasingly involving general purpose force personnel advising foreign security forces. This monograph recommends the Army expand its Foreign Area Officer program to include a secondary track to train and manage general purpose force advisors and establish a formal advisory command to create needed capacity and capability within the general purpose force.