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Army chief of staff, in Tampa for college hockey's Frozen Four, talks shop

 
WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 07:  U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley testifies during a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill on April 7, 2016 in Washington, DC. The committee held a hearing on "Posture of the Department of the Army."  (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) ORG XMIT: 627618497
WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 07: U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley testifies during a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill on April 7, 2016 in Washington, DC. The committee held a hearing on "Posture of the Department of the Army." (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) ORG XMIT: 627618497
Published Dec. 7, 2018

This story was originally published April 2016.

TAMPA — The chief of staff of the Army was here to accept an award at the NCAA Frozen Four hockey tournament, but he used a football metaphor to describe the status of the fight against the so-called Islamic State jihadi group.

The group alternatively known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh has lost momentum in Iraq and Syria, but the fight is a long way from over, said Army Gen. Mark Milley.

"I caution everybody, this is not time to dance in the end zone," Milley said in a wide-ranging interview Saturday with the Tribune. "This is the beginning, not the end. This is the beginning of a significant campaign that is designed to destroy Daesh and it's going to take some time to unfold; I'm very confident in the outcome, but it is going to take some time to unfold."

Milley, the Army's 39th chief of staff, played hockey at Princeton University and came to Tampa to receive the American Hockey Coaches Association's 2016 Lou Lamoriello Award, recognizing a former college hockey player or coach for their unique and distinguished professional career. After picking up the award, he sat down to talk about the ongoing battle against Daesh, the Iraqi security forces' ability to fight the enemy and the dangers faced by the U.S. Army in an age of budget pressures where, he has said, less than a third of brigade combat teams are fully ready for battle.

For Milley, the situation on the ground in Iraq and Syria has changed greatly since September, when he observed that the United States and its allies were losing the battle against Daesh.

He said that back then, "I thought that the enemy, Daesh, had the strategic momentum — in fact, probably the operational and in many cases the tactical momentum — for sure on the ground in Iraq, and I also think they had it in Syria. ... I would say we — being the coalition, to include the Iraqi government and the Iraqi security forces — I think we were losing."

But about a month later, U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command, both headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, along with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other elements of the coalition, "did a strategic reassessment" to the anti-Daesh campaign plan, said Milley.

As a result, the coalition partners, and the United States in particular, have conducted an intensified train, advise and assist campaign with the Iraqi army, Milley said. "Special operations forces from Iraq, supported by U.S. Special Operations Forces and other countries' special operations forces, conducted a variety of raids and interdictions on Daesh," Milley said. "The Iraqi security forces have launched a series of counter-offensives."

The intent, Milley said, "was to conduct offensive operations at multiple points in Daesh territory, all simultaneously. And to do it geographically but also functionally, so we are attacking systems, such as their finance system, their leadership system, then their combat and combat support systems, their network, their replacement systems, how they get replacements."

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The United States and its allies "have struck hard at their leadership and we've killed a lot of middle and senior leaders of Daesh," said Milley. "Their combat forces have been hit very, very hard, so their troop strength, soldiers, have been killed in large numbers."

That has reduced the number of Daesh fighters, once said to be about 30,000 to 35,000.

"There are significantly less than that today," said Milley, adding that Daesh's financial resources also have been hit hard, as well as their ability to move and communicate.

And in December, Iraqi security forces recaptured Ramadi.

"So I think the strategic momentum and the operational momentum is in favor of the friendly forces right now," Milley said. "That's not to say we are winning. There's a big difference."

Looming now is the battle for Mosul.

Milley won't speculate about when the city itself will be counterattacked.

"Right now, today, the Iraqi security forces are engaged in the battle of Hit, and that will take some time to play out," he said. "You are seeing conditions being set for the battle of Mosul, I don't want to say when that will occur, but conditions are being set and the Iraqi security forces are planning to do that."

It won't be easy.

"Mosul's a big city," Milley said. "It's got a significant civilian population; a significant enemy presence there. The enemy has prepared the battleground. The enemy has dug in. They've got prepared positions. Mosul will be a tough fight. It would be a tough fight for any army."

Are the Iraqi's prepared to take Mosul?

When you combine the Iraqi security forces, the Iraqi special operations forces and Iraqi police, they outnumber Daesh, Milley said. But the Iraqis need to improve their leadership, manning, equipping and training, particularly in the area of combined arms operations, said Milley, referring to infantry, mobile protected firepower, offensive and defensive fires, engineers, Army aviation, and joint capabilities.

"The Iraqi special operations forces have had a higher level of training and a higher quality of leadership than the average conventional forces of the Iraqi security forces, so they've been fighting very well and I have good confidence in their abilities and skills," said Milley,

The Kurdish Peshmerga forces, who also will take part in the battle of Mosul, "are clearly a very capable force," Milley said.

But "the broader-based conventional forces... you've got to make sure their leadership is up to the task and the soldiers and the troops get plenty of training and are taken care of and then I think you'll see the will to fight improve."

Are they ready to take Mosul?

"I think Mosul is going to be a phased operation, I would imagine, and it will take time to set the conditions for them to do that," said Milley, "I think that is happening, as it would with any army. It's going to happen over the course of time,"

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For Milley, the readiness of the U.S. Army is his top priority at a time when budget pressures are leading to a planned cut in the size of the Army from 490,000 to 450,000 soldiers.

Last week, in his testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, he noted that less than one-third of brigade combat teams — the basic deployable Army unit of maneuver — are considered at an acceptable readiness level to "conduct sustained ground combat in a full spectrum environment against a highly lethal hybrid threat or near-peer adversary," a reference to major powers like Russia and China. "The risk of deploying unready forces into combat is higher U.S. casualty rates and increased risk to mission success."

On Saturday at the Marriot Waterside Tampa hotel, Milley said, "I am very concerned" about the state of the Army's readiness. The concern is so great that in the budget currently wending its way through Congress, "we placed readiness as the number one, and we took money out of modernization, because the readiness of the force, today's force, is not where it should be to be able to deal with the higher-end threats."

When it comes to counterterror or counterinsurgency missions, such as those in which the Army has been involved for the past 15 years in Afghanistan and Iraq, "we have a very, very high level of skill," Milley said. "But when it comes to higher-end threats, against a great power — for example a China or a Russia, or a regional power, such as a North Korea or an Iran — and you get into more sophisticated levels of warfare than fighting guerillas and terrorists... We really need to train hard on combined arms operations in those type of environments and those are skills we haven't practiced for quite a few years."

The Army, Milley said, is "working our way back up to a level of readiness that's appropriate,"

Is the United States prepared to take on a major power like Russia or China?

"That's the concern," Milley said. "So no one is saying there's going to be a war with Russia or North Korea, or China."

But, as the United States sizes, trains and prepares forces, "you base that off of a variety of capabilities and scenarios. For the United States, and the United States national security strategy, and the objectives that we have, it's become clear over the last few years that there's a variety of emerging threats that are operating at cross purposes to American national security interests around the world."

Those threats have been identified for planning purposes by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter as Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

"I don't think that's breaking news," Milley said. "But those four countries have been operating more aggressively than in the past."

At the moment, said Milley, the Army is not at the level of Task Force Smith, a reference to the under-manned, under-armed and poorly trained unit sent in July, 1950, to slow the North Korean advance in the beginning days of the Korean War.

"But if we continue to reduce the size of the Army, and if we continue with things like sequestration, or unpredictable budgets, then we'll head that way," said Milley. "We'll move to a hollow force and a force that could result in a Task Force Smith. We are not there right now but if the current impasse, when it comes to budgets and the inability to plan with confidence… it can end up that way. That's what I'm trying to guard against."