Talk:Echelon above corps

Multinational Force-Iraq as EAC

I confess to some OR in what was primarily an aside, but, if it's worth some discussion, let's look at the situation. Part of the problem is that MNF-I, and the command structure in Iraq generally, is ad hoc rather than doctrinal. Part of the problem is that EAC is in no one specific document, but scattered across a number of them that I will cite in the main article. It doesn't help that in the last couple of days, the US Army Reimer library, defined, in part, as the repository of unclassified manuals authorized for public release, has, over protest, gone behind the Army NIPRNET firewall.

My personal impression is that MNF-I is really a response to Abu Ghraib. Before that, the senior US commander in Iraq was the three-star commanding MNC-I. The best can be said is that Sanchez, MNC-I CG at the time, was overloaded with things other than corps operations. Doctrinally,a corps is/was a tactical unit, so running rear area prisons and interrogation centers wasn't a typical responsibility for a corps G-2 section.

Your question about whether it's just a layer above corps, or my assertion that it's a Field Army unless something better comes along, doesn't fit neatly into the system.

So, enter MNF beyond MNC. "Force" is not particularly meaningful in US Army doctrine. It's a much better established concept in the Navy, where it's typically two-star and task-oriented. In the Army, it's perhaps most often brigade-level, and, with the idea of the Brigade Combat Team as the basic Unit of Action, "Force", in my memory, tends to be a term to avoid confusion. For example, during Vietnam, US formations that were clearly corps were called Field Forces, to avoid confusion with the South Vietnamese corps, which were geographic areas rather than tactical units.

I'm not familiar with every nuance of the demarcations between MNF-I and CENTCOM. For example, does MNF-I have OPCON of other than Army aviation assets in Iraq? What is the relationship to SOCCENT -- are the special operators running around Iraq reporting back to CENTCOM, or does MNF-I, for example, have much OPCON over 3rd Special Forces Group, essentially an ad hoc augmentation since 5th group would be the normal CENTCOM SOF component?

Is there a meaningful concept of a Communications Zone in Iraq? Quite a few large bases there; does CENTCOM or MNF-I run something like ANACONDA/Balad? Should interrogation centers have reported to G-2 MNF, or to J-2 CENTCOM?

MNF-I, at the least, has OPCON over MNC-I and MND-I. It's not clear to me if it has OPCON of Iraqi units in joint operations, but, if it does, and if it also has OPCON of some aviation, EAC combat support and combat service support, and perhaps rear area functions, it's no longer just a slightly augmented corps HQ. IIRC, at one point, CG MNC-I was also dual-hatted as CENTCOM Forward, at least during the invasion. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 10:18, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Weren't MNF-I and MNC-I set up at the same time? Anyway, my take is that unless there is more than one corps involved, any EAC command cannot be called a field army. Thus, MNF-I if it is directing the entire Iraqi ground forces (which it used to be) is a combined army-level force, but now, with Iraqi Ground Forces HQ running several divisions, MNF-I is more like BAOR in the 70s and 80s than anything else; a corps, and a whole bunch of army-level/theatre troops. But it doesn't have more than one manoeuvre corps, and that's it from my perspective. Appreciate your thoughts. Buckshot06 (talk) 10:43, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

AFAIK, MNC-I and MND-I were separate commands at first, with a kludged-up CENTCOM FORWARD controlling them. MNF-I came later. In my personal view, it was a response to Abu Ghraib, so they could create a four-star slot in-country. I doubt it will be clear anytime soon if LTG Sanchez, who was senior in-country as MNC-I, was too overloaded to keep track of such things as prisons and interrogation centers.

I would argue that a field army can have a single corps-level formation, as long as it also has significant maneuver elements that are not subordinated to the corps. While it's never clean to compare against countries and times, the WWII Panzergruppen were organized differently than the Wehrmacht infantry corps, and, IIRC, were smaller. While I am getting dangerous with the metaphors, I suppose there was some similarity between a Panzergruppe and a Soviet OMG, in that they were both operational-level units. Admittedly, one was for breakthrough/infiltration and the other for pursuit, but they were differently purposed than the regular forces. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 22:26, 16 February 2008 (UTC)