US Army setting up advise/assist Brigades....SOCOM out of the foreign training business...

via Military Times.

The Security Force Assistance Brigades will enhance the Army’s readiness by reducing demand for existing brigade combat teams, which will allow BCTs to perform full-spectrum operations instead.
In January, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told Defense News, a sister publication of Military Times, that advise-and-assist brigades are one way to regenerate the force as its end strength shrinks but threats continue.
The Army has conducted advise-and-assist operations for years, but in the past, the service would break apart brigades to meet those missions.
“We’ve taken brigades apart, active-duty, full-up infantry and armor brigades, and ripped them apart, ripped the leadership up, so what is the effect?" Milley said in January. "The effect is several thousand soldiers left at home station with very little — if any — inherent organic chain of command, so then you have discipline, cohesion problems, so and so forth, training problems.”
It can also take three years to put the unit back together once leadership returned from serving overseas, he said. With the new advise-and-assist brigades, there would be a cohesive chain of command to take soldiers through basic training, add a team and put it under those existing chains of command.
There are approximately 4,500 Army personnel serving in a train, advise and assist role in Iraq, with the number likely to grow.
The SFAB brigades will be designed on the Infantry and Armored Brigade Combat Team model, with approximately 500 senior officers and noncommissioned officers.

Story here. 

Two things...

1.  SOCOM is out of the foreign training business.  I remember seeing the John Wayne's movie about SF and how they were foreign language trained so that they could communicate with those they led.  Don't need that now.  The reality?  SOCOM is one huge fucking Ranger BN.  It's all raids all the time.  With that being the case it would be better if we simply upped the size of the Army, created another 4 BN's of Rangers (total would be 7) and then we could shutter the rest of SOCOM.  This is stunning in my opinion.

2.  Because of this, we're gonna see Army combat power go down.  6 brigades dedicated to foreign training?  That's a huge slice of combat power that is being tossed aside.

Yeah.  I don't like this one bit.