Every company should have a red team group...

Red Team U. creates critical thinkers
By JOHN MILBURN, Associated Press WriterFri May 18, 4:22 AM ET
During World War II, British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery relied upon junior officers to study German Field Marshal Irwin Rommel in Africa and Europe, then assess the Allies' plans.
That idea's modern incarnation is the Red Team University course at Fort Leavenworth's University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies. The goal is to produce soldiers who don't hesitate to find the flaws in a commander's strategies to prevent failed operations and save lives.
Eleven students from the Red Team University graduated Thursday from the 18-week course. Its curriculum is designed to forge officers who anticipate cultural perceptions of U.S. coalition partners, adversaries and others and to find vulnerabilities.
In short, they're supposed to think like the "red team" — the enemy — and give other officers insight into that thinking. The first class graduated in 2006, as the war in Iraq entered its fourth year.
"They learn to escape the gravitational pull of Western military thought," said Greg Fontenot, a retired Army colonel and director of Red Team University.
Fontenot said the program teaches officers to approach problems and solutions from multiple perspectives, including using anthropological research about a given population. Students are also taught to work independently to help senior military staff find answers they need before plans are executed.
Maxie McFarland, deputy chief of staff for intelligence at the Army's Training and Doctrine Command, told Thursday's graduates he became involved in red team concepts when he was with the 2nd Armored Division in the 1990s, when it was understaffed and lacked proper equipment.
"In order to win, it wasn't about the technology, and it wasn't about the planning. It was the ability to outthink the opponent and get inside his head," McFarland said.
The Red Team program also fits with the military's new counterinsurgency strategy, jointly developed by the Army and Marines at Fort Leavenworth under the direction of Gen. David Petraeus, now the top commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.
But instructors note that Red Team graduates and their skills have wider application than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"You don't know where you are going next," said Steve Rotkoff, a retired Army colonel.
The concept isn't new, of course. Montgomery tried to anticipate Rommel's tactics, just as Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee seemed to have the ability to guess what his Union counterparts would do during the Civil War.
Red and blue teams have been part of U.S. military training for years. Forces preparing for battle — the blue team — develop plans for exercises, while the opponent — the red team — attempts to counter those efforts by defending a position or disrupting operations.
But those traditional exercises were incomplete, McFarland said, because they were scripted according to the blue team's plans, without allowing the red team to alter its strategy and influence the blue team's tactics. Giving the red team a more active role gives a more critical mind-set to such exercises.
Susan Craig, a graduate of the first Red Team class, is now an analyst with the Joint Intelligence Operations Center at the U.S. Pacific Command. She wrote in a recent edition of Military Review that part of red team training is learning to ask good questions of those making decisions and to think outside one's own culture.
"We had to examine our most closely held beliefs and assumptions and fundamentally transform the way we think," she wrote.
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On the Net:
Fort Leavenworth: http://www.leavenworth.army.mil
U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command: http://www-tradoc.army.mil/index.htm