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UNDERSTANDING UAE MILITARY EFFECTIVENESS
OCTOBER 2020
Executive Summary
In recent years, the armed forces of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have earned the reputation as the best in the Arab world. Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis went so far as to bestow on them the sobriquet “Little Sparta.” Two questions linger, however: How good are the Emirati armed forces, and why are they more competent than other Arab militaries?
Emirati Military Effectiveness. Taken as a whole, the UAE’s military is unquestionably the most capable among the Arab states, probably by a considerable margin. The best Emirati units are the best in the Arab world, and the overall average appears superior to that of other Arab armies. Indeed, the best and most experienced Emirati soldiers, officers, and units are excellent by regional standards and appear equivalent or possibly even more capable than those of some NATO members.
However, there is considerable variance across the force, and only a small percentage falls into the highest-quality categories. The bulk of the Emirati armed forces are less competent, and too many of their soldiers, officers, and units evince only modestly greater effectiveness than their Arab brethren do. The UAE’s armed forces have a sharp, strong spear point, but the shaft still needs work.
The UAE’s Presidential Guard (PG), and particularly its Special Operations Command (SOC), are probably the most capable of the Emirati combat arms. These are professional, picked, and highly trained troops, who have a close mentorship program with the US Marine Corps. They are commanded by an expatriate Australian general. Several dozen key instructors, planners, administrators, and other senior officers are Westerners, particularly Australians.
The PG provided many of the forces that fought in Afghanistan and Yemen. They performed quite well there, and they now benefit from having numerous combat veterans in their ranks.
Close behind the PG, and arguably even more formidable, is the UAE’s Joint Aviation Command (JAC), which controls most of its helicopters. Until recently, the JAC was commanded by a former American military officer. It possesses some of the most advanced American systems, and its pilots are impressive. The JAC has demonstrated first-rate capabilities, providing rotary-wing fire support, air mobility, combat search and rescue, and maritime patrol operations.
The Emirati air force also has an outstanding reputation, but the validity of that reputation is harder to judge. Emirati pilots, weaponeers, targeteers, planners, and logisticians are generally high caliber, professional, and well trained. At least some of the rear echelon personnel are expatriates with extensive service in their home militaries, but the pilots themselves and most ground crew are overwhelmingly Emirati.
The air force has done well in Afghanistan, Operation Inherent Resolve, Yemen, and now Libya. However, the air force has never engaged in air-to-air combat, and only in Yemen and Libya has it conducted dynamic air-to-ground missions. In these, the air force received more mixed reviews from both American and Emirati ground forces.
Moreover, the latest generation of precision guided munitions (PGM) now do much of the hard work that once was required of pilots. Because the UAE can afford plenty of cutting-edge PGMs, it is harder to evaluate the quality of their pilots based on the generally successful results of their strike missions, especially deliberate strike missions.
The UAE Land Forces run the gamut to a much greater extent. Small numbers of the best soldiers, officers, and units from the Land Forces fought—and fought well—in Yemen, demonstrating some real capability in combined arms warfare. But personnel selection, training, promotions, and retention policies in the Land Forces are inconsistent and hampered by favoritism toward key tribes and families, among other things.
As a result, significant segments of the Land Forces have considerably less capability. The Emirati leadership has greatly emphasized improving the Land Forces, and the leadership is putting in place new procedures that should improve the forces over time.
Until the Yemen war, the UAE navy had been largely neglected, receiving less money, attention, or high-quality personnel. Some sources claim that this results from the navy having had no clear mission for many years because the coast guard handled counter-smuggling and protection of offshore oil facilities.
However, the need to lift and support a force in Yemen, enforce a blockade of the Yemeni coast, and defend against repeated Iranian attacks on Emirati and Saudi oil exports in the Gulf in 2019 have forced Abu Dhabi to reconsider.
A highly regarded senior officer from the royal family was recently named commander of naval forces, some better officers are being transferred to the navy from other services, and the UAE is now trying to purchase larger and more capable ships and aircraft. Emirati forces have demonstrated some remarkable logistical capabilities, particularly the UAE air force.
Their combat-proven lift and aerial refueling capabilities exceed that of most countries.
Abu Dhabi deployed and sustained a brigade-sized force in combat in Yemen for roughly five years and supported armored advances of up to 100 kilometers in that war. The Emiratis have mounted long-range strike missions against targets in Libya employing their own refueling assets. They have learned to integrate commercial and military aircraft into large-scale air bridges to Yemen and the Horn of Africa, supplemented by major sealift operations by the navy.
The UAE still uses small numbers of non-Emiratis as part of its military machine. However, these increasingly occupy niche capabilities that Emiratis cannot yet handle, and they help flesh out a small force that cannot provide the numbers needed for some of the military tasks Abu Dhabi has chosen to tackle. However, with only a few exceptions—such as Sudanese troops in Yemen—Emiratis themselves now do the fighting.
Emirati Force Generation. The greater military effectiveness of the Emirati armed forces derives from their force-generation practices. Across the board, the UAE has transformed its premilitary education, recruitment, training, promotion, and professional military education practices over the past two decades.
While there is still much work to be done and even the earliest reforms are only beginning to have an impact, the superior performance of elite Emirati forces in Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere represents the first fruits of these changes.
In 2014, the UAE instituted compulsory national service for men and voluntary national service for women. At present, the main purpose of nationalservice is political and cultural. It is meant to instill a sense of Emirati identity and patriotism and foster greater critical thinking, innovation, discipline, and physical fitness. Nevertheless, national service does provide a secondary benefit to the military by allowing the armed forces to scour the conscript ranks for high-quality personnel and then try to convince them to enlist in the armed services themselves.
Emirati training tends to reflect the same range as the military’s effectiveness. Units led by competent commanders typically benefit from the best training: tough, frequent, and designed to produce real combat capability through unstructured exercises and regimens that demand flexibility, adaptability, and the internalization of skills. In contrast, units led by the indolent or incompetent receive less frequent training, and what they do get is typically delivered by rote memorization, demonstration rather than participation, and the absence of any effort to assess mistakes let alone try to correct them.
One of the Emirati armed forces’ highest aspirations is to be a learning military. Too few armies can make such a claim, fewer still in the Arab world. Yet, from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ) on down, the UAE’s chain of command encourages and tries to promote learning. This is one reason the UAE is building a large, multifaceted set of professional military education institutions. Still, acrossthe board, Emirati training and military educational programs rely on Western expats to teach and evaluate personnel and even integrate lessons from the UAE’s combat experiences into doctrine, training, and other procedures.
The Emirati officer corps is essentially divided between a meritocratic cutting edge and a larger number of average or below-average officers who have been promoted automatically after serving the required time—in many cases, because they come from trusted tribes and families. The former are the key to the significant capabilities of Emirati elite forces. However,the small size of those forces, even compared to the overall citizen population of the state, reflects the relative scarcity of these high-quality personnel and the challenge of recruiting them into the military, retaining them, and promoting them to the levels in which they can have real impact.
Building an Even Better Emirati Military. The great limiting factor on further improvement in Emirati military effectiveness is the same set of problems derived from economic underdevelopment and behavior patterns emphasized by the dominant Arab culture that have bedeviled all Arab armed forces during the modern era. The UAE’s military simply suffers from them less. The reason is that, for the past two decades, MbZ and his chief lieutenants have employed every workaround devised by other Arab states to mask orndiminish the impact of the culturally derived liabilities.
Thus, the UAE has focused on building a small, elite force of officers and soldiers selected precisely because they possess these militarily desirable but culturally denigrated traits. Leaders have shaped military operations to ensure that Emirati armed forces have massive advantages in technology, firepower, intelligence, logistics, and American support.
They have employed foreigners to handle many demanding tasks such as planning, training, education, and helping the leadership identify its best soldiers and officers. Finally, they have done what they could to build a separate Emirati military subculture, one different from that of the larger society by emphasizing those militarily desirable skills disparaged by the wider culture.
All of this has been made possible by the “benevolent politicization” of the UAE’s military.
The political leadership, driven by MbZ himself, has taken an extremely active role in the Emirati military—a role that would have caused other professional officer corps to scream about excessive political interference in military affairs. The difference is that MbZ’s constant attention to the military has been extremely beneficial, designed to help the military overcome these societal limitations and increase its effectiveness in every way. So far, this “benevolent politicization” has allowed the UAE to shelter a part of the force from the worst effects of culturally derived limitations on military effectiveness.
However, even employing all the workarounds as diligently and forcefully as it has, has only taken the Emirati military so far. The military could take it somewhat further by refining organizational efficiency and personnel selection, but only at considerably higher cost. It is difficult to continue to generate greater military effectiveness in these ways. Ultimately, the only way to effect a truly comprehensive and profound increase in Emirati military power would be to transform the nation’s culture.
Not surprisingly, that is exactly what MbZ is trying to do. It is one of the principal reasons the UAE’s leadership is trying to reform Emirati society and turn it into a culture that fosters tolerance, respect, self-sacrifice, devotion to country, innovation, critical thinking, entrepreneurship, knowledge creation, and honesty—the last half of which are the traits needed for success on the modern battlefield as much as they are in the global economy.
https://www.researchgate.net/public...arta_Understanding_UAE_Military_Effectiveness
OCTOBER 2020
Executive Summary
In recent years, the armed forces of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have earned the reputation as the best in the Arab world. Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis went so far as to bestow on them the sobriquet “Little Sparta.” Two questions linger, however: How good are the Emirati armed forces, and why are they more competent than other Arab militaries?
Emirati Military Effectiveness. Taken as a whole, the UAE’s military is unquestionably the most capable among the Arab states, probably by a considerable margin. The best Emirati units are the best in the Arab world, and the overall average appears superior to that of other Arab armies. Indeed, the best and most experienced Emirati soldiers, officers, and units are excellent by regional standards and appear equivalent or possibly even more capable than those of some NATO members.
However, there is considerable variance across the force, and only a small percentage falls into the highest-quality categories. The bulk of the Emirati armed forces are less competent, and too many of their soldiers, officers, and units evince only modestly greater effectiveness than their Arab brethren do. The UAE’s armed forces have a sharp, strong spear point, but the shaft still needs work.
The UAE’s Presidential Guard (PG), and particularly its Special Operations Command (SOC), are probably the most capable of the Emirati combat arms. These are professional, picked, and highly trained troops, who have a close mentorship program with the US Marine Corps. They are commanded by an expatriate Australian general. Several dozen key instructors, planners, administrators, and other senior officers are Westerners, particularly Australians.
The PG provided many of the forces that fought in Afghanistan and Yemen. They performed quite well there, and they now benefit from having numerous combat veterans in their ranks.
Close behind the PG, and arguably even more formidable, is the UAE’s Joint Aviation Command (JAC), which controls most of its helicopters. Until recently, the JAC was commanded by a former American military officer. It possesses some of the most advanced American systems, and its pilots are impressive. The JAC has demonstrated first-rate capabilities, providing rotary-wing fire support, air mobility, combat search and rescue, and maritime patrol operations.
The Emirati air force also has an outstanding reputation, but the validity of that reputation is harder to judge. Emirati pilots, weaponeers, targeteers, planners, and logisticians are generally high caliber, professional, and well trained. At least some of the rear echelon personnel are expatriates with extensive service in their home militaries, but the pilots themselves and most ground crew are overwhelmingly Emirati.
The air force has done well in Afghanistan, Operation Inherent Resolve, Yemen, and now Libya. However, the air force has never engaged in air-to-air combat, and only in Yemen and Libya has it conducted dynamic air-to-ground missions. In these, the air force received more mixed reviews from both American and Emirati ground forces.
Moreover, the latest generation of precision guided munitions (PGM) now do much of the hard work that once was required of pilots. Because the UAE can afford plenty of cutting-edge PGMs, it is harder to evaluate the quality of their pilots based on the generally successful results of their strike missions, especially deliberate strike missions.
The UAE Land Forces run the gamut to a much greater extent. Small numbers of the best soldiers, officers, and units from the Land Forces fought—and fought well—in Yemen, demonstrating some real capability in combined arms warfare. But personnel selection, training, promotions, and retention policies in the Land Forces are inconsistent and hampered by favoritism toward key tribes and families, among other things.
As a result, significant segments of the Land Forces have considerably less capability. The Emirati leadership has greatly emphasized improving the Land Forces, and the leadership is putting in place new procedures that should improve the forces over time.
Until the Yemen war, the UAE navy had been largely neglected, receiving less money, attention, or high-quality personnel. Some sources claim that this results from the navy having had no clear mission for many years because the coast guard handled counter-smuggling and protection of offshore oil facilities.
However, the need to lift and support a force in Yemen, enforce a blockade of the Yemeni coast, and defend against repeated Iranian attacks on Emirati and Saudi oil exports in the Gulf in 2019 have forced Abu Dhabi to reconsider.
A highly regarded senior officer from the royal family was recently named commander of naval forces, some better officers are being transferred to the navy from other services, and the UAE is now trying to purchase larger and more capable ships and aircraft. Emirati forces have demonstrated some remarkable logistical capabilities, particularly the UAE air force.
Their combat-proven lift and aerial refueling capabilities exceed that of most countries.
Abu Dhabi deployed and sustained a brigade-sized force in combat in Yemen for roughly five years and supported armored advances of up to 100 kilometers in that war. The Emiratis have mounted long-range strike missions against targets in Libya employing their own refueling assets. They have learned to integrate commercial and military aircraft into large-scale air bridges to Yemen and the Horn of Africa, supplemented by major sealift operations by the navy.
The UAE still uses small numbers of non-Emiratis as part of its military machine. However, these increasingly occupy niche capabilities that Emiratis cannot yet handle, and they help flesh out a small force that cannot provide the numbers needed for some of the military tasks Abu Dhabi has chosen to tackle. However, with only a few exceptions—such as Sudanese troops in Yemen—Emiratis themselves now do the fighting.
Emirati Force Generation. The greater military effectiveness of the Emirati armed forces derives from their force-generation practices. Across the board, the UAE has transformed its premilitary education, recruitment, training, promotion, and professional military education practices over the past two decades.
While there is still much work to be done and even the earliest reforms are only beginning to have an impact, the superior performance of elite Emirati forces in Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere represents the first fruits of these changes.
In 2014, the UAE instituted compulsory national service for men and voluntary national service for women. At present, the main purpose of nationalservice is political and cultural. It is meant to instill a sense of Emirati identity and patriotism and foster greater critical thinking, innovation, discipline, and physical fitness. Nevertheless, national service does provide a secondary benefit to the military by allowing the armed forces to scour the conscript ranks for high-quality personnel and then try to convince them to enlist in the armed services themselves.
Emirati training tends to reflect the same range as the military’s effectiveness. Units led by competent commanders typically benefit from the best training: tough, frequent, and designed to produce real combat capability through unstructured exercises and regimens that demand flexibility, adaptability, and the internalization of skills. In contrast, units led by the indolent or incompetent receive less frequent training, and what they do get is typically delivered by rote memorization, demonstration rather than participation, and the absence of any effort to assess mistakes let alone try to correct them.
One of the Emirati armed forces’ highest aspirations is to be a learning military. Too few armies can make such a claim, fewer still in the Arab world. Yet, from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ) on down, the UAE’s chain of command encourages and tries to promote learning. This is one reason the UAE is building a large, multifaceted set of professional military education institutions. Still, acrossthe board, Emirati training and military educational programs rely on Western expats to teach and evaluate personnel and even integrate lessons from the UAE’s combat experiences into doctrine, training, and other procedures.
The Emirati officer corps is essentially divided between a meritocratic cutting edge and a larger number of average or below-average officers who have been promoted automatically after serving the required time—in many cases, because they come from trusted tribes and families. The former are the key to the significant capabilities of Emirati elite forces. However,the small size of those forces, even compared to the overall citizen population of the state, reflects the relative scarcity of these high-quality personnel and the challenge of recruiting them into the military, retaining them, and promoting them to the levels in which they can have real impact.
Building an Even Better Emirati Military. The great limiting factor on further improvement in Emirati military effectiveness is the same set of problems derived from economic underdevelopment and behavior patterns emphasized by the dominant Arab culture that have bedeviled all Arab armed forces during the modern era. The UAE’s military simply suffers from them less. The reason is that, for the past two decades, MbZ and his chief lieutenants have employed every workaround devised by other Arab states to mask orndiminish the impact of the culturally derived liabilities.
Thus, the UAE has focused on building a small, elite force of officers and soldiers selected precisely because they possess these militarily desirable but culturally denigrated traits. Leaders have shaped military operations to ensure that Emirati armed forces have massive advantages in technology, firepower, intelligence, logistics, and American support.
They have employed foreigners to handle many demanding tasks such as planning, training, education, and helping the leadership identify its best soldiers and officers. Finally, they have done what they could to build a separate Emirati military subculture, one different from that of the larger society by emphasizing those militarily desirable skills disparaged by the wider culture.
All of this has been made possible by the “benevolent politicization” of the UAE’s military.
The political leadership, driven by MbZ himself, has taken an extremely active role in the Emirati military—a role that would have caused other professional officer corps to scream about excessive political interference in military affairs. The difference is that MbZ’s constant attention to the military has been extremely beneficial, designed to help the military overcome these societal limitations and increase its effectiveness in every way. So far, this “benevolent politicization” has allowed the UAE to shelter a part of the force from the worst effects of culturally derived limitations on military effectiveness.
However, even employing all the workarounds as diligently and forcefully as it has, has only taken the Emirati military so far. The military could take it somewhat further by refining organizational efficiency and personnel selection, but only at considerably higher cost. It is difficult to continue to generate greater military effectiveness in these ways. Ultimately, the only way to effect a truly comprehensive and profound increase in Emirati military power would be to transform the nation’s culture.
Not surprisingly, that is exactly what MbZ is trying to do. It is one of the principal reasons the UAE’s leadership is trying to reform Emirati society and turn it into a culture that fosters tolerance, respect, self-sacrifice, devotion to country, innovation, critical thinking, entrepreneurship, knowledge creation, and honesty—the last half of which are the traits needed for success on the modern battlefield as much as they are in the global economy.
https://www.researchgate.net/public...arta_Understanding_UAE_Military_Effectiveness
