No More Train and Pray: The Consequences of Cutting the Army’s Security Force Assistance Capability
Jahara Matisek, Anthony Messenger and Curt Belohlavek | 07.22.25
No More Train and Pray: The Consequences of Cutting the Army’s Security Force Assistance Capability
In May 2025, the Pentagon announced plans to shutter two of the Army’s six security force assistance brigades (SFABs) and to downsize Security Force Assistance Command into a small shop of about three dozen personnel within US Army Forces Command. This decision ignores clear doctrinal and operational evidence demonstrating SFABs’ strategic value—from Field Manual 3-22 accounting for the utility of Gulf War advising to how the Korean Military Advisory Group was pivotal in halting North Korea’s initial assault in 1950. Yet, SFABs today face shrinking personnel authorizations and institutional ambivalence about their future.
Drawing on operational insights, doctrine, and firsthand observations, we contend that SFABs are indispensable across the competition–crisis–conflict continuum. They shape the battlespace before, during, and after conflict, and must be treated as core elements of US joint campaigning—not peripheral experiments to be cut. For too long, the US military relied on a train-and-pray model of building foreign militaries: ad hoc trainers sent with the hope the forces they train actually perform under fire. This is the epitome of hope as a strategy, and the approach has repeatedly failed. Since 2000, the United States has spent over $400 billion on security force assistance only to see many foreign units “crack” once US personnel depart—in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and elsewhere. This is because the train-and-pray template emphasizes numbers trained over actual combat readiness; it also does not take into account having a cadre of dedicated professionalized advisors that are specialized in working with foreign militaries.
SFABs offer a different path. Established in 2017, these dedicated advisor units provide persistent engagement, forward presence, and scalable missions across the competition continuum. As professionalized advisors, they replaced what were effectively pickup teams (ad hoc MiTTs) with cohesive units of specially trained soldiers. SFABs bridge the gap between peacetime engagement and wartime effectiveness through sustained, embedded advising that builds real trust, capacity, and ability to conduct large-scale combat operations as a coalition.
https://mwi.westpoint.edu/no-more-train-and-pray-the-consequences-of-cutting-the-armys-security-force-assistance-capability/
