Small War Tactics Professional Handbook

Table of contents :
Introduction
How to Use This Book
How to Win Small Wars
Sequential and Simultaneous Efforts
Structuring of Efforts and Operations
Force Protection and Population Security
Operations and Intelligence
Civil Reconstruction
Direct Action Targeting
Psychological Operations
Training Local Forces
The “Key Terrain” in Small Wars
Force Protection
Deception and Pattern Variation
Using a Route Book for Pattern Variation
Pattern Deceptions
Overt/Covert Combinations
Controlling and Predicting Enemy Actions
Sensitive Information and Deception Techniques
Counter-IED Techniques
Problems with the “Push Through” Technique
Complex Ambushes
Enemy Tactics for Emplacing Secondary IEDs
“5-25 Meter” Search Procedures
Alternate Communication Systems
Immobile Vehicle Drill
Pushing or Pulling a Mobile Vehicle
Special Cases and Situations
Base and Installation Defense Fundamentals
Threat Assessment
Enemy Courses of Action and Contingency Planning
Cyclical Interplay Between Operations and Intelligence
Intelligence Planning and Indicators
Planning for the Reserve
Indicators and Alert Levels
Wargaming and Backwards Planning
Counter IRAM (Rocket) Defense
Using Checkpoints and Barriers
Techniques for Preparing the Defense
Actions During Heightened IRAM Threat
Setting Up a Warning System for IRAMs
Using UAVs for Counter IRAM
Population Security
Fundamentals of Population Control and Security
Establishing a Census
Dismounted Patrols
Search Operations
Stationary Security and Observation Posts
Key Leader Engagements
Winning the Population
Population Security and Intelligence Collection
Local Rivalries and False Intelligence
Traffic Control Point (TCP) Operations
Choosing the Best Location for a TCP
Establishing a Deliberate TCP on a Low-Traffic Road
Low-Traffic TCP Procedures
Establishing a Deliberate TCP on a High-Traffic Road
High-Traffic TCP Procedures
Snap TCPs
IED and Sniper Investigations
Investigation Process
Access/Exit Points and ISR Planning
Enemy Technique of Emplacing IEDs in Stages
Questioning Locals on Site
The Importance of Ground Recon
Operations and Intelligence
Lines of Operations (Lines of Effort)
Embedding the Lines of Operations in Tactical Missions
Developing and Prioritizing Lines of Operations
Platoon Level Operations
1-Receive the Mission Brief from the Company Commander
2-Receive Specific Information Requirements (SIR) from the Company Intel Cell
3-Issue Warning Order
4-Develop Plan
5-Issue the Patrol Brief or Operations Order
6-Conduct Rehearsals
7-Execute Mission
8-Conduct Initial De-Brief
9-Debrief with the Company Commander and Company Intel Cell
10-Complete Post Mission Report
11-Conduct Final Platoon Internal After Action Review (AAR) and Review Lessons Learned
Company Intelligence Cell Operations
Who to Assign to the Company Intel Cell
Intelligence Requirements
PIR, Indicators and SIR
Incoming Intelligence Requirements
Outgoing Intelligence Requirements
Developing a “Common Operating Picture” of the Battlefield
Fusion Between Operations and Intelligence
Company Level Planning and Operations
Uncertainty and Course of Action Development
Constantly Updating the Battlefield “Picture”
Effective Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR)
Developing an ISR Plan
Benefits of Narrow Focus
Allocating Resources and Assets
Requesting Resources and Assets
Enduring Mission Sets and Troops to Task
Civil Reconstruction
Civil Projects and Expectations Management
The Wrong Way to Manage Expectations
The Right Way to Manage Expectations
Expectation Pitfalls and Learning to Say No
Civil Assessment and Analysis
Models for Assessment
Role of the Commander in Civil Reconstruction
Working With Limited Resources
Cooperating with Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)
Local Solutions to Local Problems
Direct Action Targeting
The F3EAD Targeting Methodology
Find, Fix and Finish
Raid
Ambush
Tactical Call Out
Exploitation
Sensitive Site Exploitation (SSE)
Searching Occupants
Tactical Questioning (TQ)
Analysis and Dissemination
Detainee Operations
Multiple Targets on One Mission
Psychological Operations
Constructing Psychological Operations Campaigns
Crafting PSYOPs Messages in Support of Lines of Operation
Different Messages for Different Target Audiences
Targeting Messages with Delivery Mechanisms
The Importance of Language, Regional Expertise and Culture
Measuring Effectiveness of PSYOPs Campaigns
Training Local Security Forces
Cross Cultural Competence - The Importance of Intangibles
Show Interest in the Local People
Mimic Local Behaviors
Avoid Patronizing Behavior
An Approach that Advances Intangible Objectives
Partnership at All Levels
Planning Operations and TOC Operations
Learn From the Locals Too
Training Local Forces
Avoid Segregation

Citation preview

SMALL WAR TACTICS PROFESSIONAL HANDBOOK

Table of Contents Introduction How to Use This Book

How to Win Small Wars Sequential and Simultaneous Efforts Structuring of Efforts and Operations Force Protection and Population Security Operations and Intelligence Civil Reconstruction Direct Action Targeting Psychological Operations Training Local Forces The “Key Terrain” in Small Wars

Force Protection Deception and Pattern Variation Using a Route Book for Pattern Variation Pattern Deceptions Overt/Covert Combinations Controlling and Predicting Enemy Actions Sensitive Information and Deception Techniques Counter-IED Techniques Problems with the “Push Through” Technique Complex Ambushes Enemy Tactics for Emplacing Secondary IEDs “5-25 Meter” Search Procedures Alternate Communication Systems Immobile Vehicle Drill Pushing or Pulling a Mobile Vehicle Special Cases and Situations Base and Installation Defense Fundamentals Threat Assessment Enemy Courses of Action and Contingency Planning Cyclical Interplay Between Operations and Intelligence

Intelligence Planning and Indicators Planning for the Reserve Indicators and Alert Levels Wargaming and Backwards Planning Counter IRAM (Rocket) Defense Using Checkpoints and Barriers Techniques for Preparing the Defense Actions During Heightened IRAM Threat Setting Up a Warning System for IRAMs Using UAVs for Counter IRAM

Population Security Fundamentals of Population Control and Security Establishing a Census Dismounted Patrols Search Operations Stationary Security and Observation Posts Key Leader Engagements Winning the Population Population Security and Intelligence Collection Local Rivalries and False Intelligence Traffic Control Point (TCP) Operations Choosing the Best Location for a TCP Establishing a Deliberate TCP on a Low-Traffic Road Low-Traffic TCP Procedures Establishing a Deliberate TCP on a High-Traffic Road High-Traffic TCP Procedures Snap TCPs IED and Sniper Investigations Investigation Process Access/Exit Points and ISR Planning Enemy Technique of Emplacing IEDs in Stages Questioning Locals on Site The Importance of Ground Recon

Operations and Intelligence Lines of Operations (Lines of Effort)

Embedding the Lines of Operations in Tactical Missions Developing and Prioritizing Lines of Operations Platoon Level Operations 1-Receive the Mission Brief from the Company Commander 2-Receive Specific Information Requirements (SIR) from the Company Intel Cell 3-Issue Warning Order 4-Develop Plan 5-Issue the Patrol Brief or Operations Order 6-Conduct Rehearsals 7-Execute Mission 8-Conduct Initial De-Brief 9-Debrief with the Company Commander and Company Intel Cell 10-Complete Post Mission Report 11-Conduct Final Platoon Internal After Action Review (AAR) and Review Lessons Learned Company Intelligence Cell Operations Who to Assign to the Company Intel Cell Intelligence Requirements PIR, Indicators and SIR Incoming Intelligence Requirements Outgoing Intelligence Requirements Developing a “Common Operating Picture” of the Battlefield Fusion Between Operations and Intelligence Company Level Planning and Operations Uncertainty and Course of Action Development Constantly Updating the Battlefield “Picture” Effective Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) Developing an ISR Plan Benefits of Narrow Focus Allocating Resources and Assets Requesting Resources and Assets Enduring Mission Sets and Troops to Task

Civil Reconstruction Civil Projects and Expectations Management

The Wrong Way to Manage Expectations The Right Way to Manage Expectations Expectation Pitfalls and Learning to Say No Civil Assessment and Analysis Models for Assessment Role of the Commander in Civil Reconstruction Working With Limited Resources Cooperating with Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) Local Solutions to Local Problems

Direct Action Targeting The F3EAD Targeting Methodology Find, Fix and Finish Raid Ambush Tactical Call Out Exploitation Sensitive Site Exploitation (SSE) Searching Occupants Tactical Questioning (TQ) Analysis and Dissemination Detainee Operations Multiple Targets on One Mission

Psychological Operations Constructing Psychological Operations Campaigns Crafting PSYOPs Messages in Support of Lines of Operation Different Messages for Different Target Audiences Targeting Messages with Delivery Mechanisms The Importance of Language, Regional Expertise and Culture Measuring Effectiveness of PSYOPs Campaigns

Training Local Security Forces Cross Cultural Competence - The Importance of Intangibles Show Interest in the Local People Mimic Local Behaviors Avoid Patronizing Behavior An Approach that Advances Intangible Objectives

Partnership at All Levels Planning Operations and TOC Operations Learn From the Locals Too Training Local Forces Avoid Segregation

Introduction Beginning on September 11, 2001, the United States and its allies became embroiled in a persistent conflict that spanned the globe. This conflict was not a conventional “big war” like World War II but rather a series of interconnected “small wars,” some of which garnered headlines, others that did not. These small wars carried many labels such as counterinsurgency, civil war, low-intensity conflict, stability operations, foreign internal defense, irregular warfare etc. In many cases these labels were inaccurate or proved to be oversimplifications of more complex realities. There are many different flavors of “small war,” and that is why we have chosen the title Small War Tactics for this book. It is simple, descriptive, and applies to most of the types of conflict that dominated the globe in the first quarter of the 21st century. In military professional literature, books on tactics are rare compared to books on operational art, strategy and theory. It is not certain why this is the case, but it may relate to the fact that tactics are often considered a lesser art. Many forget that tactics are not just relevant to platoon leaders and company commanders but are also a critical component of success for any brigade or division commander. Tactics are the building blocks that commanders need to actually win on the battlefield. The neglect of tactical studies means that many military commanders leave for war unprepared, having failed to absorb the lessons and maxims learned in blood by countless preceding generations. This problem is particularly relevant in small wars. After the Vietnam conflict, the United States Military naively assumed that the age of small wars was over, and that America could simply elect not to engage in such conflicts in the future. Thus, there was very little effort to capture and disseminate the lessons learned in Vietnam and other small wars of the era. Tragically, many of the most critical, lifesaving innovations that emerged almost 3 years into the Iraq War were not new revelations but could trace their origins to the Rhodesian conflict decades earlier.

Everything from MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) personnel carriers, to Huskey IED clearing vehicles to intelligenceoperations “fusion cells,” all emerged in Rhodesia. It was not until the casualty rates in Iraq began to rise that the U.S. military finally turned to the wisdom of history, achieving very positive results with lessons several decades old. The same might be said of the Village Stability Operations (VSO) in Afghanistan, which echoed several similar efforts from wars past, including the Strategic Hamlet Program in Vietnam. In short, the compiled wisdom from small wars is vast but the United States has proved chronically inept at recording, disseminating and applying that wisdom. This point is particularly relevant today as the world transitions from almost twenty years of small wars to an emerging era of multi-polar, conventional competition. It would be tragic to repeat the same mistakes of the post-Vietnam years by letting our small war tactical knowledge fade away. It is also relevant to note that the emerging trends in global conflict are not all conventional in nature. A good example of this is Russia’s employment of “hybrid warfare” in many regional conflict zones. Essentially, the Russians are attempting to combine multiple approaches including conventional deterrence, unconventional warfare, proxy warfare, cyber warfare and lawfare to achieve political goals. The Chinese concept of “unrestricted warfare” shares similar characteristics. In short, even if the future is dominated by great power competition, small war tactics will still remain important. Finally, this book is different from many other books on small wars or counterinsurgency because it focuses on the most practical lessons for winning real-world conflicts. There are a number of great books in circulation about counterinsurgency theory and strategy, but few provide clear instructions for what a commander should actually do when he arrives in the conflict zone. This book seeks to fill that gap and provide leaders from the squad-level to the theater level with effective tools to fight, win and survive.

How to Use This Book

This book is intended for a professional audience. Given that the conduct of small wars is such a broad and complex topic, it would be impossible to get into any sort of depth regarding specific techniques and approaches without leaving out much of the background information such as basic military knowledge and counterinsurgency theory. We assume that the reader is an experienced professional possessing some familiarity with the subject matter. This book is also not focused at the strategic or theoretical level. We will touch on the higher levels of small war studies only when necessary to provide context for the actual execution of operations. There are already a number of very good books published on the higher-level aspects of small wars and we recommend that you read as many of them as you can (if you have not already) to ensure you get the most out of this book. Despite our effort to focus the material, it is still impossible to cover all topics relevant to the conduct of small wars in their entirety. Our aim was to keep this book short and readable to increase the chances that practitioners on the ground will actually have time to read it and benefit from its ideas. Thus, we cover some topics relatively superficially and other important topics we leave out altogether. This book draws techniques from many modern small wars that took place across an extended time period. Therefore, not all of the techniques might be completely current or relevant to the particular region you are operating in. While we have made an effort to focus on techniques and ideas that could be useful in a wide range of situations, do not take any of the suggestions in this book as rigid prescriptions. Rather, let the book encourage new ideas and creative thinking. Adjust and modify the various techniques as needed to fit your specific mission requirements. The book also may use outdated on non-doctrinal terminology. Terminology is always a stumbling point for military thinking and literature. People frequently get too caught up in specific terms and acronyms and end up making things more confusing. We chose the terms in this book because they were either the most generic,

simplest or most descriptive. Also, for the sake of simplicity in syntax, the book uses the pronoun “he” rather than “he/she.”

How to Win Small Wars The commanding officer of one of the most successful units that participated in the Iraq counterinsurgency used an analogy to describe the difference between high-intensity conventional war and counterinsurgency. He compared conventional war to boxing. In boxing, the goal is the “knock out.” Knocking the opponent out requires generating as much force as possible, using the entire body including the feet, hips, torso and arms to focus power in the fist which strikes the blow against the opponent’s jaw or weak area. The result is dramatic and instantaneous. The opponent’s body is rocked by the blow and falls unconscious to the floor. This model of combat is similar to conventional warfare. In conventional warfare, ultimate victory usually comes from focusing maximum combat power at the decisive time and place to strike at an enemy’s critical vulnerability. Once again, the result is usually dramatic and instantaneous. The enemy defenses crumble, the defeated survivors surrender, and the fight is over. Small wars or counterinsurgency is less like boxing and more like grappling or ground fighting. In grappling, the goal is frequently the “choke-out” or “tap-out.” Achieving a choke-out is very different than achieving a knock-out. The amount of force that it actually requires to apply the choke is relatively small. The majority of effort goes into controlling the opponent’s arms, legs, body position and all the other variables involved in the fight. Controlling the opponent and isolating him from his fighting assets allows the choke to take place. Finally, the ultimate victory is not immediate or dramatic. Sometimes it is not even clear when the opponent loses consciousness and the referee needs to step in and stop the fight. Small wars and counterinsurgency follow a similar pattern. Victory doesn’t come from a single decisive battle or by focusing combat power at a single time and place. Rather, winning small wars requires distributing attention across many different, interrelated efforts to secure and stabilize the environment, isolate the insurgents and ultimately “choke” the insurgency out of existence. Like in

grappling, ultimate victory in small wars is often anticlimactic. Insurgent resistance grows less and less until one day, the society functions peacefully and effectively with no more violence and resistance. This hand-to-hand fighting analogy is useful for visualizing the difference between conventional war and small wars. As we will discuss in later chapters, in order to win a small war, you must be able to distribute and prioritize effort and resources across several, interrelated “lines of operations.” More importantly, you must integrate these lines of operations into a single, synergistic effort in pursuit of a clearly defined political endstate for the conflict region. The concept of integrating different lines of operation is critical and often overlooked. Because of the way military and security forces are structured, a specific unit or type of unit is typically responsible for a specific type of activity or line of operation. For example, special operations forces might focus on capturing insurgent leaders, conventional forces might focus on training local partners, psychological operations units focus on psychological operations and civil affairs units focus on civil reconstruction. While units from different services and branches are supposed to operate as a unified whole towards a common objective, in reality, units frequently focus on getting results specific to their area of focus since that is how they will ultimately get credit for success from their administrative chains of command. Thus, special operations forces may focus on capturing as many insurgents as possible without regard for other parallel efforts. Psychological operation forces may focus on distributing as many leaflets as possible to the population without trying to integrate the message of those leaflets into the wider picture. Civil affairs units might try to help rebuild local infrastructure as much as possible without thinking about who they are helping and how that relates to other operations and efforts. If every unit operates in virtual isolation, focused only on their own individual progress and operational goals, the larger campaign will likely fail. The key is to get all of these various elements and capabilities to work together and complement each

other. This can be difficult to accomplish since there is often little incentive for cooperation. This makes it critical for the theater or combatant commander who is overall in charge of the small war effort to emphasize the importance of cooperation between services, branches and units towards a unified objective.

Sequential and Simultaneous Efforts There is no single way to define and separate various efforts and lines of operation. In some cases, a specific unit or type of unit will be primarily responsible for a specific effort and in other cases multiple units might share responsibility for a single effort. Efforts can overlap in various ways as well. Given these variables, we have tried to organize this book along the lines of the various efforts and lines of operation that combine in an effective small war campaign plan. Therefore, each chapter or section focuses on a different effort or line of operations. Before delving into each of these chapters, it is critical to have a general understanding of how to tie them all together to achieve mission success. The first point to consider is that efforts or lines of operation can be sequential, simultaneous or both. In some cases, one effort must come before another effort. For example, it might be difficult to rebuild civil infrastructure if the area of operations is completely unsecure and your forces, local security forces and the population are constantly under attack. You may have to establish security first in order to set the conditions for follow on operations like civil reconstruction. There is no point in building a new school or repairing the water supply if the insurgents blow everything up the next day. This is an example of sequential efforts or operations. In some cases, it is better for efforts or operations to be simultaneous. For example, efforts to capture or kill local insurgent and terrorist leaders might be going very well, but without simultaneous support from psychological operations, the enemy might be able to spin the narrative in their favor, inciting the population to anger and violence over the death or capture of insurgent leaders. You might capture or kill one insurgent but five more might rise to fill

the gap. However, if you integrate psychological operations simultaneously with your direct action targeting, you can turn public opinion in your favor and against the enemy.

Structuring of Efforts and Operations Once again, there is no fixed way to structure efforts and operations so they integrate together effectively. The key is for leaders to think creatively and collaboratively about the specific problem and the resources/capabilities available to come up with a unique and effective solution. The following generalized example might offer some insight on how to do this. As you move forward and read the individual chapters in this book many of these concepts will come up again.

Force Protection and Population Security It often makes sense to focus on force protection and population security first. It is difficult to accomplish the more complex, higher level objectives necessary to winning small wars if you are constantly suffering casualties and the population is terrorized. By focusing on force protection and population security first you are setting the conditions for other efforts in the future. Your own security and population security are also interrelated. The easiest way to secure your own troops is to barricade yourselves in a heavily defended forward operating base (FOB) or combat outpost (COP) and never leave. However, by hiding behind the wire, you are giving the insurgents free reign to dominate the environment and control the local population. Therefore, as soon as you exit the wire you will be at great risk. The better way to ensure your own security is to get out among the population as much as possible and secure the population from insurgent threats. We will discuss these concepts in more detail in the force protection and population security section.

Operations and Intelligence

Intelligence is an absolutely critical component in small wars and is related to all other efforts and lines of operation. It is particularly important to integrate operations and intelligence. This is related to the common practice of creation operations and intelligence “fusion cells.” These fusion cells ensure that intelligence drives operations and that operations continually collect more intelligence to improve the battlefield “common operating picture.” The operationsintelligence cycle never ends. An important note to realize that intelligence is particularly connected with efforts to win the support of the local population. Most of the intelligence you will collect in a small war will come from the local population. It is very difficult to establish an accurate battlefield picture without help from the population. Thus, not only does intelligence help facilitate the other lines of operations, but other efforts and lines of operations can contribute to your intelligence collection as well. Another example of this is the interplay between intelligence and direct action targeting. When executed correctly, direct action targeting missions are not just about eliminating a single insurgent threat but rather the intelligence collected from one mission drives the next mission. Capturing one insurgent leads to another until you have rolled up the entire insurgent network. Since intelligence is relevant to all types of operations, it is not covered in a single section but rather included in all of the various sections of this book dealing with operations. Intelligence is critical for operations at all levels. Once difference between small wars and large wars is that traditionally, intelligence personnel and analysts operate no lower than the battalion level. In small wars it is necessary to create company level intelligence sections or “cells,” to manage company level intelligence collection, analysis and dissemination. Individual platoons and squads must also contribute to the intelligence effort.

Civil Reconstruction

While force protection and population security will set the conditions for future success, they are comparatively passive or defensive efforts. Eventually, to win any small war you will have to take offensive action by going out into the area and doing things, changing your environment for the better. One of the most critical of such efforts is helping to improve the lives of the local population. Small wars frequently cause the deterioration of society. Local people experience constant power outages and lose access to clean water. They may run out of food and grow hungry. They might not have access to medical care. Children might not be able to go to school. As the local society falls further and further into disrepair, the economy will collapse, small businesses will fail and there will be very few jobs available. One of your most important jobs is to correct these problems and give local people a better life. This will improve the overall operational situation in a number of ways and contribute greatly to your ultimate objective of defeating the insurgency. We will discuss civil reconstruction operations in more detail in the civil reconstruction section.

Direct Action Targeting As you start to take the offensive and make positive changes to help the local population, your insurgent and terrorist enemies will likely try to subvert your efforts. Defensive force protection and population security efforts can help counter these enemy actions but ultimately you will also have to take the offensive against the insurgents, putting them on the defensive so they cannot take offensive action against you. When targeting enemy insurgents, it is important to integrate your targeting efforts with other lines of operation. For example, targeting an IED (improvised explosive device) maker will help support your force protection efforts. You can protect yourself from IEDs by executing defensive, counter-IED measures, or you can go after the person who builds the IEDs and remove him from the equation.

You may also target enemies that are interfering with your civil reconstruction efforts. For example, you may rebuild the local hospital but find that people are afraid to visit the hospital because an insurgent cell is targeting anyone who tries to seek medical aid. You may learn that the same insurgent cell is drawing up plans to bomb the hospital. You may be able to eliminate this threat by targeting and capturing the members of the insurgent cell. These are just a few examples of how you can use direct action targeting to support the overall operational objectives. It is important to remember that direct action targeting is rarely effective by itself. The reason for this is that while you are eliminating insurgents, the insurgents are recruiting new operatives and supporters. To offer an analogy, if you continue mopping the floor without stopping the leak you will just continue mopping the floor forever as more and more water spills out. You need to mop the floor while simultaneously plugging the leak. By focusing on civil reconstruction efforts and psychological operations, you will dry up the insurgent recruiting pool making your direct action efforts more decisive. We will discuss direct action targeting in more detail in the civil reconstruction section.

Psychological Operations For the sake of simplicity, we will disregard the various nuances in terminology between psychological operations (PSYOPs), military information support operations (MISO) and information operations (IO) etc. For our purposes we will refer to any effort or unit in this realm as PSYOPs. PSYOPS is absolutely critical in any small war and relates to every other effort and line of operations. For example, when it comes to civil reconstruction operations, it is not enough just to cause positive change for the local population, but you also need to publicize and advertise that change so the effort has maximum positive impact on public perception. If you go in and fix the local roads, the people will likely be happy but they will not necessarily

know who fixed the roads or why. For all they know the insurgents might have fixed the roads. When you execute a successful civil reconstruction operation it is critical to compliment that operation with a psychological operations campaign to showcase what you did for the population and tie that action into a larger narrative you are building about your overall efforts in the region. The same principle applies to your direct action efforts. Before you capture or kill a terrorist or insurgent leader, you should execute an extended psychological operations campaign to demonize that leader and show the population all the horrible crimes that leader is responsible for. The leader must become an enemy of the people. After you capture or kill the leader you should follow up with new messages explaining how the leader’s removal was a great benefit to the local population. You may also want to emphasize how the leader was treated humanely and given a fair trial etc. If local forces participated in the operation, you should use PSYOPS to showcase their involvement, building people’s confidence in their own security forces. You can also combine multiple narratives together. For example, if the insurgent leader in question had plans to blow up the new hospital, you might want to conduct a PSYOPS campaign showing how your efforts not only eliminated a menace to society but also ensured that the new hospital is safe for all to use. These are just a few examples of how you can use psychological operations to support and enhance your other lines of effort. We will discuss psychological operations in more detail in the psychological operations section.

Training Local Forces Training local forces and building the locals’ confidence in their own government and institutions is one of the most critical factors in achieving final victory in a small war. In most cases, the objective of a small war is not for the occupying force to remain there

indefinitely but rather to hand off responsibility to the locals so they can maintain a stable and prosperous society on their own. Therefore, success in small wars is not just about conducting effective force protection, civil reconstruction, direct action and psychological operations on your own. You must be able to teach the locals to do all of these things and more without your help. It is common for leaders waging small wars to forget this and try to win themselves without thinking about the effect this will have on the local government. In some cases, the more effective the efforts of occupying forces, the more those efforts will delegitimize and degrade the local forces. If you do everything for the local security forces, not only will they not learn to get better, but they will lose confidence in their own abilities and the population will lose confidence in their own security forces as well. Local capabilities may also wither away or atrophy if an outside occupying force carries the weight for too long. We will discuss training local forces in more detail in the section on training local forces.

The “Key Terrain” in Small Wars There is no simple formula for winning small wars but in general, most paths to victory follow a similar pattern. In conventional warfare, key terrain is often an actual piece of terrain such as a hilltop, river crossing or major city. In small wars, the key terrain is generally the population itself. Your objective is not to capture a city or hilltop but to win the support of the local population. Your insurgent enemy is trying to do the same thing. Therefore, the contest ends up being a metaphorical tug of war between you and the insurgents over the hearts and minds of the population. When thinking about this contest, it is important to understand that the population can be spread across a spectrum that falls into three categories. At one end of the spectrum are the extremists who are fighting against you. It is unlikely that you will ever “win over” these extremists and they will continue to fight you no matter what. On the other end of

the spectrum are the people who support you fully and you can count on to never side with the insurgents. The important thing to realize that the number of people on each end of the spectrum is relatively small compared to the number of people in the middle of the spectrum. These people in the middle could go either way depending on the circumstances. They might side with the insurgents or they might side with you. Winning this middle spectrum of the population to your side is ultimately how you will win a small war. The following chapters provide details on how to do this.

Force Protection When first arriving in a small war combat zone, a commander will have to learn a lot in a very short period of time. Thus, the first question is what to prioritize? Many books or courses on small wars or counterinsurgency focus on rapport-building with the locals and understanding their culture. While this is indeed possibly the most critical skill for winning small wars, it should not necessarily be the first focus point in terms of sequencing. Understanding the local culture and building rapport and relationships with the locals takes time and ultimately takes extensive exposure to the population on the ground. Simply reading a book about the local culture will do little to prepare you for a small war conflict. You must get out among the population, spend time with them, get to know them and earn their trust. You will not be able to do this if every time you leave the protection of your base or outpost you get hit with an ambush or roadside bomb. Protecting yourselves and securing the environment is a prerequisite for all other operational activities. However, this too requires you to leave the wire and travel around your area of operations. Thus, the first priority, in terms of sequencing, is to learn how to leave the wire and travel around safely. The next priority is to focus on bolstering your fixed defenses and base security. Once again, the easiest way to secure your own troops is to barricade yourselves in a heavily defended base and never leave. However, by hiding behind the wire, you are giving the insurgents free reign to dominate the environment and control the local population. Therefore, as soon as you exit the wire you will be at great risk. This is why securing yourself outside the wire should be emphasized as the first priority, so you do not fall into the trap of staying locked up in your base.

Deception and Pattern Variation Some of the most common complaints from small war combatants include, “the enemy always seems to know where we

are and where we are going,” or, “it is impossible to surprise the insurgents, they always know we are coming.” This does not always need to be the case. It is frequently not that the enemy is all-knowing, but rather that allied forces telegraph their moves and stick to predictable patterns. There are a number of ways to avoid this, improve your security and gain an edge over the enemy.

Using a Route Book for Pattern Variation It is impossible to vary your pattern if you do not know what your pattern is. Therefore, every time your unit leaves the wire, record your route, your time of departure and any other relevant information in a “route book.” We will discuss more about how to build and employ route books later on. From the standpoint of pattern variation, the purpose of the route book is to help you avoid predictability. For example, if you left at 0800 in the morning on the last patrol, leave earlier or later on the next patrol. If you took the North road on the last patrol, take the South road on the next patrol. Look for any patterns that the enemy might be able to identify and avoid those patterns. It is also relevant to note that all patterns might not appear obvious on the surface. For example, if you leave the wire at 0800 on one day, at 1000 the next day and 0700 the day after that, you may be varying your departure time but you are always leaving on the hour. This is a pattern the enemy could capitalize on.

Pattern Deceptions While in most cases you should try to avoid using patterns, deliberately establishing patterns and then breaking them is one of the best deception techniques. For example, if you are attempting to arrest a local insurgent leader but he always seems to know when you are coming, you might establish a pattern of flying an overt (noisy) drone over a target area before you launch a mission to search that area. The enemy will become accustomed to your pattern and begin to anticipate your actions based on drone activity. Then, on

the day you decide to go after the insurgent leader, you can send your drone to a different area so the enemy will think you are headed in a different direction and will let their guard down. You can also establish patterns to lull the enemy into a false sense of security. For example, if you know an insurgent cell is operating in a specific area but they flee any time you approach, establish a pattern of visiting that area for a non-threatening reason, like attending a meeting, distributing medical supplies or inspecting local infrastructure. Repeat this pattern multiple times. The insurgents might flee the first few times but then they will grow lazy once they realize you are not coming to the area for them. Once they grow complacent you can catch them with their guard down.

Overt/Covert Combinations One technique is to execute a simple feint movement using an overt mounted element and a covert dismounted element. The overt element will move noisily to a pre-determined location, drawing the enemy’s attention in that direction. Meanwhile, a quieter dismounted patrol can approach the target area from the opposite direction with less chance of detection. A variation on this technique involves using loudspeaker vehicles to play recordings of battle noises in the vicinity of a known enemy concentration or possible target. Coalition forces using this technique report that the noise played by the loudspeaker is very convincing and causes every target in the adjacent vicinity to lay low and direct their attention towards the noise. This makes them very vulnerable to a surprise assault from another force. You can use these same techniques when there is no actual targeting mission in progress. By monitoring an area with intelligence assets, you can identify specific enemy patterns associated with overt coalition patrols or the noise of small arms fire. Any activity that draws attention (fixing a tire, faking a vehicle breakdown or casualty) can encourage the enemy to template himself and reveal his own responses and patterns.

The same principle can apply to base security. You can place overt dummy cameras in obvious locations for the enemy to see. The enemy will avoid these cameras, potentially exposing himself to real, hidden cameras or observation posts. Any type of patrol, observation element, security element or defensive position can benefit from the employment of overt/covert combinations. The enemy will naturally focus attention on what is most obvious and attention-grabbing, potentially overlooking other more covert elements.

Controlling and Predicting Enemy Actions One of the best ways to control or predict enemy actions is to leave an apparent opening or vulnerability. If you leave an obvious gap in your defenses or make it appear as if a unit is sleeping while on patrol, you might be able to lure the enemy into a trap. Leave an opening for the enemy but cover that opening with covert security elements that the enemy cannot see. While this technique can prove very effective, try to save it for critical moments since the enemy will eventually catch on to your deception. Don’t overuse any deception technique or it will become ineffective. Another way to predict enemy action is to preempt the enemy with aggressive actions of your own. It is always easier to predict an enemy reaction then an enemy action. If you are constantly taking the initiative and forcing the enemy to respond to unexpected changes, the enemy will have little time to develop deliberate plans, come up with their own deceptions or vary their own patterns.

Sensitive Information and Deception Techniques There are many variations and additions to the techniques described above that are not suitable for release in an open-source document because they involve sensitive information regarding specific techniques and capabilities. However, the basic, fundamental concepts outlined above provide a good baseline for thinking about deception and pattern variation. Study the latest techniques and capabilities in your specific area of operations to maximize your effectiveness.

Counter-IED Techniques Problems with the “Push Through” Technique Some units always plan to “push through” the killzone at high speed following any IED attack. The problem with this technique is that if an IED strikes a vehicle to your front and obscures it in smoke and dust, you may drive into the cloud and collide with the damaged vehicle or run over personnel trying to escape. So, only push through the killzone if you can see that all vehicles can still roll. If you are uncertain of this, order the convoy to stop momentarily to avoid collisions.

Complex Ambushes If your convoy strikes an IED and you find yourself under sustained small arms or RPG fire, you must deal with the threat first before trying to provide aid and litter for casualties. In an emergency, position one of your trucks to protect you from small arms fire as you transfer casualties from one truck to another. One effective way of positioning trucks is side-by-side with doors open, so you are creating a virtual foxhole with your armor.

Enemy Tactics for Emplacing Secondary IEDs Intelligent enemies will study your patterns and try to exploit them. So, if you establish an SOP that dictates stopping at a specific distance after spotting an IED or pushing past a specific distance after striking an IED the enemy may try to capitalize on this by placing hidden, secondary IEDs in the locations you are most likely to stop. Be aware that the enemy might also place additional IEDs close to the initial blast location and wait to detonate these until you dismount to help wounded comrades or help other patrol members out of damaged or burning vehicles. There is not always an alternative course of action since you cannot abandon team members who are wounded or in danger. However, just be aware that the

threat is not gone just because the IED goes off. Remain vigilant and minimize your exposure while aiding others. The enemy also chooses locations of “obvious cover” for secondary IEDs. For example, in the vicinity of an IED or hoax IED, there may be a position that offers particularly good cover and concealment. When coalition security elements push out to secure the site, it is almost certain that they will occupy these positions. Therefore, the enemy can plant secondary IEDs and booby traps in these locations, to target personnel attempting to take cover and provide security. The best way to counter this technique is not always straightforward. After all, you cannot choose to avoid locations that provide good cover on the chance that they might be boobytrapped. The solution is to pay attention to your surroundings and visually search or inspect a covered position before you occupy it. Particularly look at the ground for disturbed earth and pressure plate devices. If the ground is very soft like “moon dust,” you may want to avoid the position entirely because it would be very hard to tell if the enemy has disturbed the earth.

“5-25 Meter” Search Procedures The best way to conduct 5-25 searches is to have the gunner move to the defilade position and have each of the passengers clear his respective sector from 5 meters to 25 meters from inside the vehicle. Each passenger will call out when his sector is clear… “Left-front clear! Right-front clear! Left-rear clear! Rightrear clear!” At this point the gunner will come out of defilade and conduct his own 5-25 searches scanning 360-degrees around the vehicle. Once the gunner is finished, one person will dismount, close his door, and clear the immediate area around the vehicle. Once the immediate area is clear, a second person can dismount. These two patrol members can move on opposite sides of the road and clear any other remaining areas, with the gunner providing cover.

When dismounting a vehicle in a location where you expect an IED blast, you can dismount one person at a time, with each person closing his door before the next person gets out. This can help keep the people in the vehicle as safe as possible.

Alternate Communication Systems One TTP that will help make the whole process go more smoothly is to establish a secondary communications system for damaged vehicles. Very often, an IED blast will blow all the antennas and communications equipment off of a vehicle so that vehicle will not be able to communicate its status. An easy way to solve this problem is to store two chemlight bundles in each truck, one red and one green. If all personnel in the vehicle are ok, the TC throws out the green bundle. If the vehicle has casualties or needs immediate assistance, the TC throws out the red bundle. Obviously, friendly forces must expect the possibility that the crew will be incapacitated to the point where they will be unable to throw out either bundle. This will also serve as a sign of the urgency of the situation.

Immobile Vehicle Drill When reacting to a downed vehicle following an IED blast, the first priority is to establish security and check for secondaries. You may find it very difficult to resist rushing directly to the damaged vehicle to render aid. However, the enemy knows our tendency to rush to help our friends and could use that to cause even more casualties. Therefore, you must do your best to hastily clear the area before rendering aid. If the damaged vehicle has no wheels or is immobile, first stop the rest of the convoy and establish 360-security to identify the triggerman or a possible complex ambush. The closest vehicle to the damaged vehicle will begin to approach the damaged vehicle. If appropriate, the gunner will go into the defilade position to protect himself from secondaries. Approach to a practical supporting distance (don’t get too close) and first execute 5-25 searches from inside the vehicle. Once

those searches are complete, have the gunner come out of defilade and execute 5-25 searches. Then dismount one person and have him clear the immediate area surrounding your own vehicle. Once the immediate area around your vehicle is clear, you can either send the same dismount to clear around the destroyed vehicle, or you can have that first dismount pull security while another dismount exits to clear around the destroyed vehicle. Another technique is to dismount two personnel and have them move towards the damaged vehicle on each side of the road, staggered (like a two-man tactical road march formation). As the personnel dismount, they can clear the immediate area around their own vehicle. Upon reaching the damaged vehicle, they can each clear their respective side, then one man can provide security while the other begins to attempt to provide aid and rescue the crew. Once you have conducted this hastily clearance you can then dismount more personnel to rescue any casualties trapped inside the vehicle. Once the area is clear, you can also pull the supporting truck closer in order to provide cover and protection for the casualties and the aid and litter teams. If you are taking any kind of small arms fire or if you want to provide greater protection, you can pull the supporting vehicle alongside the damaged vehicle and open the armored doors to form a “virtual foxhole.” The vehicle hulls and the open doors should provide cover in all directions, allowing you to safely transfer casualties from one vehicle to another. If you have a medic, ensure that he is not the one who runs up to the vehicle to rescue the casualties. The medic should stay in a safe place, behind cover and wait for the casualties to come to him. You don’t want your only medic to get killed.

Pushing or Pulling a Mobile Vehicle

In some situations, the damaged vehicle might be able to roll but cannot move under its own power. In these situations, the vehicle behind the damaged vehicle can attempt a “push out” or you can use cables to pull the damaged vehicle out of the killzone. You don’t need to move the vehicle that far, possibly 50-200m. The idea is to get the vehicle off of the “X” without stopping at any common secondary IED distances. One effective way to rapidly pull a vehicle out of the killzone is to pre-attach tow cables to all of your vehicles. Each vehicle should have a tow cable attached to the front bumper, running to a snap-link on the driver’s side window. Another tow cable runs from the rear bumper to the TC side window. Therefore, to tow a vehicle, all you have to do is pull up on the left side, open the TC window, attach the two snap-links and drive away. You can use lightweight zip ties to secure the cable to the side of the truck. These zip ties will break away when you execute the tow drill.

Special Cases and Situations If a vehicle gets hit by an IED and falls into a canal, immediately attempt to rescue the personnel inside. There are few

historical cases of secondary IEDs on a canal road. However, even if there were, the immediate need to keep people from drowning would justify risking possible exposure to secondaries. In some cases, the enemy may use a complex ambush to create a baited ambush. For example, in one case, the enemy detonated an IED on a US convoy. One sniper then opened fire on the convoy from a nearby building. The sniper allowed US forces to identify his location and then escaped out of the back of the building. The entire building was rigged with explosives. When US forces entered to kill the sniper, the building exploded. If you identify a secondary IED in vicinity of a damaged vehicle with wounded personnel inside, you have several options. You can try to find a covered route to the damaged vehicle without exposing yourself to the secondary IED. You can send small groups to evacuate casualties one at a time, or you can use the “virtual foxhole” technique described earlier to minimize exposure.

Base and Installation Defense Fundamentals In addition to ensuring your units survivability outside the wire, it is also critical to be able to secure your operating bases as well as other critical installations and local infrastructure. The fundamental principles of defense remain relatively constant at all levels of warfare and across all types of conflict. Therefore, the procedures for establishing a base defense plan in a small war are not so different from establishing a defensive position in conventional war.

Threat Assessment Defensive planning begins with the threat assessment. Leaders complete a prioritized threat list and disseminate that list down to subordinate units to form the basis for defensive planning. Subordinate units may cross-talk with superiors to adjust defensive priorities based on specific regional or operational circumstances. All levels of command should combine their intelligence collection and

analysis capabilities to identify the most likely threats based on current enemy capabilities and historical patterns. As a unit develops its threat assessment, it must evaluate threats in terms of both gravity and likelihood. Military forces have developed many methods of doing this including threat matrices and other mathematical models. For example, in a threat matrix, planners assign each threat a value of 1-5 for gravity and a value of 1-5 for likelihood. Planners can also add additional criteria to the matrix such as force strength, training, morale etc. Finally, planners can assign weights to each of these criteria if they deem some criteria are more critical than others. The resulting numbers allow planners to use mathematical calculations to determine the priority of threats. It is critical to understand however that some of these systems can be ineffective and misleading. They were developed to give the illusion of quantitative analysis when in reality, the analysis is still qualitative since the numbers assigned to threats are ultimately subjective and based on human thinking rather than measurable data. Thus, the further a system takes planners away from actually using their brains and focusing on good qualitative analysis, the less effective the system will be. It can still be useful to use some matrices or calculations to assist the analytical process, but these systems must be essentially simple and not take away from natural human thinking and common sense. The final product will list all threats in order of priority. Once again, since each threat is weighed in terms of gravity and likelihood, even threats that are unlikely to occur might earn a high priority if their results are potentially catastrophic. For example, even if the threat of a IRAM (Improvised Rocket Assisted Munition) attack is unlikely, the catastrophic nature of such an attack could make counter IRAM efforts a high priority. Using this kind of judgement and analysis, planners must do their best to rank all threats in order of priority. Ultimately, each individual base or installation must develop its own, custom tailored ranking of threats. The threat priorities will not be the same for every location. Junior leaders and small unit commanders will need to carefully study their immediate surroundings

and keep track of past enemy attacks in order to come up with the most useful threat assessment.

Enemy Courses of Action and Contingency Planning Once a unit has completed the threat assessment, the next step is to wargame specific contingencies of how each threat will play out in real-life. This starts the process of forming a matrix of contingency plans that extends down the chain of command to the lowest level units. For example, if the greatest threat to a particular base is a VBIED (Vehicle Borne IED) attack, the next question would be to determine how such an attack would play out. There would likely be several possibilities or enemy courses of action. It is unrealistic to attempt to consider every possible enemy course of action or to try to anticipate enemy courses of action down to the lowest detail. When developing enemy courses of action, the main focus should be to identify in general terms the most likely enemy course of action and then consider the worst case scenario, or the enemy’s most dangerous course of action. In the case of a VBIED, the most likely course of action might be a VBIED ramming the main entry control point (ECP), but the most dangerous course of action might be a small team of enemies blowing a hole in the base perimeter wall and driving a VBIED into the side of the barracks building. U.S. Army schools teach planners to develop at minimum two enemy courses of action, the most likely course of action (MLCOA) and the most dangerous course of action (MDCOA). However, some Army schools overlook the nature and relationship of these two courses of action. In many cases, planners develop both the enemy’s most likely course of action and the enemy’s most dangerous course of action first, then go on to develop friendly courses of action. In these cases, the most dangerous course of action often simply involves a larger or more aggressive enemy action. Thus, the way planners typically plan follows the steps below… 1- Develop the enemy’s most-likely course of action 2- Develop the enemy’s most-dangerous course of action

3- Develop friendly course of action to counter the enemy The above steps are out of order. The correct way to plan is to first develop the enemy’s most likely course of action, then develop the friendly course of action to counter that most likely course of action. Only then is it possible to develop the enemy’s most dangerous course of action because the most dangerous course of action is not just “bigger” but rather it takes advantage of the weaknesses in the friendly course of action. Thus, it is impossible to know what the enemy’s most dangerous course of action is without first knowing the friendly course of action. Once planners develop the enemy’s most dangerous course of action, they return and develop at least one contingency plan to counter that most dangerous course of action. The contingency plan is not an entirely different plan but rather a way to adjust the existing plan mid-stride in the event that the enemy deviates from their most likely course of action. If wargaming shows that transitioning between the main plan and contingency plan is difficult or impossible, planners might need to go back and adjust the main plan to allow for easier transition to the contingency plan. For the VBIED example, the unit commander might have decided that because it is unlikely the enemy will breach the perimeter wall, he can assume some risk by leaving that portion of the wall less heavily defended and focus most of his weapon systems on the main Entry Control Point (ECP), the most likely point for a VBIED attack. However, the plan must have some security elements in place to be able to observe approaches to the perimeter wall and there must be a plan in place to shift forces to block and defend the gap should the enemy manage a successful breach. Thus, the proper steps for defensive planning are as follows… 1- Develop the enemy’s most likely course of action 2- Develop friendly plan to counter the enemy’s most likely course of action 3- Develop the enemy’s most dangerous course of action (the one that exploits the weaknesses of the plan

developed in step 2) 4- Develop friendly contingency plans to counter the enemy’s most dangerous course of action 5- Adjust the main plan as needed to allow for effective transition between the main plan and the contingency plan if needed

Cyclical Interplay Between Operations and Intelligence The process described above for planning and contingency planning is inseparable from the intelligence process. While each of the above five steps are taking place, there is a simultaneous, asynchronous and cyclical interplay of planning and intelligence. Note that in order to effectively explain the interplay between intelligence and planning, some references to offensive operations will be needed. The cyclical interplay of planning and intelligence is sometimes overlooked in U.S. Army schools. Some planning techniques and methodologies suggest that a plan can be effectively assembled using only on the intelligence initially available at the start of the planning process. Thus, in the worst cases, planners collect every bit of intelligence they have that might be useful for an operation, consider that intelligence as “fact” and proceed to develop a highly complex, detailed plan over an extended planning interval. Planners who correctly apply the Army’s Military Decision-Making Process (MDMP) at least realize that all necessary intelligence might not be available at the start of an operation. MDMP calls for identifying information gaps and developing intelligence collection requirements and corresponding intelligence collection plans to fill those gaps. For example, leaders might realize that they know very little about the enemy’s mortar capabilities in a given area of operations. The planning process would identify such information gaps and then specific detailed intelligence collection requirements, for example, “what type of mortars does the enemy employ? What is the maximum effective range of those mortars? What are the known Point of Origin (POO) sites for mortar attacks?”

The planning process would then assign specific intelligence or reconnaissance assets to collect that information. For example, planners might send out patrols investigate known POO sites in the area of operations to look for useful evidence about what type of mortars were fired from those locations. Such evidence would be necessary to inform and drive the ongoing planning process. However, because the MDMP process places intelligence and reconnaissance planning early in the planning process, it has a tendency to become a “one-time thing” as opposed to an ongoing interplay. This misses the critical point that intelligence rapidly goes stale. In some cases, the intelligence used to formulate the plan may be already obsolete by the time the plan is ready to execute. The only way to solve this problem is to view intelligence not as a step in the planning process but rather part of a never-ending cycle between intelligence and operations that must spin faster and faster in order to out-pace the enemy’s reaction time. When viewed in this way, the importance of aggressive, fluid and free-flowing operations becomes all the more apparent. For example, using a conventional warfare example, many Army planners might plan an attack as follows… 1. Establish defensive posture 2. Begin planning 3. Identify information gaps 4. Plan and execute reconnaissance to fill information gaps 5. Complete the plan 6. Execute the plan Such a rigid approach does not consider the enemy as a living, thinking opponent bent on subverting every friendly move. A more aggressive, fluid and free-flowing plan might look more like this… 1. Immediately attack into known areas of enemy weakness to fight for intelligence and to spoil the

enemy’s decision-making process by keeping him off balance 2. While attacking, use the information flow from the front to plan a larger scale attack 3. Identify information gaps 4. Plan and execute reconnaissance to fill information gaps and maintain persistent surveillance on enemy movements whenever possible 5. Attempt to identify enemy intentions and execute feints or deception plans to draw the enemy into a position of vulnerability 6. Attack or screen enemy reconnaissance capabilities to prevent him from identifying the real friendly course of action 7. Complete the plan 8. Execute the plan The more aggressive approach outlined above recognizes the urgency created by the constant fluctuation and inevitable uncertainty of battlefield conditions. Thus, as friendly forces are collecting intelligence and developing a plan, the enemy is also collecting intelligence and developing their own plan to counter the friendly plan. At any point during the competitive planning process, either side can stage a spoiling attack to throw off the opposing planning cycle or disrupt opposing preparations. Either side might also use deception to cause opposing planners to stumble into a trap or waste time and planning resources to counter an imaginary contingency. Whichever side is able to do all these things more effectively, dynamically and quickly will outpace the opposing decision-cycle. The same principles apply to small wars but are somewhat harder to illustrate in a single example because the pace of operations in small wars is often slower than that of conventional wars. However, while the pace might be slower, there is also generally a greater degree of uncertainty and ambiguity. A militia

group that helps allied forces one week might switch sides the following week. A local leader might be killed and replaced with another leader who has entirely different political alignments and objectives. Intelligence collectors and analysts must constantly remain up to date on all of these types of changes and events to ensure that planners have the most current information to support their planning efforts.

Intelligence Planning and Indicators Developing indicators that point to specific enemy courses of action is critical for defensive planning. Returning to the discussion of the enemy most likely and most dangerous courses of action, how can planners identify which course of action the enemy is choosing as early as possible? Using the VBIED example, planners might set up sensors and observation posts watching certain roads and avenues of approach leading to their base. At a higher level, when trying to predict the frequency of IED attacks in particular area of operations, planners might observe traffic along known smuggling routes or monitor activity at suspected IED building facilities. When referring to physical areas, defined intelligence collection zones are referred to as NAIs (Named Areas of Interest). Planners must at provide specific collection requirements for each NAI. It is important to provide specific collection requirements, so the collectors know exactly what to look for. It is also necessary to estimate what criteria would suggest the enemy has chosen the most dangerous course of action. Thus, for any defensive plan, it is essential to tie each enemy course of action to a series of NAIs, each with specific collection requirements and indicators. This will serve as a baseline for reading enemy actions and implementing contingencies accordingly. However, this process cannot be robotic because a clever enemy will execute feints with the express purpose of “tripping” the execution criteria for friendly contingency plans. Thus, NAIs and indicators serve only as a guideline for decision making.

Planning for the Reserve Adjusting a plan to meet the requirements of various contingencies frequently involves adjusting the size and location of the reserve. A reserve force is kept in the rear or in a location that makes it difficult for the enemy to destroy or pin down. The reserve typically stands ready to respond to any of the enemy course of actions outlined in the friendly plan. The reserve also gives the friendly commander flexibility to deal with unexpected developments. In small wars, the reserve is sometimes referred to as a quick reaction force or QRF. In general, the greater the level of uncertainty in an operation, the larger the reserve should be. In some cases, it might be necessary to have multiple reserve forces. The size and location of the reserve can change at any time as new intelligence flows in and the plan solidifies. For example, if at the start of the planning process there is a very high level of uncertainty, the reserve force might be very large. If however, the planning process reveals new information about enemy forces, portions of the reserve can deploy to reinforce defensive positions accordingly, leaving a smaller reserve to deal with the unexpected. Reserves also typically exist on different levels. For example, a company commander might establish a reserve squad or reserve platoon that he can deploy as needed in support of company level operations. However, there might also be a battalion reserve and a brigade reserve that can only be deployed with the consent of higher commanders. Leaders at each level must establish plans for incorporating any one of these reserve elements into the defense. This is particularly important for coordinating the arrival and integration of reserve elements outside a unit’s immediate chain of command. For example, what if a company outpost is being overrun and the battalion commander decides to send the battalion reserve platoon to reinforce. That reserve cannot just arrive haphazardly with no prior plan for integrating into the existing defense. Rather, the company commander on the ground must have pre-planned locations

and fighting positions for the battalion reserve platoon to assume when it arrives. Ideally, the company commander will have already talked with the leader of the reserve forces and pre-established signals, linkup procedures and control measures to facilitate maximum speed, safety and effectiveness. If prior coordination is not possible, a commander should have designated personnel pre-assigned to act as guides for incoming reinforcements, guiding them to the right positions and providing them with the information they will need to integrate effectively into the defensive plan. The commander on the ground must also know the “time string” for each level of reinforcement. For example, maybe it will take 10 minutes for the battalion reserve to arrive but take 30 minutes for the brigade reserve to arrive. Knowing this time string will allow the company commander to plan accordingly and estimate things like how much ammunition will be needed to hold out long enough for reinforcements to arrive. This same phenomenon applies to other support assets like air support or artillery.

Indicators and Alert Levels Intelligence collection and indicators also inform alert levels. Identifying and rehearsing alert levels is critical to any defensive plan. This is because a unit cannot be on 100-percent alert indefinitely. Human beings need to sleep, eat and conduct countless other activities in order to sustain life and stay sharp. Thus, a unit that is on maximum alert all the time will be less prepared than a unit that has taken advantage of opportunities to rest and refit when appropriate. Alert level must be tied to two things: posture and response time. Posture includes everything from how many troops are manning defenses, what they are wearing, how many vehicles have their engines running and whether or not bullets are chambered in weapons. Each posture must also be connected with specific response time intervals indicating how long it will take to either deploy or to reach the next level of readiness. Units will typically assign code words, numbers or colors to various stages of alert.

For example, imagine an infantry platoon is designated as the battalion reserve in a counterinsurgency operation. That means that the platoon must remain on-call at all times to come to the aid of other units in the battalion that might be in trouble. The platoon leader might identify four levels of alert, using Army terminology they might be labeled readiness condition (REDCON) 1-4. Below is a hypothetical example of what each REDCON level might mean… REDCO N 1 2

3

4

POSTURE All troops sitting in running vehicles, ready to go Troops fully dressed in combat gear, confined to barracks, can use the bathroom but not eat, sleep or shower Troops fully dressed with boots on but combat gear can be staged nearby, troops not confined to barracks, troops can eat and sleep but not shower Troops can wear whatever they want and can eat, sleep or shower

RESPONSE TIME 1 minute 5 minutes

10 minutes

20 minutes

It is important to note that response times are not just assumed to be accurate based on the posture directives. Units must repeatedly rehearse going from one alert level to another to ensure they can meet the response times in a real combat situation. It is also important to realize that while tactical examples make alert levels easy to conceptualize, the exact same concepts apply at every level of warfare. The same principles apply to ensuring a division or rapid deployment force can cross the ocean in time to support a crumbling theater-level defense. Alert levels apply both to forces in defensive positions and to forces allocated as reserve. As already stated, commanders must know the “time string” for the arrival of various reserve elements.

Unfortunately, this number is not fixed but is instead tied to alert levels. A reserve’s alert level will determine how long it will take the reserve to arrive at the reinforcement site. The total response time for a reserve is equal to the transit time, plus the response time for the given alert level. So, based on the above chart, if battalion planners know that an operation will be taking place 20 minutes away from where the reserve is located and the reserve is at REDCON 3, the total response time to the battle area will be 30 minutes.

Wargaming and Backwards Planning The most important thing to consider about response times and alert levels is how to use wargaming and backwards planning to ensure there are no unpleasant surprises in a real combat situation. Many units form half-baked plans without performing adequate rehearsals, wargames and time/distance calculations to determine how events will actually play out on the battlefield. Essentially, if the reserve does not arrive in time, it may not be bad luck but might rather be a sign of dysfunction and incompetent planning. Whatever planners come up with, the times must add up. The demands of response time dictate the alert levels or the positioning of units. Once again, it is critical for commanders to determine all of this before the action starts. If a defense can only hold out for 30 minutes before it needs reinforcements, planners must find a way to get reinforcements on site within 30 minutes. This might mean forward-deploying units to advanced bases or using air transport. There can also be phased reinforcement plans. For example, maybe a company on its own can hold out for ten minutes. That means the battalion reserve must be no more than 10 minutes away. If a company plus the battalion reserve can only hold out for 30 minutes, then the brigade reserve must be no more than 30 minutes away. This type of time-phased planning is particularly important for larger scale operations.

Counter IRAM (Rocket) Defense

Improvised Rocket-Assisted Munitions (IRAMs) present a particularly dangerous threat to your fixed bases and installations. You can counter the IRAM threat quite effectively by having a good defense plan for each base or operating post. However, there are certain ways to modify your defense plan to guard against the IRAM threat in particular. The first step is to pay special attention to the area within a 500m radius of the base. This is a common historical maximum effective range for an IRAM. Once you have identified this IRAM threat radius, identify what high speed avenues of approach pass through that radius. The most likely enemy course of action is to drive an IRAM along that route and pull off to the side of the road before launching. It is more likely for the enemy to use a main, highly trafficked avenue than it is for them to use a smaller, less trafficked avenue. Not only will a vehicle moving down a smaller street in vicinity of your base be more conspicuous, but lines of sight are often more obstructed along small, narrow roads. Either way, you will have to conduct a detailed recon of your own AO to determine the most likely enemy avenues of approach.

Using Checkpoints and Barriers Once you identify these main avenues of approach you can emplace checkpoints on either side of the sections that pass through your IRAM radius. You can have local security forces man these checkpoints and give them specific instructions to search larger vehicles that could carry IRAMs. Some units have had success by threatening to close sections of the road if the local security forces do not man the checkpoints. In between the checkpoints, along the sections of roads that pass through your IRAM radius, you can emplace Jersey Barriers to prevent vehicles from pulling off the side of the road between the checkpoints. One problem that units have seen, is local national vehicles pulling off to the side of the road for maintenance within the IRAM radius. If you put low barriers on each side of the road, you

can prevent vehicles from doing this and make it harder for IRAM attackers to move into a firing position. Use low barriers that will block a vehicle, but will not block your observation of IED emplacers. The next step is to identify other likely firing positions for IRAMs and use other barriers to block these off. You can use either concrete barriers, or “IRAM bars” depending on the terrain and civilian traffic patterns. Emplacing warning signs in these areas can also be useful and aid you in determining whether or not a vehicle has hostile intent.

Techniques for Preparing the Defense The key to an effective defense is for the company on the ground to be very thorough in their defense planning. A defense is never complete. Keep reevaluating your defensive plan constantly and always be aware of how changes in the environment, changes to enemy TTPs and changes in your intelligence reporting might affect your defense plan. One good way to identify dead space and possible IRAM launch locations is to have the guard towers take pictures of areas they consider to be likely launch locations. Then when patrols go outside the wire, they can carry with them printed copies of those pictures so they can “see what the tower sees” as they move to that location to look at things from the other perspective. These patrols in turn can take pictures from the outside in. Afterwards, you can compare the pictures and wargame possible enemy courses of action. This process becomes much more effective if the patrols maintain constant radio communications with the towers so that they can talk about what they are seeing from their respective locations while they are out there on the ground. Having pictures in hand from the opposite perspective can help make these conversations more effective. When patrolling around your base, pay particular attention to what the enemy might use as possible aiming points for IRAMs. Ideally, the enemy will want to put himself behind some sort of cover

and aim for a high-point of your base that he can still see. Be aware of this when conducting your recon.

Actions During Heightened IRAM Threat During windows of higher IRAM threat, you can increase your protection in several ways. First, you can augment the local security force checkpoints with your own forces, to ensure that the local forces are carefully searching vehicles. In addition, you can send out dismounted patrols or establish OPs to recon possible IRAM locations. Your patrols should conduct snap inspections on all trucks they come across (if possible). Even if you don’t find anything, this will create a powerful deterrent that will discourage enemies from trying to drive IRAM vehicles into your radius.

Setting Up a Warning System for IRAMs In all of your towers, you should have a PA system. This system should have an alarm sound and three prearranged messages (in the local language) of escalating aggression (level 1,2 and 3). When one of the towers spots a possible IRAM, the guards immediately activate the alarm and broadcast the first message, which might say something like “Vehicle, do not move any closer to the American base or you will be shot.” Once the alarm goes off, that triggers the QRF spin-up and Air Weapons Team (AWT) request. Non-QRF personnel will don their combat equipment and prepare to move to shelter or reinforce the base defense if necessary. The guard continues to watch the vehicle. If the vehicle does not comply with demands, the guard tower can broadcast messages 2 and 3 as necessary. After broadcasting all three messages, the tower can also use other means of escalation of force (like warning shots) or even engage the vehicle with M203 or AT4. To assist the guard tower in escalation of force and decisionmaking, leaders can observe the vehicle using ISR cameras. If at any point, the tower guards or leaders watching ISR determine that a launch is imminent, the tower will sound the second alarm. On hearing the second alarm, all personnel will move to

shelter and prepare for incoming rockets. Meanwhile, all available units will engage the IRAM vehicle with all available firepower. One example of a trigger for the second alarm would be if enemies exit the IRAM vehicle and load into another vehicle that is driving by. Historically, most enemies that collation forces have seen conducting IRAM attacks have tried to escape in this way. If the vehicle complies and stops, immediately deploy the QRF to search the vehicle and detain the passengers. Once again, at any point during this process you can sound the second alarm and prepare for an imminent IRAM attack. EVENT

ALARM

ACTIONS TAKEN

Possible IRAM spotted

First Alarm Broadcast message 1

No response to message 1 No response to message 2 Confirm IRAM threat

Broadcast message 2 Broadcast message 3 Second Alarm

Activate QRF, move to uniform level 3, shift ISR, request AWT EOF as needed EOF as needed Take cover, engage target

Using UAVs for Counter IRAM UAVs, especially small portable UAVs can be an even more effective ISR platform than stationary blimps or cameras because of the noise/signature they produce. This buzzing noise can act as a deterrent to anyone trying to approach your base. Enemies will come to identify the buzzing noise with US observation. In addition, the UAV can monitor deadspace that a fixed camera cannot see. This is particularly true in the urban environment. The UAV can also easily access any location within your 500m IRAM radius. It might be useful to fly your UAV during windows of heightened IRAM threat. Sometimes a unit is afraid to use a UAV because they don’t want to lose it. If your UAV does not have built-in tracking device, you can use a technology called “Falcon Telemetry.” These are devices used by falconers and other bird-owning civilians. It is a small tracking device that you can attach to a bird (or UAV in this case) to ensure that you don’t lose it. If for any reason the UAV does crash, you can

use your tracking device to home in on its exact location quickly and even track it if someone steals it. Based on the model, telemetry devices can have ranges of up to 30 miles.

Population Security As already discussed, force protection and population security are two halves of the same whole. It is difficult to have one without the other. More importantly, securing the population ultimately sets the conditions for you to accomplish the critical objectives leading to mission success in a small war. While we will cover the specifics for how to partner with and work with local security forces in a later chapter, it is important to address the topic in a general sense when discussing population security. Ultimately, the best way to secure the population is with the help of local military, police and security forces. Ideally, these local forces should be in the lead. Depending on your particular situation, this might not always be possible, especially early on in a small war. Before you have the opportunity to train, vet and professionalize local forces they may be incapable of maintaining security. Even worse, they may be heavily infiltrated by insurgents and even overtly helping the insurgent cause. Thus, initially you might have to secure the population primarily with your own forces. However, as you work to build local capabilities, you should hand off the responsibility for local security to local forces as much as possible. Local people will often respond better to local forces than they will to outsiders. Local forces also know the area better and have better language/culture skills. Ideally, there should also be a larger number of local forces than occupying forces and replacements can be recruited directly from the population, reducing problems caused by manpower demands and shortages.

Fundamentals of Population Control and Security In order to control and ultimately secure the population you must first gather intelligence on the population itself. As discussed earlier, in a small war the population is the “key terrain.” Just as you would gather information about the terrain and conduct terrain analysis you must analyze and study the local population if you are to know how to navigate the “human terrain.” This task becomes easier when you subdivide your area of operations into individual areas of responsibility for each sub-unit. For example, if a brigade is responsible for a certain city or town, individual companies might be responsible for neighborhoods. Within those neighborhoods, platoons and squads might be responsible for areas spanning a few city blocks. Assigning specific areas to specific units helps

leaders get to know their areas well and get to know the people living in those areas. There are several steps that can help units gain a better understanding of their areas of responsibility.

Establishing a Census If it is feasible to do so, each unit should conduct a census of their assigned area. This entails going from house to house and making a record of all the people who live in that house. Ideally, you should take pictures of each person and make identity cards with the individual’s picture, name and other relevant information like age, height, hair and eye color etc. You may want to print out these cards and hand them out to the population. Either way, you want to keep a record of the information yourself. If you have biometric tools available, they can make your work much easier and collect additional data such as fingerprints, retinal scan etc. However, you should be careful to explain to locals what these biometric machines are since people with limited technological background might get spooked or intimidated if you approach them with a biometric device. You will not just need to record information for all local people living in a region, you will also need to create a map of your area of responsibility labeling each house with an alphanumeric code. Each house should have a unique number or letter-number combination. Then, when you create lists of who lives in each house you will have an easy-to-read reference to make the connection between houses and individuals. You will also want to ask the people in each house if they have relatives in the area or other people who might visit or stay over at their house frequently. Collecting all of this information will make it harder for insurgents to blend in among the locals in your area of responsibility. If an insurgent attempts to take refuge in a local house and you find him there, you will be able to know immediately that he does not actually live in that house. If his name does not match anyone on the frequent visitor or extended family list for that house, you will have even more reason to be suspicious.

Dismounted Patrols It is important not just to drive around your area of operations in armored vehicles. While you might need to use vehicles to reach areas that are father away, it is usually a good idea to dismount from the vehicles and

walk to your final destination. While the objective of your patrol might vary, it is always a good idea to stop and visit several houses along your way. You may choose to stop at houses that you have not yet visited for your census. Or you might choose to visit certain areas to help you collect PIR (Priority Intelligence Requirements) passed to you from the intelligence cell/section. Either way, ensure you have some system to guide which houses you visit. If you always visit the same house and leave other houses out entirely that will present a number of problems in the long run. When you visit a house, make sure to be very polite and ask the owner’s permission to enter the house. In some cultures, you will only want to speak with the head of the household or the oldest male in the house. Beyond such general cultural guidelines, you should not get too stressed about the right way to present yourself or interact with the locals. Simply focus on showing them respect, being polite and treating them like normal human beings in a friendly way. Don’t always jump immediately to “talking business,” asking them about insurgent threats in the area and proposing public works programs. Instead, be relaxed, make small-talk and try to build a relationship. If you can, share personal details about yourself, especially when you share things in common with them such as children or interests etc. By actively engaging with the population, you make it clear to both the local people and the insurgents that you are present, vigilant and always ready to help keep the community peaceful and stable. This is the first step in securing the population and helping them to trust you and feel safe.

Search Operations In some cases, you may need to search an area for weapons, explosives, insurgents or any other illicit materials/individuals. While sometimes necessary, search operations can also be problematic because they usually upset or inconvenience the local population. No one likes to have their house searched by military or police forces. Therefore, when conducting search operations, it is helpful to keep the following guidelines in mind… -

Make sure to let people know the reason you are searching their home and emphasize that your goal is to help keep them and their community safe.

-

When possible, have local military or police forces conduct the search since that might be less uncomfortable for the locals.

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Make sure to be respectful of local property. If you break something, fix it or pay for it. Leave things the way you found them. Don’t leave a mess. Depending on the nature and purpose of your search, you may want to establish a “cordon” prior to conducting the search. The purpose of the cordon is to prevent insurgents from sneaking out of the search area or smuggling weapons/equipment to another location before you can find it. The cordon keeps a specific area contained and prevents anyone from going in or out until the search is completed. It is important to keep in mind that emplacing a cordon limits the area you can search and/or can impose serious manpower demands on your force. Depending on what you are looking for, military working dogs can greatly enhance your search capabilities. Dogs can be trained to use their sense of smell to detect explosives and other illicit materials. Working dogs are a valuable asset so use them intelligently and take good care of them. It is also important to remember that in some cultures, dogs might be viewed as intimidating and might further upset the locals in the search area. Make sure to explain what the dogs are there for and to assure the locals that they have nothing to fear. While not always possible, the best way to conduct search operations is in connection with a direct action targeting operation or some other deliberate military operation against known insurgents or insurgent collaborators. Going door-to-door, searching every house is more disruptive/upsetting to the population, takes longer, requires more manpower and is ultimately less likely to find anything. It is better to conduct searches that are more targeted and less random. As you gain more familiarity in the area and the quality of your intelligence improves, it will become easier to target your searches and make them more effective.

Stationary Security and Observation Posts In some situations you might want to post stationary security elements in key locations within your area of responsibility. There are a number of reasons for doing this but the most likely is that you want to present a visible deterrent against insurgent violence. For example, if there is a great deal of sectarian violence, civil unrest or crime/looting taking

place among the local population, you might be able to discourage this activity by placing military units in visible locations. When emplacing fixed security elements the key point is to ensure those elements are not vulnerable to enemy surprise attack. Because the elements are stationary, the enemy will have more time to plan offensive action. However, unlike patrols where you might need to pass through dangerous chokepoints or other areas where the terrain is favorable to the enemy, when operating from a fixed location you can pick a spot that offers you good protection and observation, reducing the chances of an enemy attack. If you choose your location wisely, the enemy will only be able to attack you effectively with mortars or sniper fire. For this reason your stationary element should ideally be loaded in armored vehicles that can protect from such attacks. Make sure all personnel remain as alert as possible and maintain 360-degree security at all times. When remaining in one place for an extended period of time it is easy to grow tired, lose focus or fall asleep. Finally, if you identify a threat or witness violence near your position, you can move to engage the threat. However, be careful when leaving your stationary position. The enemy might be trying to lure you into a trap. Once again you have been in the same place for a long time and the enemy has had a chance to plan his actions carefully. Therefore, don’t take the most obvious route when responding to the situation. You might want to dismount and approach on foot or you might want to call in another unit to advance on the threat from a different direction while you provide cover or support.

Key Leader Engagements When visiting locals, you should prioritize those who are leaders or influencers within their community. If you can build rapport with those individuals and win their support, the rest of the community will likely follow. Don’t crowd, harass or overwhelm local leaders, just make sure they know that you appreciate their value and make them a priority. Key leaders will not always be the same in each region. Leaders might be political leaders like mayors, tribal leaders/elders, religious leaders, prominent local businessmen, military/police personnel or just popular or well-liked individuals within the community. Be cautious as you feel out the power structure and balance in your area of responsibility. Not

all leaders might get along and some leaders may be in competition with others for power or influence. Getting too friendly with one leader might alienate you from another. Eventually, as you build relationships with key leaders, you will begin to establish common objectives for the community. The more you can engage in combined projects with local leaders the stronger your relationship will grow. Whenever possible, let the local leaders take the lead in proposing, planning and executing these projects. Set up a weekly meeting schedule and offer your help and resources to support the leader’s objectives. In some cases you may need to approach local leaders to ask them for a favor or ask for their help. This can be as powerful for building the relationship as offering assistance. By asking for a local leader’s help you show him that you respect his power and value his opinion. However, you should still ask for help when you most need it. If you waste all your opportunities to ask for favors on trivial requests, when you really need something you may have exhausted the local leader’s generosity or patience.

Winning the Population You will not ultimately control or secure the population just by walking around and visiting houses. Ultimately the way to win the trust and support of the population is to show them that you can defeat the insurgents and make life better for everyone in the region. There is no simple, fixed formula for how to do this and achieving this ultimate objective requires all of the various approaches and techniques outlined in this book. Therefore, integrate all of your various efforts (or “lines of operation”) into a single, synergistic whole. Combine the effects of your direct action targeting with psychological operations and civil reconstruction projects. Train the local security forces and protect key local infrastructure from insurgent attacks. The more you succeed in these areas, the more you will bond with the local population and the more rewarding and productive your daily patrols and key leader engagements will become.

Population Security and Intelligence Collection Population security is closely linked with intelligence collection. It is not only important to secure the population; the population must also feel secure. The local people must have confidence in your ability to protect

them from the insurgents. The insurgents are trying to do the same thing. They are trying to convince the local population that you are incapable of protecting them and their only hope for survival lies in siding with the insurgency. It is only when you win this psychological battle against the insurgents and convince the population that you can protect them, that the population will support you and provide you with valuable intelligence. Until you secure the population and make them feel safe, you will probably get similar answers to all of the intelligence related questions you ask local nationals. They will say, “I don’t know anything about the insurgents… they always come at night… they wear masks… I don’t know who they are… they are not from this area.” Studying historical cases, these comments are almost certainly lies. The local population almost always has valuable information about the insurgents operating in their area. They just don’t want to share that information with you. Why don’t the locals want to provide you with information about the insurgency? Insurgents are generally very good at providing convincing reasons why cooperating with counterinsurgent forces is a bad idea. Anyone who cooperates with you is likely to be tortured and killed. It is also common for insurgents to punish the families of collaborators. Therefore, it is not that the local people don’t want to help you. They may like you and even support your cause. However, you are unable to apply the sort of pressure that the insurgents can. When given the choice to risk the safety of their family, or side with the insurgents, people will almost always side with the insurgents. This pattern also refutes a common assertion that the counterinsurgent forces must be “hard” on the population and that the only language the population understands is force. While this might be true, the counterinsurgent forces of a Western democracy will never be able to compete with the insurgents when it comes to fear and brutality. It is unlikely that you are going to intimidate the locals by yelling at them and threatening them when your competition is executing and torturing them. Therefore, you must take a different approach, other than fear and intimidation, to make the population feel secure. You make the population feel secure by systematically destroying the insurgency and eliminating insurgent reprisals on the population as much as possible. Word spreads rapidly in most third-world countries. If it becomes clear to the population that there is a “new sheriff in town,” and that the tide is rapidly turning towards the counterinsurgent forces, the population will not take long to back the winning horse in the race.

Local Rivalries and False Intelligence One common pattern in small wars that you should remain careful of, is the tendency of locals to attempt to use counterinsurgent forces to settle rivalries, disputes, inter-tribal or inter-ethnic differences. This generally happens more frequently when the occupying force has just arrived and knows relatively little about the nature of local environment. For example, you may visit a local leader and that leader may claim to have critical information about the insurgency. The leader might finger specific individuals and tell you where they live. He may accuse these individuals of planning or taking part in recent attacks. This information might be true, but it also might not be true. The leader might be claiming that a rival leader is an insurgent so he can eliminate his own enemy with your help. The rival leader might not be part of the insurgency at all. Locals might try the same trick to get revenge on a hated neighbor or someone who disrespected their family etc. Members of one religion or tribe may label all members of a rival religion or tribe as insurgents or terrorists. It is important to remember that the area in which you are operating may not be united as a single community and may not have a single leader. It is likely you will find many examples of schisms, rivalries and conflicts within the community. You must keep this in mind and not jump to conclusions when talking with locals.

Traffic Control Point (TCP) Operations Another way to secure the population is to make it more difficult for insurgents to move from one area to another. If insurgents remain stationary, they are easier to identify and target. Thus, insurgents often try to stay on the move, evading your patrols and searches. The nature of insurgent operations also frequently requires them to move. For example, they might need to smuggle explosives in from another region, build a bomb in one location, stage it in another location and then deploy it at another location. All of this requires movement. By making it more difficult for insurgents to move about, you increase the level of security in the area. One effective way to restrict or control insurgent movement is to set up traffic control points or TCPs. There is no fixed number or configuration for setting up TCPs. Depending on the terrain in your area of responsibility and the nature of the threat, your employment of TCPs will vary. Use your judgement, come up with a plan and then monitor your progress so you can improve the plan over time. It is also important to remember that if your

TCPs make life very inconvenient for the locals, they may end up being counterproductive. Consider all of the potential effects a TCP might have before emplacing it. There are several different types of Traffic Control Points (TCPs) you can set up in a variety of different situations. The first example, a “deliberate TCP on a low traffic road” is designed to provide the most detailed search possible in an area where few vehicles travel. This type of TCP is best when you plan on searching every vehicle that passes through. You can also establish a deliberate TCP in a high traffic area where you only search selected vehicles at random. You can use hasty TCPs in situations where you have minimal time to plan and prepare. Regardless of what type of TCP you use, they all share the same basic characteristics. The general tactical principles remain constant though the type and purpose of the TCP may change. In addition, in all situations, you must take time to choose the ideal location for your TCP.

Choosing the Best Location for a TCP The first thing you must do is select the best location for your TCP. The best location for the TCP will depend on the task and purpose behind setting it up. If the TCP is intended to provide security and will be remaining in a fixed location for a longer period of time, you will want to emplace it in a location where you can see far down the road in either direction. It will be more difficult for enemies to surprise you or attack you, if they have to travel a long distance towards you in plain view. Setting up the TCP with long lines of sight also assists in escalation of force procedures. If the first time you see a speeding vehicle is when it pulls around a corner 50 meters from your TCP, you will have very little time to execute a proper escalation of force. You will have to engage almost immediately. Also, if the first time local nationals see your “stop or you will be shot” signs, is after they have sped around a corner 50 meters away from your TCP, they will have very little time to react and stop. Therefore, once again, if the purpose of the TCP is to provide security, place it in a location that offers long lines of sight in both directions down the road. If you are setting up a temporary TCP with the task of confiscating illicit materials from local national vehicles, you may want to take the opposite approach. If your TCP has long lines of sight in either direction that also means that enemy vehicles will be able to see your TCP from a

long way off. This will give them plenty of time to stop, turn around or avoid passing through. Therefore, if the task and purpose of your TCP is to confiscate illicit materials, it could be best to set it up in a position where it will surprise drivers, appearing unexpectedly as they drive down the road. An example of this would be emplacing a TCP around a blind bend in the road. Placing a TCP on a bend in the road (in an urban or wooded area) can offer many advantages as well, especially in a high threat environment. Placing the TCP on a bend in the road usually offers good observation and stand-off in both directions. Also, if for any reason the enemy attacks your TCP with overwhelming force, you can have pre-established secondary defensive positions around the bend in both directions. Therefore, as the enemy attacks, you can fall back around the bend in the road for concealment and protection. When the enemy follows you around the corner, they will find themselves caught in a prepared near ambush. Finally, for all TCPs, it is vital to choose a spot that creates a channeling effect that will canalize the enemy. If there are many ways to drive around your TCP or avoid your TCP, the TCP does not serve much purpose. Therefore, the terrain or road configuration must force vehicles through your TCP.

Establishing a Deliberate TCP on a Low-Traffic Road You use this type of TCP when you intend to carefully search every vehicle that passes along a certain road. The complexity of the setup and search procedure might make this type of TCP impractical in hightraffic areas. However, the general tactical principles remain the same for all types of TCPs. To set up the TCP, follow these steps… 1. Emplace obstacles in the road that will be able to stop a fastmoving vehicle. If the only obstacle blocking your TCP is a strand of barbed wire, that may be insufficient for many situations. Instead, use concrete barriers or parked vehicles to create a solid physical barrier. 2. Emplace your “stop” signs well out in front (100m-200m) of your physical barrier. Make sure these signs are clearly visible. Make sure to emplace additional signs at closer distances just in case the driver misses the first sign. The signs should include instructions for local nationals to “exit your vehicle open all doors and move forward.”

3. Emplace a machine gun or sniper team that can observe vehicles at the stopping location from the flank. Essentially, as a vehicle stops at the stop signs, this team should be looking directly at the stopped vehicle from the side. Make sure this team is well concealed and has good optics for both day and night and effective primary and alternate communications. Also ensure you have good direct fire control measures so your hidden position can engage vehicles if necessary. 4. Establish a designated personnel search area and a designated vehicle search area off the side of the road in front of your physical barriers. Both areas should be shielded so that no one can observe you as you search vehicles or personnel. Also, ensure that even the passengers of a vehicle do not see you search their vehicle. Ideally, no one should see you search vehicles. The reason for this is that the enemy might send recon elements through a TCP to observe what we search and what we don’t search. Once they determine a pattern, they will know what areas they can use to smuggle materials. Therefore, never let anyone watch how you search a vehicle.

5. To improve force protection against a vehicle rigged with explosives, you can dig foxholes in various locations around your TCP. These are particularly useful in the vehicle search area. If your personnel identify that a vehicle is rigged with explosives, they can dive into the foxhole for protection. Even close to an exploding vehicle, a deep hole will provide good protection. You can cover the foxholes with blankets to prevent the enemy from identifying their purpose. You can even place old mattresses at the bottom of the hole to prevent personnel from injuring themselves when diving in.

Low-Traffic TCP Procedures 1- As a local national vehicle approaches your TCP, they will see the signs 100m-200m away and they will comply by stopping, exiting the vehicle and moving forward. a. If the vehicle does not stop, have a prearranged escalation of force plan that you will execute at specific marked distances along the route to your TCP. For example, when the vehicle passes the first sign you will

use a visible laser, when the vehicle passes the second sign you will engage the tires and engine block. If the vehicle reaches the third sign you will engage with any force necessary to stop the vehicle. b. Shooting a vehicle’s tires is a good way to stop a vehicle without risking accidental killing of an innocent person. In terms of escalation of force, you can justify shooting the tires on a vehicle if there is any doubt that the vehicle may present a threat. Shooting out tires should be your preferred technique because it allows you to take no chances with your own security, while risking very little in terms of civilian casualties. c. Your hidden MG/sniper position on the flank will be very effective in engaging vehicle tires. When engaging tires to stop a vehicle, try to shoot the tires off the vehicle. Do not just shoot once, continue to fire until you destroy the tire, bringing the vehicle to an immediate stop. 2- Most vehicles will stop at the signs as directed. Remain behind cover while the locals will exit the vehicle and open all their doors as instructed. You can use a loudspeaker team to make these instructions clear. With all the doors open, your concealed flank team will be able to use their optics to observe the interior of the vehicle. They will be able to see anyone hiding in the back seat. They will also be able to see if the vehicle is weighted unevenly in the front or back. 3- Once the passengers exit the vehicle, have them move forward to a personnel search location. Perform a hasty search of the passengers and talk to them to try to determine if anything seems suspicious before you go on to search the vehicle. If the passengers seem at all suspicious, do not approach the vehicle since it might be rigged with explosives. Use extreme caution. 4- Once you are finished with your hasty search and interview, let one passenger return to the vehicle and pull it forward into the search area. While he is doing this, you will continue to search the other passengers. Once the vehicle is in the vehicle search area, send the driver back to the personnel search area and search the vehicle carefully.

5- Once you have finished searching both the passengers and the vehicle, you may let the vehicle pass.

Establishing a Deliberate TCP on a High-Traffic Road On a high traffic road, you will not be able to search every vehicle that passes by. Instead, you will have to establish a lane, parallel to the main road, where you will divert certain vehicles to search. You can choose which vehicles to divert based on your current intel, “Be On the LookOut” (BOLO) lists or past enemy TTPs. Just be careful not to set a pattern in the types of vehicles you search. To set up the TCP, take the following steps… 1. A deliberate TCP in a high traffic area should be the same as a deliberate TCP in a low traffic area, except for the following changes… 2. Establish a line (preferably at least 100m long) parallel to the main road and block that lane off with cones and obstacles. Emplace a team forward of the search area in a protected position that can wave selected vehicles into the search lane. 3. If you have enough personnel, you may want to establish two or more sub-lanes within your search lane. This will allow you to divide vehicles into categories. For example, all trucks might go to the right lane and all cars to the left. Or you may have a deliberate search lane and a hasty search lane. Creating these sub-lanes will allow you to allocate your personnel and equipment most effectively. For example, if you reserve a lane for trucks, you can prepare that lane with the necessary personnel, training and equipment to search trucks. If you establish a deliberate search lane, you can man it with your most experienced searchers. 4. When setting up a search lane, you can establish the vehicle stopping location in an area that is already masked and concealed. This way, the place where the vehicle stops initially, becomes the vehicle search location. This way, after the passengers leave the vehicle, you no longer have to release one of the passengers to go back and drive the vehicle to the search area. The vehicle search team can move to search the vehicle as soon as they receive the go-ahead from the personnel search team, searching vehicles and personnel simultaneously.

5. It is still very important to ensure that the vehicle search location is well concealed is not visible to any local nationals.

HighTraffic TCP Procedures 1. Once your forward team selects a vehicle to search, they wave the vehicle into the search lane. If you have multiple search lanes, the forward personnel will direct the vehicle into the appropriate lane (truck/sedan, hasty/deliberate etc.) 2. Direct the vehicle to stop in the concealed search location. Direct the passengers to exit the vehicle and move to the personnel search area. 3. Do not deploy the vehicle search until the personnel search team gives the go-ahead. If the personnel search team detects something very suspicious about the passengers, you may want to hold off searching the vehicle all together and call for EOD in case the vehicle is rigged with explosives. 4. Once the personnel search team gives the go-ahead, send the vehicle search team to search the vehicle. When you have

finished searching both personnel and vehicles, let the passengers return to their vehicle and move on.

Snap TCPs While deliberate TCPs are generally more effective and safer to operate, they also take time to set up. This means that the enemy will have plenty of warning before the TCP is operational and will be able to avoid it. For this reason, it can also be useful to employ “snap TCPs” or hasty TCPs. There is no fixed formula for setting up and conducting a snap TCP and you can draw on many of the same principles and techniques you used in the deliberate TCP. However, the key point is that you should be able to set up the TCP in no more than a few minutes. This gives the enemy minimal time to react and avoid the TCP. You can also combine deliberate TCPs and snap TCPs. Because the enemy knows they are there, deliberate TCPs often are more effective for diverting enemy vehicles. The enemy will avoid routes with known TCPs so you can use this knowledge to force the enemy to use alternate routes, limiting the number of options the enemy has to travel and transport weapons/equipment etc. You can then target these alternate routes with snap TCPs and you will be more likely to intercept enemy vehicles or capture weapons.

IED and Sniper Investigations In the counterinsurgency environment a unit is bound to encounter a recurring IED or sniper problem. This means that there is one individual or insurgent cell that is operating in a specific area. For example, a unit may begin to strike or find a higher number of IEDs in the vicinity of a certain road intersection or near a particular village. If there might be an enemy IED or sniper cell operating in your AO, you must immediately get into the mindset that you are going to target and eliminate the cell. A cell cannot operate without leaving behind traces or clues you can use to track it. Every time the cell executes an attack they give you more information to build your “investigation” and target the cell. The intention should be to destroy/capture the cell and target whatever network the cell belongs to. Who normally acts as the “investigators” in an infantry unit? In most cases, the investigators are analysts in the S2 shop or technical

specialists like EOD. However, this is not the best model for conducting investigations. The person running an investigation should be the company commander who owns the piece of land in question. The company commander acts as the police chief. The PLs act as the detectives. Finally, the correct role for personnel from S2 and EOD is a supporting role, much like CSI or forensics specialists. Battalion S2 and EOD can be compared to the “lab” where detectives send pieces of evidence. It is also a good idea for the “detectives” at the platoon level to participate in EOD searches whenever possible. Not only will this teach line units about EOD capabilities and techniques, but it will also ensure that both elements share relevant information as much as possible. Your subordinates might have information that can help EOD in their search/investigation.

Investigation Process The first step to solving an IED or sniper problem is to make a big blowup map of the area in question. Then you need to gather all the historical data that you can about that area. You can use computer databases and software to help with this. Also, notes from the transfer of authority from the last unit might be very useful. The enemy has no need to transfer authority from one unit to another like we do. They live here and may have been using the same tricks for years. The last unit might well have experienced the exact same problem you are experiencing, but the only way to find out is to ask them about it. If you have to, contact a member of the previous unit by email. Also review the detainee history from your area of interest. See if you can look at the interrogation reports from any of the individuals detained in your area of interest. See if any of the detainees are still available for further questioning. Also, check the people currently living in your area of interest Once you have gathered all the possible data, you need to start by making several assumptions. Generally, enemies will not travel long distances to place an IED or conduct a sniper attack. If there is a town two kilometers from the emplacement site and another town ten kilometers from the emplacement site, the chances are the bomber came from the closer town. Of course, this is not always the case, but it is an acceptable starting point for the investigation.

Second, consider the following question. Do bank robbers rob the same bank every time? Of course not. But, if they did, there would be a reason for it. The same goes for snipers and IED emplacers. In the ideal world, they would not choose the same place for all of their attacks, but if they do, there is a reason. The reason most likely relates to the enemy’s effort to make execution quicker, easier and minimize the chance of failure. Once you have considered those factors, you hopefully have at least an estimate of where the enemy came from. The next question you have to ask yourself is “did he walk or did he drive.” There are many factors you can consider to try to answer this question including distance traveled and the estimated weight of the emplaced IED. Some types of ordnance can be carried, others must be transported by vehicle. You begin wargaming possible scenarios using your blowup map, but you then proceed to the actual site and recon possible mounted/dismounted avenues of approach. After you complete your recon, it is a good idea to go back to your historical data and see how well your estimates match up with the history of SIGACTs in your AO. You particularly want to focus on the string of recent attacks that led you to begin your investigation in the first place. As you search for patterns, there are certain things you should be on the lookout for. First, if the blast seats of a series of IED strikes are all on one side of a road, that probably means that the emplacer doesn’t want to cross the road. It naturally follows that you could estimate which side of the road the attacker is coming from.

The side of the road that the blast seat is on becomes even more important if the road has designated lanes with two way traffic. If you determine that the emplacer drove, you can assume a number of things about where the emplacer came from. Consider the following example…

The above picture shows a recent pattern of IED emplacement. The solid circles represent the blast seat of IEDs detonated in the past two months. If we determine the attacker drove, we can assume that he drove from the North (along the path of the thick arrow) because that route would place his vehicle in the correct lane for placing IEDs in the historical spots. However, one might ask, “how do we know he’s not coming from the East? Coming from the East would also place the driver in the correct lane for placing IEDs in the historical spots?” The answer is, if the driver came from the east, there is no reason he would place all the IEDs on the western side of the intersection. If the driver came from the east, we would probably also see historical blast seats in the locations depicted by the hollow, dotted circles. In addition, if the driver came from the West, we would probably see blast seats on the southern side of the road, east of the intersection. If we take the same scenario above but assume that the emplacer walked, we can assume he walked from somewhere northwest of the intersection. Of course none of this reasoning is foolproof. However, when combined with other pieces of information, it can lead us to the solution we’re looking for. The important thing to realize is that the BN S2 will not do any of this and neither will EOD. It is up to the land owning platoon to do the detective work and it is up to the company commander to oversee it. S2 and EOD can provide the platoon level “detectives” with additional information and resources to aid in the investigation. One particular category of information you should demand from EOD and S2 is all information regarding the equipment your enemy is using. EOD and S2 should also give you their analysis of the relevance of these equipment choices. There is a lot you can tell about an emplacer or cell based on the equipment they use. If you can trace the origin of the equipment you may be able to identify the cell as belonging to a particular religious or cultural group. Also, if a cell always uses the same type of equipment, you can assume the cell is part of a larger network that incorporates producers and suppliers. This information can be an important piece of the overall puzzle. It may also help to consider what equipment options the enemy has. For example, if the enemy’s options are limited, the choice of a particular type of equipment or a particular supplier may not be very revealing. However, if an environment offers a number of different types of equipment/suppliers to choose from, we can learn more about a particular cell by analyzing why

they choose one type of equipment over another or one supplier over another. The answer could be geographical, cultural or financial etc. Finally, it is important to go back and forth between analysis and tasking. For example, take the information you already have, think it over very carefully and try to come up with some ideas. Then, task your ISR and “investigative” units to go out and gather more information based on what you’ve already figured out. This second round of gathering will produce yet more information that you can analyze and use to drive further taskings. The analysis-tasking process is a never ending cycle that continually improves the quality of your situational picture.

Access/Exit Points and ISR Planning Once you have a general idea of the enemy route, you can start thinking about how they are accessing the target road. In general, enemies place IEDs on main roads. The reason for this is obvious. Main roads generally have a higher level of military traffic and offer more opportunities for a successful strike. So, insurgents will most likely select a highly trafficked road as their target. However, insurgents don’t like to spend very much time on the main roads. The reason for this is obvious as well. If enemies travel on main roads they run a higher risk of running into military forces or traffic control points. So, insurgents will generally travel on small back roads that are more difficult for military forces to access. This all means that insurgents must find an access point that will take them from the back roads to the main road. As a rule, insurgents will spend as little time on a main road as possible. Therefore, they will choose the closest access point to their target and choose the closest path off of the main road once they have emplaced their IED. There is no reason for them to pick an access point that is father away and spend more time exposed on the main road. Returning to our previous example, given the enemy’s route, we can anticipate his access and exit points for the main target road. Once again, the enemy will almost always select the nearest access and exit points to the actual target location. Understanding this can be very useful when planning your ISR coverage. When faced with a recurring IED problem in a specific area, most units will focus their ISR (cameras, observation posts, UAVs) on the actual IED emplacement location. However, it is more effective to focus ISR on the

access and exit points to the target area. This is true for several reasons. The enemy is going to be extra careful at the actual emplacement site. He is going to be expecting your surveillance at the emplacement site and he may have developed ways to get around it. Also, he will probably conduct a covert recon of the emplacement site prior to his mission. If he sees anything suspicious or out of the ordinary, he may call off the attack. Finally, he may have instructed local collaborators or covert agents to observe the most likely areas of coalition OPs overwatching the emplacement site. Essentially, as you are setting in your OP with good view of the emplacement site, the enemy may have already installed an OP to watch out for your OP. The easiest way to get around all of this is to focus your surveillance on the access and exit points instead of on the emplacement site itself. The enemy will usually not be expecting you at the access and exit points to the main road. Rather, he usually considers this point his “last covered and concealed position” prior to the objective. This is the place where he will conduct all of his preparations. He may conduct all of these preparations quite openly. After passing the exit point off the main road, the enemy may let his guard down as well, thinking he has succeeded without detection. Essentially, while the enemy will surely be very careful and sneaky at the objective site, he will usually be complacent at the access and exit points to the main road. Monitoring access points can also be useful because it gives you a much smaller pool of vehicles/individuals to observe. Many vehicles travel on main roads and you have no way of knowing where they came from. But not as many vehicles travel on the smaller access roads that lead to the

main road. Since we have determined that most of the time emplacers will travel along these routes (particularly the closest one to the objective) we are able to dramatically reduce the number of vehicles we are monitoring. It can also be useful to emplace aerial ISR at the access points and ambush teams at the exit points. This way the aerial ISR can identify the target at the access point, track the target through the objective, and then alert the ambush team as the target approaches the exit point. As with all ambush operations, it is usually best to have the ambush team completely concealed. This means the ambush team will not be able to have any observation of its surroundings. Because the modern enemy is so good at countersurveillance, it is very difficult for a hidden team to have any observation capability. If the team is exposed enough to see out into the world, it is probably exposed enough to be seen by the enemy. Therefore, it is best to hide the team completely (in a basement etc.) with no observation of the outside world. Then, when the aerial ISR observes the enemy passing the pre-determined trigger line, the ambush team can emerge and capture the target. Just ensure that you think through the problem carefully before committing ISR or ambush units. You will not want to waste or burn your resources if you are wrong about the enemy’s route or methods.

Enemy Technique of Emplacing IEDs in Stages Insurgents frequently use a technique of emplacing an IED in stages. This allows emplacers to spend minimal time at the actual emplacement site. For example, the first emplacer will drive by and simply place all the materials in a concealed position by the side of the road. The next emplacer will assemble the device. The last emplacer will move the device to its final location and aim it to strike passing vehicles. This staged emplacement technique might also help insurgents with issues involved with heavy devices. For example, an IED might weigh too much to carry to the emplacement site. But at the same time, parking a car by the side of the road while setting up an IED attracts attention. Therefore, one insurgent can transport the heavy IED to the site using a car. Then another insurgent can approach on foot to prep and emplace the IED.

Questioning Locals on Site It is not effective to approach a group of people and ask them a question like, “did anyone see someone emplace an IED around here?” The

reasons why this approach is ineffective should be fairly obvious. The better method is to approach people individually so they do not feel pressured or nervous to respond. Also, ask specific questions. For example, instead of asking someone if they saw an insurgent placing an IED, ask them, “did you see any vehicles parked along this road earlier today?” People may not have seen the actual act take place, but they may remember seeing a vehicle parked by the side of the road. Essentially, the people you are questioning may not know how to put two and two together to figure out what is relevant. You must do that thinking for them. There may also be some situations when you are questioning local security forces about an incident. Avoid asking a local leader if his men have seen anything. He might not know the answer to that question. Also, if you ask the leader this question in front of his men and the leader says they didn’t see anything, then the men may not answer your following questions truthfully because they don’t want to contradict their leader. Still, it is obviously not respectful to begin questioning a leader’s men without his permission. So instead of asking “did your men see anything?” instead ask, “could I please talk to some of your soldiers about the events that occurred?”

The Importance of Ground Recon As a final note, do not rely entirely on UAVs. Always conduct a ground recon to confirm what you are looking at from the air. For example, in one case an insurgent repeatedly emplaced IEDs along a major road. The road was lined on each side by a barbed wire fence. So, the emplacer would have to drive to emplace the IED. However, UAVs never saw any suspicious vehicles stopping by the side of the road. The IEDs always appeared in the same place even though coalition forces tracked all vehicles approaching the emplacement site. It was not until someone decided to send a unit to conduct ground recon that they found a hole in the barbed wire fence. The hole was not visible using the UAV.

Operations and Intelligence Lines of Operations (Lines of Effort) Lines of operations are ways of achieving the military endstates that are subsets of greater political endstates. For example, if the political endstate is to overthrow an oppressive dictator and install a democratic pro-US government, the military endstates might include defeating the dictator’s army, securing the local population after military victory, and presenting a deterrent to neighboring countries from interfering in the rebuilding process. To achieve each one of these endstates, a general will develop one or more lines of operations. For example, lines of operations to achieve the endstate of “defeating the enemy army” may include… Destroying the enemy’s military infrastructure with precision air strikes Destroying enemy ground forces with decisive operational maneuver Disrupting enemy C2 with electronic warfare and special operations Once a leader has established these lines of operations, he must understand how these different lines of operation interact with each other in the greater effort to achieve the overall endstate. One line of operation might be decisive in that it accomplishes the mission or achieves the endstate. Other operations may be shaping operations that set the conditions for the decisive operation. A leader might also have to execute operations in a certain order. A leader might not be able to achieve decisive results from certain lines of operation before he meets other preliminary objectives. Taking all of these factors into account, a leader must prioritize lines of operations. The leader uses this prioritization to help decide where to focus combat power and where to allocate resources. It is rarely effective to spread effort evenly across all lines of operations. Throughout history, leaders have achieved decisive victory by massing their combat power and resources at the decisive place and time. Therefore, a leader must prioritize lines of operation and adjust those priorities accordingly as the situation changes or develops.

For example, the decisive line of operation may be to use operational maneuver to destroy the enemy’s army. However, maybe that cannot happen before achieving air superiority. So, at the beginning of the conflict, the first priority will be to destroy the enemy air force in order to set the conditions for decisive victory in the future.

Embedding the Lines of Operations in Tactical Missions It is vital for leaders and subordinates at all levels to clearly understand the political origins of war and the resulting lines of operations that drive military action. The reason for this is that in order for an army to be truly effective, one must be able to identify a direct causal chain between the lowest tactical action and the highest political endstate. In order to truly understand his mission, every individual must be able to visualize how his actions are helping to accomplish the overall political endstate. If the political endstate is to install a democratic government in a foreign country, a squad may serve that endstate by capturing a key insurgent leader. However, the causal chain between the political endstate and a tactical action is not always as simple as it seems. It might appear on the surface that capturing a key insurgent leader directly serves the political endstate of installing a democratic government because the insurgent leader is an enemy of the democratic government. However, after further analysis, we might realize that it would be impossible to defeat the opposition to democratic government by capturing all of its opponents. Since we can never hope to capture or kill all of the insurgents out there, what are we trying to accomplish by capturing insurgents? Some possible answers to that question might be the following… By capturing an insurgent leader you are disrupting insurgent operations By disrupting insurgent operations you are making it more difficult for insurgents to mount attacks on the local security forces By reducing attacks on the local security forces you are creating a more stable, less threatening environment where you will be able to train local security forces more effectively By training local security forces more effectively, you are improving their ability to protect the local people and impose

order By protecting the local people you are increasing the capacity for economic growth By increasing economic growth you are opening the door for NGOs, western companies and investors to establish themselves in the target country By establishing Western companies in the target country you are exposing the local culture to Western influence and lifestyle By exposing the local culture to Western influence and lifestyle you are setting the conditions for the final political endstate of installing a democratic government This is of course a drawn out, hypothetical example, but it is meant to illustrate that the causal chain leading from a tactical action to a political endstate can often be long and complex. That is the value of lines of operations. Lines of operations establish a way of focusing efforts in a specific direction in order to ensure that every tactical action, no matter how small, in some way serves the ultimate political endstate.

Developing and Prioritizing Lines of Operations Lines of operations are developed at a very high level. The precise origins of the lines of operations will vary depending on the situation and the size of the operation. Unlike individual tasks and missions, that change as you move down the line from the general to the sergeant, the lines of operation remain the same. That is their value. For example, the commander of all ground forces may establish the lines of operation for a particular campaign. Then as missions are passed from the highest commander down to the individual squad, they will remain within the confines of one of the pre-determined lines of operation. Doing this keeps everyone on the same page and allows all levels of command to pull in the same direction. At around the battalion level and below, the lines of operations become subdivided into several specified efforts. This helps further focus the actions of smaller units. For example, if one of the lines of operations is to establish a functional civil government, there may be many different efforts associated with that goal. These efforts may include facilitating democratic elections, improving the government’s information operations capability, establishing an effective meeting schedule and organizational

hierarchy. Each of these efforts is very different and subdividing lines of operations in this way helps battalion commanders focus the efforts of smaller units. Consider this example… 1. Establish security a. Reduce sectarian violence b. Confiscate weapons 2. Train local security forces a. Conduct classes and training events b. Improve equipment and technology c. Conduct joint missions/patrols d. Train trainers and develop schools 3. Target enemy insurgent groups a. Target insurgent leaders b. Seize insurgent weapons caches c. Disrupt the insurgent’s ability to move freely d. Interdict insurgent smuggling operations 4. Improve the local infrastructure and economy (decisive operation) a. Improve sewer and piping system b. Improve local electricity and power supply c. Encourage growth of small businesses d. Improve telephone network and local communication e. Develop public transportation system 5. Develop the civil government a. Establish fair local elections b. Reduce corruption within the government c. Develop an effective meeting schedule and organizational hierarchy d. Develop economic plan e. Develop civil service organizations 6. Protect coalition forces a. Constantly improve base defense b. Gather intelligence on latest enemy plans and techniques c. Clear routes of ambushes and explosive devices By developing a list similar to the one above, a battalion commander can give his company commanders a clearly defined way to ensure that all

operations directly serve the ultimate political objective. Having this framework also makes it easier for leaders at all levels to set and adjust priorities. For example, if the priority is improving the local infrastructure, but a rise in crime and violence is making that effort impossible, the commander may choose to shift the main focus to establishing security. He might decide to further specify that weapons confiscations are the most important priority for US forces. The second priority might become training the local security forces so that once security is established, local forces can take over allowing US forces to resume their original effort of improving the infrastructure and economy. The lines of operations provide a flexible, adaptable framework for all military decision-making, planning and intelligence collection. Lines of operations allow a military force to maintain a unity of effort towards the same political endstate while allowing for the decentralized execution of vastly different but inter-related actions across the full spectrum of operations.

Platoon Level Operations Now, we will move on to study the nature of platoon-level operations and from there, work our way up the chain of command to see how the command hierarchy moves along the lines of operations and ends at the political endstate. The following steps lay out the deliberate process of planning and executing platoon level operations.

1-Receive the Mission Brief from the Company Commander As a platoon leader, the company commander briefs you on the upcoming mission. At a minimum, the company commander will provide you with a task, purpose and endstate. After listening to the brief, you should provide feedback to the company commander. For example, if you don’t think your platoon can accomplish the mission without a certain resource/asset, you should tell the company commander right away so that he can begin coordinating for that resource. In addition, if there is any aspect of the mission that you do not understand, you should ask the company commander to clarify or elaborate immediately. If you think your platoon needs more time for preparation, or even if you think you cannot accomplish the mission at all, you must inform your company commander as soon as possible. This open two-way

communication is essential to the planning process. It helps leaders at all levels find the most feasible and efficient way to accomplish the mission

2-Receive Specific Information Requirements (SIR) from the Company Intel Cell After you receive the mission brief from the company commander, the company intel cell will provide you with Specific Information Requirements or SIR. SIRs are specific pieces of information you are looking for on your mission. SIR is different from PIR (Priority Intelligence Requirements) because SIRs tell you exactly what to look for. A PIR might be “any Aqaba Militia activity in AO BEAR.” In response to this PIR, a unit on the ground may ask… “Well… what does that look like?” It is unlikely that Aqaba Militia members will walk around wearing shirts that say, “Aqaba Militia.” So, it is better to give personnel on the ground SIRs that tell them exactly what to look for. For example, if intelligence confirms that Akaba Militia members often drive BMW vehicles and post black flags on their buildings, that gives us two pieces of information we can use to create SIRs for the personnel on the ground. For more information on developing SIRs, see the section on company level intelligence. It is important to understand that SIRs will not be the same for every mission. A good company intel cell will tailor SIRs to a specific mission. Therefore, the SIRs you receive should not be random or generic. The intel cell is giving you these SIRs because they believe, based on your mission plan, time and location, that you will be able to answer these questions. So, make an effort to gather the information and report it accurately.

3-Issue Warning Order Once you have received the mission brief and the SIRs for your mission, pass all the information you know on to one or more of your subordinate leaders. This allows your subordinates to begin “parallel planning” and pre-combat checks/rehearsals. You are not limited to issuing just one warning order. If after your first warning order, you discover more important information about the mission, you can issue another warning order to push that information down to your subordinate leaders. However, you don’t need to push down every bit of new information as you get it. If you did, you would have nothing left

to brief in the final order. So, just pass down the information that will support your subordinates’ parallel planning and preparation efforts.

4-Develop Plan When developing your plan, focus on the enemy and the environment you will be operating in. If you have questions, you can ask the company intel cell. Walk through the mission in your head, visualizing each phase and anticipating what the enemy will do. Make the plan as simple and flexible as possible. It is often more important to focus on contingencies or what may go wrong than it is to develop a detailed or complex plan. If you make your plan too detailed or too complex, it will probably not be very flexible and will probably collapse at the first sign of combat or friction. Instead, make a simple plan and then study it looking for flaws or errors. Think about what might go wrong with the plan, how the enemy may react to it and how you will respond in these situations. When developing your plan, be sure to review the current battlefield situation as carefully as possible. Make a note of recent reports and intelligence tips. Gather these together and factor them into your planning. Computer tools designed to help units share information can be very useful for this. When possible, use these computer tools to assist you in your planning. Also, when planning your mission, remember the SIRs you will be responsible for collecting during the mission. Without sacrificing the mission’s primary objective, try to plan the mission in a way that will increase your chances of collecting good answers to the SIRs. One planning technique that can be very effective, especially under time constraints, is to split up the planning responsibility between several individuals. For example, the senior drivers on the patrol might be the designated “route planners.” As soon as the planning process starts, the drivers immediately know they need to start planning primary and alternate routes. It’s often good to have planning teams of two or more individuals instead of relying on a single person to plan any part of the mission. Two heads are always better than one and two people are much less likely to make simple errors. Having this designated route planning team plan the route every time has many advantages. First, they can keep a record of the routes that they take each day and which routes they travel more frequently. They can use

this historical information to ensure friendly units don’t take the same route too often and create a pattern. This technique is even more effective if the drivers in the company maintain a consolidated “route book” or record of all of the different platoons’ routes. It would be difficult for the platoon leader to track and process all that information, but because the route planners have only that one responsibility, they can do a very detailed job of it. The route book can include a great deal of useful information compiled over time. The book can show which vehicles are able to travel on each route, based on the route’s width, surface type, bridge strength and the presence or absence of low-hanging wires. The book can show historical IED strike locations and historical ambush sites. As stated before, the route book will record which route a unit takes on each mission, each day. Using all this information, the route planners can plan a route that takes into account the type of vehicles to be used in the mission, possible danger areas and pattern avoidance. Also, because the route planners are the drivers, it is certain that the drivers will know the route well because they planned it in the first place. Also, drivers may have the best knowledge of the road networks in the AO, so they are the ideal people to plan the route. The platoon leader (PL) can of course give guidance to the route planners or make changes if necessary, but it is much easier for a PL to tailor or adjust an existing plan than it is for him to make the whole thing from scratch. Just as the drivers can create the route plan, the platoon sergeant (PSG) and medics can create the casualty evacuation (CASEVAC) plan. These small planning teams can also communicate between each other as the plan develops. For instance, in order to know where to designate HLZs (Helicopter Landing Zones) for casualty evac on the mission, the CASEVAC planners will need to know the route. Instead of bothering the PL, the CASEVAC planners can go directly to the route planners, get the route, and use it for their planning. The CASEVAC planners might even ask the route planners to adjust their route because another route might offer better options for HLZs enroute to the objective. Spontaneous and proactive lateral communication between planning elements is essential for this sort of decentralized planning. A platoon leader can designate as many special planning teams as he wants. He may task the RTO with developing the commo plan and

conducting the pre-mission commo rehearsals. He may ask squad leaders to develop their own plans for their own individual roles in the mission. While this decentralized planning method can be very fast and effective, it can also cause problems for a less-experienced unit. The PL must decide on the level of decentralization he is willing to accept based on his own knowledge of his platoon’s capabilities.

5-Issue the Patrol Brief or Operations Order Issue the completed order to your platoon. Use some kind of visual aid like a map, satellite imagery, and concept sketch or terrain model. However, it is essential that all members of your unit be able to see the visual aid. It is far too common for platoon leaders to issue orders when many of their subordinates cannot even see the map during the brief. Keep the brief simple and try not to include details that subordinates don’t need to know or will never remember. Focus on the key points and repeat them more than once if necessary. Make sure subordinates write down key pieces of information and conduct back briefs after the order to ensure that everyone understands the mission. Also, be sure to brief your people on the SIRs for the mission. Make sure each subordinate writes the SIRs down and knows at what times or locations they might expect to find answers to the SIRs. If you opted to use decentralized planning teams to plan the mission, it follows that each of these planning teams should brief their part of the order. This means that the PSG and medic brief the CASEVAC plan, the drivers brief the route, the RTO briefs the commo plan and each squad leader briefs his own role in the mission. Using this decentralized briefing technique can increase the platoon’s overall involvement in the brief and understanding of the mission.

6-Conduct Rehearsals It is not enough to conduct a slow, boring, walkthrough. If at all possible, you must conduct full speed rehearsals under the most realistic conditions. Also, as long as it does not tire out the platoon, you should conduct several reversals. Rehearsals are usually much more productive than the order brief itself so devote the majority of your time to rehearsals. Rehearse actions on the objective, reactions to the enemy’s most likely course of action, and battle drills/common tasks you might have to execute on the mission.

7-Execute Mission While executing the mission, you should conduct communications checks with your Tactical Operations Center (TOC) every 30 minutes. Beyond this, only contact your TOC if you need guidance or support from higher, or if you gather information that you know your commander will want to hear right away. Essentially, if an event takes place and you think to yourself, “Something might come of this in the future. This may affect future operations,” report it to the TOC.

8-Conduct Initial Debrief The purpose of the initial debrief is for you to gather all the necessary information for your full debrief with the commander. You may not know everything that happened on the patrol. Some of your subordinates might have answers to the SIRs that you do not. Focus on collecting all these answers and writing them down carefully. Make sure to also record who gives you what information. If the commander or company intel cell wants more details, you need to know which person to send for. Once you have gathered the information you need for your debrief, leave your subordinate leaders to conduct post-mission checks and maintenance while you go talk to the CO. Depending on your preference you may want to skip this step and bring all personnel from the patrol to the full debrief with the company commander and company intel cell. The advantage of bringing everyone to the full debrief is to ensure all relevant information from the mission makes its way to the company intel cell. The disadvantage of bringing everyone is that it takes time away from subordinates’ post-mission activities and checks.

9-Debrief with the Company Commander and Company Intel Cell At this point you are going to brief your commander, 1SG and company intel cell on the results of your mission. This is also when you will provide answers to the company intel cell about the SIRs they gave you. It is much more useful to conduct a face-to-face debrief than it is to simply send up a written report. The most important reason for this is the value of two-way communication. If your commander or intel cell doesn’t understand something you say, they can ask you to clarify. They can ask you further questions, ask for more details about a certain part of the

operation, or tell you to skip topics that are not important. This immediate feedback allows for a much better understanding of the battlefield. Once again, if necessary, you may have to send a runner to find one of your subordinates to answer questions in more detail. If the commander or company intel cell wants information on an event that you did not see clearly, you should send for the person who was right there and get his perspective on the event. If you opted to bring the entire patrol to the debrief, you may have saved time because the person will already be present. Take notes during the debrief. While talking with the commander and the company intel cell, you may decide to add or remove information from your debrief. The commander and intel cell might also be able to give you clarification on some of the events that took place or the possible reason for these events.

10-Complete Post Mission Report After the debrief with the commander and company intel cell, you should have a clear picture of what happened on the mission. At this point, take the time to create a detailed post mission report, preferably using a computer tool that allows the information to be shared across other units in the theater of operations. Take your time and do a good job on the report. You don’t need to include every mundane detail in the report but be sure to include all the information that might be a help to others using searching the shared computer databases in the future. Think of the key information that people will need to know and put that information up front in your report.

11-Conduct Final Platoon Internal After Action Review (AAR) and Review Lessons Learned The purpose of this AAR (as opposed to the debrief) is for the benefit of the platoon. At this point you have had plenty of time to review the mission and should have a good picture of the events that took place. You subordinates have conducted their post-mission checks and maintenance and may have learned more relevant information for the debrief. With your platoon, conduct a detailed AAR and discuss the areas you should improve in the future. Write down these AAR comments and keep them. Review them frequently and use them to drive your training and rehearsal priorities. Share them with your peers.

At this point, your personnel should have also conducted Preventative Maintenance Checks and Services (PMCS) on their equipment and vehicles. It is good to do PMCS immediately after a mission because that is the most likely time things will come up broken. If you wait to conduct PMCS until just before the next mission, you will not have time to react when you discover broken equipment. By conducting PMCS right after a mission, you are giving yourself maximum time to deal with maintenance issues. Your units should provide you with maintenance reports (DA Form 2404 ) after the AAR and you can then pass these on to the company XO immediately. The diagram on the following page visually depicts the entire process just described. The diagram also includes information about BN level operations that may not be clear until later sections. You can download or print this diagram from our website https://specialtactics.me under the Small War Tactics section.

Company Intelligence Cell Operations

The primary mission of the company intel cell (CIC) is to support the company commander’s planning efforts by providing him with an accurate “picture” of the battlefield. As a member of the company intel cell, you must constantly strive to improve your picture of the battlefield by collecting and analyzing information from all sources. In addition to collecting information to support the commander and the platoon leaders, you may receive additional intelligence requirements from battalion S2.

Who to Assign to the Company Intel Cell Commanders frequently make poor choices when selecting personnel for the company intel cell. The most common mistakes are selecting individuals who are either too busy or underqualified. In the first case, a commander might select an experienced subordinate like the company XO, platoon sergeant or squad leader to lead the company intel cell. These would seem to be good choices because of their experience and qualifications. However, they also have other jobs that dominate most of their attention. The company XO may be very busy with all the company maintenance, logistics and property issues. He may also have to lead company level operations. He is too busy to devote the kind of time required to run an effective company intel cell. On the opposite side of the spectrum, commanders may choose people for the company intel cell who are not at all busy or not even competent in other positions. A commander, not wanting to rob subordinate units of valuable men, may choose the least capable personnel, the people who nobody else wants, for the company intel cell. This is also a mistake because if the least qualified individuals in the unit are running the intel cell, intelligence efforts will obviously not run smoothly. Making the right choice requires some sacrifices. The commander may need to pull a junior NCO from a leadership position to put him in charge of the intel cell. Another good choice is to pull college-educated lower enlisted men. For the leader of the intel cell, it often makes sense to use the Company Fire Support Officer (FSO) since he is generally the least busy officer in counterinsurgency warfare. The personnel who work under the FSO like the forward observers also frequently make good intel cell members.

Intelligence Requirements HYPERLI NK TO

REQUE ST

REQUE ST

REQUEST ED BY

REQUEST ED FROM

COMMENTS/STAT US

DATE MODIFI

REQUES T B13DEC08.d oc 1B13DEC08.d oc 1B13DEC08.d oc 1B13DEC08.d oc B14DEC08.d oc BNS25DEC08.d oc BNS25DEC08.d oc BNS26DEC08.d oc

TITLE

DATE

ED

IED Builder

3-Dec08

B/1-505 CIC

1-505 S2

S2: Answers provided

5-Dec08

Hamid Wasim

3-Dec08

1/B/1-505

B/1-505 CIC

CIC: Answers pending

6-Dec08

Hamid Wasim

4-Dec08

B/1-505 CIC

1-505 S2

S2: No info at this time

4-Dec08

Hamid Wasim

4-Dec08

B/1-505 CIC

HUMINT Team 1

THT: Answers pending

4-Dec08

Kidnappi ng

4-Dec08

B/1-505 CIC

2/B/1-505

2/B: Will check today

4-Dec08

Terrorist Meeting

5-Dec08

1-505 S2

B/1-505 CIC

CIC: Some answers

5-Dec08

Terrorist Meeting

5-Dec08

B/1-505 CIC

3/B/1-505

3/B: Answers pending

6-Dec08

Canalize in 454

6-Dec08

1-505 S2

ALL UNITS

B,HHC: Answers Pend

6-Dec08

An intelligence requirement is a piece of information that a leader needs to make a decision. We must never gather information for information’s sake. If a leader can’t tell you what decision a piece of information will help him make, there is most likely no reason to waste valuable time gathering that information. Intelligence requirements can come from your company commander, from platoon leadership, from battalion or from within your own CIC. The CIC should be proactive in anticipating what questions leaders might ask and what information might become important in the future. Therefore, the CIC can develop their own intelligence requirements based on what they think is important. The flow of intelligence between units can become very overwhelming because there can be a lot of information passing between many different people. Therefore, it is important to create a system to track all intel requirements. Above is an example of a tracking system for intelligence requirements. This example is also available for download and printing on

our website at http://specialtactics.me under the Small War Tactics section. Looking at the tracking matrix, on the first line, the CIC is asking BN S2 a question and S2 has answered. On the second line, 1st Platoon has asked the CIC a question, but as you can see on the third and fourth lines, the CIC has forwarded this request to both BN S2 and a HUMINT Team. On the fifth line the CIC is sending a question down to 2nd Platoon. On the sixth line, BN S2 is sending a question down to the CIC and as you can see on the seventh line, the CIC passed the same question down to 3rd Platoon. The final line is a request from BN S2 from all units. This is one example of a tracking system created using Microsoft Excel. You can select your entire table and convert it into a “list” so that you can sort and filter the data by each column. This makes it very easy to single out the specific requests that are relevant to you. There are some dedicated computer software programs that can provide this functionality but if they are cumbersome or have compatibility issues, it might be best just to use generic software like Microsoft Excel. In order for everyone to be able to edit the table and the documents, you will need to upload them to a shared drive that all units have access to. If you include all of the actual request documents in the shared folder, you can create hyperlinks to the documents (as shown above) in the intel requirements table. Below is an example of an intelligence requirement. It is the document you would see if you clicked on the hyperlink on the last line of the table on the previous page. In this case, the Battalion S2 is forwarding a question to all units within the battalion. As you can see in the example intelligence requirement, you should always include the “why” or the reason for collecting information. Explaining the purpose behind a given intelligence requirement will allow collectors to act on their own initiative and collect the most relevant information to serve the commander’s intent.

PIR, Indicators and SIR

A PIR relates directly to operations and is worded in a way that makes it clear why the information is important. A PIR might be “any Akaba Militia activity in AO BEAR.” In response to this PIR, a unit on the ground may ask… “well… what does that look like?” It is doubtful that Akaba Militia members will walk around wearing shirts that say “Akaba Militia.” So, it is better to give personnel on the ground SIRs that tell them exactly what to look for. For example, if intelligence confirms that Akaba Militia members often drive BMW vehicles and post black flags on their buildings, that gives us two pieces of information we can use to create SIRs for the personnel on the ground. The process for developing SIRs from PIRs involves first determining indicators. An indicator is something you observe to confirm or deny a PIR. In the example above, BMW vehicles or black flags on buildings are both indicators of Akaba Militia activity. To create an SIR, you take one or more indicators and turn them into a task that specifies what exact information to collect . If an indicator of Akaba Militia activity is black flags on roofs, an SIR might be “confirm or deny black flags on the roof of building X” or it might be “count the total number of black flags on rooftops between street Y and street Z.” Those are two examples of SIRs. The advantage of an SIR is that it gives clear, quantifiable guidance to personnel on the ground. If you pass subordinate units a raw PIR, they may not know what they are looking for, or they may come back with vague or unclear information.

Incoming Intelligence Requirements As stated before, intelligence requirements can come from anywhere. They can come up from platoons or down from the battalion S2. They might come from the company commander or as the company intel cell, you might develop new requirements yourself. Regardless of where they come from, as the company intel cell, you are responsible for finding answers to those questions. When you receive an intelligence requirement, you should respond immediately with a quick acknowledgement of receipt, so the sender knows that you are aware of the requirement. If you do not send this immediate acknowledgement, the requester might think he is not hearing back from you because you are looking for answers, when in reality, you never got the question in the first place. By the time the requester calls to ask for an update, you have already wasted valuable time. For that reason, send a quick acknowledgement the moment you receive a requirement.

After you send the acknowledgement, as long as other requirements don’t take precedence, try to get an initial response back to the requester as soon as possible. The initial response should contain two pieces of information… 1. What you know already 2. What you are doing to learn what you don’t know and how long you expect that to take Sending this initial response to a requester gives them some information to process while you compile the full story. In that way this initial response is very similar to a warning order. By telling the requester what you are doing to find the complete answer and how long that will take, you may greatly assist in their planning. Now they will know when they can expect the information and they will plan accordingly. They may also give you feedback, offer you additional assets, or ask for a faster turn-around time while explaining the importance of their request. In this case you may need to re-prioritize your efforts to get them an answer more quickly.

Outgoing Intelligence Requirements In some cases, you may be able to answer an intelligence requirement on your own without any outside help. However, in almost all cases you will want to forward an intelligence requirement to other units and assets to gather more information. Battalion may ask a question that you will forward to one of the platoons. One of the platoons may ask a question that you will then forward to battalion. The company commander may ask a question that you will forward both to the platoons and to battalion. When sending a requirement down to a platoon, you should always include indicators and SIRs as discussed earlier. The reason for this is because platoons do not have the same intelligence capability or knowledge as the CIC. As the CIC, you can determine exactly what the lower units should be looking for that will confirm or deny your PIR. When you pass requests up to battalion S2, the important thing to remember is that you should avoid being too specific about how you want them to gather the information. If you get stuck on requesting a certain asset, battalion simply may not be able to give you that asset. However, little do you know that battalion has another asset that could gather the same information, but that never happens because you requested a specific

asset instead of requesting information and letting battalion decide how to collect that information.

Developing a “Common Operating Picture” of the Battlefield As stated before, your job as the company intel cell is to develop an accurate common operating picture of the battlefield that your commander can use to make decisions and develop plans. Every intelligence requirement that comes in, helps you develop that picture by pointing out missing pieces of information and focusing your efforts on what is most important at current moment. It is battalion S2’s responsibility to help you develop your picture of the battlefield and to fill gaps in your information. You should send your picture and assessment up to battalion S2 along with intelligence requirements based on your analysis. Battalion S2 can then work on finding answers to the unanswered questions. To develop and visualize this constantly changing picture of the battlefield it can be helpful to create some sort of visual aid. The sort of visual aid you use depends on your individual needs and situation. You may choose to use a large map with pins and sticky notes marking relevant events and locations. You may choose to diagram an insurgent network by posting pictures on a whiteboard. Whatever method you use, ensure that it helps you save time, rather than creating more work for work’s sake.

Fusion Between Operations and Intelligence We have already explained how you assist the company commander’s decision-making and planning efforts by providing him with an accurate picture of the battlefield. However, it is important to understand that the company intel cell must remain fully integrated with operations at all times, from planning to execution to post-mission analysis. As the company intel cell, you must always be aware of what operations your company is conducting and what operations are planned for the future. Every time a platoon leaves the wire, you are responsible for providing them with SIRs. You should not provide the same, generic, SIRs to every patrol. Instead, you must take time to figure out which SIRs a platoon will be able to answer given their route, destination and SP time. You must also understand what the platoon’s primary mission is. If a platoon has a specific, difficult and high-priority objective, you may want to give only a few, simple SIRs to allow the platoon to focus on their main priority.

At times, intelligence requirements may even drive operations. If there are particularly important intelligence requirements that you need to answer, you may need to suggest to your commander that he plan a special recon mission to collect that information. You may need to request special assets from battalion (like HUMINT teams or dog teams) to support these missions. The company intel cell has an active role on the battlefield and must always remain involved in the operations process. One of the most important roles of the company intel cell is both anticipating and analyzing the second and third order effects of operations. The company intel cell must answer the question, “if we execute this operation, what effect will it have on the environment, the enemy, the local population etc.” Once you have executed the operation, you must go back and confirm or deny your original estimates. “We expected that this operation would cause the local population to become more supportive of their local government. Was this the case? How can we find that out?” Anticipating and understanding the second and third order effects of operations allows leaders and planners to stay on top of problems and neutralize them before they occur or at least before they spiral out of control. In addition, understanding second and third order effects provides valuable feedback to assist in future planning and anticipating future challenges and problems.

Company Level Planning and Operations The company commander uses the lines of operation as a framework to build his plans based on the Battalion commander’s guidance or intent. The planning process involves two-way communication between the battalion commander and the company commander. For example, consider the following dialogue or exchange… Battalion: “Shift your main priority to establishing security, particularly on conducting weapons confiscation operations. The reason for this is that a recent rise in violence is degrading our civil reconstruction efforts. According to BN S2, your area of operations has the highest concentration of weapons among the civilian population. Our assessment is that the availability of weapons is encouraging sectarian violence and crime. Therefore, conduct operations to confiscate weapons from local nationals in your area of operations.”

Company: Submits a plan that calls for combined door-to-door searches with local authorities, covering the entire AO in seven days. Battalion: “Plan is approved but you must finish in four days in order to help stabilize the AO prior to the big essential services meeting next week.” Company: “We can complete the search in four days if you give us two more platoons as attachments. Because of increased attacks (both direct fire and indirect fire) on our base we have had to commit one platoon to augment base defense and provide 24-hour overwatch on mortar POO (Point of Origin) sites. This leaves us with not enough combat power to complete the search in four days. With two more platoons we could do it.” Battalion: “Due to high op-tempo throughout the battalion, we can only spare one platoon. However, we can provide you with constant UAV support during peak mortar threat hours in order to overwatch the mortar POO sites. Tell us what hours you want the UAV coverage for.” Company: “That is not ideal because the UAV does not give us the capacity to engage the mortar team. If we could have attack helicopters that would be ideal, but if not, we can make do with the UAV. Here is our revised plan that will finish the search in four days.” In the above example, notice how important it is for the orders process to be a two-way dialogue. By maintaining open communication, both battalion and the company are able to find the best solution to the problem. However, this must not devolve into a situation where companies are being lazy and taking advantage of the battalion’s effort to empower junior leaders. In addition, while it is always the aim to delegate authority to the lowest levels, there are times when any commander must take a firmer hold on operations and impose more detailed control on planning and execution. The level of involvement battalion takes in an operation depends on the situation.

Uncertainty and Course of Action Development With your help and feedback, the battalion commander determines what your priorities are according to the lines of operation. That gives you a reference point for all of your efforts and actions. From there, in order to discover the best course of action, you must understand the interplay of many different factors on the battlefield.

The Army uses the acronym METT-TC (Mission, Enemy, Terrain, Troops, Time, Civilians) to help you categorize and understand many of the factors that will affect your decisions and actions. Once again, all of these factors interact with each other. For example, you plan a mission in accordance with your lines of operations but after conducting reconnaissance, you discover that the opposing enemy is too strong for the mission to be feasible. You determine that the best solution to the problem is to increase the number of troops available for the mission and you ask battalion for support. However, battalion determines that there is not enough time for reinforcements to arrive and you will have to make do with what you have. Luckily, you find a way to use the terrain to give you a decisive advantage against superior forces. At this point, consider what happens to your plan if any of the factors change. If the enemy force changes, can you still win by using the terrain, or might you need more time to collect more troops? But what if because you take more time to prepare, the weather changes and you can no longer use air support? Now, you might need to change your mission alltogether and attack a different, more vulnerable objective. As you can see, when any single factor changes, it has an effect on all of the other factors. This presents a true challenge to the commander. This challenge becomes even more overwhelming when we realize that even in the best cases, commanders have less than all the facts. Even if you had perfect situational awareness, it would still be hard to choose the best path through the constantly changing web of interrelated factors. In reality, a commander’s picture of the battlefield is foggy at best. The commander might not know when the location or composition of the enemy changes. He might not know exactly what the terrain is like on the objective. He might not know how much time he has to prepare for a mission. He might not know what kind of reinforcements or assets he will get for the mission. Nothing is certain and everything can change, and when one thing changes, everything else can change too. It is important to keep this in mind when developing a course of action.

Constantly Updating the Battlefield “Picture” Because the battlefield is uncertain and constantly changing, intelligence collection and analysis has to be a constant effort. It is not enough to conduct a single session of intelligence preparation of the

battlefield (IPB) to help plan the mission. From the time it takes you to issue the order and move to the objective, everything might have changed. The job of intelligence is not over once the mission is complete either. Whenever you execute an operation, your actions have second and thirdorder effects. The enemy is going to change what he is doing based on what you did in your operation. Civilian opinions or factional loyalties may change as well. It is vital to continue to gather intelligence after a mission is complete to immediately begin to track how the situation is developing as a result of your actions. If you get on top of this early, there will be fewer surprises when you sit down to plan for your next mission. Essentially, in order to make good decisions, the commander needs to constantly remain up to date on the METT-TC and the battlefield “picture” (or Common Operating Picture). The company intel cell is responsible for providing the commander with the most accurate picture possible. In addition, the commander and the CIC take a more proactive approach to intelligence collection by generating an ISR (Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance) plan.

Effective Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) Lines of operation drive mission planning. Mission planning requirements drive ISR planning. You request and allocate ISR to fill in the “holes” in your battlefield picture. In almost all cases, ISR assets are limited, so you will have to focus your ISR at the decisive time and place to get maximum use out of it. In order to make the best possible use of ISR, the first thing we must know is that ISR is a much broader concept than most people realize. It is common for people to use the term “ISR” to refer to airborne ISR assets or UAVs. In reality however, ISR comprises intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. So actually, intelligence is a subset of ISR and must be viewed as such. If you look at ISR simply as an aerial platform, you will most likely not use it to maximum effect. For example, many units use aerial ISR platforms to simply scan up and down routes looking for IEDs. If we look at the actual results we are getting from this kind of action, we will almost surely see that we are not gaining very much ground. How many IEDs do we find by scanning up and down routes with a UAV? Probably not many. However, here is an example of how a unit might use the full spectrum of ISR in a logical, integrated manner that achieves decisive results. First, we get a SIGINT intercept that suggests that insurgents are

smuggling rockets into our AO by transporting them in fishing boats along a river. Using this SIGINT hit as a starting point, we provide SIRs to HUMINT collectors and units on the ground. Soon, we get answers back, corroborating with the SIGINT intercept and further narrowing our NAI (Named Area of Interest) to a 1 km section of the river. We now have a reliable piece of intelligence. The S2 and company intel cells brief their respective commanders. After reviewing the overall situation and their lines of operation, both commanders agree that stopping this riverine IED smuggling is a high priority. So, the commanders talk with S2 and the CIC and begin planning to commit ISR assets to the effort. In a two-way discussion, the commanders, S2 and CIC develop the best possible ISR plan. The commanders provide their operation goals and guidelines, while the S2 and CIC provides feedback on what assets are available and what each asset is capable of. Both sides consider and weigh all the factors of METT-TC until they arrive at the best possible solution. In this case, here is the final plan you come up with. You will use a specialized reconnaissance aircraft to conduct surveillance on the 1 km NAI on the river that you built using intelligence. You choose this aircraft as your collection asset because it is particularly useful for tracking movement across flat areas like rivers and deserts. Using the aircraft over the course of a few days you are able to identify the most common landing points on the riverbank. From here, you take this new information back to the analysts who may send out additional SIRs to units on the ground. You may want to find out where legitimate local fisherman typically land their boats. Or you may want to send out patrols to conduct physical reconnaissance of the landing sites to determine which are suspect. You might also try to bounce the information you have off of existing intelligence reporting. Hopefully, your intelligence analysis of the results of the aircraft reconnaissance has allowed you to narrow down the possible IED smugglers landing sites to one or two locations. At this point, you might task a UAV to observe those locations at peak times of activity. However, because UAVs are not a persistent resource (they are only available for certain periods of time), you might be able to find a better ISR asset that can monitor those landing sites 24-hours a day. For this mission, a ground surveillance camera or stationary surveillance balloon would be the perfect asset. You send out a patrol to emplace the camera and that allows you to monitor the landing site

constantly. If you do not have a camera, you could use a small surveillance team to accomplish the same mission. At this point, the important thing to figure out is “what do we do if we see smugglers landing at the site?” It is very common that a unit will develop a detailed ISR plan but not have a plan of what to do when they actually find what they are looking for. For example, you might do all this work and successfully identify smugglers with your surveillance camera, but then be unable to take decisive action because you hadn’t pre-planned anything. You might send a unit to ambush or intercept the enemy, but they might arrive too late because nothing was planned. So, it is very important to include in your ISR plan, your planned actions in response to positive identification of what you are looking for. In this case, you may put a squad at a certain level of readiness to be able to intercept the smugglers inland. The state of readiness you keep the squad at is derived from detailed calculations of time and distance. You may calculate that from the moment your camera identifies the smugglers, you have 30 minutes to intercept before they pull off the single road leaving from the landing site. Therefore, if it takes you 15 minutes to drive from your base to the ambush site, the ambush element will have to be able to move out 10 minutes from notification. However, if the time/space calculations make it unfeasible to send a unit to conduct an ambush, you might be able to tie in another ISR asset to solve your problem. If your brigade has near constant UAV coverage, you could pre-arrange to pull the UAV whenever your surveillance camera identifies a smuggler’s landing. If it takes the UAV an average of ten minutes to get on station, that might provide a good solution. From there, the UAV can follow whatever vehicle the smugglers load the IEDs in. If you could positively identify the IEDs with the camera, you might be able to destroy the vehicles with attack helicopters. If you cannot positively identify the IEDs, you can track the vehicle to its destination using the UAV. Now you have another NAI to monitor. You may want to send a unit to conduct a cordon and search on the destination house immediately, or you may want to use another persistent ISR asset, like the surveillance blimp, to monitor that house. Then you can watch who goes into and out of that house over a period of time and figure out where those individuals live as well. In this example, we integrated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to gather specific information from specific places at specific times. Each platform set the conditions for the next, all the way up

to the point of tactical execution. We tied in our HUMINT and SIGINT collection with our aerial and persistent surveillance assets. We also made an effort to pick the right asset for the right mission. This is very different from just having a UAV fly over a road looking for an IED.

Developing an ISR Plan In order to develop an effective ISR plan, you need to take the concepts described in the last section and translate them into a concise, easily understandable product that you can push out to units, collectors and assets. A good ISR plan contains the following information… 1. What you are looking for and why (task and purpose) 2. What it will actually look like on the ground (observables) 3. Where you are looking for it (NAI) 4. When you are looking for it (time window) 5. What you are going to do when you find it (tactical plan of action) The best way to organize this information is on a slide. The slide contains a map of the AO, with NAIs marked clearly. Then on the left you have a list of all the intelligence requirements. Each requirement includes task (what you are looking for), purpose (why you are looking for it) and observables (what it actually will look like on the ground). The concept of observables is almost exactly the same as the concept of “indicators” or SIRs that we discussed earlier. The following example shows how the information should be organized on the ISR plan slide… TASK: Identify Akbar Militia movements between the Ali Mosque and Salem Bridge PURPOSE: Confirm or deny whether Akbar Militia is using the Mosque to store alleged weapons shipments from south of our AO OBSERVABLES: Black BMW vehicles (Akbar Militia known to use these vehicles) Vehicles that seek to avoid the local traffic control point (AB 1403 3378)

Vehicles coming from the bridge stopping at the Ali Mosque for long periods Any vehicles moving after curfew In the above example, the UAV operator might not know what “Akbar Militia movements” look like. That is why your intelligence personnel must take the time to develop observables that give the observer something concrete to look for. Then for each requirement, you also include the NAIs (on the map) you want collectors to observe for that specific requirement. Finally, if necessary, specify the times when you want an asset to observe the NAI.

Benefits of Narrow Focus As we have already seen, trying to look at too much with ISR can end up being ineffective. It is sometimes more useful to focus ISR on one particular objective. For example, if you think you know where a target lives, you might want to watch his house around the clock to monitor who comes and goes from the house and what kind of vehicles they use. You can also track where vehicles go when they leave the house. This will give you more information to exploit and you can begin compiling information to form a better picture of what is going on. Essentially, you begin by focusing on one lead in detail, collect information and let that information guide you to other possible sources of information, which in turn guide you to other possible sources of information.

Allocating Resources and Assets Knowing how, when and where to apply your resources and assets is a key part of planning. Resources are allocated based on priority. Once again, our prioritized lines of operations give us a framework to use when deciding where to focus our resources. For example, if the first priority of the lines of operation is protecting US forces, then you will want to support that effort with all the assets and resources that you can. You also distribute resources based on a resource’s usefulness to a particular situation. For example, your priority within the lines of operations might be training the local security forces. So naturally you will want to focus all of your available resources on training the local security forces.

However, an asset like UAVs might not be very useful for this mission. What can you really use a UAV for that can help you train a local force? So, even though training local forces might be your priority, it would make more sense to use your UAV to support another effort to which the UAV is better suited. For example, the UAV might be more useful to help targeting insurgents or protecting US forces. So, you allocate resources based on current operational priorities, and the usefulness of a particular resource or asset to a specific mission. There are also some missions that are so important that they will override all other priorities. For example, if a US combatant is captured or a US helicopter gets shot down, pretty much everything else will stop and all units and assets will focus on the crisis. It is important to consider these contingencies and wargame how you will respond. Completely shifting your effort can be very difficult and painful if you have not thought out how you are going to do it beforehand.

Requesting Resources and Assets As a company commander, it is your job to convince your battalion to give you assets. There is an important reason for this beyond serving the needs of your company. The reason is, by making your case, you are giving your higher commanders the most accurate picture for their resource allocation decisions. Consider the following example. Two companies are asking for UAV support. Bravo Company wants to use the UAV to support a raid on a suspected IED builder. Bravo Company makes the effort to sell their request by showing that they have corroborating HUMINT and SIGINT that predicts the target’s location. They also show several HUMINT reports that connect their target to recent IED attacks in the AO. Charlie Company wants to use the UAV to protect their base from possible catastrophic rocket attack. Charlie Company has received numerous HUMINT reports of a possible rocket attack that all point to the attack taking place today. However, Charlie Company does not make an effort to sell their request. They simply make a generic request for UAV coverage to support “base defense operations” and don’t mention anything about the HUMINT tips regarding IRAMs. Looking at what each company requested, battalion’s decision is easy. They will surely give the UAV to Bravo company because they are not aware that Charlie wants the UAV for anything more than routine base

defense. So, battalion is making decisions based on less than all the facts because one of the companies didn’t take the time to argue their case. As we can see from this example, it is very important to use intelligence to back up your resource requests. Once again, this is not about putting yourself first or beating out other units. It is simply about helping superiors to allocate resources based on an accurate picture of the battlefield. The other important thing to remember when requesting resources, is to tie your request into the battalion’s priorities and lines of operation. If the battalion’s priority is finding weapons caches, if you are requesting an asset to help you find weapons caches be sure to mention that in your request. Help your superiors put two and two together and lay out for them how you plan on using the requested assets and resources to support the higher commander’s intent. That being said, it is not solely the responsibility of the company commander to sell his request. Battalion should also be proactive in developing their own picture of the battlefield. Therefore, they should already know much of the information that supports a given resource request. The final point to remember when requesting resources is not to simply request a specific resource. As we already discussed with ISR, if you ask for a specific platform, you may or may not get it. However, if you tell battalion what you are trying to do, battalion may know about another asset that can provide you the same (or even better) support. You may not know all the assets that battalion has to offer. You may be requesting a specific asset when in reality, another asset is better suited to your goals. It would be unfortunate to give up because you didn’t get a certain asset, when another asset was available that could have served your purposes even more effectively.

Enduring Mission Sets and Troops to Task As we have seen up to this point, planning is all about trying to focus combat power at the decisive time and place in order to achieve the higher endstate. When making the necessary planning calculations to do this, it is important to remember that there are some requirements that can never change. For example, no matter how important the mission, you’re not going to leave your base undefended. So, even if you have one-hundred and

twenty men in your company, you may need twenty of those to secure the base. That leaves only 100 for outside missions. But of course, you could only keep 100 men on alert for a limited amount of time. Humans need to sleep, eat and rest in order to maintain their combat effectiveness. So, a certain amount of your force (we will say 1/3 at a minimum) will need to be asleep or resting during part of the day. Then you factor in the requirements for a reserve. Deploying all of your forces on a given mission without any reserve can be very dangerous. It is usually a good idea to have a reserve force available to deal with unexpected contingencies or problems. Depending on the size of your reserve, it will take away roughly another third of your combat power. So, in calculating the total combat power you have available to conduct patrols and offensive missions, remain aware of your enduring mission sets. You will most likely have no more than one platoon available at a time. As we have stated before, you can surge to free up more combat power (by cutting down on rest and eliminating the reserve) but this posture will not be sustainable indefinitely.

The diagram below visually depicts the company level planning process as described in the previous pages. The diagram is also available for download and print at https://specialtactics.me under the Small War Tactics section.

Civil Reconstruction In small wars, civil reconstruction is one of the most critical forms of offensive operation. Going out and creating positive change in the community and making life better for the local people is one of the best ways to cripple the insurgency and win over the local population. As we have already discussed, establishing some degree of force protection and population security is critical in order to set the conditions for civil reconstruction operations.

Civil Projects and Expectations Management One of the most critical factors to consider when conducting civil reconstruction operations is expectations management. Conversely, one of the most common mistakes of inexperienced counterinsurgency forces is to ignore expectations management and thereby discredit themselves in the eyes of the population. The scenario typically proceeds in the following way…

The Wrong Way to Manage Expectations An inexperienced commander approaches a local leader and immediately asks, “What is wrong in your community? What can we help you with? How can we make your lives better?” The local leader will certainly have many possible answers to this question and will probably pick one of the more critical problems his community is facing. For example, the leader might comment that the roads are very poor and in disrepair. The commander will nod and agree to help with road repair as soon as possible. At this point the commander will have to go back to his superiors and begin the process of organizing a civil project to repair the roads. This will not be an easy process. The leader will need to work through multiple levels of command, coordinate with engineers or with local contractors. Organize and plan the operation including all of the associated logistics and security. Given the complexity of such an operation, it will surely take time to plan and execute. In the meantime, the local leader will likely

be asking for updates on progress and the commander will have to repeatedly make excuses since it is impossible for the commander to know exactly when the road repair can take place. Finally, the commander will get a proposed date for the operation and will most likely report that date back to his local counterpart. However, as with all military operations, something always goes wrong and it is likely that the initial date will have to be delayed because of complications or problems. The commander will then have to go back to the local leader and share the bad news. It is not unlikely that the date will be pushed back in this way multiple times. The local leader will grow more and more frustrated and disappointed. The commander will look more and more incompetent. At some point, the local leader will begin to doubt whether the commander is telling the truth at all. In the worst case scenario, higher-level commanders will decide to cancel the project altogether. Now the commander on the ground will look truly incompetent or dishonest. The next time the ground commander promises something to the locals, like pledging to keep them safe from insurgents, the locals will have serious doubts.

The Right Way to Manage Expectations Imagine an alternative scenario. A more experienced or savvy commander is put in the same situation and must meet for the first time with a local leader. Instead of jumping directly to business, the commander keeps things casual and focuses on getting to know the local leader and building a relationship. At the same time, the commander and his men are carefully observing the environment, taking notes and analyzing what could be improved. They will surely notice that the roads are in poor condition. The commander will then take this analysis and figure out tentative timelines for the various projects. He will also start the wheels turning on as many of the projects as possible to get a better idea of the resources required and the feasibility of each project. In most cases, it is a good idea to start with a simpler, more practical project to achieve an “early win” with the locals. In this case, the

commander might identify the road maintenance project as a good first option. Without making any promises to the locals, the commander will begin prepping to execute the project. Even when the commander receives tentative dates and times, he will not pass these on to his local counterparts yet. Instead, he will wait until the operation is literally ready to execute and the construction trucks are running, ready to go. At this point the commander will meet with the local leader and casually ask, “these roads seem to be in poor condition. Would you like our help repairing them?” The local leader will certainly agree. The commander can then turn around, “snap his fingers” and the construction trucks will appear as if by magic. Securing an early win like this will seriously impress the locals and enhance the ground commander’s reputation.

Expectation Pitfalls and Learning to Say No The example above is a great way to improve your image in the eyes of the locals and win their trust with a seemingly magical feat. However, performing such miracles carries its own risk in terms of expectation management. The locals might be very impressed that you were able to fix the roads in a matter of days, but then they might ask you to complete other projects and expect comparable speed. You must guard against this pitfall as well. The true art of effective expectation management is not just about using tricks to impress the locals. It is about using your brain, thinking ahead, being honest and predicting the reactions of your local counterparts. It is critical to learn to “say no” and be honest with the locals about your capabilities. Building off the previous example, after your initial victory with the road repair, if the local leader comes back and asks you to fix the power supply, you should not immediately agree to help or make any promises. Rather you should set yourself up for the worst-case scenario. You might say something like, “Power supply might be more difficult. We had good resources available to fix the roads but we’re

having problems with the power all over the country. Unfortunately, I cannot promise I can help with that but if I learn anything more I will let you know.” Notice you don’t even promise that you will get back to him with more information. You don’t say, “I’ll find out what I can and get back to you.” Don’t set yourself up for failure. Indeed you will find out what you can and get back to him but you don’t want to promise that up front. Work the problem like you did before, learn as much as you can, and don’t make any promises until you are confident you can deliver on them in a timely manner. If the power supply problem is too difficult to solve at this time, find another problem on your list, work towards solving it and then go back to the local leader proposing the more feasible project. It is also always a good idea to blame the insurgents for everything that goes wrong whenever possible. Don’t lie, since the locals are good at detecting lies, but be honest about how the insurgents and local violence are making it more difficult to provide for the population. Regarding the power supply problem, you might say, “we have been trying to fix the power for months but every time we do the insurgents cripple the power stations or cut the power lines. We have a lot of resources and want to help but there is only so much we can do if the population doesn’t stand up against the insurgents and help us find and eliminate them. ”

Civil Assessment and Analysis While keeping expectation management in mind, one of your first objectives in civil reconstruction is identifying and analyzing the current state of the civil infrastructure, society and standard of living. In general, it will not be hard to get a sense of where things stand. It is also likely that there will be specialized units in your area of operations that are assigned to assessing, analyzing and improving the local community, government and civil infrastructure. There are a number of different kinds of support teams including Human Terrain Teams (HTT) or Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT). Civil Affairs units also specialize in these types of missions.

The reason it is critical to create and deploy specialized teams and units for civil reconstruction is because the average infantry or special operations unit does not have the background or expertise to know how to rebuild a community. This lack of knowledge also limits your ability to assess the problem at a deeper level. You may be able to identify that there is a problem with the sewage system but assessing how bad the problem is and how long it will take to fix is in the realm of civil affairs specialists. Therefore, as a commander in a small war, you are not responsible for knowing how to build a functioning government, legal system, sewage system or power grid. However, it is important that you have a general knowledge of civil reconstruction operations that will allow you to play a supporting role in these efforts. Because teams of specialists are usually small, they will be depending on your larger forces to provide them with initial assessments of the local society and infrastructure.

Models for Assessment The U.S. military has created a number of models over the years to help units think about civil reconstruction operations. These models typically have phonetic acronyms to make them easier to remember. In some cases it can be useful to create checklists or worksheets using these models to ensure you don’t miss anything when you are assessing a local community. Two common models are ASCOPE (Areas, Structures, Capabilities, Organizations, People and Events) and SWEAT-MSO (Sewage, Water, Electricity, Academics, Trash, Medical, Safety and Other). This book will not go into detail about how to understand and apply such models but it is important to study them and know which models are being used in your area of operations. More important than the specific model is to link up with the civil affairs units, or reconstruction teams operating in your area of responsibility and get their direct feedback. Ask them what model they use and ask them what sort of assessments they are looking for in particular. In addition, ask them for more in-depth guidance on how

to conduct the assessment. They may give you specific things to look for or take photographs of. Spread this guidance to your subordinate units and send them out on patrol to gather this information, much like you would assign them to collect PIR. When these units come back, pass the information to the civil affairs units or specialized teams to get their feedback. Continue to foster this two-way communication and cooperation. Refining and improving your ability to conduct assessments and support civil reconstruction efforts.

Role of the Commander in Civil Reconstruction As already stated, the land-owning commander is probably not a specialist in civil reconstruction. However, he is overall responsible for his area of operations and must remain aware of all civil reconstruction efforts so he can coordinate them with other activities. While he might not be the most knowledgeable about specifics, the commander remains the “boss” and plays the role of chief representative for all civil reconstruction efforts. The specialist reconstruction units will need to interact with the population and particularly local leaders in order to do their job effectively. It is the commander’s responsibility to make these introductions, facilitate and oversee meetings. If the commander fades into the background and take a second seat to reconstruction teams, he and the land-owning unit will lose influence with the local leader. While civil reconstruction operations might proceed smoothly, other critical lines of operations such as security might suffer. The commander also needs to coordinate civil reconstruction efforts with other operations such as psychological operations and direct action targeting. In order for civil projects to succeed and have the maximum positive impact on the local population, they need to sync with the various other lines of operations for the region. The commander’s job is to integrate, deconflict and harmonize all of these various capabilities and efforts in order to achieve the highercommander’s endstate.

Working with Limited Resources In some cases, your unit might not have the support of civil affairs units or specialized reconstruction teams. Without this support it may prove extremely difficult to achieve positive results in the realm of civil reconstruction. However, as the ground commander, you are responsible for doing your best with the resources you have. There are several steps you can take to maximize the potential of your internal civil reconstruction capabilities. First, request as many assets as you can. Some commanders do not ask for assets or resources because they are afraid of how their higher command will respond. There is nothing wrong with asking for the world. The worst they can say is “no.” Furthermore, you should back up your requests with as much justification as possible, citing real-world examples or carefully collected data that show why you need a certain type of resource or support. Second, if you cannot secure additional assets or support, see if you can benefit from these assets remotely. If your command will not send you supporting assets to assist in improving sanitation and sewage treatment, you can reach out to organizations or experts in the United States who have the knowledge you need to start moving in the right direction. If you email the department of sanitation in your hometown or in a major city, it is unlikely that they will refuse a request for help and advice that comes from a military unit overseas. There is a limit to the help they can provide over email or over the phone, but they can at least improve your chances of success. Finally, scour your unit and neighboring units for personnel who have prior experience that might be useful to civil reconstruction efforts. Almost all military units are likely to have personnel who have skills in the areas of farming, construction, plumbing, electrical wiring etc. You may also find subordinates with experience in law enforcement, firefighting, business, finance, education etc. In the case of the sanitation and sewage problem, you might discover that someone in your unit used to work in that field before they joined the

military. You must take advantage of all the knowledge and skills available within your own unit and neighboring units.

Cooperating with Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are organizations that specialize in specific humanitarian efforts such as the treatment of diseases, rebuilding infrastructure and providing aid to children and refugees. NGOs generally focus on one specific type of problem, so it is up to the commander to integrate their efforts into the larger civil reconstruction effort by identifying the best way for them to help with their particular skill set. One common problem is that NGO teams are deployed to the combat zone somewhat haphazardly without consideration of where they would have the most positive impact. For example, you might receive an NGO attachment that specializes in treating a specific disease or ailment, but you might not have anyone in your area of responsibility suffering from that disease. In this case there will be little for the NGO team to do. However, it is possible that the disease in question might be very common in a neighboring unit’s area of operations. It is up to you as a commander to coordinate with other units in theater to make maximum use of external assets like NGOs. If you discover another unit has a need for the NGO team, you can put in a request to transfer the team to that unit. Not only does this benefit the overall war effort, but you can now call on your neighboring units to help you in similar circumstances. Maybe they have assets and resources they are not using but could be very helpful to you. By starting and reinforcing a trend of cooperation and sharing of resources, you are setting all units in the region up for success.

Local Solutions to Local Problems One of the most important principles in civil reconstruction operations is ensuring that you are not solving the problem yourself

but rather you are helping the locals to solve their own problems in a way that is sustainable. If you solve the problem for the locals, you may end up doing more harm than good for a number of reasons. To better understand this problem, consider the following example. A unit is operating in an area where the water supply is completely cut off and local wells are destroyed or in poor condition. People are dying of thirst. The commander decides to truck in large amounts of water and position water trailers on local roads that the people can use to refill jugs and cannisters. This solves the water problem temporarily, but the people become dependent on the water trailers for their survival. More disturbingly, because the people can get all the water they need from the trailers, they make no effort to sustain or improve their other water sources. They lose the ability to self-sustain. At this point, if the occupying forces have to leave or if the insurgents blow up the water trailers and the occupying unit cannot replace them, the local people will find themselves in a terrible bind. There may be times when there is no choice but to step in and do something for the local population. However, the goal must always be to find a way to help the locals solve the problem themselves in a way that is sustainable. Sustainable means that they can continue to provide for themselves even after occupying forces leave. Ensuring a solution is sustainable means checking that all the necessary equipment, replacement parts and resources are available on the local market. You must also ensure that the locals are trained in how to sustain themselves and trained to operate and maintain any relevant equipment. A final note is to remember that a local solution to a problem might not always be perfect. You and your unit might be able to do a better job of solving the problem. However, a mediocre local solution is better than an ideal solution that is not sustainable. In order to truly empower the population and rebuild civil society, you need to be willing to accept suboptimal solutions and performance. The locals will never learn to provide for themselves if they are not allowed to take charge of their own destiny and make mistakes.

Direct Action Targeting Direct action targeting is a critical part of small wars and can be executed by both special operations forces and conventional forces. Direct action targeting generally involves capturing insurgent leaders. While many of the specific techniques related to direct action targeting are sensitive in nature, it is still possible to provide an overview of some general guidelines, particularly at the conceptual levels.

The F3EAD Targeting Methodology Why do you capture an insurgent? So you can capture the next insurgent. This is the general principle behind the F3EAD targeting methodology. F3EAD stands for Find, Fix, Finish, Exploit, Analyze, Disseminate. This cycle allows you to progress from one target to the next and eventually roll up an entire insurgent network. Insurgent and terrorist networks can have a variety of structures. In some cases they have a hierarchical structure with the chain of command leading up towards a single leader or group of leaders. In other cases they may be organized in isolated cells to enhance operational security. However, they are structured, some degree of communication between individuals or elements is needed. It is rare that any part of an insurgent network or cell is completely separated from all others. This fact is what makes F3EAD targeting effective. If you start out with knowledge of only a single insurgent, first you must find that insurgent using all the intelligence resources available to you. You then must fix the insurgent in place so you can move in and finish him without offering him the opportunity to escape. While in some cases you might kill the insurgent, it is almost always better to capture the insurgent alive since you can then question him, looking for information that will lead to other insurgents. Even if the insurgent organization has gone to great lengths to preserve their operational security, each insurgent you capture will lead you to some useful information about others in the group. You

must exploit this information in a number of ways. You can question and interrogate the insurgent. You can search his house or his vehicle for evidence. You can examine his electronic devices like laptop computers etc. Once you have exploited all available information, you must analyze that information and turn it into finished, actionable intelligence. In most cases, the unit on the ground will not do this themselves but they will rather pass the exploited intelligence up to dedicated intelligence analysts. However, the unit on the ground can make the analysts jobs much easier by collecting and organizing the intelligence properly. Once the intelligence is analyzed it then must be disseminated out to the units on the ground (like your own) still conducting targeting. Armed with this intelligence, the targeting units will be able to find, fix and finish new targets, leading to the exploitation, analysis and dissemination of new intelligence. The cycle continues and if executed quickly and effectively, it allows you to roll up an entire insurgent cell or network relatively quickly.

Find, Fix and Finish While not generally classified, the specific methods of finding, fixing and finishing targets is sensitive in nature and therefore cannot be discussed in this open-source book. It is important to note however that there are more effective ways to find, fix and finish targets and your ability to succeed in these first three steps depends largely on your level of training and the specific techniques you employ. High levels of training in urban warfare and close-quarters battle (CQB) are a critical component for this phase of the targeting operation. What follows is a brief summary of several targeting approaches…

Raid In some cases you will plan a raid on the target’s home or another location where the target spends time. In order to capture the target you will need to capitalize on surprise, speed and violence

of action. Your force can move to the target location on the ground using vehicles or you can use helicopters if available. You will first want to establish a cordon around the target area to prevent the target from escaping and you will then assault the target building to capture the target.

Ambush In other cases, you might determine that the target is most vulnerable in transit. In these cases you can plan an ambush along the target’s route. In order to succeed, you must ensure your ambush element is well concealed and that the target has little opportunity to escape once the ambush is initiated.

Tactical Call Out Tactical call out means securing a building from the outside and not going in but instead calling the occupants out. This is often the best course of action if you are worried that the building might be boobytrapped, rigged with explosives or if the occupants are likely to use suicide tactics. If you believe there are sensitive materials inside the target building that the enemy might try to destroy (particularly electronic records) or if there is a hostage situation, you may opt to execute an assault and enter the building. Otherwise, tactical call out can be the safest and most effective option. To execute a tactical call out, first cordon off the building and tell the individuals in the building to come out with their hands out and fingers spread. The reason for this is to prevent people from using hidden triggers for explosives. From there, tell the males to remove their clothes so you can check for explosive vests. You can use lasers to identify individuals as you are talking to them. You can throw colored chemlights to direct the flow of individuals out of the house. For example, “all men go to the blue light, all women go to the red light, one man advance to the yellow light.” Once you have pulled all the individuals out of the building, have one female, over 18 years old, go back into the building and open all the windows and doors. Tell her she is doing that to be sure

you don’t break anything when you enter the building. Then turn to one of the detainees and tell him to lead the way into the building before your assault team. If he refuses, the house could be booby trapped. If he agrees, have him move through the front door ahead of your team and then through each interior door in the same way. If you initiate a tactical call out and no one comes out, that could mean one of four things… 1. There is no one home 2. They are set up for an ambush 3. They are scared 4. The building is boobytrapped If this happens, enter the house next door. Ask the neighbors questions about the target house and ask about the people who live in the target house. Then, ask one of the neighbors to go into the target house. If the neighbor refuses to go, the house might be rigged with explosives.

Exploitation Regardless of which one of the above approaches you choose to employ, the next step is to exploit all available intelligence. In some cases you will need to do this in a hurry if you are in a vulnerable position and need to pull out quickly. In other cases, when you are able to secure the area, you can take your time to ensure you do not miss any details. In general, the exploitation process falls into two categories. Sensitive Site Exploitation or SSE involves searching an insurgent’s home or vehicle for valuable intelligence in the form of documents, electronic devices etc. Tactical Questioning or TQ involves questioning the suspected insurgents and anyone else who might have information that you find in the house or vehicle. If you have ex-law enforcement officers in your unit, they can be a great help in your exploitation efforts when it comes to SSE and TQ. Much of their experience in law enforcement can carry over

to small wars and they likely have a lot of experience conducting searches, collecting evidence and questioning suspects. Take advantage of this knowledge whenever possible.

Sensitive Site Exploitation (SSE) When conducting Sensitive Site Exploitation (SSE) it is critical to avoid damaging local property or treating locals with disrespect. You still may not be sure if the person you targeted is really an insurgent and you are not sure that everyone in the house is affiliated with the insurgency. Furthermore, rumors spread quickly in small war environments. If you are disrespectful or brutal towards the locals it will damage your reputation and might turn people against you. Therefore, before you search a house, it is a good idea to take one series of photos of the site before you touch anything, much like you might take pictures of a rental car before you use it so you can accurately account for any damage. Many specific SSE techniques are sensitive in nature and thus cannot be discussed in this open-source book. However, it is possible to cover the general principles and procedures for SSE. Make sure to research and train up on the latest techniques that are being employed in your area of operations. The most important part of SSE is collecting and organizing intelligence in a way that will make the intelligence analyst’s job as easy as possible. If you just take everything of interest in the house and dump it into a big garbage bag, that will not provide the intelligence analysts with much useful information. You want to record where you found everything and what it looked like when you found it. Use a digital camera to take detailed pictures of each room of the house and label where you found each relevant item. Make sure to have an easily understandable system for labeling everything you take off of the objective so that analysts can make the connection between the photos you took and the objects you collected. Make sure to secure intelligence, particularly electronic devices, in safe, waterproof containers to ensure they don’t get damaged or spoiled on their way to the analysts.

If the insurgents hid secret materials you will also want to record and photograph the specific method they used to hide the materials. This might be relevant information to assist in future searches. It is also relevant for analysts to know which items were hidden and which were not, since the hidden items are likely to contain more valuable intelligence.

Searching Occupants In addition to searching the premises, you must also control and search the occupants you find inside a house or building. First, control the occupants and restrain them. You also want to keep them separated as much as possible to facilitate tactical questioning (TQ) which will be discussed in the next section. Searching an occupant ideally requires two people. The first person provides cover and points their weapon at the occupant while the second person conducts the search. The searcher should carry a large, numbered Ziplock bag with a 550-chord loop attached to the top and a Polaroid camera. The searcher should first hang the bag around the occupant’s neck and then carefully check all of the occupant's pockets, emptying the contents into the plastic bag. When searching the occupant, the searcher should not “pat” the occupant down but should rather rub his hand firmly over the occupant’s body and reach into pockets, turning them inside out when possible. Prior to searching, the searcher should ask the occupant if there is anything in his pockets that is sharp or dangerous. It is also important to search the groin area. In some cultures, you will need a female searcher to search women. Once all of the contents of the occupant’s pockets have been removed and placed in the plastic bag. The searcher writes the occupant’s name on the bag below the number and uses the Polaroid camera to take a photograph of the occupant with the bag around his neck, then places the photograph in the bag, closes the bag and places it in a backpack or safe location. This way, when the intelligence arrives for analysis, there is no doubt about who was carrying what items.

Tactical Questioning (TQ) When questioning individuals, don’t keep them all in the same room and go down the line. Then it is very easy for them to synchronize their stories. Instead, you should separate the suspects immediately and pull them out one by one for questioning. When you first enter the house, designate a small room to use for TQ and mark that room with a colored glowstick so everyone knows where it is. Keep the detainees away from this room and bring them into the room one by one. Stage three personnel in the TQ room to execute questioning. The first person should be your designated TQ specialist. For this TQ specialist, pick someone who is a streetsmart, confident wise talker and knows how to read people. Do not pick the PL or another key leader for this job. The key leaders will be too focused on other aspects of the mission to focus on TQ. The second man in the room is the interpreter. The designated TQ specialist should know the interpreter well and they should spend considerable time practicing TQ together. The interpreter should translate every aspect of the questioner’s expression. If the questioner gets angry, the interpreter should get angry. If the questioner acts sarcastic, the interpreter should act sarcastic. The best way to get good at this is practice. That is another reason why not to make a key leader your TQ specialist. The TQ specialist needs time to focus on practicing TQ prior to each mission. The TQ specialist, his interpreter and a second interpreter can review what is known about the target individual and set up a simulated TQ session in preparation for the real operation. The final person in the room should be one of the biggest and most intimidating people in your unit. As the questioner and interpreter stand in front of the detainee, the “muscle man” should stand directly to the side of the detainee at a distance that will make the detainee uncomfortable. The first thing the TQ specialist should say is, “I am going to ask you a few questions. While I am talking, do not move or look away from me at any time. If you do, I will take this as a threat to my own safety. Do you understand?”

If the questioner wishes to place more stress on the detainee, he will use a covert signal to instruct the muscle man to take a more aggressive posture and move closer. When the detainee moves or looks at the muscle man, the muscle man should turn the detainee’s head back towards the questioner and command “look at him when he’s talking to you!” If the detainee tries to move, the muscle man should control him and command him to “stay still!” The detainee will be very nervous because he will remember the instructions the TQ specialist gave at the beginning of the session. The intention of the muscle man is to apply gentle pressure to make the detainee flustered, uneasy and keep him off balance. Do not actually abuse or hurt the detainee in any way. The muscle man should also practice with the interpreter and questioner so that the muscle man knows when to be more aggressive, and when to back off. For some detainees who already appear scared and flustered, the muscle man might want to start off at a distance and deliberately not present an overly threatening posture. It can help to conduct the search of the house (SSE) first before you conduct questioning, or at least simultaneously. If the team conducting SSE finds useful information, they might call the TQ specialist out of the room to update him. The TQ specialist can use knowledge acquired from the SSE to guide his questioning and maybe catch the subject in a lie. Catching a subject in a lie can increase the level of stress and lead him/her to reveal more information. It’s also important to evaluate people’s stories rationally. For example, if the penalty for carrying a weapon in a country is very high, you might not have much reason to believe someone who is telling you they carry a weapon for self-defense. They probably have more sinister reasons for carrying the weapon. It is often better to ask open ended questions like, “who do you know?” or “who around here makes IEDs?” or “are there any weapons in this house?” Hopefully these kinds of questions will lead you to your next target.

Analysis and Dissemination As already discussed, analysis and dissemination are probably not your job as the unit on the ground. However, the better job you do of exploiting the intelligence, collecting and organizing all information the easier you will make the analysts’ job. Also, working through your own intelligence cell or battalion intelligence shop, make sure that the intelligence is not just flowing up the chain but is coming down the chain as well. You are entitled to ask questions about the intelligence you pull off of the objective and the analysts should let you know any answers they find as long as none of the information is highly classified.

Detainee Operations The ideal way to conduct detainee ops involves a working relationship between the assault team and the detention team. This is the way the special operations community works. The first step is to send the detainees to medical to check them out. The assault team immediately goes to debrief with the interrogator. It is very useful for the assault team and interrogator to have a face to face so that the assault team can tell the whole story and the interrogator can ask questions as they go along. Then, simultaneously you are distributing all the items you found during the site exploitation to the various experts. Once the assault team debrief with the interrogator is finished, the prisoner goes right in for questioning. The interrogator knows what questions to ask because he knows what questions the assault team asked. He can also see if the prisoner changes his story and he can call out the lie if this happens. While this is going on, the various experts who are exploiting the captured materials can feed the interrogator information. For example, the interrogator might ask the detainee if he knows John Miller. If the detainee says no, the interrogator can turn around and say, “well, you’ve called him three times today on your phone.” At this point, the prisoner thinks, “oh no… they know about the phone! What else do they know?”

The main problem that conventional units face is that there is not this close connection between the assault team and the interrogators. Sometimes, the assault team might not even talk with the interrogators. You need to do your best to make the most of this situation. The best way is to include good, clear guidance to the interrogators and exploiters about what to look for. Once you ask the detainee the pre-prepared questions on your target packet, record the answers and pass those along with the target. If you send up a hard drive, send some key information requirements that you want the exploiters to look for. For example, you might want to know anything tied to a certain individual or a certain location. The better, more specific guidance you can give, the quicker the process will go, and the sooner you will get back good information that you can use for further targeting. Also, be sure to number detainees when you capture them. This will simplify things for the detention team down the line. Never reuse the same sequence number twice. Attach the number to the detainee’s flex cuffs and attach the same number to all the items that are found with the detainee. Make sure to take pictures of the detainee with his items. The easiest way to do this is to use a Ziplock bag hung around the detainee’s neck and a Polaroid camera. This technique is described in the previous sections.

Multiple Targets on One Mission While in most cases the ground unit will conduct the find, fix, finish and exploit steps and leave analysis and dissemination to higher-level analysts and intelligence personnel, in some cases a ground unit can conduct the complete cycle by itself. In these cases, the ground unit will exploit intelligence on the target that will lead immediately to another target. The unit must conduct a hasty analysis of this intelligence and in some cases disseminate it to maintain the initiative and strike the next target before the window of opportunity closes. For example, if the ground assault unit captures an insurgent and conducts TQ on the objective, the insurgent might give up the

location of another known insurgent. It is ideal to strike this second target as quickly as possible since insurgents might flee or hide when they learn that one of their number has been detained. However, it is not wise to act too hastily on the detainee’s information. What if the detainee is providing false information or leading you into a trap? For this reason you must conduct a hasty analysis of the available information in real-time with the help of the intelligence personnel back on base. Gather and analyze all available intelligence on the objective. The more corroborating evidence that you can collect that verifies that the detainee’s information is valid the better. In addition, you must relay as much information as possible back to your intelligence section. The intelligence section will crosscheck this information with their own facts and may share it or discuss it with other intelligence units as well. The key is that all of this has to happen quickly. Once your unit gets the green light to proceed to the next target from your higher command, you can execute another raid or ambush immediately. You can use this technique to capture several targets in one night. In some cases, you (or your higher command) may also need to disseminate your intelligence to another unit. If you are too far away to action the second target, you may need to hand that target off to another unit that is closer.

Psychological Operations Psychological operations are one of the most important parts of a small war effort. Ultimately, small wars are wars of perception. You cannot win by killing the enemy. You cannot even win by protecting the local people if the local people do not feel safe and trust in your ability to protect them and bring them a better life that is aligned with their own cultural beliefs and ideology. Thus, soft factors like perception, opinion, ideology and identity are all critical factors in small wars. The science of psychological operations allows you to influence these soft factors in pursuit of operational and political objectives. Psychological operations is an expansive and complex topic and it would be impossible to offer anything but a cursory overview in a book of this size. Just as civil reconstruction is primarily the responsibility of specialized Civil Affairs units, psychological operations are primarily the responsibility of dedicated PSYOPS units. However, it is critical for the commander on the ground to have at least a general understanding of the mechanics of psychological operations in order to ensure that psychological operations are integrated into every aspect of operations. All of the various types of operations already discussed including civil reconstruction operations and direct action targeting cannot guarantee progress if they are not integrated with psychological operations. Even a successful civil reconstruction project will not win the locals’ approval if no one knows it took place or who was responsible for it. Capturing an insurgent leader might end up being counterproductive if the public perception is that the leader was a noble man who was wrongfully accused and treated inhumanely. Thus, you must push your own story and your own narrative for every event that takes place on the battlefield, shaping public perception and opinion to support your own perspective and cause.

Constructing Psychological Operations Campaigns

Each psychological operations campaign is made up of three elements: the message, the delivery mechanism and the target audience. Each one of these elements can change in relation to the others. Ultimately you want to craft your messages and employ your delivery mechanisms to have a positive effect on the various target audiences in relation to each of your various lines of operation.

Crafting PSYOPs Messages in Support of Lines of Operation For each line of operation and for each individual operation, mission and action on the battlefield you want to craft a PSYOPs message that supports your own objectives and endstate. We have already discussed the fairly straightforward examples of demonizing an enemy insurgent leader before you capture him to ensure he receives no sympathy from the populace or showcasing how a civil reconstruction operation benefits the local people. However, there are many other, less straightforward examples of PSYOPs messages. For example, beyond simply demonizing an insurgent leader, you might want to sow seeds of descent within the insurgent organization by crafting a message that suggests the leader was betrayed by one of his own people who is trying to take power in the organization. You may want to craft a message that a particular insurgent is cooperating with your forces so his fellow insurgents question his loyalty. You may want to taunt an insurgent leader by calling him incompetent to see if you can lure him into committing rash actions and expose himself. In the case of civil reconstruction operations there are many nuanced messages you can craft as well. When rebuilding a destroyed school, your message might want to emphasize that the only reason you had to rebuild the school was because the insurgents destroyed it in the first place, killing innocent children. You may want to credit the school’s construction to the vision of a particular individual, a local or religious leader you want to promote within the society. You may want to showcase the fact that the safe construction of the new school without incident is a testament to the

outstanding security provided by local forces. There is no limit to the number of messages you can craft. The key is ensuring that the messages support your various lines of operation and the desired endstates associated with each.

Different Messages for Different Target Audiences A target audience is a specific group of people or segment of the population as defined by the PSYOPs planners. You can label and define target audiences in any way you choose. For example, some examples of target audiences might include the local civilian populace, the local security forces and the insurgents themselves. In a society divided along religious or sectarian lines, you might distinguish target audiences on the basis of their religious or tribal affiliation. The reason for identifying and distinguishing various target audiences is because you may want to deliver different PSYOPs messages to different audiences. For example, in the case of capturing an insurgent leader you might craft different messages for the local population, partnered forces and the insurgents. Consider the chart below. Local Population

Local Security Forces

Insurgents

Local security forces successfully captured an enemy of the people who was responsible for countless atrocities including murdering innocent women and children. You are safer now. With the help of U.S. forces, you managed to capture an insurgent leader who illuded you for years. Have faith in your U.S. allies. You will win public and political approval if you work with us. Your movement is fractured and

divided. We were able to capture one of your leaders because he was betrayed by another leader in your organization who is working with us. Who will he betray next? Each of the messages above is mainly relevant to a particular target audience. Your PSYOPs campaigns will prove to be more effective when you are able to tailor messages to specific audiences in this way. However, the next question is how to you limit the reach of one message to a particular audience.

Targeting Messages with Delivery Mechanisms By studying the landscape of the local society, you can target your messages by employing different delivery mechanisms for each message. A delivery mechanism is simply the way that you get the message to the target audience. There are many different delivery mechanisms including leaflet drops, radio broadcasts, television broadcasts, newspaper articles, loudspeaker campaigns etc. Each mechanism can be orchestrated to reach a different target audience. For example, imagine a particular message will resonate more with young people and a different message will appeal to older people. If young people mainly watch television and older people typically read the newspaper, you can target young people with a television advertisement and the older people with a newspaper article. What if you want to craft a simple message for uneducated people but a more complex message for educated people? You could announce the simple message using loudspeakers and drop leaflets with the more complex message for the literate members of the population. What if you want to deliver different messages to different regions? This is easy with leaflet drops, but you could also disperse radio broadcast stations with limited range so they will only reach the segments of the population that you are targeting. What if you want

to target particular religious groups? You can enlist the help of local religious leaders to spread specific messages to their followers.

The Importance of Language, Regional Expertise and Culture How can you know which PSYOPs messages will be effective and which will not? How can you know which words or images will resonate with the local people? It is difficult to know if you do not have a strong knowledge of the local language and culture. If you base all your thinking on your own culture, you might make critical errors. For example, many advertisements or messages that would appeal to a U.S. audience might be considered scandalous or offensive in a foreign culture. A message that might appeal to a foreign culture could appear backward, superstitious or racist to a U.S. observer. Therefore, you cannot “put yourself in the shoes” of the target audience. They may not think like you do. The only way to truly understand a foreign culture is to immerse yourself in it. This is difficult to do if you do not speak (and preferably read) the local language. If at all possible, you should watch the local news, read the local newspapers, follow local popular culture and sports. The more you can immerse yourself in the local culture, the better you will be able to see the world through the eyes of the local people and you will then be better able to know which messages will resonate with them and which will not.

Measuring Effectiveness of PSYOPs Campaigns Measuring the effectiveness of PSYOP campaigns is particularly difficulty. Many units simply count the number of leaflets dropped, the number of articles published or messages broadcasted. This might tell you how hard you are working to get your message out but it will not tell you if anyone is taking the time to read it or listen to it. More importantly, it will not tell you if the message is actually having the desired effect on the target audience.

There are no foolproof ways to measure the effectiveness of a PSYOPs campaign, but in general, the most effective methods measure the actions of the local populace. It can be helpful to take surveys or interview select individuals to ask them their opinion about how effective or ineffective a specific campaign was. However, information is more reliable when people “vote with their feet,” and actually back up their words with action. For example, if you are broadcasting a message that the insurgents are losing, and the community is safer, you can include in this message information about a medical clinic hosted by U.S. and local forces. Because the environment is now safer, you can encourage people to visit the clinic. If no one shows up it is likely that your core message was not accepted by the population, but if many people respond to the clinic advertisement, your message might have had an impact. Another example of this is including the “tip line” phone number along with messages directed to discredit the insurgents and build local confidence in the security forces. If people call the tip line it means they are growing less fond of the insurgency, are less afraid of the insurgents and are becoming more confident in the ability of security forces to protect them. You can also tie in PSYOPs messages with civil reconstruction projects and offer people the opportunity to help with the project, either for free or for pay. Once again, the number of people who show up to help with the project is an indicator of how effective your message was.

Training Local Security Forces Ultimately, your goal in a small war is generally not to remain in the country as an occupying force indefinitely. Therefore, at some point you need to hand over authority to the local government and security forces to solve their own problems and maintain a secure and prosperous society on their own. This makes training local security forces a critically important factor in winning small wars. Training local forces is not just about the actual mechanics and procedures of the training itself. In many cases, the human interaction with the local force and interpersonal dynamics are even more important for success. Therefore, developing a high level of cross-cultural competence is critical for counterinsurgent forces. In addition, while many fundamental principles of training remain constant regardless of the situation, there are some special considerations to take into account when training a local force in a small war.

Cross-Cultural Competence - The Importance of Intangibles Before getting into the mechanics of how to train local security forces, it is important to emphasize the importance of “intangible” factors when interacting with locals. While these factors can be difficult to quantify and understand, they are often the most important keys for success in combined multi-national operations. When dealing with local nationals and local security forces, what one says is often less important than how he says it. Actions are often less important than attitudes. Unfortunately, in many cases American forces work courageously and tirelessly to help the local population or security forces, but they negate the positive effects of their efforts by mistakenly expressing the wrong attitude. Because of differences between American culture and foreign cultures, it is easy for Americans to mistakenly come off as arrogant, condescending or disrespectful to local people. Fortunately, with a

few simple adjustments to one’s behavior, it is relatively easy to eliminate this problem. There are three key points to focus on when trying to build an attitude that promotes cross-cultural competence. First, try to demonstrate a sincere interest in the locals as people rather than merely intelligence sources to be exploited. Second, make a conscious effort to imitate local behavior and conform to the locals’ cultural norms. Finally, and most importantly, focus on adopting an attitude that makes it abundantly clear that you do not consider yourself superior to local people simply by virtue of the fact that you are an American.

Show Interest in the Local People Demonstrating a sincere interest in the local people may seem very simple and obvious. However, in reality, this change is not always easy to implement. For example, it is common for new leaders to get so focused on the objective of helping the local people, that they focus only on “business” and operations and fail to identify with locals on a human level. Inexperienced leaders might bombard locals with questions such as, “Is there anything you need? How can we help you? How is your electricity and water?” First of all, simply addressing these topics, suggests that a leader has the capacity to do something about them when in reality he may not. Without formally promising anything, leaders can unknowingly make promises they cannot keep. More importantly this focus on looking for ways to help drives leaders to end up treating the locals as projects, challenges, or missions, rather than human beings. The local people generally react much better when you actually show interest in them as people and try to establish an actual relationship with them. This requires learning about people’s beliefs, hopes, fears, interests, likes and dislikes. You cannot learn about someone by following an interview checklist. It takes time. People will not open up to you right away. You need to make an effort to build a relationship with them just as you would try to make a new friend back home.

When talking with locals, it is best not to immediately jump to the business at hand. Begin casually, asking the person his name and telling him your name, asking him about the people around him, about his family and his house. Tell the locals about yourself and draw parallels between their lives and your own. Tell them about your family, about your parents, about where you are from and what jobs you have had. Once again, the key point is to do all of this in a natural manner. It is not necessary to exchange loads of information during the first meeting. It is better to have a short, casual, friendly conversation and then move along, aiming to visit again tomorrow and the next day, slowly building trust in the relationship over time. This way of interacting with people should not seem at all unusual or unnatural. After all, this is how we interact with people in our own lives in our own country. If we interact with locals in the same way, we will end up building much stronger bonds and relationships in the long run. Taking this more human approach will dramatically improve the quality of intelligence a unit gets from the locals, but the human approach also takes time and effort. To be truly effective, a unit might need to spend months getting to know a particular family before imposing on it by asking for intelligence on insurgents. In the ideal scenario, when the family members are ready, they will volunteer this information before they are asked. Once a unit has established a local’s trust, the local will proactively seek to provide that unit with information.

Mimic Local Behaviors The second point is to learn to mimic local behavior. Many Americans have trouble doing this, and as a result, they end up being less effective in their interactions with locals. For example, a leader might be very friendly and respectful, but he might make the mistake of behaving has he would in America, with the typical backslapping and abrasive demeanor common among American military personnel.

While this type of behavior makes Americans feel at ease, it might jarring to the locals in certain cultures. It is better to try to mimic the way the local people move, talk and act, even though it might make you feel awkward or uncomfortable. In some cases, Americans are often unwilling to truly blend with their environment because they find it uncomfortable or embarrassing to imitate local behaviors. Some Americans claim that locals will be insulted if we try to imitate them. Others claim that it is not natural or genuine to pretend to be something you are not. While these arguments may be valid in theory, they do not hold true in reality. In most cases, locals are not at all insulted when American servicemembers mimic their behavior, instead the locals generally respond with enthusiasm and cordiality. It is easy to understand, however, why many Americans might mistakenly think that mimicking local behavior is unnatural or inappropriate. For example, some commanders of U.S. forces in Iraq decided that their personnel should not grow moustaches, even though moustaches would have helped them blend in with the population. These commanders based their decision on the fact that locals were used to seeing clean shaven Americans and that it would appear unnatural for Americans to suddenly decide to grow moustaches. Indeed, from our perspective, wearing moustaches would feel strange, awkward, or even comical. However, if we imagine the same scenario in reverse, we can see why imitating local behavior is not unnatural at all. Most of us have seen a foreigner walking around in the United States wearing some kind of strange, foreign clothing, like a long robe or a turban. Such people immediately become the center of attention. These people often inspire emotional reactions as well. Some people laugh at the strange clothing, others may make derogatory comments, others simply stare in interest and amusement. Why would a foreigner decide to look so out of place by wearing such clothes in the United States? If you asked him, he might say it would be unnatural or ridiculous to try to imitate American dress. He might find it strange, awkward, or silly to try to wear jeans,

a tee shirt, and a baseball cap. If he wore these American clothes, the foreigner might even expect that others would look and stare. In fact, no one would even look twice at the foreigner wearing jeans and a baseball cap. While these clothes might seem very strange to the foreigner, to other Americans, he would simply be another face in the crowd. This same concept applies to the way Americans appear in a foreign country. While moustaches might seem unnatural from our perspective, they do not seem strange at all to Iraqi people. Local Iraqis would not say, “Oh, look at this American trying to imitate the way we look,” any more than we would comment on a foreigner wearing jeans. Imitation on all levels, in appearance, dress, gestures, customs, and speech patterns helps makes locals feel more relaxed and at home with American personnel. Therefore, it is important to overcome the forces of pride and embarrassment to attempt to observe local customs and courtesies, imitate local behaviors, and blend with their environment as much as possible. Conversely, it is important to remain aware of your surroundings and not overdo your efforts to blend with the populace. At some point the locals might indeed start thinking you are taking your efforts too far. In the end, all of your actions need to seem natural and genuine. If your local partners think you are trying to put on a show or manipulate them, they will not respond favorably. It is also important to realize that some cultures respond better to imitation than others. If you try to imitate your local partners and blend in with them and they look at you like you are crazy, you should probably choose a different approach.

Avoid Patronizing Behavior The most important factor in winning local support involves making an effort to show the locals that we do not consider ourselves superior to them simply because we are Americans. Americans can often unintentionally project a feeling of superiority over the locals. Often, when Americans believe they are being helpful or polite, they

are still “talking down” to local people. For example, in a news story describing what the American military was doing to train Iraqi forces. An American captain was gesturing and telling an Iraqi officer, “OK, here’s what I need you to do…” The captain probably didn’t even realize that he was insulting his counterpart. Many Americans might not even see what is wrong with saying something like “OK, here’s what I need you to do.” Americans are often used to this type of communication. American military officers, in particular, often speak in a commanding, authoritative, confident tone that projects authority and superiority. While some Americans, particularly American military personnel, are used to being ‘talked down to’ in this way, people in other cultures, particularly Middle Easterners, may find this type of attitude insulting. One of the things that makes it so difficult to identify what qualifies as ‘talking down to people’ is that sometimes the more one tries to help people, the more he is unintentionally talking down to them. By definition, whenever one offers help to someone, he is also suggesting that the person is somehow inadequate and therefore needs help. This means that trying to “help the local population” is not always the quickest way to establishing true partnership. It is also important to recognize, as we have mentioned, that some foreign cultures are particularly sensitive to issues involving pride and respect. Pride is of particular importance in many MiddleEastern cultures. Therefore, Middle Eastern locals and military leaders are particularly offended when Americans talk down to them, treat them like they are stupid, or offer help as one would offer help to an incompetent child. A common example of this problem is American military lower enlisted personnel failing to salute or show respect to host-nation officers and NCOs. Failure to respect host-nation leaders is one of the more glaring and harmful examples of military arrogance. Such arrogance can seriously offend host-nation forces. It is critical for American military personnel to show the same respect to a foreign military officer or NCO as they would to an American officer or NCO.

It is also important to remember that when locals are offended, they may not let any of their resentment show on the surface. Your partners might not resist you openly but they instead might simply maintain a mediocre effort to comply with your demands and nod their heads when you talk to them. However, under the surface they may resent you and just be waiting for the moment that you leave so they can go back to doing things the way they used to. This is not a path to mutual respect and true partnership. Avoiding “talking down” to local nationals is actually very easy to do. The solution is to treat partnered local units as equals, even if their actual capabilities are inferior. If a commander inspects local troops, he should inspect US troops as well. If American leader gives classes to local personnel, local leaders should give classes to American personnel as well, covering topics such as the local environment, cultural issues, enemy analysis, local TTPs etc. American leaders should approach their local counterparts not as novices to be mentored but as competent equals. Americans should aim to learn as much from the locals as the locals learn from Americans.

An Approach that Advances Intangible Objectives Given these three imperatives of local interaction (treating the locals as human beings, imitating local behavior, and avoiding patronizing attitudes) the next goal is to find a way to encourage these practices and behaviors in real-world operations. The aim must be to establish a tangible approach or specific TTPs that will naturally encourage the desired behavior without any explicit instruction or interference. What follows is a general guide for establishing tactical and operational practices that naturally enforce the intangible factors just described. If a unit implements this system and set of practices it will already be halfway down the road to achieving the intangible goals that are so essential to local partnership.

Partnership at All Levels

When you ask an American about their partnership with local military forces, they will often answer, “We have a great relationship with that unit. Our company commander meets with their company commander every day and our PLs spend a lot of time with their fellow officers.” This may be the case, but all too often, good partnership exists at the higher levels of leadership but does not exist between lower ranking personnel. In order for partnership to be truly effective, US privates must pair up with local privates. US team leaders must partner with local team leaders, squad leaders with squad leaders, and so on. The best way to accomplish this is to actually mix your units down to the fireteam level. On a mounted patrol, each vehicle should carry a mix of US and local personnel. Essentially, a private’s “battle buddy” will be a foreign soldier and he will keep that battle buddy as long as possible. There must be no distinction between US personnel and local personnel. They should ride in the same vehicles and live in the same areas. While many people expect this technique to be dangerous or undesirable, it has almost always turned out to be dramatically effective. US Marine units have adopted this technique in Iraq and have achieved great success with their partnered Iraqi units. According to combat reports, while almost every unit has been initially opposed to this technique, no unit that has actually adopted the technique has had anything but positive things to say about it. It is very effective.

Planning Operations and TOC Operations Every part of an operation should be combined. US forces and local forces must cooperate at all levels to plan, execute and assess operations. You should have a combined TOC at both the company and battalion levels. Your planning bay should also be combined. You can place an interpreter in each one of these rooms and whenever anything changes, you can call “attention in the TOC” and let the interpreter ensure that both sides understand what is going on.

The only thing that should be segregated is your S2. There should be a US S2 section and a local S2 section. Each should have their own private room. US forces must not be allowed into the local S2 section just as locals must not be allowed into the US S2 section. As much as possible, all meetings, planning sessions and briefings should be for both US and local forces. Of course, there are a few events that must be for US forces only due to sensitive information. However, a good rule of thumb is to integrate US forces and local forces into all events unless there is a specific and important reason not to do so. Command and control must be separate to a certain degree as well. There must be an English speaking radio frequency and a separate local radio freq. There can also be two different phone lines. On this surface, this may seem to be a command and control nightmare, but in reality it is very easy. In every unit TOC, from the company level up, set up both US and local radios nets as well as US and local phones. Place an interpreter in every TOC to ensure that US and local forces stay on the same page and pass information back and forth.

Learn From the Locals Too One of the best parts about total partnership is that we can learn as much from the local forces as they can learn from us. While we may have a lot to teach about tactics and modern technology, the local forces know a great deal about their own terrain, culture and communities. Local forces have street smarts and they can sometimes do certain things a lot better than Americans can, especially when it comes to gathering intelligence. While conducting operations in a combined TOC, US forces received a report regarding a known local terrorists. US S2 located the terrorist’s target packet and brought his picture into the combined TOC. Some of the Iraqi’s in the TOC immediately identified the individual and knew exactly where he was. US and Iraqi forces were able to detain that individual on the same day. Another unit that doesn’t use total partnership might have been able to get the same

information from the Iraqis, but it would have taken much longer and there would have been less opportunity for immediate feedback and two-way communication.

Training Local Forces The best way to train a local unit is to immediately jump into the hands-on portion of the training. Do not to sit down and start giving them a PowerPoint or butcher block presentation. Such presentations are notoriously boring for US personnel. Locals, who are even less accustomed to technology, the classroom environment and US culture, will find such presentations very confusing. Remember, many of these people are not used to sitting down in a classroom and reading the blackboard like American students. The best way to approach training is to jump right into hands on activities or even actual operations. Let the locals show you what they can do. That way you will know what is not broken and what doesn’t need fixing. Focus your training on solving the actual problems the local unit runs into in the field. When you take this “learn by doing” approach, chances are that the local soldiers will ask you questions. That is what you are aiming for, to teach by answering questions that the local units pose, while conducting hands on activities. A local unit should never be asking “why are we doing this?” If you rigidly pick subjects from a field manual, locals might be very confused about what they are doing, even if they give the appearance of understanding or being interested. That type of rigid classroom learning does not make sense to many local cultures. Instead of training on random, canned, subjects, conduct good AARs with your local unit and use that AAR to drive training. This allows local units to understand why they are training on a given subject and it will help them see the tangible results of their progress. This in turn will improve their morale and desire to train and get better. Many units that have not achieved total partnership complain that local forces immediately return to their bad habits once US forces leave. Apparently, units that achieve total partnership have no

such complaints. When you train, live, eat and sleep with your local unit, the things you teach them stick and your habits rub off on them, both good and bad. Also remember to approach the partnered relationship not as an arrogant, all knowing, all powerful teacher. Instead, look at your partnered unit as an equal. Understand that you have as much to learn from them as they have to learn from you. Not only will this help you to learn about your AO, but it will also have an overwhelmingly positive effect on your relationship with your partnered local unit. The local army is expecting you to look down on them. If instead you show them respect and treat them as equals, they will be very grateful and will serve you with great dedication.

Avoid Segregation It is also important to realize that segregation of any kind is extremely offensive to local units. Also, just because the local units are not complaining, does not mean they are not offended. In many cultures, people are still polite even when they are angry and will make an effort to show respect on the surface even if they don’t feel it in their hearts. This can often be the case when local units partner with American units. While the locals might appear to be happy and respectful on the surface, they might secretly resent their arrogant American counterparts. Therefore, regardless of what the locals say, it is very important to not have any kind of segregation between US and local forces. Any kind of segregation has been proven to be very offensive to the locals. US forces and local forces should sleep in the same areas and use the same bathrooms. Eating the same food can sometimes cause serious health side effects for US personnel. However, occasionally eating with your local counterparts will give them a great morale boost. Also, hold US and local personnel to the same standard. If you inspect local forces, inspect US forces too. Don’t make it appear as if you are giving them extra help because they are incompetent.

It is natural for US leaders to be initially very wary of this type of partnership. The most serious concern would be security issues involved with complete integration. However, when examined more closely, you really won’t be doing anything you are not already doing. Local nationals (sometimes hostile ones) already ride in your vehicles and local national interpreters and workers already frequent most locations on your base. While there is always the chance that local forces might turn on you, this has been the exception to the rule and the numerous benefits of total partnership far outweigh the risks.

Fundamental Principles of Effective Training There are certain fundamental principles that apply to all types of training in all situations. It is important to understand and internalize these principles and then try to incorporate them into training activities at every opportunity. After establishing a baseline of fundamentals, the next step is to examine and adapt to the special considerations of the unique situation, in this case, the training of local forces in small wars.

The Four Pillars of Effective Training The four pillars of an effective training program are proper mindset, situational awareness, skill proficiency and physical fitness. These four pillars might seem overly simple or intuitive. However, a deeper understanding of the true nature and interrelation of each of these concepts will highlight their importance. Proper Mindset - Proper mindset is the most critical of the four pillars. In the simplest terms, military professionals with the proper mindset devote a large volume of time and energy to training for combat and preparing for the worst-case scenario. Combat skills like marksmanship, battlefield communications and tactical medical care decline quickly if units fail to practice them every day. Having the proper mindset means being tough, determined, never cutting corners and taking every precaution to ensure mission success. Units with the proper mindset set aside time every day to train and maintain

weapon systems and personal equipment. In a combat situation, having the proper mindset means being prepared to employ lethal force without hesitation and never quitting during the fight regardless of fear or pain. While it is clear that developing the proper mindset is a critical training objective, the precise methods for how to develop the proper mindset are less clear. In the ideal scenario, the proper mindset grows from within, resulting in internally driven, self-motivated individuals. Some units have the luxury of screening for individuals who already possess this drive and self-motivation. Other units possess gifted and inspirational leaders who can build and foster the same self-motivation within their subordinates. In other cases, well designed training programs and skilled instructors can craft training in a way that enhances the proper mindset and increases each trainee’s level of self-motivation. However, if achieving self-motivation appears difficult or impossible, there are other ways to attempt to improve the mindset of a unit through external motivation and discipline. In some cases, motivation and proper mindset must be hammered into trainees through rigid discipline, rewards and punishments. However, it is important to remember that if rigid discipline is a subordinate’s only motivation to do the right thing, it is likely that he will falter if challenged to act independently while not under the direct control of superiors. In other cases, building a team culture that promotes unit pride, camaraderie and even bravado can foster a mindset that will reduce the chances that units will cower in battle. While on the surface bravado may seem hollow, even false bravado has proven almost as effective as real courage in combat situations, since no one wants to appear cowardly in front of his comrades. Essentially, units that are not blessed with inspirational leaders or self-motivation, must find a way to artificially generate and enforce the proper mindset as much as possible. Situational Awareness - Lack of situational awareness is one of the leading causes of failure or death in combat. In modern society, most

people’s situational awareness is very low. They generally spend their day wrapped up in their own thoughts and problems, paying little attention to what is going on around them. People who live in relatively secure environments often fall into even deeper levels of complacency and unpreparedness. Leaders of combat units must strive to reverse this trend of complacency. Military professionals may have grown up in relatively safe environments but to survive in the combat zone, they must nurture their innate survival instincts. People with the proper mindset described earlier understand the importance of situational awareness and make disciplined efforts to cultivate it. Situational awareness begins with awareness of the threat and awareness that the worst-case scenario is always a possibility. Situational awareness also involves keeping up to date with intelligence reports, studying enemy tactics and developing a deep regional and cultural expertise on the theater of operations. Situational awareness calls for an effort to remain alert at all times without being paranoid. The core attribute of situational awareness has many indirect applications as well. Situational awareness includes being aware of faults or dysfunction within a unit and understanding friendly and enemy strengths and weaknesses. It also entails recognizing if training or reform efforts are proving effective or ineffective. Situational awareness also helps predict and identify unintended outcomes of decisions and combat actions, including second and third-order effects. Skill Proficiency - After cultivating the proper mindset and maintaining good situational awareness, the next step is to develop the proper skills or “tools” required to prevail in a real combat situation. When striving to improve skill proficiency it is important to choose the best techniques that are simple, effective, easy to perform and can realistically apply to a real-life scenario. After identifying the best techniques, the next step is to practice and rehearse them repeatedly until they become second nature. This will

maximize the chances of rapid and appropriate response in a highstress situation. Skill proficiency does not apply just to the individual. Just as an infantryman can practice changing magazines or setting up a machinegun, planning staffs can practice designing and briefing operational concepts. Intelligence analysts can practice their language skills and broaden their knowledge about threats and theaters of war. Leaders can work to improve their charisma and the interpersonal skills required to inspire and lead troops. Every military profession includes a set of skills that are essential for achieving success and it is the job of a true professional to devote tireless effort to mastering those skills. Physical Fitness - Even skilled fighters with the proper mindset and high levels of situational awareness can lose a fight simply because they run out of energy. In order to maintain adequate levels of combat fitness, it is not necessary to achieve the same fitness level as a professional or Olympic athlete. Rather, the key is merely to stay healthy, maintain a decent level of cardiovascular endurance, running speed, functional strength and coordination. Popular commercial fitness programs don’t always focus on the most useful abilities needed for combat. For example, many people jog but how many also run sprints to build speed? Simply being able to run fast without falling is one of the most critical survival skills in a gunfight or emergency situation, yet most people rarely practice sprinting. Physical fitness is not just about running fast or lifting heavy weights. Physical fitness provides the capacity to train. The previous pillar, skill proficiency, demands a certain volume of work. Trainees who do not have the endurance or physical ability to achieve the adequate volume will not progress. This principle applies to any kind of training. If it takes 4 hours of daily practice to improve at the violin, a student must first develop the finger strength to play for four hours. Physical fitness is also important for moral or psychological reasons. Units with high standards for physical fitness, that take pride in maintaining their health and physical professionalism, typically prove more cohesive and effective than units with lower standards. In

conventional units, the same can even apply to neatness of dress and military bearing. An inward focus and outward display of professionalism has a positive psychological effect on the unit as a whole. Taking pride in physical fitness and a healthy lifestyle is a key goal for a professional military unit. Conversely, it is possible for units to get too focused on physical fitness and neglect other critical aspects of the military profession. While physical fitness is essential, it is not necessarily the most important attribute for every profession. For example, while it is helpful for tank gunners to be fit, it is more important for them to be able to shoot accurately and destroy enemy tanks on the battlefield. It is also important not to discount the potential contributions of military professionals who are less fit. For example, if an intelligence analyst is less physically fit, that might not be ideal, but it does not affect his ability to do brilliant analytical work. The best units find a balance, encouraging all unit members to strive for excellent fitness, regardless of their profession, while recognizing that other attributes besides fitness are important too.

Mastering the Basics In combat, the unexpected is inevitable. In the U.S. military, unexpected bad luck is sometimes referred to as “Murphy.” When a poorly-trained unit is engaged in combat and Murphy shows up, it can only devote 10-percent of its attention to Murphy because the remaining 90-percent is consumed by basic tasks like how to change magazines, how to select covered and concealed firing positions and how to call for indirect fire. Essentially, in a high-stress situation, a poorly-trained unit immediately becomes inwardly focused on process instead of outwardly focused on the problem and the enemy. Such a unit won’t last long against an elite opponent and must be lucky to win. The main thing that sets an elite-unit apart is the fact that it can focus almost all of its attention on Murphy because the basics are taking care of themselves. An elite unit has mastered the basics to the point that they are automatic and second nature. This allows

for outward focus on the problem and the enemy. It also allows for learning and improvement in the higher-level combat arts. Developing “game-sense” and the capacity for pattern recognition first requires that someone is able to see the pattern. If someone spends every battle focused on fumbling through magazine changes, he is missing the learning opportunity for how to maneuver and fight. Many scholars have conducted studies showing that achieving this level of skill or “expertise” requires something approaching 20 years of experience. This is simply not true. The fact is that all of us achieve expertise in various skills in a far shorter time. Most of us, for example, are experts in driving a car. If a deer jumps in front of us on the highway our foot goes to the break and or our hands manipulate the wheel before we even know what we are doing. If the deer jumps from the right, we turn the wheel left. If the deer jumps from the left, we turn the wheel right. Thus, our action is not just a spontaneous conditioned response that happens the same way every time. Rather, it is a spontaneous creative action that can be different every time depending on the situation. Without this spontaneous creative action, we have to consciously think about what we are doing and we will hit the deer. When we are learning to drive, we pass through four stages: unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence and unconscious competence. These are known as Noel Burch’s four stages of learning. Military units pass through the same stages on the road to mastery. First is unconscious incompetence where we don’t know what we don’t know. This compares to the young child who is certain he could drive a car if only given the chance. Understandably this stage is the most dangerous and can result in the most unpleasant surprises. The second stage is conscious incompetence. This is where we at least know what we don't know. This is the stage where we might have jerked around a parking lot with our parents, unable to make the car do what we wanted it to. However, after continued practice, our parents agreed we had reached the level of conscious competence and for the first time they tell us we can drive into town by ourselves. Our hearts raced as we walked out to the car. Then we

carefully drove into town, having to maintain unbroken concentration on the task at hand. This is conscious competence. Finally, many of us today can drive while talking on the phone, fiddling with the radio, eating or doing any other number of things. If a deer jumps in front of our car while we are changing the station, we will still react spontaneously and unconsciously. This unconscious competence is just another word for the spontaneous creative action mentioned before. The distinction between these two concepts is absolutely critical for effective training. Once again, what sets spontaneous creative action apart from just simple conditioned response is that it can adapt to changing circumstances. A pianist can train to play the same song, the same way every time with no conscious thought. However, if asked to change the song in certain places, the pianist will certainly have difficulty since he will always instinctively revert back to playing the piece in the rehearsed way. Training for conditioned response, means an action or task will be performed exactly the same way every time. On a number of occasions, conditioned response has proven extremely dangerous. On one occasion a police officer and martial arts practitioner swiftly grabbed a gun from an assailant and then gave it right back. Luckily, the officer’s partner arrived in time to resolve the situation. Why did the officer give the gun back to the assailant? Because that’s how he had practiced the movement in the dojo countless times, giving the gun back to his opponent after each repetition. Given this example, conditioned response is obviously not the goal. However, how do we teach ourselves to adapt and act creatively faster than we can think? While it is possible to achieve mastery of a simple skill like driving a car merely by driving every day, mastering more complex combat skills with more variables requires a slightly more refined process. In truth, drivers actually go through this process when learning to drive without even realizing it.

Repetitive Drill

The path to mastery proceeds through three steps: repetitive drill, variable patterns and competitive scenarios. If trainees skip any one of these steps or fail to achieve mastery in one phase before proceeding to the next, they will most likely fail in combat. The first phase, repetitive drill, allows the trainee to encode certain movements or processes in the brain so they become instinctive or second nature. In order for drills to be useful, they first must be the right size. Drills that are too big restrict adaptability. Drills that are too small reduce speed. For example, some of the U.S. Army’s battle drills are likely too big because they apply a rigid formula to a rather complex action, such as engaging an enemy force and maneuvering for a flank assault. To better understand this concept, consider an analogy. A house-builder goes to a lumberyard and asks for materials to build a house. The lumber merchant offers the builder a variety of prefabricated house parts such as an exterior wall that is 20-feet by 10feet. The builder says these pre-fabricated parts do not necessarily match his vision for the house. What if he wants his wall to be 25-feet by 10-feet? He asks the lumber merchant for materials that offer more flexibility. The merchant turns and points to the forest outside, assuring the builder that he can cut the trees in any size he wants to build whatever he wants. The builder is still frustrated, asking if there isn’t some “happy medium” that allows for flexible design without the burden of chopping down trees. In fact, the kind of lumber typically sold in stores fits this description exactly. Over the years, people realized that there were certain cuts of lumber like 2x4s and 4x4s that could be prefabricated but then combined and arranged in infinite combinations. These cuts of wood are not too big and not too small. They are just right to allow for maximum convenience (speed) while providing complete flexibility. A drill must fit this same description. A good rule of thumb for determining the size of a drill is that it should be something that always needs to be done the same way. For example, barring debilitating physical injury, we always change our magazine in the same way. There is no creative way to change

magazines and there would be no benefit to doing it different ways each time. In small-unit tactics, while a complex battle drill involving multiple maneuvering elements is too big, a simple immediate action drill is just the right size. In such a drill, a small unit will seek cover, return fire, come on-line and report the distance, direction and description of the enemy contact. This is a drill that can be performed the same way every time and must happen so fast that there will be no benefit to variation. Whether a drill is for an individual or for a unit, the method of drill training remains the same. The key is maximum number of repetitions. If a unit only practices a drill one-hundred times, it will have little hope of instinctively executing the drill in a high-stress combat situation. While some scholars suggest there is a magic number to achieve mastery, the better solution is simply to continue repetition and test for mastery. It will usually take several thousand repetitions over the course of several sleep cycles because the motor cortex encodes motor programs during sleep. It is easier to conceptualize this drill mastery process if we follow the following steps… 1- Perform the drill slowly, focusing on details and ensuring that form is correct and that there are no mistakes. 2- Increase speed and use a time standard (stopwatch) to push for faster and faster times. 3- Incorporate distraction in the form of a blindfold, darkness or noise etc. and continue practicing until the drill can be performed with distraction almost as fast as it can be performed without distraction. 4- Test for internalization by forcing trainees to execute the drill without warning or while the conscious mind is occupied with something else. Any hesitation or stuttering means mastery has not been achieved. The trainee must be able to react instantaneously and seamlessly. Once a drill is mastered it can sometimes be useful to move on to other drills that overlap or interfere with the encoded behavior.

A good trainer has generally developed a sequence of drills that the student will practice in sequence. Very often it is useful to ensure a student fully masters one drill before proceeding to the next. This maximizes the interference effect caused by learning the next drill if the two drills overlap at certain points. This would be akin to telling a piano player to learn to play a song flawlessly, then changing certain parts of the song and challenging the player to be able to instantly transition between both versions. This helps break down rigid, conditioned response and foster a more flexible spontaneous creative action.

Variable Patterns The real transition to spontaneous creative action comes in the next step: variable patterns. This forces the trainee to put drills together in different combinations. The drills are the building blocks, the metaphorical 2x4s and 4x4s of combat training. Variable patterns are about learning to nail those pieces of wood together in different combinations. For example, in training someone to shoot, a variable pattern might look like this… 1- Sprint to the first barrier and fire two shots from the kneeling position to the left 100m target and two shots to the right 100m target. 2- Switch to the prone position and fire four shots to the 200m target. 3- Combat reload and sprint to the first window, fire two shots from the standing position at each of three steel targets. 4- Transition to the pistol, sprint to the next window and fire from the standing position to knock down four “pepper-popper” targets. The trainee (or the whole unit) will run through this pattern over and over, timing each iteration and competing for a faster time. Then the instructor will change the pattern. There are some patterns with proven value (like the El-Presidente Drill) that may be practiced over and over in multiple training sessions. These “pre-packaged”

combinations are good for use as a performance benchmark over time and save the instructor the time of having to explain every drill. Variable patterns do not only apply to tactical shooting. In fact, based on the reality of most combat, fancy tactical shooting is generally more useful for specialized units. The same variable pattern principle can be used to train all basic combat-arms skills. One example is the “immediate action drill,” already mentioned where a unit takes cover, returns fire, comes on-line and reports. That is a drill. To incorporate this drill into a variable pattern, a small-unit leader might walk his element in formation through the woods and randomly call out, “Contact left! Contact front! Contact rear!” The element will practice this immediate action over and over for hours every day. Then the leader might incorporate things like bounding, indirect fire and machinegun employment to form different patterns. Another useful thing about the variable patterns is that they force trainees to react to their environment. For example, practicing the kind of four-way react to contact drill described above really starts becoming useful when it is performed on various types of terrain. A common novice mistake is to fail to find covered and concealed firing positions. Inexperienced personnel performing the drill will find themselves lying in the open or hiding behind one-inch thick trees that would never protect them in combat. Pattern training teaches the mind to be always “switched-on” and subconsciously looking for the next covered and concealed position. When units practice reacting to contact from all directions while moving through the woods and varied terrain, they eventually learn to find good covered and concealed firing positions without thinking.

Competitive Scenarios Repetitive drills and variable patters are only of marginal value if the trainees do not have the opportunity to engage in real, free-play competition. While variable patterns in particular help break rigidity and improve spontaneity, the true test of spontaneous creative action is being able to react to a living, thinking opponent.

Scripted scenarios are not nearly as useful as free-play scenarios. It is possible to succeed in a scripted scenario by following a rigid checklist or sequence of procedures. Learning to place faith in a procedural approach can be catastrophic in combat. To understand the importance of competition it is useful to tell a story. During a debate between military officers, some of the officers claimed that checklists and rigid processes were useful in combat while others claimed they were not. The anti-checklist group claimed that checklists could not work in an environment with many changing variables. The pro-checklist group retorted by providing an example of a pilot who used a checklist to land a plane in a raging storm. Certainly, the pilot had to deal with a myriad of changing variables, but the checklist brought him down safely. In truth, both groups completely missed the true nature of the problem of combat. What makes checklists problematic is not the presence of variables but rather the competitive nature of combat. There is a big difference between combat and landing a plane in a storm. When the pilot compensates for a crosswind by using the rudder, the wind doesn’t respond by thinking, “he’s pushing his rudder to the left…I’m going to switch direction to flip him over and smash him into the ground.” The biggest problem in combat is not random variables but rather a living, thinking opponent who is consciously trying to subvert friendly actions and destroy friendly forces. It is impossible to use a checklist to win a chess game or any other game. The best chess players have played so many games against so many opponents that they develop an uncanny ability for pattern recognition. A chess master can see many moves ahead and can even read a new opponent’s intentions based on behavior cues. Great competitors have a real “game sense” that comes only from repeated exposure to real life opponents. It is impossible to develop game sense by running through scripted scenarios, no matter how realistic or varied they are. In addition to being free-play competitions, scenarios should be as realistic as possible. The closer a scenario comes to the real thing, the better prepared units will be when they engage in real combat. It is also important to remember that number of iterations is

particularly important in scenario training, as it is in the preceding phases as well. Some military units might conduct one or two realistic free-play scenarios per year. This is obviously inadequate. Using the training methods and techniques discussed later in this section, it is possible to do two or more scenarios each day let alone each year. Another common error is that some units run scenarios before they have mastered drills and variable patterns. Even a well-crafted scenario will prove less useful for a unit that has not mastered the basics to the point they are second nature and practiced performing those basic tasks in different patterns and combinations. This would be like telling someone who had never boxed before to get into the ring with a champion. All the novice would learn would be how to get pounded. Even worse, the experience might teach the novice to expect to lose, reduce confidence and encourage timidity or caution in future engagements. It is best to send trainees into a scenario armed with enough tools to give them a fighting chance.

Prioritization and Tracking Whatever system a unit chooses to use, the important part is that units up and down the chain of command maintain good communication, align their priorities and focus training on the highest priority areas first, based on intelligence and enemy pattern analysis. In addition to prioritization, tracking training and sustainment is critical. Each unit should have a training matrix showing the last time it conducted any given drill, pattern or type of exercise. For example, a simple drill such as assembly/disassembly of a machinegun is a drill every individual in a unit should master. The unit standard must be completion of the task in a given par time while blindfolded. The matrix should show and confirm that everyone in the unit has practiced numerous times and met the standard. The matrix should also show each individual’s best times in each drill or event. For larger exercises and competitive scenarios, each one should produce a detailed after-action review (AAR). Those AARs should be analyzed, disseminated and compiled in frequently updated “living documents” that can be used to drive training and evaluate

readiness. Most importantly, AAR comments and insights should be shared between units both horizontally and vertically. Not only will this help improve training but it will also create a habit of sharing lessons learned that will carry over onto the battlefield.

Common Indicators of Poor Training How many actual repetitions or iterations does each trainee perform? Whatever the training task might be, from assembling a machinegun, calling for indirect fire or leading a patrol, how many times does each trainee get to run through the process? Running through once or twice is entirely useless. For some physical activities even one hundred iterations are of limited value. If training does not focus on letting trainees actually do the task over and over it is not good training. Does the unit conduct after action reviews and disseminate the results? Trainees and instructors should both constantly evaluate their performance and record lessons-learned to improve for next time. Leaders should be able to walk up to any instructor or student and ask to see the AAR from the previous day’s training. If no one can produce the AAR there is a potential dysfunction. More importantly, units should share AAR results up the chain, down the chain and with their fellow units to the left and right. It is the sharing of AAR results that is the best indicator that they are not thoughtlessly or hastily compiled. In some cases, a unit will conduct or record an AAR simply because it is a requirement but put little thought or effort into it and never take the time to study or review the AAR later on. A unit would not bother to share such an AAR, so the fact that a unit shares an AAR is also an indicator that the AAR was well done. Do instructors know their trainees? Instructors should be able to articulate who are the good trainees in the class and who are the weak trainees. More importantly, the instructor should be able to cite from memory the particular strengths and weaknesses of each trainee. If the instructor cannot cite this information from memory it

should be physically written down somewhere in an organized format. Great instructors go as far as bringing home tapes of trainees and watching them over and over, taking notes on what to help each student with the next day. Does training focus on combat, adaptability and worst-case scenarios? If instructors spend many hours teaching patrolling, going through how to move in the woods, how to set up an objective rally point or how to send out a recon, the training is almost useless if they do not spend at least equal time practicing what happens if the unit gets attacked during any one of those processes. The whole reason there is a specific way to recon and set up an objective rally point is to protect the unit from attack. Thus, once trainees know the mechanics or drills of patrolling, the next step is to make them respond to attacks from any direction at any point in the patrol. What happens if the recon gets hit on the way back to the objective rally point? What happens if the recon takes casualties? What happens if the objective rally point takes indirect fire while the main element is on the objective? If training does not focus on these kinds of scenarios, with unexpected variables, over and over a unit will likely panic when it must deal with these problems for the first time. Does training incorporate a living and thinking opponent? If the good guys always win and the OPFOR moves are scripted, the training is only of limited value. Training must at the very least include free-play force-on-force scenarios where the OPFOR can win. Are scenarios predictable? A common example of this is a unit practicing a react to contact drill many times but only with an enemy attack from the front. Good training will include attacks from the right, left, rear and multiple directions simultaneously or sequentially. Scenarios must always incorporate stress and new, unexpected variables. Are trainees held accountable for mistakes? In an effective training evolution, instructors will point out numerous mistakes on each iteration, write them down and force students to repeat the

drills, patterns or scenarios over and over again until the mistakes are corrected. A course where the instructor simply pats trainees on the back and moves on to the next exercise is either much too easy or poorly executed. Are trainees ever sitting around during training? Trainees should never be idle during training. Even if they are waiting for their turn to perform an activity, they should be practicing something, going over notes, quizzing each other etc. Instructors should be on top of the trainees all the time, correcting anyone who is not focused on training, quizzing trainees unexpectedly and punishing them for incorrect answers. Obviously, in more elite units punishments might not be needed. Can students fail the course? If no one fails the course, it is obviously not very difficult is therefore of limited value. If instructors claim that the purpose of the course is simply to pass on knowledge that is an irrational excuse. How do instructors know the knowledge is passed on if they do not conduct challenging evaluations? If no one fails those evaluations they are not hard enough. In elite units those who fail can be cut. In conventional units those who fail should be retrained or recycled in the course. Attrition in any course should be at least 20-percent. This does not necessarily mean that students need to "fail" the course and not graduate. Rather, students should simply fail to meet course standards at least 20-percent of the time, "training at the edge of failure." Retraining or recycling through training is always an option when students fail to meet course standards. Do instructors emphasize sustainment? If instructors do not have a specific and detailed plan for how students are going to sustain the skills gained in a course, and if they do not pass that plan on to students, the course is of limited value. Leaders should be able to ask any instructor or any student what the plan is for sustaining the knowledge gained in the course. If there is no specific and detailed answer to this question there is a potential dysfunction.

Do instructors have written course materials and do they provide materials to the students? Except in some very rare cases where secrecy is an issue, instructors should have many professional manuals and references to support training. Instructors should also provide trainees with take-home materials to aid in retention and sustainment of the topics covered. If there is no written documentation to back up the lessons of the course, it is difficult to standardize or maintain combat capabilities. Are trainees falling asleep? Even if trainees are not literally falling asleep, if the instructor is talking and not even aware that no one is listening, the training is probably of limited value. Any course that calls for an instructor to just talk at students for long hours without any kind of engagement, feedback or practical exercise is rarely effective. Are trainees asking questions? This is one of the best indicators of course effectiveness. If students are not asking questions, instructors must assume the training is not engaging the students’ minds and must take action to get the students more involved in the learning process. What is the quality and background of the instructors? At a minimum, instructors must be highly skilled and be able to demonstrate mastery of the subject matter they are teaching. Ideally, instructors should also possess personal experience in real-world combat scenarios. Not only will a skilled instructor do a better job of planning and conducting training, but high levels of experience and professionalism also motivate students to take training seriously and give maximum effort.

Special Considerations for Training Locals While the fundamentals above provide a baseline for effective training, it is usually necessary to apply these fundamentals in different ways and tailor your training plans to the specific requirements of the local forces you are working with. Every local security force is different and there are no fixed rules or formulas for

how to train local forces. However, what follows are some common patterns that are worth considering.

Operational Security Concerns In small wars, the lines often blur between the insurgents and the security forces. In some cases, the insurgents will have infiltrated the security forces. In other cases, specific security force units might openly support the insurgency. It is also not uncommon for individuals and units to switch sides periodically depending on the situation. For all these reasons, you must be especially cautious about what training you provide to the locals. As restricting as it might be, a general rule of thumb is that you should train local forces assuming that anything you teach them will get back to the enemy. There might be an insurgent infiltrator in the unit you are training who will report back everything you teach to the other side. Disturbingly, in some cases the insurgents may prove more dedicated in practicing what you teach than your own partnered forces. The solution is to keep your training topics and techniques relatively basic. You should not necessarily train partnered forces in U.S. tactics and doctrine. In some cases you will need to use or develop a simplified doctrine especially for the local force. Most importantly, you should not provide local forces with any sensitive or specialized training that insurgents might be able to use against American forces. This can present a particular challenge when training local special operations forces. While these units need more advanced training, it is not possible to vet them to the degree that ensures they will not pass special operations tactics to the enemy. In some cases, international terrorist groups might infiltrate local security forces as well. This scenario is even more dangerous. These infiltrators will not just bring your teachings back to local insurgents but will pass those teachings on to fanatical terrorist groups that could initiate attacks against innocent civilians in your home country. This is all the more reason to be especially careful about what training you provide to local security forces.

Skill and Education Level Some local forces might be extremely skilled and educated. However, in other cases they may be significantly behind the typical American unit. You should remain aware of this and accurately assess the skill level of your partnered unit before providing training that is too advanced and potentially dangerous. A typical example relates to weapons safety. Many local forces do not have a baseline of weapons safety training which can dramatically increase the risk of accidental death or injury in more advanced live-fire training activities. In these cases, you might need to review weapons safety rules and/or impose more safety controls when conducting training. Partner skill level also applies to the general complexity of what you teach them. If a local unit is less experienced and skilled, they simply might not be able to follow or master more complex procedures and tactics. They may grow confused and fail to perform well. This will frequently lead to embarrassment or humiliation, which in turn can cause them to lose interest in training or resent their trainers. When possible, try to prevent your partnered forces from failing too often. Build their confidence and make sure that training is a positive and rewarding experience for them if possible. Level of education is another important factor that can affect your training efforts. If you are used to training more educated personnel, you may have to adjust your techniques when dealing with a less educated audience. For example, handing out manuals or writing on a chalkboard is not useful when your trainees are illiterate. Trainees might also have limited language skills or limited knowledge of military terminology. Even if interpreters translate your instructions correctly, the students might not understand and will likely not admit their misunderstanding for fear of embarrassment. It is also important to remember that just because trainees have limited military skills, experience and education level, that does not mean they are stupid. Your trainees might be exceptionally capable in other areas such as street smarts or wilderness survival. Make sure to identify your trainees’ strengths as well and attempt to capitalize on them as much as possible. Also try to point out and

praise your partnered force’s strengths whenever possible. This will boost their confidence and help offset some of their discouragement with mastering other skills.

Corruption In some local forces, the level of corruption might be much higher than what you are used to. It might not be uncommon for locals to steal equipment and supplies to sell on the black market. It is also common for leaders to pad their rosters with “ghost” personnel who do not exist but collect pay that the leaders will keep for themselves. When asked about these ghosts the leaders will typically make excuses that those individuals are on vacation or dealing with a family emergency. While it may be important to reduce the level of corruption, you may also have to accept that corruption is an unavoidable component of the way the local security force has operated for centuries. In some cases, cracking down on corruption too quickly will render the force completely ineffective by removing sources of motivation for key leaders and causing these leaders to turn their back on you. Until corrupt leaders can be reformed or replaced you may have to overlook some level of corruption to keep the military machine running and ensuring that local leaders want to cooperate with you. It is also important to realize that your efforts to reform the local society and improve the lives of the local people might not align with the interests of the military leaders and politicians you are working with. They may pay lip service to these goals and ideals when in reality, they are quite pleased with the existing, broken system because they are able to use it for their personal benefit. The overall good of the country, the wellbeing of the locals and U.S. or regional interests may not be important to local leaders and elites. Therefore, if your reform efforts are not making progress, it may be because those in power are not actually interested in reform. This is a problem that must be addressed at the strategic or political level

but it can cause serious challenges for units on the ground. In these cases, you must simply make the best of a bad situation.

Different Tactics and Methods In some cases, challenges will not come from the local force’s skill level but will result from differences in the way the local forces operate and the way your forces operate. A common mistake is for U.S. leaders to simply assert that the “American way” of doing things is the best and that the local force should adopt American methods. This might be true in some cases but the problem with this argument is that in most cases, American leaders do not know foreign tactics and methods. How can one assert that his own way is better if he does not even know how the local force operates? For this reason, it is better not to dismiss local methods. In some cases, the locals operate in a certain way for a logical reason. For example, American forces typically keep their weapons on safe when entering a room in urban warfare. This is easy when using an M4 assault rifle or similar weapon. However, if your partnered force uses the AK-47, the safety on the AK-47 is not nearly as easy to manipulate while moving and shooting, so entering a room with the AK-47 on safe might not be feasible. Local forces also might have been trained by foreign countries and they may have well-established doctrine and tactical models based on British, French, Russian or other tactical systems. These systems are different from U.S. doctrine but they are not “wrong”, and it can take much longer to untrain a local unit in one doctrine and re-train them in another doctrine, especially when the weapons, equipment, maps, manuals, forms and computer programs they are using are designed to operate with the existing doctrinal approach. In these cases, it is beneficial to try to understand the way a local force currently operates and change as little as possible. Essentially, if it is not broken, don’t fix it.

Conclusion No book could hope to provide a comprehensive guide to fighting and winning small wars. This book has left out many critical topics and covered others in insufficient depth. However, our hope is that book provides a general framework and series of concepts or ideas that will inspire creative thinking about small war tactics. We also hope that this book may serve as a point of departure for military professionals who may then go on to study small war topics in greater detail. While at the time of this writing, the world is going through another transition towards great-power competition and conventional conflict, small wars are not going away. Not only might we return to another era of small wars in the future, but the current evolution of “hybrid warfare” means that small wars and big wars might take place concurrently, with the lines blurring between the two. This is all the more reason to capture the lessons learned from many decades of waging small war and be prepared to apply these lessons in new, creative ways to confront the challenges yet to come.