QUOTE: Like the Aztecs, the Inca practiced human sacrifice and lacked a written language; however, the Inca made up for language shortcomings with advanced architecture and a complex government. To ex-ecute any of the warfighting functions effectively requires determination, while the object in war is to impose our will on our enemy. We are convinced we can measure everything we do, to the extent that we talk about things like measures of effectiveness and measures of performance as if effectiveness is something one can always measure (the problem of sufficient causation and original causes). The other way arguably leads towards relatively smaller budgets, less technology and platforms, and possibly developing proprietary systems and processes that both allow a closer relationship with conventional forces while at the same time preserving what has made SOF special in the past. My empiricism is not the empiricism that you sometimes criticize, is it? B. flower cultivation was indicative of a society with leisure time. What saved the remaining Groups after the massive 70/80s RIF was DA and strat recon-it was the difference between SF and the CF and something only SF could do--what the new SF forgot was that DA and SR were done even when SF had a deep/deeper understanding of UW---DA and SR were conducted by the various 5th SFGA Projects including Delta and the MACV-SOG programs at the same time that the 5th was driving the CIDG program and running the various Corp and National Mike Forces. The sublime for SOF, especially those within the Special Warfare framework, can also be art. Pizarro was eventually killed by his own people, but the Inca Empire was forever lost. Sustainment influences the tempo, duration and intensity of all operations and often determines what can actually be achieved. It is noteworthy that within the ARSOF 2022 vision and related efforts, LTG Charles T. Cleveland, the commander of USASOC, calls for testing and experimentation of new and different operational planning constructs specifically with respect to Special Warfare. [vii] When combined with the other functions- movement and maneuver, fires, intelligence, protection, sustainment, mission command- and welded together through leadership, the Seventh is supposed to enable decisive effects and ultimately success on the battlefield. For purposes of the definition, the term enemy includes the entire range of threats and the term terrain includes weather. I would hazard a guess that in a zone 50 km west of the Durrand Line there is not a single BCT HQ, FOB or COP that has not been under a guerrilla Mark One Eyeball (M1E) for less than 30 years. Interesting take on the situation inside SOF community. Actually making these things happen in the face of the current drawdown, our relatively recent infatuation with technology and the inexplicable application of physical domain concepts to the human domain, however, will be a herculean task. This is good to know information for any commander or staff officer. Force Protection Intro To Classified Material Intel Community Directives Intro To Intelligence The Int WFF includes all systems and capabilities involved in fulfilling the requirements of information management and the intelligence cycle. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Though weathered or overgrown, the relics stand as permanent markers of the ingenuity and art of the pre-Columbian civilizations. The warfighting functions are the physical means that tactical commanders use to execute operations and accomplish missions assigned by superior tactical- and operational-level commanders. I hate using this term in the "old days" of SF we had the SORO who published excellent area studies that we inhaled prior to a deployment into those areas---and guess what they were extremely accurate even five years after some of them were published AND by the way CHEAP when compared to the costs of paying six digit incomes for deploying HTS teams in order to gain "human terrain" information. The insurgents currently have the M1E which they use as effectively as they can to trip us up, now imagine the M1E further enabled with digitized surveillance and smart weapons. Also see Paparone, Chris, COL (ret. that are part and parcel to these such state and societal breakdown and rebuilding initiatives? 1. The so-what of all this is that the military has now developed a system that is largely run by bureaucracy and ruled by process. Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. This greater and more exact knowledge of our goals and objectives helping to explain why artistry, innovation and mission command -- as produced by the enemy -- can seem so natural for them and, therefore, seem to be a step ahead of our own. The endurance of Army forces is primarily a function of their sustainment. It is unlikely they have ever viewed the target with their M1Es and probably never will. IO is not a discrete, stand alone capability but is the integrated, coordinated, and synchronized operational application of all information-related capabilities (IRCs) 5, both organic and non-1 Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication (MCDP) 1, Warfighting, 20 June . NATURE OF PLANNING o Planning as Command and Control o The Functions of Planning and Plans o Uncertainty and Time: Planning for an Unknowable Future Likewise, the concept that the Air Force and Navy dont have anything to do with humans borders on the fantastical. After all, there are many examples in our own history where military commanders considered the population [or human domain as we call it now?] Operational art for SOF should touch on the key components of the sublime and not on a methodology for approaching operational design. The physical domains are composed mostly of those things that are visible, but also those that are detected by our other senses. 3 The nature of war does not change, even though the Marine Corps added an additional warfighting function to our lexicon. Viewed from that perspective, the self-defense groups of Michoacn, heroic and dignified, represent a fresh and hopeful alternative that should be recognized and supported. The alternative, and the militarys current preferred philosophy, is the technically rational approach. It is normally associated with initiative. There were some interesting comments posted to Dave Maxwell's article on UW several weeks ago here in SWJ that are worth going back and re-reading. [xvii] One example of formulaic metaphor found within military doctrine is the formula for combat power. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. M2 WFF consists of the sub-functions of (tactical) movement, manoeuvre and mobility (described below). Movement is primarily concerned with positioning forces in an advantageous place and time from which to have an effect to achieve the mission. The first historically recognized terrorists, the Jewish Zealots, targeted the temple priests and wealthy elites, the people who held the power. You should have resurrected your SF VN R&R party trick and set Flashbangs everywhere rear echelon personnel were real assholes. It is beyond time that SOF headquarters be as special as the teams underneath them and offer those teams something more than what the conventional forces have developed for the physical domains. Manoeuvre elements may then exploit the advantage gained through that terrain action to destroy the threat in close combat. Another is deploying forces to intermediate staging bases in preparation for an offensive. Bill C---that was a small sentence in a recent book concerning the Shia revival that goes to the heart of the ecosystem concept which the Army has now spun into the term human domain in order to maintain the fielded concept of Human Terrain Teams that was never defined as a program of record so it is fighting for survival during the current financial draw down. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. Thus, "knowing one's enemy" seems to be taking a back seat to building partner trust and building partner capacity during this new period of peace. Regardless of the constructs philosophical issues, why are Special Operations Forces (SOF) pushing for a new Army warfighting function and why is the Army supporting SOF in doing so? The fires warfighting function is the related tasks and systems that provide collective and coordinated use of Army indirect fires, AMD, and joint fires through the targeting process. Even our own COIN doctrine- which implies that that type of activity is counterproductive, cannot rescue us from the technically rational system, of which it is, ultimately, also a part of. But, I would assert that, excepting the new bureaucracy of SOF, the traditional and tactical (young NCOs and Captains) culture of SOF more closely relates to Mr. Whites stance (in terms of being against the intellectual orthodoxy) as well as anti-militarism in the way that I think Mr. White describes it: as a vast military-industrial bureaucracy that largely wags the dog of foreign policy in both conscious and unconscious ways. Some call the latter complex operations, and indeed hereafter I will refer to those as complex. Why did "osw" cause heartburn---because it explains just how the organism ie insurgent adapts in his particular "ecosystem". We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. I have read and heard many who claim that the Army Warfighting Functions just create more red-tape and are not needed. Protection determines the degree to which potential threats can disrupt operations and then counters those threats. The open-ended nature of part two however, puts you in a big 'ol pickle. This that any different than the Sunni Awakening movement--I personally do not think so. .kind of like a pattern of life targeting process just in reverse and just how much times does the HiG or the Taliban spend watching our every move in AFG-----hours, days, weeks. Risk can be taken in IT platforms, vehicles, C2 systems, and airframes. The command and control WFF consists of the command and control tasks and the command and control system. Originally a nomadic society inhabiting the central basin of antediluvian Mexico, the various tribes who identified 252525 themselves as Aztec settled in the marshy region near Lake Texcoco and, in 132513251325, founded the city of Tenochtitlan at the present site of Mexico City. What does it mean to have a warfighting culture? A WFF is a group of tasks and systems (people, organizations, information, and processes) united by a common purpose that commanders use to accomplish missions and training objectives (FM 3-0). It is about endurance, freedom of action, and extending the operational reach. Commanders plan, prepare, execute, and assess protection capability requirements throughout operations to shape, operations to prevent, large-scale ground combat operations, and operations to consolidate gains. [xxiv] Just to head off any protests, I realize this dual-natured description is disingenuous, however I am constraining myself to the two choices our society presents us with and their respective approaches. This likewise helping to explain, for example, why artestry, innovation, etc. Grant---an example of reality that could one day effect SF especially in the SW world is Mexico---if a team is alerted and enters isolation for deployment-------use the following statement as their mission scenario---ie support the development of local Autodefensa groups in their fight against the transnational criminal organizations ie the various drug cartels when the governance in the areas of the Autodefensa equal a failed state and the politicians/government at all levels are fully corrupted by the TCOs. advise/assist, sabotage) are no longer the realm of SOF. In my experience I found them poorly motivated and I imagine Haqqani might spend $2000 a year on each fighter whilst we drop a cool $1 million per infantryman. The purpose of the IA WFF is to affect the will and understanding of groups to assist in the achievement of the mission. And it goes to the point that one must understand one's enemy within that specific event as they are an agile portion of the population that one is concerned about and they have their reasons which we might not even begin to understand. In some aspects the Civilian Defense groups are forcing the military and federal police to start offenses against some of the TCOs but it should be noted that the military and federal police have been are to a degree also corrupted by the TCOs. For the most part we have tactical-level teams who can do this now. It accomplishes this by engaging the civil population, threat elements, and domestic and foreign audiences in the information and human dimensions to establish a coherent narrative. For example, even if say an AQ affiliate is killing some of the local population in their attacks on the government why is it they still find resonance/support in portions of the same attacked population---we never did attempt o understand that in Iraq. The goal is not more money, more missions, or more personnel. By this I don't mean training in TTPs or organizational and topical minutia. Effective maneuver requires close coordination with fires. The first being the political aspect of military operations and the second being tied to the firstthat democracy is a bottoms up political ideologywhere political power is rested with the people. Everything evolved in and out of UW---I am surprised that the current SF senior leaders do not jump immediately back to UW/SW as it is and always has been the core historical success of SF. These two occurrences arguably have brought Special Operations to a level similar to the rest of DoD wherein the most important priority among the hierarchy is the growth of the bureaucracy. If two things dont alert us to the possibility that there could be something fundamentally wrong, then possibly nothing will. Identify the six war-fighting functions 1. 7 . One cannot believe how many times I have heard the comment "we cannot template the insurgency"---my argument even to today was "yes we could as they were hiding nothing from us"---the CF just did not want to admit that the insurgency was a living, thinking, adapting group of people who were giving us a solid run for our money----or is anyone wanting and or willing to state we "won" the IED fight in Iraq and or AFG----Gen. P nor Nagel has ever mentioned anything on this front. Since the purpose of military action is to affect the behavior of human groups in the operational environment toward a defined objective, the Army must improve the doctrinal representation of the operational environment and account for the socio-economic, cognitive, and physical aspects of human activity. The goal, re: the human domain generally and participatory observation specifically, has less to do with "knowing one's enemy" and more to do with developing and maintaining relationships with indigenous personnel; this, so as to be able to (1) defeat the enemy (a resistant standing government or a resistant population group as the case may be) and (2) achieve our objectives without (3) the use of large numbers of U.S. trooops. -- as produced by the enemy -- seems to be a step ahead of our own? One could argue that General Lee based his operations in the North during the Civil War as a way to influence the Northern population to put pressure on President Lincoln and the US government to end the war; did he not? Its SOF opposite, Special Warfare, is usually associated with Unconventional Warfare and COIN, but in truth includes those operations of long duration and limited footprint wherein a politically sensitive situation precludes a large foreign force on the ground. Those two things are our inability to clearly articulate what it is we do within SOF and the afore-mentioned continued struggles in Afghanistan. Manoeuvre is movement in coordination with fires within the operational area to concentrate force or the threat of force decisively at the right place and time in order to achieve surprise, shock and opportunities for exploitation, Mobility is the shaping of the battlefield to provide freedom of manoeuvre to land forces. Maya descendants still inhabit the Yucatan, but the technology, religion, and practices of the ancient civilization must now be slowly exhumed and catalogued by archaeologists-a difficult task considering the Maya had no central ruling capital. Hereafter I will refer to those as complex Marine Corps added an warfighting... And the afore-mentioned continued struggles in Afghanistan we have tactical-level teams who can do this now do not so! Assist in the achievement of the IA WFF is to impose our on... 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