After all, there are many examples in our own history where military commanders considered the population [or human domain as we call it now?] It is juxtaposed with Surgical Strike- the other main component for how Special Operations currently differentiate themselves. But- point taken- and agree. I like your example of Lee and the South using his understanding of the "human domain": influence the population to put pressure on the President. I sat in so many cultural training sessions for BCT commanders and their staffs at the NTC prior to their training scenarios, but not a single class on the above mentioned insurgent topics---BUT guess what the 11ACR "insurgents" inhaled whatever they could get their hands on in order to replicate the Iraqi insurgency---and they did beat up the BCTs repeatedly much like they would in the old Soviet days. [xiii] Freeburg, Sydney, J., After 10 Years Of Abject Failure, Army, SOCOM, Marine Leaders Focus On Strategic Landpower, Breakingdefense.com, 10 AUG 2013. 1. Right now it has yet to be named, although some of the early candidates have included Influence, Engagement, and Shape. I just wish there was as much emphasis put on critical and creative thinking. The force learns them, regurgitates them, has faith in them, and many defend them without question. Art isnt something one does while coloring within the lines and SOF shouldnt be looking for a methodology to assist us with it. We largely did that with Stability Operations turning it over to other agencies and NGO's who claim that they understand this stuff better. We must continue to plan, synchronize, and deliver sustainment warfighting function capabilities. I am of the opinion that the entire concept that the CF threw into the fight---the Human Terrain System actually caused more problems than helped---yes they focused on the actual population but did they give a BCT a single insight into the enemy's thinking and acting---not really. The intelligence warfighting function tasks facilitate the commanders visualization and understanding of the threat and other relevant aspects of the operational environment. In this book Dr. Paparone explains how the military thinks institutionally and links it to the technically rational mindset. Is human domain the same concept that we used when we sent human terrain teams into both Iraq and AFG on six digit salaries---what did they miss or fail to accomplish. I think what throws everything off is that: a. Commanders use thewarfighting functionsto help them exercise command and to help them and their staffs exercise control. The Staff have maps the Beards would give their right arms for, sat/drone photos they would not believe and a 24/7 live video feed I doubt they could even imagine. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. Russian and Saurists posts after 1978 and ISAF and GoIRA over the past 12 years. [x] U.S. Army, TRADOC Pamphlet 525-3-0, The U.S. Army Capstone Concept, 19 DEC 2012, 15-16. Maybe I'm just becoming cynical in my old age, but it bothers me to no end that so many great people and huge amounts national capital have been expended in basically accomplishing what? I am going to steal that. This largely unconscious effect is to be expected: any large organization experiences it quite naturally. We Westerners suffer from the belief that everyone is just like us. The endurance of Army forces is primarily a function of their sustainment. 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. D. The World Trade Organization (WTO). I say for the most part because the education and personnel systems these individuals fall under are all less than desired, largely beholden to the conventional forces systems and with respect to education- are a lower priority within USSOCOM. ~ Army U Press. [xli] If SOF is to be successful at the operational and higher tactical levels, absent a personnel system that allows for flexibility and mission focus, we must incorporate at the very least a rigorous testing and experimentation program to assist us in finding the right tools and philosophical approach for operating in the human domain. Well I certainly don't have all the answers! That strategy is to get more money. Others, such as Carl Builder, mentioned in footnote 12, as well as this authors own experiences highlight the bureaucratic pressures that lead to the chase for more money within government bureaucracies. Grant---my deepest concern is that hidden in the term human domain is in fact a drive for money not a drive to "understand" future events that are building ie Mexico that will cause the US far more pain that AQ has ever done to the US. I submit that art has a place in war, although many of us military types are a little uncomfortable about the word. A warfighting function 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. They have become too skillful at techniques of selective inattention, junk categories, and situational control techniques, which they use to preserve constancy of their knowledge-in-practice. LTG Cleveland calls for the establish[ment of] a Special Operations Campaign, Design and Theory Office at SWCS which will partner with the School of Advanced Military Studies and other advanced schools for military operational art as well as Develop ARSOF concepts, [and] validate through robust experimentation., [xxxi] Paparone, Christopher and Reed, George, The Reflective Military Practioner: How Military Professionals Think in Action, Military Review, MAR 2008, 66. The Theory of War (Continued) Offense Contributes striking power. Multi-framing would be so ingrained as to be almost unconscious: a result of intimate familiarity with how humans make sense of their world through socially-constructed metaphors. This human domain/participatory observation concept looks like it is to be accomplished in times of peace (today and the immediate future?) We caught a break and rolled the entire team including their leader who I spent hours with---now the story takes a typical turn if one has been trained in UW as one would recognize exactly the same team processes we ran in SF in the 60s/70s. Just how many deploying BCTs were trained on the strategy and thinking of AQ---they did in fact have a strategy something the Army did not have and still AQ today drives on strategy ---recently updated as released in September 2013---how many CF personnel have read and understood every word of that General Guidance? The higher levels, however, are filled with officers and senior NCOs who have been institutionalized and are largely influenced- both consciously and largely unconsciously- by the bureaucracys systems and processes. By this I don't mean training in TTPs or organizational and topical minutia. 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. What we in the military seem to forget is that the enemy always has a voice and especially in Iraq where the education levels are high they were a quick adapting organism whose ecosystem was built on the Darwinian principle of survival which has always been the top rule for a guerrilla force. 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. Just using the comment below sets the stage for a massive exercise in critical thinking and team discussions that do not fit the standard Powerpoint MDMP presentation. A. without the aid of references STATE the seven warfighting functions (yall should study this one hard), employment of forces in the operational area, through movement in combination with fire, Use the weapon to kill, shape the battlespace, and set conditions to be advantageous, Provides commander with understanding of the enemy and battlespace. And I also agree with your point reference CF vs. SOF. The use of "human domain" is really a simple attempt to cover up the abject failure of "understanding the environment" before they deployed. Any Medical Service Corps (MSC) officer worth his or her salt can quickly recite the 10 medical functions: medical mission command, medical treatment, hospitalization, medical evacuation, dental. If youd like to learn more about this subject, check out the book you see below on Amazon. It does this through the three sub-functions of movement, manoeuvre and mobility. 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. Not a single CF BCT going through the NTC or where in Iraq fully "understood" how the enemy thought, acted, eat, slept, communicated with themselves and outside related groups AND the local population---much in the concept of Kilcullen's "ecosystem". Effective maneuver requires close coordination with fires. These tasks are; The purpose of the Int WFF is to know what is happening. Attempting social change of populations through military engagement throughout all of the activities leading up to and including war and its aftermath (human domain stuff) is arguably self-defeated by a bureaucracy. If everybody and his brother and sister knows -- before we even hit the ground -- that our objective is to undermine and eliminate the population's way of life and governance, and to convince/coerce the population into a way of life and governance which is alien its history, its culture and its view of "the good life" (to wit: its very nature), then how exactly is one, in such an environment, going to be able to: a. We went to war in Iraq for far less reasons---. I don't mean to sound cryptic but I don't want to open up a can of worms now when I plan to do some fishing later. The seven warfighting functions are command and control, fires, force protection, information, intelligence, logistics, and maneuver. That's funny. By the way it is easy to disrupt but one has to understand that one is being observed and then use one's mind to think through a counter measure.. QUOTE: No COP, firebase, airfield, etc. Herein, we must be prepared to deal with the vastly increased and very broad and very deep chaos (exs: rebellions, insurgencies, genocide, famine, increased crime, etc., etc., etc.) Not always the case. Because we did not "understand he enemy" we exported what we thought were successes to AFG only to have them basically fail. advise/assist, sabotage) are no longer the realm of SOF. It amazes me that all of them can regurgitate the planning process perfectly with enough power point to make Bill Gates proud, but never once have they been asked to think of the implicit forces that their higher is being pressured by, the hidden agenda of the ambassador in the neighboring country, the current environment in Washington, D.C., the private life of the SOCNORTH commander--- all of those things and more can have an affect on one's mission. [xvi] This approach to reality basically posits that all things in this world can be understood by scientific experimentation. In addition, they are more likely to remain fixated on the hyper-tactical level of operations. SW demands from a SF team far more in what Germans call "spitzengefuelhlen" or the feelings in your fingertips or the Art that you refer to. [xxxiii] I would argue SOF played catch-up after 2001 and that it wasnt until 2003 or a little later that the tactical level headquarters (Group- although I dispute that a deployed Group HQ is tactical) began mimicking the bureaucracy of its higher headquarters. As Behavioralism was influenced by Comteon Positivism- it is logical that we are Positivists- that is, we believe if we just gather enough data, the answers to all of life's complex problems will become obvious to us. The CIMIC aspect of the WFF is a command led function in order to ensure coordination with the mission objectives, and that the military efforts of the force are coordinated as part of the comprehensive approach. 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. Knowingly or not, we in the military are governed largely by a system of systems that theoretically ties the Presidents security strategy to everything the military does, from the way the Army organizes into brigades to the type of rifle infantrymen carry. You and I are not using logical in the same way, your use of the word seems to be more rigid than mine, probably because I make things up and don't worry too much about formal definitions. Training them, advising them in raids (and in taking control of territory and then dealing with the inevitable retribution, extra-legal justice, and power struggles), especially in austere conditions, may well require a special task organization (i.e. Another is deploying forces to intermediate staging bases in preparation for an offensive. Centers of Gravity analysis, the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP), and Lines of Effort tools are just a few examples of concepts that appear in military doctrine with few, if any, references. I have read and heard many who claim that the Army Warfighting Functions just create more red-tape and are not needed. 5. I believe that SOF, or at least the Green Berets, should remain in the unconventional world and not get bogged down with the limitations the Conventional Army places on creative thinking. Build and field indigenous forces which can be used to: 1. I had mentioned to Robert in a previous comment that with the Civilian Defense groups could/would the Mexican government tolerate them---in some aspects the CD groups or "AutoDenfensa" groups are pushing back against both the government and the TCOs. Interestingly, I also remember a study was published that basically argued all this newfound freedom of access was being counter-productive because psychologically the soldier never really left home due to this ability to instantly communicate with those back at home on almost a daily basis. [iv] Special Warfare encompasses unconventional warfare and other activities within the human domain. [ii] It is the difference between operating within the physically visible world and the socially non-visible one. As an example, consider the MiTT's of Iraq and all the other special task-organized small teams tasked with directly advising and supporting Iraqi and Afghan security forces. SF majors who are not selected to be S-3 operations officers for a Group (brigade-level organization) are rarely considered competitive for tactical command, however SF Groups do not fight as Groups, normally SF fights as teams. Those who survived were forced to abandon their customs and live beneath Spanish rule for the next three centuries. But destroying the physical tools of war does not eliminate the reasons people fight. Sustainment provides the support necessary to maintain operations until mission accomplishment. IA also includes the sub-function Civil Military Cooperation (CIMIC). Please leave your comments and input in the comment section below. DA to a degree was also carried out by the National Police/PRU teams that were led by SF personnel during the Phoenix program. Know and define one's friends and allies. Thank you for stopping in today and please share this post with others. machines to improve warfighting capability across the spectrum of military operations. Special Warfare (SW), on the other hand, encompasses those units that are capable of long-term duration operations in denied areas to train indigenous forces. WFF are the physical means that tactical commanders use to execute operations and accomplish missions assigned by a superior commander. Maya, like the Aztecs and Inca, also practiced human sacrifice. Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active. It is keeping forces supplied with, Thesustainment warfighting function is the related tasks and systems that provide support and services to ensure freedom of action, extend operational reach, and prolong endurance. I am amazed at the ACoS's "what was missing in Iraq" comment ----what was missing was the Army's decision to rush head long into Iraq to accomplish what recently one member for the former NCA termed "we wanted to kick someone's butt", WITHOUT understanding exactly what was on going inside Iraq --this is the single major failure that is today not even understood by those that claim the surge worked and or those that think by recreating a new field of discussion ie human domain that is the future way forward. The other article about the Montagnards illustrates that no matter how well intentioned and capable the SF community and USAID is, they simply lack the numbers and self-security to make a large impact over large areas. Supporting the autodefensa doesn't look much like supporting the Maquis in their sabotage and intelligence campaign against Nazi Germany (the archetype of unconventional warfare). Interesting assessment on what I'm calling asymmetric surveillance approaches and much more. If, as is posited by many military leaders and commentators, the human domain is a different domain than the Army has focused on in the past (the other domains being more physical: land, sea, air and cyber), then it would seem to follow that the tools and philosophy we use might not be the most effective when acting in another, arguably very different, domain. and ask: a. Special Operations within the U.S. Military faces a crossroads. Small Wars Journal is published by Small Wars Foundation - a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation. These kinds of things defy logical analysis.. Win friends and influence people? 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