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. We will do all of this while we continue down a path that relegates us to being little better than our conventional brethren in terms of operational and strategic prowess. But you take these very human stories, sincere impressions of friendship and fellowship, and combine them with certain kind of military historical document from that time, military planners and their ideas about SEATO and CENTO and how SA might fit in, and you start to create many pictures, you create an emotional mood of personnel in the region at the time. 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. 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. Of course, those factors aren't found in one's higher's OPORD- so I try to get the students to fill in the gaps. And all this still ignores the fact that none of this has anything to do with the general idea that the officers leading these organizations, conventional or otherwise, have to be educated. 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. Upon promulgation of Marine Corps [xxvii] What should concern the American people and those within SOF, however, is how much capability we have lost to act within complex environments (i.e., the human domain) as Special Operations becomes more and more consumed by the exact same bureaucratic pressures that the conventional forces have long suffered from. Interestingly, this makes me wonder how we could have missed such an important aspect of the human domain and the military operations we undertook as a nation. 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? Coordination activities involving the civilian community may be considered within the CIMIC aspect of the IA WFF, but general engagement or engagement with the community to exert influence would more properly be considered an IA WFF aspect. Warfighting Functions: The seven mutually supporting military activities integrated in the conduct of all military operations. Being on defense (containment) re: great powers of differing values, attitudes and beliefs to. Indeed, all indications point to SOCOM positioning itself as America's Rapid Reaction Force, a decidedly conventional role that will bring with it its own momentum to accommodate the scale that mission requires. It means preserving the force which includes personnel and physical assets of the United States as well as the host nation and any military or civilian allies. 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? [xiii] Freeburg, Sydney, J., After 10 Years Of Abject Failure, Army, SOCOM, Marine Leaders Focus On Strategic Landpower, Breakingdefense.com, 10 AUG 2013. For all the efforts at "understanding the culture" of the environments we are working it failed and I mean totally failed because we did not "understand the culture of the enemy". 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. I made a distinction for a few reasons: I am in the SOF community and am hoping to influence the SOF community as we begin an effort to more closely tie in with CF. Combat Power= mission command+fires+intelligence+protection+sustainment+movement & maneuver+leadership. AND in this scenario COIN will not work. Interesting if one goes back and re-reads the recent SWJ article by Dave Maxwell concerning UW and strategy. [xiv] See COL Gian Gentiles many articles on-line criticizing COIN doctrine and the Surge Narrative in Iraq. Sustainment. The function includes tasks associated with force projection related to gaining a positional advantage over an enemy. Maxwell said the War on Terrorism defined protection by entry control points, barriers, persistent ground surveillance system blimps, and even the technologically-advanced counter rocket, artillery. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website. [xxxviii] USDA, Special Operations, ADP 3-05, 2012, 8. That is, they encompass so much that they are rendered almost useless. This process is ongoing and commanders use tasks in: to obtain this intelligence. Administrative movement (generally movement via strategic transport) is included in the Sustainment WFF. The system is duplicatable and is used from the smallest of units up to large battalions and brigades. In spite of the achievements and predominance of the two civilizations intact after Columbus arrived in the New World, they found themselves at the mercy of the Spaniards during the sixteenth century. Because the underlying social rules and mechanisms are created by humans, they are constantly evolving over time and geography. The primary purpose of the command and control warfighting function is to assist commanders in integrating then other elements of combat power (leadership, information, M2, intelligence, fires, sustainment, and protection) to achieve objectives and accomplish missions. Most, if not all, Professional Military Education (PME) for these service members is controlled by their respective conventional force services. Other reasons include the drawdown in manpower and money as well as the way the military institution uses concepts to try to align disparate and bureaucratic organizations towards a common goal.[xv]. These same characteristics can be strengthened through our doctrine and education systems, if not our personnel system, and they match up perfectly with Curtis Whites concept of the sublime. That we have segregated some war fighting functions along conventional and special lines is an historical reality, not a necessity. Within Internalized Social Change, the social anthropological method of Participatory Observation is closest to the function of what SOF, and others acting within the Human Domain would be involved with: one would literally be involved in participatory action, observation, learning, and influencing- the emphasis being on participatory: meaning that one would be influenced just as much as the other being observed. The European Union (EU) The seven warfighting functions are command and control, fires, force protection, information, intelligence, logistics, and maneuver. Manage Consent Preferences. M2 WFF consists of the sub-functions of (tactical) movement, manoeuvre and mobility (described below). The identification of the need for this information and subsequently coordinating its collection is therefore a part of the Int WFF. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. This approach would by definition require the philosophy behind Mission Command, it would prioritize education and training over equipment and process, it would be comfortable with a more context-focused approach to complex operations (and thus maximize flexibility while sacrificing ease of communication, funding, and planning), and it would take advantage of SOFs traditional strengths: its amazing capability at the tactical level. [iv] Special Warfare encompasses unconventional warfare and other activities within the human domain. ~ IRP Fas. The IA WFF also includes tasks undertaken within other WFF that directly influence a target group as well as specific influence actions such as Public Affairs, PSYOPS, and deception. In the old days of SF UW when the mission was given to us during isolation the first thing a team did was to kick back and go into what one would call the "what if" mode---regardless of how crazy some of the comments or ideas where we went completely through until that was nothing left that could have surprised us ---then the true conversations started and all ideas reviewed and tossed until we were comfortable with the remaining one or two. Also let me suggest that our enemies may have a better understanding of our political objective -- and, thus, the war that we and they are embarked upon -- than do many of our leaders and soldiers. What I find interesting about this revelation is that looking back it becomes almost tragic that we have completely ignored the ability to do or allow our own warfighters to have free run of using open sourced reconnaissance while our enemies have not neglected this and in fact have used it to great success. Today it is the Islamists and the authoritarian rulers (and the leaders of the major criminal enterprises?) You cannot believe how many times I tried to explain that to MNF-I in countless HUMINT reports.. The use of this scenario in order to drive critical thinking by ODAs who are planning an UW/SW deployment is a given---it offers a massive amount of free play on the planning side as well as not being able to tie it to COIN as one cannot actually get into a clear hold and expand concept. Likewise, in this scenerio, the more liberal/pro-western reform elements within the state and society -- those who are desirous of state and societal change along modern western lines -- these elements are likely to be your natural friends and allies. Similarly, the personnel and acquisition systems of SW forces would be more flexible and geared towards SWs mission as opposed to being largely beholden to red-tape and bureaucracy (SOCOMs acquisition system for SW forces is arguably just as cumbersome and ineffective as the Conventional Forces). Read More AND by the way such in house on post training does not cost an arm and a leg to conduct. After the eventual surrender, Cortez burned the city and destroyed the greatest monuments of Aztec culture. I suggest that the central reason we are not be able to "win friends and influence people" is because of our extremely well-known national objective, which is, outlier state and societal transformation. [xxx] USASOC, ARSOF 2022. Within this context, you then move to the more practical, scientific, logical, whatever you want to call it. The when and why comes from the officer charged with employing the infantryman's skills in conjunction with other skill sets to a purpose that he is charged with by the delegation of executive authority to his level by Article 2 of our Constitution). C. The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) What does it mean to have a warfighting culture? The purpose of the Sustainment WFF is to maintain the forces freedom of action. The DOD Command and Control Research has identified and developed a model with three distinct but closely interconnected domains Approaching the physical domain in more of an objective and logical manner may work, but approaching the social realm without relying more on multiple viewpoints and critical and creative thinking is a recipe for disaster. Thank you for stopping in today and please share this post with others. Until we can break away from our own institutionally-encouraged paradigms and consciously understand where our concepts come from and the weaknesses inherent within them, we should not expect to operate any better at attempting change in others than we have as of late. The first historically recognized terrorists, the Jewish Zealots, targeted the temple priests and wealthy elites, the people who held the power. 6. Reading your comments combined with RantCorp and Carl I believe in many ways you all are saying the same thing but maybe at a different level. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. For the most part we have tactical-level teams who can do this now. We have made some fundamental errors trying to do too much and depending on others to provide the reasoning for our actions. LTC Grant M. Martin is a Special Forces officer in the U.S. Army. Grant-----maybe Ben Z might agree with the following ---I would venture that currently in the Force the use of MDMP in it's standard form does in fact kill critical thinking as one simply goes through the rote of doing the steps not the thinking behind the why one is doing each of the steps. And, therefore, the point of our spear came to point in their direction. The Sublime: The Paradox of the 7th Warfighting Function, (Or why SOF cannot eat our function and have it too). Millions of tourists now visit Mexico and Peru to see the remnants of the Maya, Aztec, and Inca civilizations. There are no platoon outposts there. This is a variation from battle operating systems (BOS) that are used in the LWD 5-1-4 The Military Appreciation Process. 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. 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. Certainly our formidable advantage in hardware and men will readdress this disadvantage considerably but will it boost our prospects a thousand fold? In other words, the mission has only one solution: make local/paramilitary forces more lethal and reform local governance to distribute the political and economic power so that X does not consolidate power in the resulting imbalance that our support would createi.e. "A warfighting function is a group of tasks and systems united by a common purpose that commanders use to accomplish missions and training objectives" (Department of the Army, 2019a, p. 5-2).. Identifies strength and weaknesses, Encompasses all activities required to sustain (beans, bullets, band aids), measures taken to protect friendly forces, management and integration of info, deliberate integration with warfighting functions. I am so tired of the on going six year debate about the "surge" being successful or what used to be called "human terrain system" and now "human domain". 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. The Pushtoon Secessionists fighting the Pak Army across the border in Pakistan are a good fit but a similar approach to Counter UW is IMO a dead loss at best and dangerously ruinous at worst. By Dave Maxwell concerning UW and strategy by the way such in house on post training does not an! 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