Entropy thanks for posting.This is a Strategic paper. It is a key part of SBW (Slapout Based Warfare) and I was shocked to something like this in print. The people are not the COG !!!! It is the land with the people and how they interact with it. IMHO this is a war winning paper.
Norfolk: remember my paper about Strategy....Seize Terrain That has Political Value!!!!!
If you haven't yet, you really should put out a SBW reading list!Originally Posted by slapout9
Entropy thanks for posting.
Norfolk: remember my paper about Strategy....Seize Terrain That has Political Value!!!!!
Entropy, I will have to work on that list
Entropy, to get you started he is a link to place based policing...it's focus is on micro-geography. A lot of this would apply to COIN I think. It is not just the paper I like but it matches a lot of my personal LE experience.
Would also go well with a paper Jedburgh posted awhile back called Ungoverned Spaces.
http://www.policefoundation.org/pdf/...edpolicing.pdf
Don't Know how I missed this
But Slap we gonna have to go at it on this one.Entropy thanks for posting.
Norfolk: remember my paper about Strategy....Seize Terrain That has Political Value!!!!!
I'm gonna read the book and get some points to debate on but I'll start out with this. Focus on capturing physical terrain such as land or even infrastructure is effective but not the COG. Reason being it simply provides job security for the armed force by creating a requirement to maintain that control. The people on the other hand own the land, the jobs, the causes, basically any factor which contributes to the end result of any given operations.
If you can define a way in which terrain (other than people) guarantees a particular action works both in gaining against the enemy and gaining buyin from the people long term even after your gone then I might be persuaded.
From what I can see though if your first focus isn't on the people and how to get them involved in the process thus leading to more informed and effective knowledge of what needs to be secured/destroyed/embraced/or just plain left alone; then your SWAG's tend to be be a lot more wild guesses and a lot less informed moves.
Any man can destroy that which is around him, The rare man is he who can find beauty even in the darkest hours
Cogitationis poenam nemo patitur
Hi Ron, My point was/is it's the people and the terrain "together" (which is what geography used to be about when I was in school) that equal the COG...you just said it better then me.
In that case I think we're in violent agreement
Just as long as those setting forth the path don't allow the different parties to claim responsibility for one of the two and expect a different party to handle the other
Example:
Lanes, Not my job its yours, I'll take the ground then you diplomacize.
Any man can destroy that which is around him, The rare man is he who can find beauty even in the darkest hours
Cogitationis poenam nemo patitur
I haven't read the book, but I am suspicious of overly rationalized Western models for dealing with issues like land. On one hand, there is data and it lends itself to analysis and problem solving, but in my experience, that's the smaller part of the picture. Land administration and laws are paramount and a database of information, while useful, doesn't deal with the issues around the value of land (money), corruption, identity issues and so on...untangling property rights in some of these countries is a nightmare. I have a friend in Cambodia that owns a piece of land up by Siem Reap which was essentially siezed and squatted on by local authorities. She has a deed to the land, but it's not helping her much. She has no recourse beyond physically kicking off the squatter(s).
RAND, 27 Jan 09: Assessing Irregular Warfare: A Framework for Intelligence Analysis
The aim of this study was to assist the Department of the Army’s National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC) in better understanding the intelligence analytic requirements of irregular warfare (IW). To do this, we were to develop an analytic framework for IW that could be used as the basis for an educational and training curriculum that would enhance NGIC analysts’ capabilities for assessing IW situations.
In December 2006, after considering a number of alternative definitions for irregular warfare and acknowledging the many conceptual and other challenges associated with trying to define this term with precision, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved the following definition:
A violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant population.
Definitions aside, large numbers of academic, doctrinal, and other publications stress that the outcomes of IW situations depend on both the level of one’s understanding of the population and the deftness with which non-military and indirect means are employed to influence and build legitimacy. Accordingly, the study team’s principal efforts were devoted to developing an analytic framework for understanding IW situations, whether population-centric (such as counterinsurgency) or counterterrorism, that focused on “irregular features” of the operating environment—that is, the central environmental and operational variables whose interplay determines the overall trajectory of an irregular conflict toward either success or failure......
CIA, Undated (FOIA release 5 Jan 09): Guide to the Analysis of Insurgency
This pamphlet contains key definitions and analytic guides applicable to any insurgency. Analysts with the knowledge of the political, military and socio-economic characteristics of a specific insurgency will find these definitions and frameworks helpful in evaluating the major components of the conflict. Among other things, this guide is designed to assist in conducting a net assessment of the overall status or progress of a specific conflict.
In New Military, Data Overload Can Be Deadly
In New Military, Data Overload Can Be Deadly
Entry Excerpt:
In New Military, Data Overload Can Be Deadly by Thom Shanker and Matt Richtel, New York Times. BLUF: "As the technology allows soldiers to pull in more information, it strains their brains. And military researchers say the stress of combat makes matters worse. Some research even suggests that younger people wind up having more trouble focusing because they have grown up constantly switching their attention."
Last edited by davidbfpo; 01-13-2018 at 12:20 PM.
NGIC, 24 Nov 09: Complex Environments - An Alternative Approach to the Assessment of Insurgencies and their Social Terrain
Part 1: Identifying Decisive Factors
NGIC, 31 Mar 10: Complex Environments - An Alternative Approach to the Assessment of Insurgencies and Their Social TerrainThis assessment is the first in a two-part series that outlines additional principles for intelligence preparation of the operational environment (IPOE), information operations (IO), and strategic intelligence assessment. This assessment represents an alternative to many current approaches to behavioral and motivational assessment. The approach uses widely replicated findings from psychology and neuroscience research to explain and assess the likelihood and impact of large-scale and/or significant changes in the behavior of large populations. This assessment outlines why many current approaches to analyzing the likelihood and impact of popular movements, while often useful, lead to problems in both analysis and implementation. It also defines a viable alternative for explaining, forecasting, and making decisions about populations. The second assessment in the series will lay out specific, practical guidelines for implementing the approach described in this assessment.
Part 2: Constraint-Based Analytic Procedures
This assessment offers and explains a new set of analytic procedures for assessing the behavior of local populations (LPs). It is based on the approach set out in Complex Environments - An Alternative Approach to the Assessment of Insurgencies and their Social Terrain Part 1: Identifying Decisive Factors. The procedures identify and analyze LP behavior in a way that facilitates the capability to target and to alter the influences that make the behavior likely. The procedures are designed to achieve both the short-term goal of minimizing undesirable behaviors and the long-term goal of encouraging desirable behaviors, particularly by improving the ability to derive decision advantage from LP intelligence.
The Statistical Irrelevance of American SIGACT Data: Iraq Surge Analysis Reveals Real
The Statistical Irrelevance of American SIGACT Data: Iraq Surge Analysis Reveals Reality
Entry Excerpt:
The Statistical Irrelevance of American SIGACT Data: Iraq Surge Analysis Reveals Reality
by Joshua Thiel
Download The Full Article: The Statistical Irrelevance of American SIGACT Data:
Maneuver warfare at its core is a mechanistic endeavor and fits with a corresponding necessity of top-down hierarchies. Conversely, counterinsurgency is a more ambiguous environment that varies in its complexity and context; it is the chess match of war. It is different in every locale and can cover the entire spectrum of war simultaneously. Consequently, counterinsurgency is difficult to put on a bumper sticker, to trademark as a catch phrase, or sell to a population and their representatives. In 2006 the United States (U.S.) public’s perception of success or failure of the Iraqi counterinsurgency strategy was concentrated around the concept of massing combat power in time and space, often called the “The Surge.” The term, “The Surge,” condensed a new counterinsurgency strategy into a simple and quantifiable slogan for the sound bite culture surrounding current affairs in the modern world. Unfortunately, counterinsurgency is more complex than “add more and then you win.”
Download The Full Article: The Statistical Irrelevance of American SIGACT Data:
Major Joshua Thiel is a United States Army Special Forces Officer and a recent graduate of the Naval Postgraduate School with a Masters of Science in Defense Analysis. He is currently serving in 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne).
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Human Intelligence in Counterinsurgency: Persistent Pathologies in the Collector-Cons
Human Intelligence in Counterinsurgency: Persistent Pathologies in the Collector-Consumer Relationship
Entry Excerpt:
Human Intelligence in Counterinsurgency: Persistent Pathologies in the Collector-Consumer Relationship
by Michael Gallagher
Download the Full Article: Human Intelligence in Counterinsurgency: Persistent Pathologies in the Collector-Consumer Relationship
In the realm of counterinsurgency (COIN), the currency is intelligence. In other words—as the Counterinsurgency Field Manual succinctly puts it—intelligence drives operations. “Good” intelligence provides precision, helping the counterinsurgent eliminate insurgents from the populace “like surgeons cutting out cancerous tissue while keeping other vital organs intact.” Within this surgical effort, Human Intelligence (HUMINT) proves uniquely valuable; it can obtain information that more technologically-oriented assets cannot. Thus, while all counterinsurgents collect operational reporting as they perform their daily functions—what is frequently termed “passive” collection—HUMINT requires “active” collectors who are specially trained to conduct military source operations and interrogations.
Download the Full Article: Human Intelligence in Counterinsurgency: Persistent Pathologies in the Collector-Consumer Relationship
Michael Gallagher is a Captain in the Marine Corps and currently a fellow in the Junior Officer Strategic Intelligence Program. He deployed twice to Iraq as a Human Intelligence Exploitation Team Commander.
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(NPR) Math Can Predict Insurgent Attacks, Physicist Says
http://www.npr.org/2011/07/31/138639...physicist-saysThe atrocities of war often seem random. But when it comes to insurgent attacks in Afghanistan or Iraq, that's not exactly the case, says Neil Johnson, a physicist at the University of Miami. Johnson tells Guy Raz, host of weekends on All Things Considered, about the equation his team has developed that predicts when such attacks will happen.
"We found ... that there was a kind of rhyme and reason behind the numbers," he says. "They weren't just accelerating, they were accelerating in a particular way."
A scrimmage in a Border Station
A canter down some dark defile
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail
http://i.imgur.com/IPT1uLH.jpg
Military Intelligence Fusion for Complex Operations
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Illuminating the Structure: Intelligence in the Development of CT Strategy
Last edited by davidbfpo; 01-13-2018 at 12:20 PM.
Fitting Intelligence to the Fight: Lessons from Afghanistan
Last edited by davidbfpo; 01-13-2018 at 12:21 PM.
Afghanistan Data Initiative: McCain Institute asks
Via FP's Situation Report, a plea for civil & military veterans of Afghanistan to participate in a survey for the at Arizona State:Link to survey:https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/6B67866...is developing a database for lessons learned from Afghanistan in the hopes that those lessons learned don't have to be re-learned. The "Afghanistan Data Initiative, a robust, fact-based, data-driven analysis of what happened in Afghanistan, but the Institute is doing it without imposing any preconceived ideological or political framework....We hope to disseminate this raw, fact-based information, providing a resource for future research and study, allowing others to draw conclusions and make better decisions in the future. In the long-term, we expect that this data set will serve as a resource for future research and academic study......Please take part in our survey to help ensure that the experiences and sacrifices of you and thousands of others like you are not lost to history, but recorded and learned from for the future."
They want honest answers and won't attribute comments of poll participants to the public arena. It takes about 25 minutes to complete.
What is the McCain Institute? From their website:Link:http://mccaininstitute.org/The Mission of the McCain Institute at ASU is to advance leadership based on security, economic opportunity, freedom, and human dignity, in the United States and around the world.
I have emailed them to tell them SWJ / SWC exists!
davidbfpo
Intelligence in Complex Environments
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