Quote Originally Posted by Tom Odom View Post
It is not the same as a presence mission; establish a presence is a mission. Conduct a "presence" patrol however soon turns into drive through/walk through without a purpose, without a plan, and all too often without a clue. We saw this quite a bit at the JRTC especially in the earlier days of MREs; such patrols were meat on the hook for Geranimo
From what I saw in Afghanistan in early 08-09, this is what "presence/presents patrols" turned into, especially in the over-tasked and under-resourced East. A weekly/monthly visit to a district center constituted a "presence" patrol, and was done as fast as possible. Stops in the bazaar, or to talk to road workers, etc. were verboten, because it was time consuming and we had to be back before dark.

As a HUMINT guy, these "patrols" were almost worthless, even if one of the supposed purposes was to "gather intelligence" (other than for orientation so we could refer to landmarks when talking to sources). It's really hard to gather intelligence when watching out the window of a HUMVEE/MRAP and then talking to a corrupt district police chief for fifteen minutes.