MG Flynn (on intell mainly)

[BayonetBrant]

What is needed is not a map, or a data source, but a data system--- a process to collect, update, and use current and valuable stuff. That's not going to come from an outside contractor, or just be tied to a rotational element or command.

....

NGA is one of those many agencies with the capability to tackle some pieces, but not all. It's something else.

http://defense-update.com/features/2...ht_141009.html
http://mapht.org/

[Steve the Planner]

BayonetBrant:

I'm still trying to figure out how to figure this out.

I spent two months in 08 listening to the drumbeat for CIDNE---the magical all-purpose elixir. Then, it gets to Iraq, and needs to be populated---it's like a GIS system with no shapefiles. Then the population problems.... Then the transitional control problems (iraqi turnover?). Then....

Now, we move to a new, and no doubt, very expensive mapht. Go figure?

Starts to sound like USAID. Why solve a problem if you can just let a contract.

OK. OK. HT is the way forward. Wasn't that the message a few years ago? So where's the result?

OK. It's complicated, and will take many years (strategic patience). Ok, but where's the path, what's the schedule? How many years? Who has the plan?

Is it so complicated that we can't have a plan until later?

It always seems to come back to the same old anthropological/tribal stuff but no hard data, no focused background information. Tactics. Tactics. Strategy requires something else.

I had a few interactions with people involved in the big review. Like MG Flynn describes, they were looking for normal and typical hard data, and nobody had it---fortune telling.

Then the double-barrels from UN and CSIS (Cordesman: Winning battles, losing the war). All of them need something more than: "It's complicated!"

And not just for us, but for the Afghans. A colleague send me the news about the 4 kids killed today; 80 injured. Real and focused answers are needed by everybody else. Or the mission will not be able to continue. (Just the facts of life).

I truly hope that Fixing Intel means more than "do more of what we have been doing."

Was it a call for something different, or just do the same better? Was it a path to better answers: How to be ahead of problems rather than just reactive?

I guess that's what we'll find out soon enough.

Steve

[BayonetBrant]

To me the biggest thing that intel supports is making the right decisions at the right times for the right reasons to create the right effects.

Blow stuff up? We know the calculus on that.

Population-centric warfare, where the population is not an inherent component of the enemy, but the environment in which he operates? I'm not sure we know what the "right" effects are, and some of the answers that we're pretty sure are right we (honestly) don't have the stomach for.


Until we know what the right effects are, we can't begin to define what tools can be used to create those effects.

Until we know what tools we can use, we don't know what the contraints are within which we can operate.

Until we know what the constraints are, we don't know what information we do/don't need to make the right decisions on implementation of tools for the purposes of creating the effects we desire.


Someone *really* needs to start with the effects and work backwards from that.


The Map-HT tools are a set of population-focused tools that are designed to offer a robust picture of the "green COP" and not just an S2/S3 'maneuver-focused' SITREP. There's a lot more that can be handled in that toolkit and it colors shades of gray for the commander quite nicely. More to the point - it forces the collectors/assessors to spend time digging for real information to support the non-kinetic analysts rather than just rolling into town and counting AK47s on a drive-by basis. It gets the non-kinetic questions out of the S2's hands and into the S9 where they belong.

All that said, until you can answer the questions about effects, it's just collecting data to collect data, so that criticism is spot-on.

[Steve the Planner]

Eloquent answer beyond: It's complicated.

Effects on the land and people---I think that starts with the ways to define and differentiate the land and people---then to start thinking about how to model effects on them.

I think one of the gaps, which the military only has to do as the force of last result, is to now look at what is beyond the conflict issues.

We saw today in the kids killed and injured what many people have talked about as a challenge to typical COIN practices. Troops bring conflict. How does that get factored into obvious effects?

Also, sometimes troops bring population displacement.

Talk on another thread about safe zones and refugee areas. Do those get factored in before conflict? Are they a critical component of winning hearts and minds while not losing population? Is there a process? (Warn. Resettle. Clear. Rebuild. Repopulate. Hold.)

I keep watching the metric of 6.5 million in schools and growing. What are they going to do when they graduate? Better educated opponents, or a central part of the solution? (Tick. Tick. Tick.)

There was a poultry processing plant in Tikrit, and every new deployment would bring folks who spent US dollars trying to restart it (for the supposed thousands of jobs), but it wasn't going to work until you restarted agriculture. I sure as hell hope that these kids can be uptrained to be the Johnny Appleseeds instead of, every year, another deployment of US ag teams.

Be nice to understand the framework and processes of sequenced job evolution before what the UN calls the Ticking Time Bomb (one million per year graduating form school).

Those big factors are, I believe, the more critical gap that is separating us from a clear picture. Lots of bits around to assemble, but bits don't make strategy.

Etc...

[Steve the Planner]

Cross-posted from the Sanctuary Thread:

Beetle:

Major Madera does a great job in providing an overview of CIMS -Civilian Information Managament Systems as:

demographics, economics, social constructs, political processes, political leaders, civil-military relationships, infrastructure notes, non-state actors in the area of operations, civil defense, public safety and public health capabilities, the environment.31 In short, CIMS capture the sort of information that paints a clear picture of the ecology of insurgency.

If he were updating this 2006 paper, I would suggest that he add: cadestral/property ownership (What MG Flynn calls out), and the basic topo, soil type and hydro data sets for cursory reconstruction/manuever stuff.

In Iraq, we used roads and bridges (with identification of the agency responsible for the component-state, provincial, local), ag components (the whole value chain for each applicable sector), reconstruction assets (asphalt & cement plants), major industrial/economic components, and important government activities (schools, clinics)/repair facilities.

Other special purpose maps "might" have included appointed/elected official's homes (for a variety of reasons).

Key thing in Iraq and Afghanistan, where UN demographics were used, was to set up shape files for each census boundary, even if political boundaries may have changed since. Important to, is to integrate real time, refugee, and pop displacements best estimates whenever you can suck them in.

As much as you can get whenever you can get it.

I'll cross post this on the Fixin's thread.

Steve

Citation from SurferBeetle:

"From a SAM's paper entitled Civil Information Management in Support of Counterinsurgency Operations: A Case for the Use of Geospatial Information Systems in Colombia by Major José M. Madera, United States Army Reserve"

[Pete]

Does anyone have an opinion about the appropriateness of CNAS/Foreign Policy magazine as a place for an active duty two-star to publish his article?

[Entropy]

Does anyone have an opinion about the appropriateness of CNAS/Foreign Policy magazine as a place for an active duty two-star to publish his article?

I don't have a problem with publishing an article, but this wasn't just an article - it was also an order which, to me, is extraordinary.

[IntelTrooper]

Does anyone have an opinion about the appropriateness of CNAS/Foreign Policy magazine as a place for an active duty two-star to publish his article?

I think it has the effect of making pseudo-spooks realize that their little world isn't above scrutiny.

[Pete]

There are some great quotations in the article. After describing how intelligence information usually flows from top to bottom during conventional conflicts, the authors state:

In a counterinsurgency, the flow is (or should be) reversed. The soldier or development worker is usually the person best informed about the environment and the enemy. Moving up through levels of hierarchy is normally a journey into greater degrees of cluelessness.

On PowerPoint briefings:

Microsoft Word, rather than PowerPoint, should be the tool of choice for intelligence professionals in a counterinsurgency.

Does this mean that the "PowerPoint Ranger" tab will soon be a thing of the past?

[Steve the Planner]

Pete:

Bottom to top sounds right to me.

I think the best recommendation for Powerpoint is below.

Somebody on SWC considered, in 2005, CERP funding to fit AQI out with Powerpoint.

If only they had done that AQI would have been lost in briefings forever, and miss the whole point of everything.

Maybe, as a last ditch, we could rig-up the Taliban. I know it takes a few years before effective PP paralysis sets in, but might be worth the effort with, say, a target date of 2013.

Strategic patience,

Steve

[Pete]

From the essay "Dumb-dumb Bullets" in the July 2009 issue of Armed Forces Journal. I wouldn't have known about it had I not read about it in an endnote to the Flynn article.

Make no mistake, PowerPoint is not a neutral tool — it is actively hostile to thoughtful decision-making. It has fundamentally changed our culture by altering the expectations of who makes decisions, what decisions they make and how they make them. While this may seem to be a sweeping generalization, I think a brief examination of the impact of PowerPoint will support this statement.

Click on the link below to read the entire article.

http://www.afji.com/2009/07/4061641

[BayonetBrant]

On PowerPoint briefings:

Microsoft Word, rather than PowerPoint, should be the tool of choice for intelligence professionals in a counterinsurgency.

Does this mean that the "PowerPoint Ranger" tab will soon be a thing of the past?

Probably not. After all, how many of the briefings out there are time-wasters generated by someone other than the intel guys?

I can already see what'll happen - the intel guy will write a beautiful 4-page narrative on the local situation, and because it'll take more than his allotted 5 minutes in the evening CUB, some assistant to the assistant deputy night ops officer will bulletize the whole thing into 2 slides to "help him out" and everyone will collectively miss the point.

[Bob's World]

Hmmm. A call for a shift from a threat-centric approach to a populace-centric approach; with intel being the ones who need to change the most.

I have read this somewhere before...

(though I do find amusing all the intel guys who have been pumping threat threat threat up their commander's backside for years now all crying how they were victims, and only giving the boss what he wanted.... Bull. If I had a dollar for every time I've asked the intel guys to stop dronning on about HVIs and to give us some info on the environment and the populace; and gave back 90 cents for everytime those same intel guys smugly replied "that's not our job, we just do threats," I'd still be rich. Sure there are plenty of commanders who only want to know about the bad guys, but that doesn't relieve one of the duty to develop the critical intel he doesn't ask for.)

[IntelTrooper]

(though I do find amusing all the intel guys who have been pumping threat threat threat up their commander's backside for years now all crying how they were victims, and only giving the boss what he wanted.... Bull. If I had a dollar for every time I've asked the intel guys to stop dronning on about HVIs and to give us some info on the environment and the populace; and gave back 90 cents for everytime those same intel guys smugly replied "that's not our job, we just do threats," I'd still be rich. Sure there are plenty of commanders who only want to know about the bad guys, but that doesn't relieve one of the duty to develop the critical intel he doesn't ask for.)

The intel community is certainly not blameless, but some of us lack the standing and resources to effectively challenge the threat-centric system that has been in place since the beginning, in spite of our best efforts. I've recommended population-centric PIRs to battalion and brigade S-2s, only to get blown off.

[Entropy]

Hmmm. A call for a shift from a threat-centric approach to a populace-centric approach; with intel being the ones who need to change the most.

I have read this somewhere before...

(though I do find amusing all the intel guys who have been pumping threat threat threat up their commander's backside for years now all crying how they were victims, and only giving the boss what he wanted.... Bull. If I had a dollar for every time I've asked the intel guys to stop dronning on about HVIs and to give us some info on the environment and the populace; and gave back 90 cents for everytime those same intel guys smugly replied "that's not our job, we just do threats," I'd still be rich. Sure there are plenty of commanders who only want to know about the bad guys, but that doesn't relieve one of the duty to develop the critical intel he doesn't ask for.)

Leadership comes from the top and Afghanistan, until very recently, has not been a COIN effort, population-centric or otherwise. Until this past year, resources for Afghanistan, especially intelligence, were under-resourced for anything but the explicit missions we were given which was not COIN. Those were decisions made at the highest levels. What you seem to be suggesting is that the intel people should have diverted some of those intel resources (collection and analysis) away from the Commander's explicit intent to something else. That's simply not going to happen.

Some of us who have been invested in Afghanistan for many years - long before the current COINdinista crowd became interested - took it upon ourselves to explore many of the issues you've raised in this forum in an attempt to gain a deeper understand of the environment and context in which we conduct operations. For me personally, this was done almost entirely on my own time and at my own expense (as my private library of Afghanistan publications attests) and consisted almost entirely of unclassified, open-source material. Why? Because I had no authority to formally task collection assets or to submit RFI's to relevant agencies to collect such information. Why? Because the Commander's intent, as clearly spelled out in his intelligence requirements, did not focus on these areas and our authority to task assets and spend analytical resources derives directly from those requirements. Outside of a good-old-boys network and informal RFI's (ie. emailing my buddies in other agencies) the system is explicitly designed to prevent intelligence assets from being used (or misused, depending on one's perspective) contrary to a Commander's published intel requirements. Even if I got my immediate Commander's approval to ask some of these questions, they were shot down at the theater level because of, guess what? The theater PIR's!

So your suggestion that intel people have a responsibility to "develop critical intel he doesn't ask for" is not possible for two reasons: First, we can't get information to develop such intel because collection is not driven by analysts but Commander PIR's. No information, no authority to collect information means no analysis and no answers to the relevant questions. Secondly, which intel is "critical" and which intel isn't is defined by the Commander and not the intel professional. Obviously if an intel person thinks something might be critical he/she needs to inform the Commander immediately, but it's still the Commander who decides. Additionally, because intel assets (both collection and analysis) are always limited, the system is purposely designed to prevent the very thing you are asking for - which is diverting assets away from a Commander's stated desire.

As late as last month the theater requirements had not substantially changed from what they've been for the past several years, which is largely threat-focused. Until they do change, pop-centric COIN information is inevitably going to play second fiddle. Maybe things are different today with the publication of this report and the orders that were reportedly promulgated through official channels. I don't yet know.

This passage in the MG Flynn's report struck me particularly:

The problem is that these analysts – the core of them bright, enthusiastic, and hungry – are starved for information from the feld, so starved, in fact, that many say their jobs feel more like fortune telling than serious detective work.

Yes, that's been an enduring problem and it's a big reason why the vast majority of my personal research over the years has been confined academic and open-source work. That problem is not an intelligence problem, but a Command and leadership problem. The intelligence function cannot force units to provide us information - that can only be directed by Commanders. So, again, the issue comes back to Commanders and command responsibility.

Finally, if your intel guys are smugly giving you information and intelligence that you don't want - indeed, information that you are hostile to, then why are they still your intel guys? Where is the accountability? Intel people should be held accountable like anyone else and if they are not performing or if they are feeding you a line of BS then they need to be put in their place and held accountable. If my immediate Commander wants info that falls outside the scope of the HHQ and theater PIR's, then I'll try like hell to provide that while explaining the LIMFACs on collecting new information and answering that request. In essence, all I can usually do is search existing information which is often insufficient. So, as MG Flynn said in his report:

This memorandum is aimed at commanders as well as intelligence professionals. If intelligence is to help us succeed in the conduct of the war, the commanders of companies, battalions, brigades, and regions must clearly prioritize the questions they need answered in support of our counterinsurgency strategy, direct intelligence officials to answer them, and hold accountable those who fail.

That about says it all, IMO.

And, just to be clear, I do think there are valid criticisms against intel people and the intel profession and system, particularly military intel people. Yes, we, as a group, are more comfortable with threats, but realize that's how we are trained. It would be interesting if any Army people here could tell us what the current MI curriculum is at the school house and how much of it, if any, deals with intelligence support to COIN. I know in the Air Force and Navy the school-houses have not changed much and support to large-scale conventional warfare requirements dominates. For imagery analysts, full-motion video analysis is still an afterthought in the imagery course. Our new IA's at my predator unit get almost no training in FMV exploitation despite the fact this is 95% of their job. That is one place we can start cleaning house.

[Outlaw 7]

Gen. Flynn's article brings to the forefront a core discussion that has been moving under the radar screen since 2007. It highlights the core difference between anti-insurgency which is focused on kill/capture and the elimination of IED cells/networks or true counterinsurgency which focuses to a high degree on population control and security.

It is interesting that FID and unconventional warfare which were the bread and butter of Special Forces from their inception to the early 1970s was forced into extinction by the big Army as they drove to disband Special Forces who had to rebrand themselves as the "Strategic Recon types" in the 80s/90s in order to survive. This rebranding cause internal problems for SF when they discovered the need to shift back to FID/UW.

Now we are back to FID and unconventional warfare and big Army went left in Iraq and that is now not working in Afghanistan which went right and is a true insurgency with characteristics of a full blown phase three guerilla war. It is refreshing to see a Spad called a Spad.

Now just maybe big Army can focus in learning just what is insurgency, what drives an insurgency, and how does that insurgency evolve--and not learning it out of the COIN FM or from CTC scenario rotations. It is amazing that many in the old guard (Vietnam vets) have pointed to key lessons learned about FID, but were brushed off and now there is the sudden interest in books written about FID in Vietnam--lessons learned though from the Special Forces CIDG program seem on the other hand to still be ignored. One of the most important books written in the early 80s "Silence As A Weapon" written by retired COL. Herrington goes along way in describing the use of silence by an insurgency in the control of populations.

Since Gen. Flynn has gotten some attention on the MI side maybe attention should be paid to a concept developed by John Robb called "open source warfare" (2004/2005) and just recently scientifically verified by the Nature magazine article "Ecology of Human Warfare". For the first time via computer research one can make specific outside changes/impacts to the insurgency environment and see the results on the insurgency movement without having boots on the ground. And it goes a long way in explaining the media impact of their operations which can be verified by the impressive increase in video releases on the part of the Taliban in Afghanistan since 2008.

[Jedburgh]

Since Gen. Flynn has gotten some attention on the MI side maybe attention should be paid to a concept developed by John Robb called "open source warfare" (2004/2005) and just recently scientifically verified by the Nature magazine article "Ecology of Human Warfare". For the first time via computer research one can make specific outside changes/impacts to the insurgency environment and see the results on the insurgency movement without having boots on the ground. And it goes a long way in explaining the media impact of their operations which can be verified by the impressive increase in video releases on the part of the Taliban in Afghanistan since 2008.

I would hesitate to say it is "scientifically verified". A magazine article doesn't verify anything, and the research is far from conclusive.

This link is to the full Nature article and this one is to the supplementary notes. The Mathematics of War website was set up by the authors to accompany the publication of the article and provide additional background.

Here is a critique of the Nature article by Drew Conway: On the Ecology of Human Insurgency.

Which elicited a response from John Robb and more discussion from Drew Conway. None of which really settled anything.