I've been that mission commander that left PSYOPers pulling security; in hindsight, I was wrong to do that. Depending on the mission, I usually took their NCOIC with me.
In post-mission AARs, they seemed unhappy about it, but didn't complain. I will take the blame for a poor use of assets; but sometimes, I needed (or thought I did) the extra security. I utilized PSYOPs in many ways that I shouldn't have. But most of the time, I believe I gave them the ability to do their job (which at the time, I wasn't sure what that was, exactly). I tried very hard to incorporate them into every mission, regardless of what it was. I required the NCOIC to keep me informed of his independent operations and always tried to get his input in post-mission AARs, targeting meetings, etc. I never intended to misuse them, but to be honest, like I mentioned, I didn't know what exactly what they were supposed to do. My fault.
What REALLY annoyed me about the PSYOP team was the guidance they got from their company HQ (which was located a hundred miles from where we were). In many cases, the missions they were given by their own chain of command conflicted/didn't apply to our situation. That would be my biggest complaint with the employment of PSYOP teams; who do they work for? The unit they support/are attached to (in this case, my MiTT), or their company HQ? From what I understood, the answer was both. I think the reality was that their HQ was trying to "fill the gap" that existed because we didn't always employ them properly. In that same regard, the THT, EOD, JTAC, CA team and medics I had attached were all asked to things "out of their lane".
All of them did this without complaint and were excellent assets. I was thankful to have all of them. I've had a good experience with every PSYOPer I've ever worked with...even when I didn't understand what their mission was. I normally found that most PSYOPers to be folks that took initiative, and tried very hard to keep me and the Chain of Commmand informed of what they were doing/trying to do/wanted to do.
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