Jon,

Having looked at our bde TTPs I know we do it (LOO team), I am just not sure how...

Key to the LOO capability (apologies of teaching to suck eggs, but in all 3 areas my HQ is currently deficient) is:

  • Subject area expertise of respective staff
  • In depth knowledge of relevant operational area/culture
  • Tried and tested HQ procedures to integrate the LOO with all bn ops


On the last point the emphasis in the campaign seems to be shifting away from the kinetic; you may find yourself main effort and not necessarily an enabler for kinetic ops!

What types of HQ training do you have planned before you deploy? If we have an idea of the type of training you will be doing I may be able to give some pointers on what could be incoporated. For example my HQ has a considerable series of non-mission specific synthetic and field training exercises planned where we are going to develop and refine our TTPs.

One thing we are doing is organising some informal get togethers with non-military people who have extensive COIN and/or Afghan experience to get their perspective on how we (the military) do business. IOs and NGOs have come forward, they are very wilco but like things kept very low key and off the record (I bribe them with the promise of good food, fine wine and my scintillating company!). We are hoping to get a different perspective on how we do business as well as access to some in-depth cultural knowledge.

MarcT has made the point that the narrative continuity is very important. As soon as possible you want to understand the plan of the unit you are replacing and the actions they are taking. Depending how good your links to theatre are (ours are very bad!) you may want to start shadowing what they do. When your team meets up you will have concrete scenarios and actions to discuss.