Owning Battlespace

[Cole]

While reading the thread I've pondered LE applications of the concept.

Wilf listed and defined Operational Area and Area of Responsibility. Operational Area seems to roughly equate to a jurisdiction. Area of Responsibility seems to roughly equate to a beat assignment.

AOR would be more like the entire large city jurisdiction the Police Chief is responsible for, while a precinct would be more like an operational area, and series of beats are the individual areas of operation (AO).

The way Ken defined Battlespace Owner seems to roughly equate to an Incident Commander (IC) for a critical incident under the current Incident Command System, which is a subset of the National Incident Management System. The IC won't always be LE, even if LE is involved in the incident. The IC could be LE, Fire, EMS, etc., depending on the nature of the incident.

This raises the point that the commander of the area of operation has responsibilities listed in FM 3-0 for that area. That does not mean they "own" that space anymore than the police or precinct chief owns the space they operate in.

The comparisons are general, of course. LE and military have some important similarities but also some important differences.

It also is analogous to how a police officer treats citizens and how (I would presume) a Soldier/Marine practicing COIN should treat foreign citizens...with respect. If police officers play rambo and treat citizens with disrespect, my bet is they don't last long on the job. It should be the same way for Soldiers and commanders in an AO with respect to average citizens. Police don't assume that everyone is a criminal. Troops can't treat every Pashtun like they are Taliban...IMHO the whole disconnect of those who advocate enemy-centric COIN.

Enemy-centric COIN implies an assumption that you can take greater liberties with the population as a whole and screw the collateral damage as long as you ferret out and kill the bad guys. Would a cop take that attitude?