Thursday, February 24, 2011
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Ia Drang & 9/11 Parallels
Both the actions in the Ia Drang Valley during the Vietnam Era and the more recent 9/11/01 can be seen through the prism of history as seminal events that have shaped and changed the way we have looked at operations that revolve around the relevant conflict of that era. Before the Ia Drang Valley campaign we had never met the North Vietnamese in open battle. Afterword’s our entire doctrine changed and would remain the same until post 9/11. What happened? How did it happen & why? What lessons can be learned and how have those lessons shaped our current thinking as we are immersed in today’s fight.
Having defeated the French 10 years before the Ia Drang Valley battle the North Vietnamese realized that the techniques they used to defeat the outmoded 40’s and 50’s warfare tactics and equipment used by the French needed to be revisited .
In the early 60’s the U.S. Army’s thinking was still largely how along with the other service branches they would meet and defeat the Soviet threat in a more modern version of World War II style battles. Largely the same approaches would take place with newer weapons systems substituting for those used to combat the AXIS powers. It occurred to some in the military and others in the government that while the Soviet threat was real another more stealth type approach was being unleashed by the forces of communism. The face of this communist state sponsored aggression would take the shape of low intensity conflicts fought in evolving third world countries whose indigenous population could potentially form the “sea” in which the insurgents could survive and grow their base of operations within. These brushfire wars, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brushfire_war , would require a new military model to solve. Pentagon planners seized ideas from World War II airborne operations that utilized movement of troops via new helicopter technology vs. parachute jumps combined with forward based artillery power . This new air mobile doctrine would become our methodology for Vietnam and combined with low altitude combat air support form the basis of maneuver warfare that has carried us up until 9/11 and even beyond. Vietnam thus became a backdrop for classical small unit encounters not a war of large armies contesting far reaching battlefields. The battle at Ia Drang in November, 1965 allowed both sides to test and validate their methods and counters to the air mobile doctrine. Up until this encounter our dealings had been with “Charlie”, the Viet Cong surrogate of the Peoples Republic of North Vietnam. When you review these events and the lessons learned in the rear view mirror of history you see how wrong that people are when they compare today’s asymmetrical fight with that of the Vietnam Era. Today we are engaged with largely tribal societies who have no scope of loyalty other then economical and when convenient religious. There is no real political or ism involved. The radical element of the Muslim religion has high jacked the base and created a call for worldwide jihad. They choose to use the weapons of terror not conduct themselves with armies or even “named” small units. When the 7th Cavalry met the North Vietnamese forces in the Ia Drang Valley they fought against units of that army that had been in operations against the French 10 years before. What’s the point of mentioning this? It’s because it says everything about today’s fight. When we engage today with “bad actor”s, non nation state players, asymmetrical threats or whatever the popular politically correct term is for terrorist we are not encountering a group with an identity that has a traditional and carries with it traditional battle honors. It’s hard to award or even acknowledge terror groups who have no collective unit culture or “history” other then they formed and then look for the best opportunity to blow themselves up or in non the in thing just start shooting while in disguise as a member of the indigenous populations army or police force. This point alone demonstrates the vast difference between then and now. How should this shape then our thinking on developing a counter to the new threat. If one looks at the staggering demographics surrounding the Muslim world they will agree that diplomacy vs. overt classical military action is and should be the preferred route. With that said how can this be achieved? One promising avenue resides in the concepts of HSCB (Human Social Cultural Behavior) models and lessons applied to real daily world scenarios. Much has already been written in this area and the field while rather new as a standalone named discipline is just another morph of being able to deal with people and their problems from a position of understanding and inclusiveness vs. territorial and demanding. Perhaps an interesting scenario would be to not look at the current mid east situation and look to apply HSCB techniques but in retrospect review the Vietnam Era and understand where and how the techniques of HSCB could have been applying on a more formal and concise basis. Indeed psyops were conducted, intelligence collected and analyzed and models and decisions run and made. It was not though done as part of any grand or master plan however. http://www.dtic.mil/dticasd/docs/HSCB-news-spring-2009.pdf What if before the Ia Drang campaign HSCB techniques would have been put in place. Let’s say Human Terrain Teams would have been dispatched to interview village elders and evaluate the status of critical infrastructure. What if ground sensors and video coverage would have been utilized to validate information collected from interviews with the reality of the real time picture.Would not it be interesting to validate a scenario in this fashion and then simulate a variety of outcomes.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
HSCB FOCUS 2011 Conference Review
This year’s conference focused on the urgent need to pull together technology and techniques from both the social science and physical communities. In the past the dominant emphasis has been on the modeling aspect. While this approach has caught the attention of the government it is not outside of the lab and research world enough to transition into the war fighter’s hands for exploitation in solving situational awareness problems. Training is a key aspect of the HSCB paradigm .The value of training is rated highly by those that have used simulations that can show how to behave in a variety of situations and hone both culture-general and culture-specific skills. The ability to use high fidelity computer graphics that have created simulated scenarios of authentic missions that embed cultural dilemmas are becoming invaluable in training forces deploying to theater . Through the combination of real sensor data with models and realistic speech the war fighter can experience a life like engagement that he can apply various techniques on before encountering the real thing. Mistakes made in this environment can be corrected and form the foundation from which a real experience level can be built on. Human Terrain Teams, using this type of approach could plan for missions based on the types of locals they are likely to engage with and thus have a very scripted message constructed when they actually reach the village they are collecting data from.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Entry Point Control
See http: www.rowebots.com for a review of an environment that would provide maximum capability to a developer wanting to leverage a variety of silicon architectures to this end. Consider the following scenario as to how these themes could play out in a real scenario of today.
A vehicle parks in a crowded urban area close to a Forward Operating Base occupied by coalition forces. The vehicles occupants are there to observe the tempo of traffic in and out of the base and gauge weaknesses they can exploit to latter place and IED in egress/ingress points, crash the gate to cause maximum fatalities or simply blow up their vehicle outside the base. While the occupants of the vehicle review all these strategies inside the vehicle occasionally taking pictures and chatting to affiliates on their cell phones they are being observed from the base via cameras. While the high power cameras record their activity the information is being analyzed in real time. Biometric software can determine the identity of the occupants by matching the incoming video to a data base of known bad actors. In addition lips can be read to determine intent and timeline all within the appropriate laws for invasion of privacy. Using the combination of information collected on vehicle type, license plate number, and color plus identity of its occupants HSCB tools can then drill deeper constructing a situational awareness picture that determines where the vehicles occupants came from, whose funding them, who they are affiliated with, how they fit into the organization (how big is the organization),is it a local organization or from out of the region and trying to expand its footprint and credibility by conducting an incident of note. We need to keep in mind that our adversaries have become extremely skilled at using the internet and cell phone infrastructure as their communications network. While our government entities work with the environments of expensive closed communications systems our adversaries are communicating with each other in the open. Being able to work with cameras, sensors of all types and today’s and future cellular infrastructures using a robust RTOS as defined earlier will allow applications developers the opportunity to bring forward new modules that will assist in countering the asymmetrical threats that will continue to exist for many years. If you think that the role of “guard duty “has changed then you are right. In order to facilitate the security of key infrastructure both home and abroad in this new world multiple government contracts that focus on various types of force protection have been developed by the government. These contracts are called IDIQ for indefinite delivery indefinite quantity .Usually sent with a dollar volume ceiling and lasting for four to five years they allow the government to issue task orders defining what they want to order and when they want it. The believe is that by making a number of these awards the government will achieve a bidding process on the need and those gain the overall lowest price. This is a huge paradigm shift from the era of cold war or star wars types of DOD contracts and today’s shrunken military industrial establishment is having a hard time coping with its reality. Winners and losers will be defined by those contractors who understand how price conscious today’s world is in this community and adjust accordingly. This means tight lean designs with well constructed applications that can scale up and add new content is generated.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
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