thedrifter
02-14-04, 07:20 AM
02-12-2004
From the Editor:
Finding ‘Ground Truth’ in Cyberspace
By Ed Offley
Deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan soon?
If you are, no doubt your calendar is chock full of practical training at your home base, from marksmanship qualification to dismounted patrols to heat protection. And if you are like every other military person, there is never enough information to ease that dull cramp in your stomach as you watch the latest roadside bombing on the evening news.
Getting the “straight skinny” on an upcoming combat op is a challenge as old as soldiering itself.
Historian William Manchester, a Marine rifleman in the Pacific campaign of World War II, recalled in his memoir, Goodbye Darkness, how he was awakened from sleep in a muddy cave one night during the Battle of Okinawa. Three newly-arrived Marine replacements huddled next to him, asking not for food and drink, but grilling him for tips on how to survive the maelstrom of fire outside.
A friend of mine named Bill, who spent much of his 20-year Navy career as a sonarman on nuclear fast-attack submarines engaged in top-secret reconnaissance missions, once described an identical situation. Just before deploying, Bill once told me, his submarine squadron would conduct formal briefings describing the mission objectives and relevant intelligence on the Soviets. Guys with charts and slides formally droning through the mission task list.
“Then, unofficially, we’d get some guys off [another] boat who had just come back and we’d walk to the end of the pier and smoke cigarettes and have a good off-line chat with them about what really went on,” Bill said. “That was a good way to exchange the straight information [without] all of the kabuki theater and stork dancing.”
Thanks to the maturing of the internet and email, tens of thousands of military people now rotating into Iraq have an unprecedented level of access to unofficial “lessons learned” reports compiled by the veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Afghanistan.
From company commanders on up, a large number of American officers who found themselves waging counter-insurgency operations instead of routine peacekeeping patrols in Iraq have written informative survival guidelines for the benefit of the troops coming in to relieve them. And more and more, these detailed-rich essays and memos are soaring around the internet being read by those who crave the information the most.
In an article in The Washington Post on Feb. 8, “Soldiers Recall Lessons from Iraq,” reporter Tom Ricks cited the experience of Army Lt. Col. Steve Russell, a battalion commander with the 4th Infantry Division:
“[B]ombers were using the transmitters from radio-controlled toy cars: They would take the electronic guts of the cars, wrap them in C-4 plastic explosive and attach a blasting cap, then detonate them by remote control.”
So Russell … mounted one of the toy-car controllers on the dashboard of his Humvee and taped down the levers. Because all the toy cars operated on the same frequency, this would detonate any similar bomb about 100 yards before his Humvee got to the spot. This ‘poor man’s anti-explosive device’ was ‘risky perhaps,’ Russell writes in a 58-page summary of his unit’s time in Iraq but better than leaving the detonation to the bombers.”
In a nearly 5,000-word essay that can be found on many military-subject websites (and which DefenseWatch has posted today as a Special Report Army Capt. Daniel Morgan provides a heavy dose of street smarts that he and his company from the 101st Airborne Division learned in the alleyways of the Sunni Triangle:
“You must always be on the offensive. You cannot assume that you are on a security presence patrol. It is always a movement to contact. Company commanders must plan every patrol in this mindset and give specified tasks that accomplish the overall mission. For example, if you are going to conduct a patrol down a heavily congested market street in order to distribute information, treat it as a movement to contact and be on the offensive.”
Morgan provides a cookbook of recipes for prevailing against the insurgents and minimizing the loss of life. His recommendations range from issuing to every soldier in his company a one-inch wide “mini-ratchet strap” for use as a tourniquet, to details on how to mount an effective cordon-and-search mission in an urban neighborhood.
Ricks in his article noted that some senior Army officials are unhappy with the informal, word-of-mouth data exchange, but officers in Iraq have said the time-sensitive tips arrive quicker via the internet than from updated field manuals:
“One officer based at Balad noted that after reading Morgan’s essay he made adjustments in a convoy he was organizing for an operation in the Sunni Triangle. ‘Our troops are in down-and-dirty fights in the streets of the Fallujahs of this country, and mostly the Army still trains for the Big Fight,’ he said in an interview. ‘So we definitely need these informal debriefs.’ ”
Several Army officers have also created a website, Company Command, that is dedicated to passing on these informal “lessons learned” and features an extensive discussion board in which to exchange information and ideas. The site has now been embraced by the Army, which has provided it a “dot-mil” website domain.
Morgan in his essay broke down a year’s worth of hell into four succinct categories of work that American soldiers must master to succeed and survive in Iraq: marksmanship, casualty evacuations, entering and clearing a building/room, and react to contact – attack – from a vehicle or dismounted location.
Thanks to these concerned veterans and to the power of the internet, the word is getting out fast.
Footnote: DefenseWatch over the past year has posted AARs and “Lessons Learned” reports from Afghanistan and Iraq as they have been located. Readers who have such documents or know their internet URLs are encouraged to send in that information so that we can post it here at SFTT.org.
Ed Offley is Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at dweditor@yahoo.com. Please send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com. © 2004 Ed Offley.
http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=FTE.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=24&rnd=960.7836236162645
Sempers,
Roger
:marine:
From the Editor:
Finding ‘Ground Truth’ in Cyberspace
By Ed Offley
Deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan soon?
If you are, no doubt your calendar is chock full of practical training at your home base, from marksmanship qualification to dismounted patrols to heat protection. And if you are like every other military person, there is never enough information to ease that dull cramp in your stomach as you watch the latest roadside bombing on the evening news.
Getting the “straight skinny” on an upcoming combat op is a challenge as old as soldiering itself.
Historian William Manchester, a Marine rifleman in the Pacific campaign of World War II, recalled in his memoir, Goodbye Darkness, how he was awakened from sleep in a muddy cave one night during the Battle of Okinawa. Three newly-arrived Marine replacements huddled next to him, asking not for food and drink, but grilling him for tips on how to survive the maelstrom of fire outside.
A friend of mine named Bill, who spent much of his 20-year Navy career as a sonarman on nuclear fast-attack submarines engaged in top-secret reconnaissance missions, once described an identical situation. Just before deploying, Bill once told me, his submarine squadron would conduct formal briefings describing the mission objectives and relevant intelligence on the Soviets. Guys with charts and slides formally droning through the mission task list.
“Then, unofficially, we’d get some guys off [another] boat who had just come back and we’d walk to the end of the pier and smoke cigarettes and have a good off-line chat with them about what really went on,” Bill said. “That was a good way to exchange the straight information [without] all of the kabuki theater and stork dancing.”
Thanks to the maturing of the internet and email, tens of thousands of military people now rotating into Iraq have an unprecedented level of access to unofficial “lessons learned” reports compiled by the veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Afghanistan.
From company commanders on up, a large number of American officers who found themselves waging counter-insurgency operations instead of routine peacekeeping patrols in Iraq have written informative survival guidelines for the benefit of the troops coming in to relieve them. And more and more, these detailed-rich essays and memos are soaring around the internet being read by those who crave the information the most.
In an article in The Washington Post on Feb. 8, “Soldiers Recall Lessons from Iraq,” reporter Tom Ricks cited the experience of Army Lt. Col. Steve Russell, a battalion commander with the 4th Infantry Division:
“[B]ombers were using the transmitters from radio-controlled toy cars: They would take the electronic guts of the cars, wrap them in C-4 plastic explosive and attach a blasting cap, then detonate them by remote control.”
So Russell … mounted one of the toy-car controllers on the dashboard of his Humvee and taped down the levers. Because all the toy cars operated on the same frequency, this would detonate any similar bomb about 100 yards before his Humvee got to the spot. This ‘poor man’s anti-explosive device’ was ‘risky perhaps,’ Russell writes in a 58-page summary of his unit’s time in Iraq but better than leaving the detonation to the bombers.”
In a nearly 5,000-word essay that can be found on many military-subject websites (and which DefenseWatch has posted today as a Special Report Army Capt. Daniel Morgan provides a heavy dose of street smarts that he and his company from the 101st Airborne Division learned in the alleyways of the Sunni Triangle:
“You must always be on the offensive. You cannot assume that you are on a security presence patrol. It is always a movement to contact. Company commanders must plan every patrol in this mindset and give specified tasks that accomplish the overall mission. For example, if you are going to conduct a patrol down a heavily congested market street in order to distribute information, treat it as a movement to contact and be on the offensive.”
Morgan provides a cookbook of recipes for prevailing against the insurgents and minimizing the loss of life. His recommendations range from issuing to every soldier in his company a one-inch wide “mini-ratchet strap” for use as a tourniquet, to details on how to mount an effective cordon-and-search mission in an urban neighborhood.
Ricks in his article noted that some senior Army officials are unhappy with the informal, word-of-mouth data exchange, but officers in Iraq have said the time-sensitive tips arrive quicker via the internet than from updated field manuals:
“One officer based at Balad noted that after reading Morgan’s essay he made adjustments in a convoy he was organizing for an operation in the Sunni Triangle. ‘Our troops are in down-and-dirty fights in the streets of the Fallujahs of this country, and mostly the Army still trains for the Big Fight,’ he said in an interview. ‘So we definitely need these informal debriefs.’ ”
Several Army officers have also created a website, Company Command, that is dedicated to passing on these informal “lessons learned” and features an extensive discussion board in which to exchange information and ideas. The site has now been embraced by the Army, which has provided it a “dot-mil” website domain.
Morgan in his essay broke down a year’s worth of hell into four succinct categories of work that American soldiers must master to succeed and survive in Iraq: marksmanship, casualty evacuations, entering and clearing a building/room, and react to contact – attack – from a vehicle or dismounted location.
Thanks to these concerned veterans and to the power of the internet, the word is getting out fast.
Footnote: DefenseWatch over the past year has posted AARs and “Lessons Learned” reports from Afghanistan and Iraq as they have been located. Readers who have such documents or know their internet URLs are encouraged to send in that information so that we can post it here at SFTT.org.
Ed Offley is Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at dweditor@yahoo.com. Please send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com. © 2004 Ed Offley.
http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=FTE.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=24&rnd=960.7836236162645
Sempers,
Roger
:marine: