thedrifter
11-14-06, 01:08 PM
November 06, 2006
Indirect action vital, DoD official affirms
By Sean D. Naylor
Staff writer
A top civilian counterterrorism official has added his voice to the chorus of senior Pentagon leaders who recently have been at pains to deny that direct-action missions — killing and capturing enemy combatants — have greater priority in U.S. special operations than such indirect actions as training foreign security forces to keep order in their own nations.
“The direct-action piece is just a stiff jab; it’s just to keep the enemy away, to enable time for the indirect pieces to take hold and take effect and to lead us to victory,” said Mario Mancuso, deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combating terrorism.
The opposite view, that the U.S. special operations leadership — drawn mostly from the “black” spec ops world of Joint Special Operations Command rather than the “white” world of Special Forces, psychological operations and civil affairs — favors JSOC’s direct-action role over indirect missions and units has steadily gained ground in the Special Forces community and among some civilian analysts.
But while acknowledging that JSOC is one of the “heavy hitters in the national security arena,” Mancuso said the direct-action missions in which JSOC specializes are not the key to victory in the current wars.
Mancuso, who spoke at a breakfast meeting Oct. 18 with defense reporters in Washington, said that after Sept. 11, 2001, there was a clear need to focus on the direct-action component, at least in the short term.
But “everyone” in the Defense Department, including JSOC’s parent outfit, the U.S. Special Operations Command, recognizes that the “irregular challenge” of the current conflicts “is not really about direct action. ... In fact, it’s not primarily about the military instrument of national power,” Mancuso said.
From a direct-action sense, U.S. forces are taking out enemy insurgents, “but ... I don’t think saying that you completed this number of operations and you’ve gotten this number of individuals is the complete measure of success,” he said.
It is more important, he said, to construct an “architecture” that enables the U.S. not only to “go after certain individuals,” but also to address “the underlying ideology and what really, frankly, inflames a lot of people.”
Mancuso said preventing the spread of radical Islam requires the ability to penetrate “denied areas” and conduct “protracted reconnaissance” in far-flung corners of the globe. These requirements, in turn, drive a need for greater investment in human intelligence, he said.
The HUMINT gap
While the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review laid out plans for Air Force Special Operations Command to establish an unmanned aerial vehicle squadron, “hardware itself is not sufficient” when it comes to intelligence collection in the war against Islamist extremism, Mancuso said.
“We are clearly ahead of our adversaries, whether they be conventional adversaries or irregular adversaries, in terms of technological know-how,” he said. “We are still in an overmatch, an overwhelming overmatch.
“But the diffusion of these technologies makes it clear that both state and nonstate adversaries will be able to develop systems that will make it harder for us, from a technical intelligence standpoint, to penetrate them.”
While that points to the need to continue investing in that technological capability, “it also underscores the need to develop, frankly, less technical means ... an ability to collect intelligence that is not bound by the limitations that are inherent in technology,” Mancuso said.
As such, U.S. special operations forces will be adding to their human intelligence capabilities, he said.
“Being able to develop and maintain and nurture relationships with groups in other societies ... that is how we are going to be in a position to have a global sensor network,” Mancuso said. “It has nothing to do with satellites — it has to do with people.”
While fluency in foreign languages is an important factor in building such relationships, “cultural fluency” will also be key.
“I mean being familiar and comfortable and able to operate in those cultures,” he said.
U.S. special operations forces will have to place particular emphasis on “recruiting and training and developing people [who] can truly engage with other people,” he said.
“That doesn’t mean just being able to talk their language and being able to understand them, and it doesn’t necessarily only mean understanding that, for example, that they worship at mosques on Fridays,” he said. “It means a person — a soldier, a sailor, a [special operations forces] member — who is willing to engage other people with whom they have nothing in common, and be willing and open to be changed by that encounter.”
Among other points Mancuso made during the breakfast:
• The U.S. is making progress in penetrating insurgent communications networks, but there is still work to be done. “We have learned a lot about how they use technologies, particularly wireless, but we don’t have the puzzle solved,” he said.
• Special operations forces remain committed to the foreign internal defense mission, but because troop demand for this purpose is so high around the world, some of those missions will be undertaken by conventional units.
• Warnings have been sounded in the Special Forces community that efforts to more than double the number of graduates from the Special Forces Qualification Course run by the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg, N.C., will inevitably result in a reduction in the quality of that force, but Mancuso indicated the opposite is occurring.
“Fort Bragg and the Special Warfare Center [have] improved the numbers and the quality of folks coming through,” he said.
Ellie
Indirect action vital, DoD official affirms
By Sean D. Naylor
Staff writer
A top civilian counterterrorism official has added his voice to the chorus of senior Pentagon leaders who recently have been at pains to deny that direct-action missions — killing and capturing enemy combatants — have greater priority in U.S. special operations than such indirect actions as training foreign security forces to keep order in their own nations.
“The direct-action piece is just a stiff jab; it’s just to keep the enemy away, to enable time for the indirect pieces to take hold and take effect and to lead us to victory,” said Mario Mancuso, deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combating terrorism.
The opposite view, that the U.S. special operations leadership — drawn mostly from the “black” spec ops world of Joint Special Operations Command rather than the “white” world of Special Forces, psychological operations and civil affairs — favors JSOC’s direct-action role over indirect missions and units has steadily gained ground in the Special Forces community and among some civilian analysts.
But while acknowledging that JSOC is one of the “heavy hitters in the national security arena,” Mancuso said the direct-action missions in which JSOC specializes are not the key to victory in the current wars.
Mancuso, who spoke at a breakfast meeting Oct. 18 with defense reporters in Washington, said that after Sept. 11, 2001, there was a clear need to focus on the direct-action component, at least in the short term.
But “everyone” in the Defense Department, including JSOC’s parent outfit, the U.S. Special Operations Command, recognizes that the “irregular challenge” of the current conflicts “is not really about direct action. ... In fact, it’s not primarily about the military instrument of national power,” Mancuso said.
From a direct-action sense, U.S. forces are taking out enemy insurgents, “but ... I don’t think saying that you completed this number of operations and you’ve gotten this number of individuals is the complete measure of success,” he said.
It is more important, he said, to construct an “architecture” that enables the U.S. not only to “go after certain individuals,” but also to address “the underlying ideology and what really, frankly, inflames a lot of people.”
Mancuso said preventing the spread of radical Islam requires the ability to penetrate “denied areas” and conduct “protracted reconnaissance” in far-flung corners of the globe. These requirements, in turn, drive a need for greater investment in human intelligence, he said.
The HUMINT gap
While the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review laid out plans for Air Force Special Operations Command to establish an unmanned aerial vehicle squadron, “hardware itself is not sufficient” when it comes to intelligence collection in the war against Islamist extremism, Mancuso said.
“We are clearly ahead of our adversaries, whether they be conventional adversaries or irregular adversaries, in terms of technological know-how,” he said. “We are still in an overmatch, an overwhelming overmatch.
“But the diffusion of these technologies makes it clear that both state and nonstate adversaries will be able to develop systems that will make it harder for us, from a technical intelligence standpoint, to penetrate them.”
While that points to the need to continue investing in that technological capability, “it also underscores the need to develop, frankly, less technical means ... an ability to collect intelligence that is not bound by the limitations that are inherent in technology,” Mancuso said.
As such, U.S. special operations forces will be adding to their human intelligence capabilities, he said.
“Being able to develop and maintain and nurture relationships with groups in other societies ... that is how we are going to be in a position to have a global sensor network,” Mancuso said. “It has nothing to do with satellites — it has to do with people.”
While fluency in foreign languages is an important factor in building such relationships, “cultural fluency” will also be key.
“I mean being familiar and comfortable and able to operate in those cultures,” he said.
U.S. special operations forces will have to place particular emphasis on “recruiting and training and developing people [who] can truly engage with other people,” he said.
“That doesn’t mean just being able to talk their language and being able to understand them, and it doesn’t necessarily only mean understanding that, for example, that they worship at mosques on Fridays,” he said. “It means a person — a soldier, a sailor, a [special operations forces] member — who is willing to engage other people with whom they have nothing in common, and be willing and open to be changed by that encounter.”
Among other points Mancuso made during the breakfast:
• The U.S. is making progress in penetrating insurgent communications networks, but there is still work to be done. “We have learned a lot about how they use technologies, particularly wireless, but we don’t have the puzzle solved,” he said.
• Special operations forces remain committed to the foreign internal defense mission, but because troop demand for this purpose is so high around the world, some of those missions will be undertaken by conventional units.
• Warnings have been sounded in the Special Forces community that efforts to more than double the number of graduates from the Special Forces Qualification Course run by the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg, N.C., will inevitably result in a reduction in the quality of that force, but Mancuso indicated the opposite is occurring.
“Fort Bragg and the Special Warfare Center [have] improved the numbers and the quality of folks coming through,” he said.
Ellie