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thedrifter
03-12-07, 02:58 PM
Squad authority

Distributed operations will turn grunt units loose

By Gidget Fuentes - Staff writer
Marine Corps Times
March 19, 2007 Edition

It began as an experimental rifle platoon in Afghanistan, outfitted with sophisticated communications gear, calling in airstrikes and making life miserable for Afghan militants hiding in the mountains.

Now, the concept of "distributed operations," in which small, dispersed units operate far from higher headquarters and, using advanced training and tactics, push decision-making down to the lower ranks, is going Corps-wide.

Top officials want to incorporate a laundry list of to-dos, ranging from hot new gear and more realistic training for a reshaped infantry, to improvements in leadership training and unit stability. Units will be manned up earlier in the pre-deployment cycle to create a tighter group that heads to war. And leathernecks will receive beefed up cultural training as they continue to work on far away battlefields.

It's a tall order, but for some of the service's tacticians, thinkers and experimenters, it's a progression of ideas and concepts they believe will set the Corps on a healthy course as combat operations and the global hunt for terrorists continue to reshape the battlefields that beckon thousands of leathernecks.

"This focus is going to be on much more capabilities across all the forces of the Corps," not just infantry, said Vince Goulding, a retired colonel and director of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab's Sea Viking division. Small units and their leaders will be able to provide greater combat and war-fighting capabilities to their higher commanders.

"This isn't a new concept," Goulding said. "It's very evolutionary."

On Jan. 31, the Marine Corps announced a revision to the distributed operations concept, first issued in April 2005.

"The ideas presented in that first edition have been the subject of much discussion, debate and experimentation. They have also been tested by the crucible of combat as well as by the diverse challenges of the current security environment," officials wrote in the Jan. 31 Corps-wide message, MarAdmin 065/07.

That "crucible" came last spring in Afghanistan, when 1st Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines, showed what a distributed operations platoon can do.

Platoon members used sophisticated gear to redirect aircraft to conduct close-air support and a casualty evacuation for a group of nearby Marines who were being ambushed and couldn't communicate with their home base. In another operation, they called in airstrikes by B-52 bombers, F-15 Eagles and Army attack helicopters.

That and other experiments led to the revision of the concept, which is posted on the Warfighting Lab's Web site, www.mcwl.usmc.mil, although officials haven't made the full report or other supporting documents available.

In a three-page document titled "Marine Corps Operations in Complex and Distributed Environments" and posted on the Lab's Web site, the Corps offers this definition of distributed operations: "A technique applied to an appropriate situation wherein units are separated beyond the limits of mutual support. Distributed operations are practiced by general purpose forces, operating with deliberate dispersion, where necessary and tactically prudent, and decentralized decision-making consistent with commander's intent to achieve advantages over an enemy in time and place."

It also outlined a number of ongoing initiatives and projects to man, equip and train units. But don't look for a new doctrinal publication. The playbook is on the shelf.

"This is right out of the pages of MCDP-1," Goulding said, referring to "Warfighting," the Corps' manual that outlines its war-fighting philosophy.

"This force is going to bring much more capabilities across all the forces of the Corps," he said.

Officials note that distributed operations isn't a new technique, but a form of maneuver warfare focused on the spread of smaller units across a larger battlefield, with squads and other small units operating beyond the reach of their larger unit's direct fires.

Lt. Gen. John Amos, commander of Marine Corps Combat Development Command at Quantico, Va., penned the revised concept, dated Jan. 11.

The Corps isn't about to restructure into DO battalions, but it will become capable "of doing more in irregular complex operating environments while remaining capable of rapidly aggregating for more traditional missions," Amos wrote.

The Distributed Operations Implementation Working Group, led by the Sea Viking division, is overseeing the effort and working on upcoming experiments. The Distributed Operations Transition Task Force, meanwhile, will expand the concept beyond infantry units and across the force, Goulding said. A newly completed DO capabilities list "takes distributed operations out of the experimentation and makes it a real thing," he said.

To support distributed operations, top brass is on a new tack to:

•Prepare junior leaders. In distributed operations, Marines in platoons and squads take on greater responsibilities and decision-making. They may have to call bombers onto a target, sort through imagery and intelligence, assess threats, deal with casualties and talk with local residents - all far removed from their battalion's command post.

Training and Education Command officials are revising the Infantry Squad Leaders Course for staff noncommissioned officers and the Tactical Small Unit Leaders Course for NCOs and building a train-the-trainer course. The Schools of Infantry are getting more instructors to teach more students and support additional courses from the new training schedule for infantry units. Officials want to realign assignments and time orders to schools and new units so Marines get the requisite leadership courses for their billets.

•Have one team. Officials want to organize combat forces as cohesive, stable and deployable units. That means providing battalions with Marines who have the proper schooling to train with their units, and sufficient time at home between deployments. Officials want to ensure that battalions have all their personnel 180 days before deploying so every leatherneck gets his schooling, dwell time and two unit deployments before his initial enlistment ends. "That is so important for team building," Goulding said.

•Provide capable, lethal gear. Infantry battalions are being outfitted with additional tactical vehicles - the straight-leg infantry is more often riding in trucks these days - and a lighter combat load. An infusion of funding for distributed operations equipment will outfit 35 infantry battalions with $19 million worth of gear, including a larger suite of weaponry, sights, radios and other communications gear.

"You really need to equip your squad leaders to a level that we have never really done before," Goulding said. "We believe that all squads need the capability to tell an airplane ... to drop a bomb on a target."

•Sharpen small-unit control. Offi- cials want to improve the command-and-control and fire-support capabilities of small units, to include terminal control. "You can't distribute if you can't talk," Goulding said.

Officials also want to build a small unit's cultural savvy by preparing Marines to operate in diverse cultural environments, beyond the basic cultural and language training they're getting before going to Iraq or Afghanistan.

BACK TO THE BASICS OF TACTICS

Distributed operations is not a new doctrine or way to fight, and it's not far from the Corps' Combined Action Program, squad-sized teams that operated in Vietnam villages and far from their parent commands - "a classic example," Goulding said.

Definition aside, distributed operations could be a much-needed refocusing on the basic tenets of war fighting, one veteran tactician said.

"The battlefield is dictating that they have to disperse, so they call it distributed ops. But all it really amounts to is that they want to develop a squad that can survive on its own," said H. John Poole, a Vietnam veteran, infantryman, retired lieutenant colonel and author of several books, including "The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO's Contribution to Warfare."

"It's a squad leader's war."

And now might be the best time to get the Corps back on track to let squads do what they're supposed to do.

"They're not letting them develop the tactical techniques, they're not training them in advanced light infantry subjects, and they're not giving them any tactical decision-making experience," Poole said.

What's needed, he said, is less emphasis on supporting arms and a return to small-unit tactics of what amounts to light infantry forces, which can quickly disperse, move or attack, if necessary.

Such forces "don't use supporting arms as a crutch. They can operate very much with impunity with really advanced light infantry skills," he said. "What we call the basics."