MOD B - Tactical Flashcards
Identify and explain the four Pillars of ARSOF Capability
1) Indigienous Approach to Operations
2) Precision Targeting
3) Understanding and Wielding Influence
4) Crisis Response
- Indigenous Approach to Operations. The indigenous approach is a means to address challenges to regional stability with and through populations and partner forces empowered by persistent ARSOF engagement. Through the approach, ARSOF leverage nascent capability within populations, transforming indigenous mass into combat power. Since World War II, ARSOF elements have amassed unique institutional and operational expertise in living among, training, advising, and fighting alongside people of foreign cultures, achieving effects with and through partner forces.
- Precision Targeting Operations. Precision targeting operations involve direct action and counter-network activities enabled by SOF unique intelligence, targeting processes, and technology, such as ARSOF rotary wing capabilities and armed unmanned aerial systems. Precision targeting operations are employed against uniquely difficult target sets that may require operating in uncertain or hostile environments, careful and focused application of force, and significant intelligence and operational preparation. These operations are executed by highly trained, rapidly deployable, and scalable ARSOF personnel and formations that are employed to buy time and space for other operations to gain traction, as seen in counterinsurgency campaigns. They create precise physical and psychological effects and can be used to collapse threat networks through deliberate targeting of critical nodes, as demonstrated in counterterrorism campaigns. They also include sensitive activities in support of targeting processes and the execution of operations.
- Understanding and Wielding Influence. Developing understanding and wielding influence are essential aspects of the value ARSOF capabilities provide joint force commanders and the nation. The SOF network of personnel, assets, and international partnerships represents the means to obtain early understanding of emerging local, regional, and transregional threats and where opportunities exist for advancing U.S. objectives. The SOF network provides capabilities needed to influence outcomes in all campaign phases and especially in conflict short of overt war.
- Crisis Response. Crisis response, provided through CONUS and OCONUS stationed alert forces and persistently deployed and dispersed units, provides national decision makers with agile, tailorable, and rapidly employable special operations formations necessary to respond to emergencies. These forces provide options to rescue people under threat, to recover sensitive materials such as weapons of mass destruction components, to provide humanitarian relief, or to address other short notice requirements.
Identify and explain the operational characteristics of the Special Forces Principal Tasks
- Covert operation. An operation that is so planned and executed as to conceal the identity of or permit plausible denial by the sponsor.
- Clandestine operation. An operation sponsored or conducted by governmental departments or agencies in such a way as to assure secrecy or concealment. A clandestine operation differs from a covert operation in that emphasis is placed on concealment of the operation rather than on concealment of the identity of the sponsor.
- Low-visibility operations. Sensitive operations wherein the diplomatic-military restrictions inherent in covert and clandestine operations are either not necessary or not feasible; actions are taken as required to limit exposure of those involved and/or their activities and with the knowledge that the action and/or sponsorship of the operation may preclude plausible denial by the initiating power.
Define Foreign Internal Defense (FID) and explain its three categories of support
def: Participation by civilian agencies and military forces of a government or international organizations in any of the programs and activities undertaken by a host nation government to free and protect its society from subversion, lawlessness, insurgency, terrorism, and other threats to its security.
FID supports a HN’s IDAD (internal defense and development).
- Indirect Support. DOD FID indirect support consists of security assistance, exchange programs, and joint/multinational exercises. These programs can have either a small or no US footprint in the HN, and they can support issues not related to insurgency, issues related to a latent insurgency, or programs related to an entrenched insurgency.
- Direct Support (Not Involving US Combat Operations). DOD FID military direct support that does not involve combat operations includes civil-military operations (CMO), PSYOP, SFA, military training support, logistics support, mobility support, and intelligence and communications sharing. These programs have varying US footprints in the HN. They can be in support of a HN of any kind, but large efforts in this area tend to assist a HN with an extant insurgency. These operations involve the use of US forces to provide direct assistance to the HN civilian populace or military. Direct support operations are normally conducted when the HN has not attained self-sufficiency and is faced with social, economic, or military threats beyond its capability to handle.
- US Combat Operations. The introduction of US combat forces during FID requires a Presidential decision and serves only as a temporary solution until HN forces are capable of conducting independent combat operations. Based on the assessment of the threat, the US-HN combat operations will likely take the form of one or more of either COIN, CT, CD, or stabilization
What is the definition of Counterinsurgency (COIN)?
Comprehensive civilian and military efforts taken to defeat an insurgency and to address any core grievances.
What is the definition of Security Force Assistance (SFA) and what are the tasks/activities that characterize it? (hint: think of the acronym)
Security Force Assistance (SFA). The Department of Defense activities that support the development of the capacity and capability of foreign security forces and their supporting institutions.
OTERA: organize, train, equip, rebuild, advise
Identify and explain the components of the acronym OTERA?
- Organizing. Security force assistance includes organizing institutions and units, which can range from standing up a ministry to improving the organization of the smallest maneuver unit. Building capability and capacity in this area includes personnel, logistics, and intelligence and their support infrastructure. Developing HN tactical capabilities alone is inadequate; strategic and operational capabilities must be developed as well. HN organization and units should reflect their own requirements, interests, and capabilities—they should not simply mirror existing external institutions.
- Training. Training occurs in training centers, academies, and units. Training includes a broad range of subject matter, to include security forces responding to civilian oversight and control.
- Equipping. Equipping is accomplished through traditional security assistance, foreign support, and donations. Equipment must be appropriate for the HN’s ability to sustain it. The equipment must also be appropriate for the physical environment of the region and the HN’s ability to operate and maintain it.
- Rebuilding. In many cases, particularly after major combat operations, it may be necessary to rebuild existing or build new infrastructure to support foreign security forces. This infrastructure includes facilities and material but may also include other infrastructure, such as command systems and transportation networks.
- Advising. Advising HN units and institutions is essential to the ultimate success of security force assistance. Advising benefits both the state and the supporting external organizations.
What is the definition of Special Reconnaissance (SR) and how does it differ from reconnaissance conducted by conventional forces?
Special Reconnaissance (SR). Reconnaissance and surveillance actions conducted as a special operation in hostile, denied, or diplomatically and/or politically sensitive environments to collect or verify information of strategic or operational significance, employing military capabilities not normally found in conventional forces.
- Conducted as a special operation
- In hostile, denied, or diplomatically and/or politically sensitive environment
- To collect or verify information of strategic or operational significance
- Employing military capabilities not normally found in conventional forces
What is the definition of Direct Action (DA)?
Direct Action (DA). Short-duration strikes and other small-scale offensive actions conducted as a special operation in hostile, denied, or diplomatically sensitive environments and which employ specialized military capabilities to seize, destroy, capture, exploit, recover, or damage designated targets.
What is the definition of Counterterrorism (CT)?
Counterterrorism (CT). Actions taken directly against terrorist networks and indirectly to influence and render global and regional environments inhospitable to terrorist networks.
What is the definition of Preparation of the Environment?
Preparation of the Environment (PE). An umbrella term for operations and activities conducted by selectively trained special operations forces to develop an environment for potential future special operations.
What are the 9 principal tasks of SF?
Special Warfare tasks:
UW, FID, COIN, SFA
Precision Targeting tasks:
DA, CT, SR, CPWMD
PE fits into both
What other SF principal task supports FID?
COIN
What is IDAD and what principal SF task does it relate to?
Internal Defense and Development: The full range of measures taken by a nation to promote its growth and to protect itself from subversion, lawlessness, insurgency, terrorism, and other threats to its security.
FID at the strategic level
What is SSR and what principal SF task does it relate to?
Security Sector Reform: A comprehensive set of programs and activities undertaken to improve the way a host nation provides safety, security, and justice.
SFA at the strategic level
