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The faculty of the Department of Joint, Interagency & Multinational Operations (DJIMO) offer topics for further discussion on a wide range of issues.
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Reporting on GEN Dempsey's remarks at the 2009 Joint Warfighting Conference, Gerry J. Gilmore (AFPS) writes:
With the advent of terrorism and other types of irregular warfare, he said, the U.S. military now “must develop leaders who are effective in the context of ill-defined problems against an enemy likely to migrate among operational themes.”
REF: Writing in Army Requires Different Leaders to Fight Irregular Wars, General Says
Hat Tip to the War on Terror News (WOTN) for reporting this in GEN Dempsey: Junior Leaders Must Decide (**)
Dempsey, the commander of U.S. Training and Doctine Command (TRADOC), went on to say that the "complexity on the battlefield that, in turn, requires a different kind of leadership and a decentralized command structure that pushes down decision-making authority to more junior leaders."
As a TRADOC organization, his words made me stop and think, how well are we accomplishing the preparation mission he describes below?
“We must prepare leaders for the shifting balance of operational and tactical art due to complexity and decentralization [on the battlefield],” Dempsey said. “As the operational environment becomes more complex, commanders at much-lower echelons of command must gain an appreciation of the operational art.”
(**) As noted in the Failure to Communicate with Remote Server error message, the War on Terror News may not be accessible from many Army installations as it appears CTNOSC is arbitrarily blocking all blogs hosted at TypePad
The error message linked above provides a remedy:
If access to this site is needed for official business follow the instructions below.
1. Obtain Supervisor Approval with a written justification of why the site is part of your official duties.
2. Have your IMO contact the DOIM Help Desk to open a work order to request waiver to have this site unblocked if applicable.
Once we receive your waiver, it will be submitted to the Change Configuration Board (CCB) for approval prior to submission to CTNOSC for action.
This process can take up to 60+ to complete. (I presume that is 60+ [days], although in practice it is probably "60+ [months]" or longer)
Reading the above procedure, does that in any way sound like GEN Dempsey's "decentralized command structure that pushes down decision-making authority to more junior leaders?"
The article Culture of Engagement summarizes LTG Caldwell's remarks to the FA30 students at the Information Proponent Office:
Every leader in our Army needs to be thinking about how we inform, educate and engage others, and what tools and mediums we will use.
[He] emphasized the importance of the message getting out. With new media, there is no news cycle. The command climate must embrace speed, creativity, and adaptability.
In his speech Fueling Change in our Army to the AUSA Land Warfare Breakfast Series, LTG Caldwell shared the SECARMY's remarks:
We have a tendency to keep our head down and do our jobs. We need a culture that is more open. We need to get people outside of their comfort zones. Soldiers and Civilians need to look for opportunities to tell the Army story.
Reading the above remarks, I can't help but think of a couple slides from one of GEN Casey's presentations, specifically his Rules for Information Engagement and his timeline for StratComms Impact. Are these draconian blocking policies meeting the intent of "Timing is everything" and "Don't over-centralize!"? They certainly do not provide any assistance in helping us meet the "You Want to Get Your Story Out Here" objective as illustrated on the StratComms Impact timeline.
REF: GEN Casey's 11 Flat Out Rules for Information Enagement (Slide 56 of 57)
Annotations in RED reflect my additions and emphasis.
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During a panel session at JFCOM Carmen Medina, Director of the Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency stated:
“I think, in the future world, civilian casualities will not be tolerated. The line between war making and criminality will become blurred and differ from state to state. The ability to communicate happens in a flash. As a commander, if you are not immediately competing with a story, you are sunk. Perceptions are what ideas are about. There are concepts that are greater than an individual life, but why non-involved people must die for a cause is not clear to people like it used to be.”
REF: Ms. Carmen Medina encourages commanders to react quickly to internal news post at USCFCOMLive Blog
In early June 2006, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed by an airstrike. In a press conference after the attack, the MNFI spokesman (then MG Caldwell) showed a video of F-16's dropping two 500-pound bombs on the house.
He also revealed "that six other people were killed in the attack, including one woman and one child."
I frequently use this incident as an exercise in critical thinking when discussing Information Operations.
Imagine the same situation, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's known with high certainty. But, instead of an Iraqi woman and child, we know that two kidnapped Soldiers are present? or perhaps a member of some non-governmental organization and her child? (both U.S. citizens)
I ask: Would we still make the decision to drop the bombs? Within the classroom environment, most would not.
Applying the adage - "actions speak louder than words" - those responses shout one message loud & clear: we value the lives of "our people" more than that of Iraqis (or Afghans, as this example could apply there as well).
Is that truly the message we want to send? Does that not contradict many of our other messages? and perhaps confirm some of the messages of our adversaries?
REF: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Killed in Bombing Raid (8 June 2006)
Note: This post was originally crafted as a response to the JFCOM blog article. However I was unable to answer this question: Spam protection: Sum of + ? which was required in order to submit my comment. I suspect that may explain why there are NO comments on any of the their blog posts.
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TO: Whom It May Concern
CC: Our Enemies, Hackers, Spammers, Script Kiddies
FROM: NETCOM
SUBJECT: Congratulations - We're Accomplishing Your Mission
To all, just a short note to congratulate you. Due to our knee-jerk reactions to your exploratory probes and continued hacking attempts, we continue to assist you in accomplishing your mission. In recent months our responses have enabled some of your objectives, specifically:
- Disrupting our daily work flows and sharing of information, rendering numerous thumb drives, digital cameras and external hard drives useless overnight
- Wasting thousands of man-hours trying to adapt to operating within the new constraints
- Impeding and, in some cases, preventing communications between organizations
- Inflicting occasional Denial of Service attacks upon our own networks under the guise of Information Assurance
Request: To facilitate our accomplishment of your future objectives, please send your OPORD, along with all annexes, to the originating address. Recommend highlighting any tasks you deem we can most effectively assist you in accomplishing.
Are you wondering what prompted me to write the above satirical message? See the images below for just one example of how we continue to hamstring ourselves.
Early this afternoon I received confirmation of my registration for the government's Web Content Managers Forum.
So, I clicked on the link where it said Please sign in here:
Note the "blocked" text inserted by AKO at the front the URL. (I first referenced this in my picture at AKO Blocks URLs in Email Traffic back in mid-April) A discussion related to this blocking of URLs revealed that mangling the URLs is just an interim measure, eventually they will be stripped altogether:
The INFOCON mandates all html and javascript in unsigned emails be stripped. We wanted to start slow so as not to create too much an uproar. ( Another good intention with less then stellar execution). The reason why we did not strip the html in total is because we wanted show what was coming but allow the 99.9% good urls to be usable while the rest of the admins in the Army get their systems in compliance and sign all emails containing html. (emphasis added)
The above box reads Click to follow link, so I did and this is what happened:
Great, another confirmation dialogue box. Yes, of course I want to continue, if I did not want to continue, I would not have clicked on the link in the first place.
So I click the Yes button and then:
Great, so all of that was just wasted effort.
At this point, I wonder what percentage of users will just abandon any attempts to access the link? From various items I've read, each time an additional roadblock or obstacle is put in the path, it filters out a percentage of users. These could very well be users that need to access that information, but are not willing to jump through hoops to get to it.
Some may be asking, so what? There's a work around, right?
Yes, you can do the following:
1. Right click on the mangled link and chose Copy Hyperlink.
2. Start a browser window and paste the mangled link into the address bar
3. Delete the "blocked" text in front of the URL and press Enter.
That procedure takes about 7-10 seconds for someone that knows exactly how to do it. It also took about 10 seconds for the previously described failed attempt to access the mangled link.
Assume 20 seconds extra added. Now, multiply that out by [# of users] X [# of links per day] X [Days Per Week] X [Weeks Per Year] and appropriate factors to convert it to a number of personnel-hours wasted. Multiply that number by an average hourly wage for a government worker.
That is a direct cost, and at what benefit?
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 The Policy Coordinating Committee (PCC) on Strategic Communications has been dissolved and the Global Strategic Engagement Center (GSEC) is sitting around waiting for leadership. The problem is the "lack of a broad constituency in Congress for Public Diplomacy."
So said the Honorable James Glassman, former Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, in Keynote Address to the InfowarCon 2009 attendees on Friday, April 24th.
In his speech he remarked:
"The business that many of you have chosen is influence. It is not exposition; it is not explanation. It is information with a purpose. It is using words, images, and non-violent deeds to get people to behave in ways that help America achieve its national security objectives. We define public diplomacy as understanding, engaging, informing, and influencing foreign publics. But it is the fourth gerund that counts – influencing.
As an article in the New York Times last week indicated, the business in which you are engaged and in which I used to be engaged can be contentious in a free society. There is, in some quarters, a squeamishness about using information to influence.
But it is absolutely necessary. It is a noble calling. And it is changing. As a result, much of what we think we know about this endeavor is wrong."
Excerpted from Glassman's prepared speech as posted in Stop Explaining! (29 April 2009) on his blog Economics, Investing, Public Diplomacy, and More
Matt Armstrong (@mountainrunner) authors MountainRunner, a blog about public diplomacy and strategic communication in the 21st century.
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The Milblogging Conference 2009 was held on 24-25 April at the Westin Arlington Gateway in Washington, DC. The event was live blogged by many in attendance. I'm sure that numerous top Military Bloggers will be providing extensive coverage over the next several days. I'll use this post - and subsequent comments - to provide links to additional coverage as it becomes available. Readers are encouraged to add comments and links as well.
You can view the archive of live coverage posted by @subbob on Twitter by searching for #milblog at Twitter search page
I recommend those interested in following more information about this visit the Military Blogging Conference site which contains a linked list of the 2009 Speakers on page right. The conference was sponsored by Military.com, USAA,
A highlight of the conference was the virtual appearance, via live VTC, of MG Michael L. Oates from Iraq. He maintains http://taskforcemountain.com, including the interactive Mountain Sound Off blog.
He explained why he established the Task Force Mountain Blog and how he uses it. He also spoke about the importance of embracing these new technologies for both internal and external communication. View a 52-second video clip of his presentation.
Additional Video & Transcript: 15-minute video of MG Oates and partial transcript of his remarks (Added 27 April 2009, 11:32 PM)
As with the Vimeo note below, please comment on this post if you are not able to access or view the video. I'm trying to capture information to establish the range of restrictions affecting our ability to communicate and collaborate.
Request: If you are somewhere that does not allow you access to Vimeo, please let me know in the comments section below, including the post or base you are at and what type of error message or notice presented when you attempted to view the video. Last week the Army started posting video clips of GEN Casey (Chief Cam) on Vimeo at http://www.vimeo.com/ocsa. My assumption is that if anyone out there can't view them, someone in OCSA might want to know.
Other videos and transcripts from the conference should soon be available. In the meantime, for those new to the MilBlogging community, here's a video from last year's conference:
Panel 2 MilBlogging Conference: Panel Introductions (2008 Conference)
Description: Moderator Melinda of Spouzebuzz welcomes everyone to Panel 2 of the MilBlogging Conference in Las Vegas and each panel member introduces themselves and tells their relationship with military and with blogging
Note to advanced readers & experienced bloggers: The comment interface does not accept HTML or allow you to enter formatted links. Periodically I will edit the comments to format the links into a more readable format. I will not change the content of any comments, merely improve the readability.
To facilitate that formatting, please provide any links in the following format (using Great Americans as an example):
Title: Great Americans - Ordinary People. Extraordinary Deeds.
URL: http://www.greatamericans.com
The above is not a requirement for posting, but it will make it easier for me to efficiently reformat the links.
Note to any Senior Leaders (Army, Other Service or OSD) reading this:
My attendance at yesterday's conference was "on my own time" as it does not "count as work", it's not in my job description. Unfortunately, unless assigned to a Public Affairs position, that probably applies to the many other government employees that were also in attendance. That same caveat also applies to the time spent writing this post - on a Sunday morning, in DC, while on leave. Until the overall civil service system is revamped to recognize information workers, and that we are no longer in an "industrial age" making Widgets, the use of these technologies for strategic communication will remain relegated to those that are passionate about it.
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Earlier this week in DoD Failing To Build Good Strategists (30 March 2009), DOD Buzz reported:
America has done a lousy job of ensuring we have a crop of well trained and experienced strategists and must act to fix this. That’s the conclusion of Barry Watts, one of the leading US experts on transformation and its discontents and a top analyst of weapons systems. Watts, who served under Rumsfeld as head of the crucial PA and E shop, was speaking at a seminar on the acquisition crisis facing the Air Force and mentioned the paucity of sound strategic decision making in recent years.
Last year Barry Watts wrote U.S. Combat Training, Operational Art, and Strategic Competence Report (PDF, 1.5 MB, 94 pages) as part of the Strategy for the Long Haul series published by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA). From the Executive Summary of that report:
As for American strategic competence at the national level, US performance in Iraq provides ample evidence that it has been declining for some time. Indeed, with a few exceptions, it appears that overall US strategic performance has been deteriorating since the late 1960s or early 1970s. Especially at the national level, American strategists have been prone to mistake desirable strategic goals for the concrete strategies necessary to achieve those goals within existing resource and other constraints despite the active, opposing efforts of our adversaries to achieve their own ends. Also, particularly in the case of Iraq since 2003, the costs and difficulties of creating a somewhat democratic, Western-oriented, economically viable nation in the aftermath of regime change have proven far greater than most people imagined. To begin addressing these sorts of long-term problems connecting ends and means, one of the first steps will be to decide where in the government to locate a small group of individuals with the cognitive skills required of competent, national-level strategists.
Barry D. Watts asserts that America’s strategic performance is in decline. His study Identifies research that indicates different thinking processes are required to solve tame problems, at the tactical level of war, and wicked problems, at the strategic and operations levels of war. He argues that America’s waning strategic performance stems from a dearth of people competent in the latter skill set. These people either have what it takes by age 20, or they do not. One aspect of the problem then is to identify the people capable of strategic thinking and place them in a key position to provide their best thinking to national leadership. The second aspect of the problem is whether or not the President has the proclivity to seek such strategic advice and implement it. In other words, how do you get the horse to drink the water?
Watts proposes a solution that addresses only the first aspect of the problem. If America is really short of people capable of the hard reasoning necessary to create grand strategy, then it cannot identify the individuals because they do not exist. If they do exist in sufficient numbers then identifying them is the key task. This group of 8 to 10 (7 would be too few and 11 just over the top) would do the hard thinking needed to create successful grand strategy if, and only if, the President decides to consider their advice.
The real key to America’s strategic decline then is the attitude of the President. If the chief executive does not appreciate the contributions that such a group can provide, we run the risk of simply creating a pencil-ready jobs program for self-promoting geniuses who have the gravitas to convince the hiring authority that they are competent strategic thinkers.
~~ Blog post by Phillip G. Pattee, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Joint, Interagency, and Multinational Operations
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The whole English army had recoiled from the line of Boer intrenchments. The battle was practically over by noon: the only ones who remained in the front line being the artillerymen and some of the infantry who had succeeded in reaching it, in their gallant but futile effort to rescue those who were in the ravine in the rear of the guns. It was hopeless for these to look for succor unless the whole division came to their relief, and the Boer riflemen in the trenches were ready to pour in a withering fire at the moment such an attempt would be made. They were all captured with the guns
An heroic and superb fight all along the line, but a hopeless one.
The total English forces engaged were 16,000 infantry, 1000 mounted infantry, 36 field artillery guns, 6 naval guns, and 250 men (sic) naval brigade. (British losses were 165 killed, 670 wounded, 332 missing)…
A striking feature of the battle was the total invisibility of the enemy, not a Boer was seen during the fight.
From a report on the Battle of Colenso, 15 DEC 1899, during the Boer War by Captain S.L’H. Slocum, Eighth U.S. Cavalry, U.S. military attache’ accompanying the British forces.
We may be trying to pack too much into the term Hybrid Conflict/Threat and thus missing the true importance of the phenomena, at least as it applies to ground forces.
In 2006, IDF ground maneuver was frustrated tactically, and perhaps operationally, by the quality of the Hezbollah defense. That is in the defense of built –up areas or certain other key terrain, Hezbollah was able to repel IDF units in a more or less conventional fight. Contributing to this success was a very skilled use of the latest generation of antitank missiles, proficiency at field fortifications and hardening built up areas, and effective tactical intelligence including signal intercept. In certain limited ground tactical niches, Hezbollah became something close to a peer competitor to its opposite number IDF units.
Also contributing to Hezbollah's relative success was the fact that the IDF ground forces were de facto maximized by training, recent operational experience, and mindset for effectiveness in continuous security/stability operations in the West Bank. In short, the IDF’s effective unit experience at battalion and below was protecting settlers, arresting and ambushing terrorists, and foiling suicide bomber infiltrations into Israel proper. Hezbollah has, since the 1980s, used, to paraphrase Frank Hoffman, a combination of irregular, terrorist and criminal capabilities. In the early 1990s it added conventional operations and is a far more proficient foe in more or less conventional small unit tactics than any of the Palestinian groups. The IDF had not really engaged in significant maneuver ops against Hezbollah since the withdrawal from South Lebanon in 2000.
There is nothing new under the sun, to quote Ecclesiates. Not many armies transition seamlessly from combating insurgents or "hostiles" to fighting a peer or near peer competitor. Additionally, large state armies sometimes seem to have a tough time getting the most out of new weapons systems, probably because they tend to want to graft the new capability onto a mountain of existing doctrine and preconceived notions of how things ought to be. Baseline tech-savvy substate groups or smaller armies just take the thing out and play with it to see what it will do and adapt to maximize the new weapons' capabilities. They have an organizational OODA loop that is the envy of larger state armies.
Back to the Boers. In the early stages of the Boer War, the Boer employment of high velocity smokeless powder magazine rifles and breech loading artillery put the British army, which was equipped with basically the same class of weapons but using them according to a very outdated tactical concept, to shame. The early tactical reverses hurt British public support of the war and thus the whole British endeavor. Though it could be argued that the Boers were the state armies of the Transvaal and Orange Free State, in terms of the lack of a long standing professional military establishment they probably more resembled some substate forces today.
So what is the "so-what" ? Is Hybrid Conflict a revolutionary, never seen before form of warfare? Not in my opinion. If the Boer War and the ground portion of the 2006 war in Lebanon conflict are guides, it is simply the phenomena that large state armies that have focused on the lower end of the spectrum of conflict for significant periods may fail to defeat or even be beaten by well trained substate forces in more or less conventional engagements. This is most likely to happen when state armies go into these conflicts without analyzing the new enemy’s capabilities or training to overcome them. Showing up to such a fight doesn’t equal winning such a fight.
Similarly, state armies should never rest on their laurels when it comes to technology. Smaller, disciplined but less bureaucratic enemies may more quickly and fully employ new technologies to great effect than larger, presumably more professional or advanced, forces. As the British Army in 1899 and the IDF in 2006 learned, these tactical defeats are unnecessarily costly in the lives of soldiers and are so shockingly counterintuitive to the public back home that they can endanger the larger strategy or policy.
~~ Blog post by Eric F. McMillin, an instructor in the Department of Joint, Interagency, and Multinational Operations
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The article Army reviewing Ala. use of troops (USA Today, 18 March 2009) reporting on the use of 23 Army soldiers near Fort Rucker, Alabama on March 10, 2009 generated some quick response interest and points out how the famous Posse Comitatus Act is well understood in concept but can be confusing in application given the exceptions to it in other parts of federal legislation. Anecdotally, I have yet to meet the military person who was unaware that there was a Posse Comitatus Act. Nevertheless, all the caveats and exceptions are challenging to keep up with. These posts were originally emails and I received permission to cross-post to this blog. The larger question is whether the Posse Comitatus Act is an obstacle, in the contemporary environment, to efficient response and the saving of lives and property, an important safeguard to prevent the abuse of the civil population by the military, an import safeguard to prevent the abuse of the military by civilian officials, or so incoherent as to have no practical effect whatsoever?
Bob King wrote:
From today's Early Bird. First I've heard about this. Could be a useful example of the sensitivities and tension in how & when troops are used.
Rich - You might consider sending this to the JAG instructor doing the legal lesson. Perhaps he (or she) could use this as a vignette to support the Posse Comitatus instruction.
John Pilloni wrote:
I believe this falls under the clause about base commanders having the authority to assist local authorities (not to exceed their Title X status) in cases of emergency, with the caveat that the commander informs national authorities within 24 hours. I think the commander also has to be a general officer. Am I wrong? I thought I recall this from the last time I taught A504.
Bob King wrote:
John - I would agree with your assessment of the decision to offer initial assistance at the local level. This may come down to whether or not the additional action of informing higher was performed. Whether right or wrong, it does provide a real-life (& current) example for discussion.
Dwayne Wagner wrote:
As an "old MP", as the Provost Marshal, this would have been run through the SJA before the MPs left the installation. If an emergency, I would have called the SJA on his cell phone. The situation did not fall under the caveats of a national emergency nor was it a natural disaster.
LTC Rodriguez wrote:
I will certainly cover all this in my class, and just yesterday was talking to CAC SJA and the JAG School Commandant about this incident. There's an investigation going on to see how the 21 MPs (plus the post's PM) ended up policing downtown. I think that it can be done via Initial Response Authority (IRA) - here's a great article on that authority.
[page 30 on this link http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/02-2007.pdf ]
Rich Berkebile wrote:
As an even older SP and CSP (Chief, Security Police), Air Force procedure was essentially the same - call the Judge Advocate and conference with the installation commander. I am unaware of any requirement for the commander to be a general officer but these days in the AF installation commanders typically are. In my day they were more often colonels.
That said, I think it is debatable whether securing a crime scene is enforcing the law. I also think it debatable whether this an immediate response authority (IRA) case as well (LTC Rodriguez disagrees - see his response below). Judge Advocates can be creative by classifying things as "safety" (which would be IRA) or "loans of equipment or training" or "hot pursuit" which are not. All of these actions are legal.
What I am surprised at, and skeptical about, is the need for a governor's involvement. I supported many a local request over the years and none that I know of (with the possible exception of the Talladega prison riot and I was only informed on that one) involved a governor.
LTC Rodriguez’ email excerpt: "I will certainly cover all this in my class, and just yesterday was talking to CAC SJA and the JAG School Commandant about this incident. There's an investigation going on to see how the 21 MPs (plus the post's PM) ended up policing downtown. I think that it can be done via Initial Response Authority (IRA) - here's a great article on that authority."
Bob King wrote:
Rich - Thanks for the sharing LTC Rodriguez's response and the article.
In response to Dwayne's message, I would agree it was not a "national emergency", but I also do not believe it needs the "national" caveat.
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Only it's not what you think...
Late last century the Shining Path guerrillas staged a bloody insurgency in Peru, causing a reported 70,000 deaths until it was suppressed in 2000. Now they're back:
"But here in one of the most remote corners of the Andes, a renewed military campaign is battling a resurgent rebel faction. And the new Shining Path, taking a page from Colombia’s rebels, has reinvented itself as an illicit drug enterprise, rebuilding on the profits of Peru’s thriving cocaine trade." New York Times, 18 March 2009
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/18/world/americas/18peru.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp
The Peruvian government appears to be taking aggressive action to quell the revived insurgency, but is making some fundamental mistakes, not the least of which is indiscriminate use of force. Still, they have the right idea in terms of winning the "hearts and minds" of the people. See the embedded video to learn of govt. efforts to improve life for the local people. Improving infrastructure is standard COIN practice, but the Peruvians are not delivering what they promise. The results could be counterproductive.
More on the Shining Path guerrillas: http://www.cfr.org/publication/9276/
The guerrillas have taken a "kinder, gentler" approach this time. Have they learned something?
Are there parallels with our efforts in Afghanistan, particularly with the drug trade?
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As discussed in Danger Room's Was the Impeccable on a Sub Hunt?:
On Sunday, an unarmed Navy ocean survey vessel was forced to turn on the firehose to fend off Chinese ships shadowing it in the South China Sea. The incident -- which happened in international waters claimed by China as an "exclusive economic zone" -- touched off a full-blown diplomatic spat between China and the United States.
Over at the Nautilus Institute, Mark J. Valencia wrote in Tempting the Dragon:
The 'harassment' of the US Navy military survey vessel Impeccable operating in China's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the South China Sea is but the tip of an iceberg of maritime legal differences between China and the US. Indeed this is not the first such incident and unless a compromise can be negotiated it certainly won't be the last. [....]
Regarding the confrontation, China would say that its vessels were not harassing the Impeccable but simply trying to make it cease violating what China says is both international law and its law and leave the area.
Geoff Babb - our in-house China expert (and wanna be stand in for Comedy Central) - recommends Valencia's article in his typical witty manner:
This relatively short article is a great discussion of China-US differences over "maritime research and surveillance" and how where one sits or bobs depends on where one stands or floats. Ramming Speed Ba Hu, row faster!
From Observing the Incidents Off the Chinese Coast at Galrahn's blog Information Dissemination: Observations of an Armchair Admiral:
The only dark spot for the United States is in this entire incident is the military's deceptive communications strategy with the American people. This American Forces Press Services article states the "ship is an ocean surveillance vessel and was mapping the sea bottom when the Chinese ships approached." As AP military writer Anne Gearan is reporting, and just about every experienced hand in the comments has noted, both T-AGOS ships were clearly monitoring for Chinese submarine operations, which is exactly what Peter Dutton recommended in his testimony last year to Congress that the Navy should be doing.
Somebody in the DoD apparently believes the American people can't handle the truth regarding what our ships would be doing off the Chinese coast. Can someone please explain how collecting intelligence on the least transparent nation in the world while in international waters with an unarmed ship whose primary purpose is to monitor submarine activity is somehow a threatening act towards China if we say it out loud.
The Navy needs to believe in transparency when they attempt to be transparent, and honesty is the best approach.
Does Galrahn have a valid point? In an era where many see the U.S. as having lost credibility amongst the international community, what do we gain by hiding our intentions behind carefully crafted statements? Assuming the Impeccable was engaged in submarine surveillance operations, what do we lose when such statements are discredited?
In Tempting the Dragon, Valencia, referring to the 1982 UN Convention Law of the Sea, writes: "Since the US is not a party to the Convention the issue can not be resolved by the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea."
What is the way ahead in this? Should the U.S. reexamine ratification of this Convention?
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As reported at DoD Buzz:
"The Pentagon is likely to take the rare action of adding a new
combatant commander, this one for cyber warfare. COCOMs, as they are
known, are the four-star generals who actually plan and fight the
nation’s wars. The Joint Chiefs, comprised of the service heads, have
no combat authority. They train, prepare and equip the nation’s
warriors."
REF: New Cyber COCOM Likely
Hat tip to Danger Room blog's Twitter feed for this story
This is yet the latest in the wrangling over who will have the lead on cyber warfare, in an ongoing struggle that started several years ago. In December 2005, the U.S. Air Force added cyberspace to their mission statement:
"The mission of the United States Air Force is to deliver sovereign options for the defense of the United States of America and its global interests -- to fly and fight in Air, Space, and Cyberspace."
REF: Air Force releases new mission statement (Air Force Print News, 12/8/2005)
It was not clear at that time whether the Air Force was assigned that mission by the Secretary of Defense or if they took the initiative to expand their mission into cyberspace. Many observers perceived the move as a "land grab" to fill a vacuum and, at the same time, set the stage for and increase in funding and manpower. Others, including the Air Force, explained it as codifying in their mission and doctrine what was already occurring anyway.
Up until the middle of last year they were on the glide slope towards establishing a new Air Force Cyber Command. As reported by Danger Room in Air Force Suspends Controversial Cyber Command (August 2008):
"The Air Force is about to suspend its controversial effort to reorganize its forces to "dominate" cyberspace. The provisional, 8,000-man Cyber Command has been ordered to stop all activities, just weeks before it was supposed to be declared operational."
Among other issues, including the attention over their handling of nuclear weapons, the location of the new command became a subject of political infighting as various states sought to bring it to their district. (Begging the question, why does a command managing cyberspace require a large physical footprint with all of its personnel co-located? Perhaps a command managing a virtual environment could itself be geographically distributed and connected virtually?)
Proving that they were "down but not out", last week the Air Force approved the structure for the new cyber organization:
"After two years of delays, reversals and adjustments, the shape of the service’s cyber warfare organization is finally beginning to emerge as it moves toward an official standup in May or June.
Air Force Secretary Michael Donley approved on Friday a plan for standing up 24th Air Force, the service’s new cyber warfare organization, as part of Air Force Space Command, an Air Force official said."
REF: Donley sets out structure for cyber command (Air Force Times, 26 Feb 2009)
(NOTE: The terms "command", "organization", "force" and "wing" are sprinkled throughout the article. I suspect calling it a "cyber command" is still a sensitive issue given the recent speculation of a combatant command with the same name.)
Returning to the concept of a new combatant command, I'll ask the question from this post's title:
Why stop there?
Why create just a cyber combatant command? Why not step back and consider whether a more substantial reorganization is needed?
Last year the term cyberspace was officially defined (Defense Department adopts new definition of 'cyberspace', May 2008) and last fall elevated to a new domain:
cyberspace - A global domain within the information environment consisting of the interdependent network of information technology infrastructures, including the
Internet, telecommunications networks, computer systems, and embedded processors and controllers. (CJCS CM-0363-08)
REF: Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms (JP 1-02) (12 April 2001 - As Amended Through 17 October 2008)
To further the discussion, it is also necessary to present the definition of another domain medium from the same publication:
space - A medium like the land, sea, and air within which military activities shall be conducted to achieve US national security objectives. (JP 3-14)
With all of the redundancies across the various services, why not consolidate them into a new service? Analogous to the National Security Act of 1947, which created the Air Force from the Army Air Force, a 21st century reorganization could create a CyberSpace Force. (The exact name is not significant, using CyberSpace Force as a generic moniker.) This new force, formed from components in all of the services, would concentrate the existing disparate and duplicative efforts into one organization. No service would lose capabilities, because we fight as a Joint team now. Personnel from the newly created force would join operations and command structures as dictated by mission requirements.
As it exists right now, each the services are devoting significant resources and efforts into solving the cyber challenges "in their own lane." Recent examples:
Air Force - Cyberspace career fields, training paths, badge proposed
Army - Bridging to a Cyber Career Force
Navy - US Navy also planning Cyberwar Command and Center for Information Dominance
Marines - Corps to establish the Marine Corps Information Operation Center (MCIOC)
In September 2001, a day prior to the terrorist attacks, Secretary Rumsfeld pointed out "Each service branch has its own surgeon general and medical operation. At the department level, four different agencies claim some degree of control over the delivery of military health care." in his Bureaucracy to Battlefield speech of 10 Sep 2001.
Similarly, why should each service recruit, organize, train and equip information assurance professionals and other related specialties?
Each of the services would resist this reorganization, just as the Army did over 60 years ago. Looking back, are there many today that would question the wisdom of having the Air Force as a separate service? (Funding issues and differences in MWR services aside...)  In addition to eliminating redundancy, all the services would benefit
in that they could each put more focus on their core mission.
I first asked this reorganization question seven years ago, while on a field trip staff ride to Colorado Springs, CO as part of a Space Operations elective. The general officer speaking to us answered along the lines of "it may happen eventually, but we're not there yet." That time it was more about a space reorganization. Last week, while in DC to attend Phoenix Challenge 2009, I asked a similar question regarding creating of a cyberspace force. Generally the response was "good idea, probably the right thing to do, but we can't afford it" and "maybe in 20 years." Others suggested that it should be an agency - incorporated into, or similar to, the National Security Agency.
If it's the right thing to do, why wait? The cumulative cost of duplicated efforts, followed by an eventual reorganization, surely exceeds the startup cost of doing the right thing now.
Additional Advantages
This new CyberSpace Force, if done right, could expand the pool of available personnel. Numerous reports over the last several years lament the shrinking percentage of high school graduates physically qualified for military service. Why does a programmer need to run 3 miles? We have an entire generation growing up comfortable using the complex controllers associated with Halo 3 and Guitar Hero, just to name a couple popular titles. Does it make sense to say to them, "Sorry, we can't use you to monitor and adjust the orbit of a satellite if you can't do 40 push-ups in two minutes?"
Consider the stereotypical images conjured up of "uber geeks", college IT support staff or attendees at a hackers convention (e.g. DEF CON): long (sometimes different colored) hair, may not pass a uniform inspection, may not even fit in a uniform. But does that mean we should keep them out of the cyber fight if they are willing to serve?
DEFCON Attendees (Pic 1) (flickr)
DEFCON Attendees (Pic 2) (photobucket)
DEFCON Attendees (Pic 3) (pdphoto)
flickr link provided for those at Fort Leavenworth and other military installations blocked from accessing photobucket
pdphoto link provided as backup for those not able to access either of the first two (and as evidence that attempting to block all image galleries is a senseless endeavor)
Many Americans may choose to serve that otherwise would not consider traditional military service. As Noah Shachtman (Editor, Danger Room) said last week in his keynote speech at Phoenix Challenge: (paraphrasing) the military is not a popular option in Manhattan, but there a lot of people that want to feel like they are part of something.
This should be a service and not an agency. In our nation's defense we need the ability to send people where and when we need them - we can't afford to face the same challenges other departments have faced when necessary to send their personnel "down range."
Questions
What are the advantages and disadvantages of creating CYBERCOM as a new combatant command?
Is it time to perform a new reorganization of the Defense Department, creating a force focused on the Space and Cyberspace domains? What challenges would be faced in a large-scale reorganization? What opportunity costs do we continue to pay by a failure to address the root problems?
Further Reading
Wikipedia's article on Air Force Cyber Command (Provisional) provides more history and additional references, including the Air Force's Q&A ABOUT THE CYBER "PAUSE."
Join the Cyber Corps - A Proposal for a Different Military Service
John R. Surdu and Gregory J. Conti, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, United States Military Academy, West Point, NY
IEEE Information Assurance Workshop (IAW); Poster Session; June 2002
Additional Reference added 8 March 2009
Army, Navy, Air Force, and Cyber—Is it Time for a Cyberwarfare Branch of Military?
LTC Gregory Conti and COL John “Buck” Surdu
IAnewsletter Vol 12 No 1 Spring 2009
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Yesterday, in Wired magazine's national security blog Danger Room, Nathan Hodge and Noah Shachtman wrote about a new blog setup by the American Forces Press Service, On Location in Afghanistan.
Recognized by many as an influential and successful blogger on defense issues, Noah spoke at the Phoenix Challenge 2009 conference last week, as he wrote about in Info Wars: Pentagon Could Learn From Obama, Israel.
In Pentagon Gets a Blogger of Its Own, they write:
"The Pentagon couldn't beat the military bloggers, so it decided to join 'em. For years, the Defense Department has maintained an uneven, often-uneasy relationship with online journalists. But now, the American Forces Press Service, the Defense Department's in-house wire service, is taking a page from the bloggers and offering up a new series of internet reports from one of its own."
The article goes on to explain the historical difficulties and tension within the DoD with respect to military personnel accessing and using blogs and other social media.
Also, they are quick to point out that the source of the news on this blog will be suspect to many readers:
"But this is still the military's official good-news organ. So don't expect anything too critical of the war effort, or its conduct."
It would be interesting to see if either of the authors ever made the opposite claim about the New York Times or the Washington Post - "don't expect anything too positive of the war effort or its conduct" - an opinion that seems to be held of those outlets by many supporters of our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What can the Pentagon, and subordinate commands, do to ensure their blogs are seen as legitimate sources of information?
Should they take care to blog about bad decisions, be critical of unsuccessful operations and highlight failures as well as positive outcomes? Would including the "bad news" amongst the good be counterproductive or lend an air of credibility that may not currently exist?
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When it comes to the homeland, what is the proper amount or approach to the education of field grade officers? After the 9/11/2001 attacks and the potential for more, it would seem wishful thinking to conclude the answer is none. On the other hand, as a global power, to answer that homeland missions and the accompanying education should be the sole or overwhelming topic of professional education seems misguided as well. As the Department of Defense (DOD) defines things, homeland security is the broadest category representing the combined efforts of all levels of government, the interagency process, and the private sector. DOD missions within the homeland security umbrella are homeland defense, classic military tasks such as air or missile defense for which DOD is supported by the rest of government, and civil support (also termed Defense Support of Civil Authorities (DSCA) within the United States), which includes tasks such search and rescue, civil disturbance, or wildfire fighting that support civil agencies. Neither of the DOD missions are new and were not “discovered” after 9/11 or the creation of Northern Command despite punditry to the contrary. After all, events such as the Civil War, Pearl Harbor, the British destruction of Washington, the San Francisco Earthquake, and the Whiskey Rebellion occurred and deeply involved the military. Although not “discovered”, the homeland defense and DSCA missions were often neglected by either design or happenstance. Lest I be guilty of exaggeration, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) dutifully executed their homeland defense mission and the National Guard consistently supported the DSCA mission. However, the 9/11/2001 attacks combined with the devastation of Hurricane Katrina sharply focused or refocused DOD attention on the homeland.
By my analysis, the current scope of education in the Command and General Staff School (CGSS) in the core course consists of portions of the National Security Organizations/Process, National Strategies, and DOD Organization and Process lessons in the Strategic Environment theme and the Interagency Capabilities and Interagency Operational Considerations lessons in the Joint Interagency Intergovernmental and Multinational (JIIM) theme. All total, approximately 1 hour of class time in these lessons. In addition, the Fundamentals of Support to Civil Authorities lesson in the Joint and Army Doctrine theme dedicates an entire 4 hours to homeland security education. Homeland security education appears to be absent from the Advanced Operational Warfighting Course (AOWC) although it is prominently featured for the students who break out the final few weeks to the Joint Advanced Warfighting Seminar (JAWS). In JAWS, homeland security topics account for 10-12 hours of instruction depending on how one categorizes the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) threat presentation. The bottom line is that each graduate receives a minimum of about 5 hours of instruction in homeland security.
The CGSS elective program offers seven 24-hour electives - Homeland Security Studies, Installation Preparedness and Critical Infrastructure Protection, Defense Support of Civil Authorities, The Law and Homeland Security, Threats in the Homeland, Introduction into Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Homeland Security: The American Historical Perspective. The courses are popular but as electives they are, well - elective. The modal graduate receives 5 hours of homeland instruction.
To add complications, students come in several varieties. The military students can be categorized as active, reserve, or national guard. Military students could be further subdivided into the four services but I cannot think of why that would matter for homeland security education. In addition, interagency students are a tiny but growing portion of the population. Finally, international students round out the basic categories. Do the categories of student require different levels of homeland security education? I think it plausible that National Guard students do require more. However, I think it unwise that active duty officers not have any homeland security education.
Education is an intrinsic “good”. It is easy to argue that more is better. On the other hand, students only have 10 months available for education and as any graduate or faculty member can testify the curriculum bag is already overstuffed. I argue that the current core curriculum is sufficient. The National Defense Strategy asserts “the core responsibility of the Department of Defense is to defend the United States from attack upon its territory at home and to secure its interests abroad” (NDS 2008, 6). The DSCA mission also merits “the Department must also maintain the capacity to support civil authorities in times of national emergency” but it is not identified as a key objective as is homeland defense (NDS 2008, 7). What do the stakes require for the homeland education of our future senior leaders?
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