How Should U.S. Military Forces Prepare for a New Kind of Warfare?

[thedrifter]

How Should U.S. Military Forces Prepare for a New Kind of Warfare?


July 28, 2003

Since the toppling of Saddam Hussein statues in April, events unfolding in Iraq show that guerrilla warfare marks Phase 2 of Operation Iraqi Freedom. It's a commander's nightmare: A tossed grenade, a remote-controlled bomb or an explosives-laden vehicle in a populated area continues to threaten U.S. troops securing the peace and chasing Saddam's shadow. Welcome to fourth-generation warfare. Just how should commanders prepare their troops?

As training days go, this one was a nondescript spring night for a half-dozen Marines whose expeditionary unit was conducting an urban warfare exercise in Southern California.

That is, until a driver took his car right through their checkpoint.

Six Marines were working the checkpoint that night. Only one of them was an infantryman; the rest were in combat support skills. It was dark, about 11:30 at night.

The driver "was face to face with a couple of M-16s and 9mms," recalled Sgt. Maj. Jeffrey Morin, the top enlisted Marine with the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

The six Marines were in Condition 1 - round in chamber, finger off the trigger. Quickly, they converged on the driver of the vehicle, which had turned around after crashing through the concertina wire strung across the road.

They averaged 21 years in age. The most senior was a corporal, who led four lance corporals and one private first class at the checkpoint. Among them were a cook, a communication repairman and two data technicians.

The Marines didn't react to the threatening vehicle with a hail of gunfire. Instead, the corporal used his squad radio to alert the command, which ordered a quick-reaction team to the gate, Morin said. Their weapons were trained on the vehicle and the solo driver.

By the time the reaction team arrived, the six Marines had the driver and the vehicle under control. For their work, the six Marines received four commendation medals and four certificates of commendation from the MEU command.

The Marines later retraced every step, detailing to the commanders on a "walk through" every thing they did and thought. Said Morin: "We want to know what they were thinking" to help teach other Marines how to respond in similar situations.

The incident could have been at a gate in Kuwait, a road checkpoint in Afghanistan or a secured compound in Iraq.

But it wasn't. The 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which will deploy overseas next month as part of the Navy's first Expeditionary Strike Group, was training at the time. But the incident wasn't part of the training scenario crafted by exercise planners. It really happened on a road at March Air Reserve Base, a large air base in Riverside County, east of Los Angeles.

A few hours after the incident, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrived at the scene, sent a robot to inspect the vehicle and arrested the driver, Eid Elwirelwir, 26, who now faces prosecution on charges of damaging government property.

The Marines' leaders credited their combat training and quick thinking to averting a small disaster.

Granted, this incident didn't happen in Iraq, and luckily the driver wasn't steering a car loaded with explosives intended for the Marines inside the fence line. But although the incident was mild compared to what could have happened if the threat was serious, it highlights the dangers U.S. forces - whether at home or operating overseas - face from unconventional threats. It also reinforces the need to ensure today's military is well trained and prepared to handle the wide-ranging threats known as asymmetric warfare.

The headlines July 17 screamed "guerrilla warfare" and "guerrilla tactics," noting the characterization by the head of the U.S. Central Command of the continuing insurgency that still continues to push the U.S. casualty toll in Iraq. The Defense Department's news releases have become nearly a daily identification of the latest troops killed in Iraq, mostly in isolated, guerrilla-styled incidents. On July 26 alone, three soldiers died when someone threw a grenade from the window of an Iraqi hospital in Baghdad.

There's been no letup for U.S. forces operating in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's two sons were killed in a recent Mosul raid. "The United States has a bigger problem than the guerrillas," George Friedman of Strategic Forecasting Inc., an Austin, Texas, a national security forecasting firm, wrote July 28. "In the end, the longer the guerrillas can sustain the current tempo of operations, the greater their credibility, their ability to recruit and the greater their effect on the war as a whole."

Guerrilla tactics are part of what military officials call asymmetric warfare, fueled by non-state or "asymmetric" threats from an unknown enemy, often hiding behind civilian clothing and among the local populace. Other military experts say such tactics are "fourth-generation warfare," or 4GW. This latest evolution in warfare is something "nonlinear, possibly to the point of having no definable battlefields or fronts," wrote the authors of "The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation," which appeared in the October 1989 issue of the Marine Corps Gazette. "The distinction between 'civilian' and 'military' may disappear."

Operation Iraqi Freedom already is showing some clear lessons learned. The saga of the 507th shows that every soldier, as Marine, is a rifleman. Security operations are paramount, and not just a grunt's job. Nor is operating a checkpoint, protecting your convoy or pulling gate guard, which can become anyone's duty.

Col. Mike Regner, an infantry officer who commands the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit and will lead them overseas later this month, and his crew have been watching and studying the war in Iraq. Regner blamed OIF's early casualties on asymmetrical warfare. "We destroyed the Iraqi Army; they're since beaten," Regner said during a break at a desert training exercise this spring at Twentynine Palms. "But we have not destroyed the suicide bombers, the suicide walkers, the Fedayeen, the asymmetric threat."

So Regner and his top leaders are preparing and training for the wide range of warfare that includes the unconventional possibilities of asymmetric warfare. Tactical exercise planners have tossed them a few curve balls during the pre-deployment training. Top leaders continue to emphasize reaction drills and scenario-driven training to hone their Marines' combat skills and "train like you fight."

Asymmetric warfare now is more rooted in the training. "In everything that we do now - every scenario that's in every training evolution - it is brought up in the planning. It is brought up in the rules of engagement by the judge advocate," Morin said. "The emphasis is being placed on it," he added.

The basics of 4GW are understood by many. A "sniper" on a hillside trains his rifle and laser engagement system on a convoy of vehicles. Someone in a crowd of civilian protesters tosses a "grenade" at a checkpoint. Several years ago while on assignment, I stumbled upon several Marines - reservists pulling their two-week annual training - on a dusty road at Camp Pendleton, Calif. The road led to an urban training, or MOUT facility, where an expeditionary unit was trying to keep the peace in a simulated war in a Third World country.

The reservists couldn't contain their joy: Hidden in the sagebrush and scrub, they had successfully ambushed a series of combat vehicles heading to the "village."

But as 4GW threats remain real in Iraq, how best should the military train and prepare its men and women? In today's well-scripted training exercises and war games, how much free play and curve balls should be thrown at Marines and soldiers?

That's the hard part, Regner and Morin acknowledged. The experiences in Iraq are writing and revising lessons that drive training and will prepare them for the menacing threat of 4GW. These include emphasizing a few training basics:


Know the enemy. In preparing for possible asymmetric threats, study of the region and cultures are as important as enemy weaponry and combat hardware. "Any 18-year-old, any lieutenant or captain who doesn't understand the enemy is a casualty waiting to happen," Regner said. "You've got to really stress that to these warriors."


Teach simple language skills. Emphasis on the obvious cannot be overstated to overcome the first barrier: language. "If you're at a checkpoint in Iraq and there are civilians around, you've got to know about seven words in Arabic or Farsi" or the language of "whoever you are fighting," said Regner. "How to say 'Stop,' 'lay down,' 'put your arms up,' 'we're here to help.'


Ensure safe distance. A rifle hidden under a coat. Explosives wrapped around someone's chest. The more distance between the Marine pointing the rifle and the unknown civilian, the better the chances to assess the situation and threat. "The biggest thing that's going to save your life is distance," Regner said.

Marines train to fire at a target at 500 yards, but on the urbanized battlefield, a typical confrontation might be 50 yards. "You've got to distance yourself (and) create a gap," he said. Marines must be trained enough to be able to tell a suspected driver or pedestrian, "Get out of your car. Open the trunk. You open the doors. You lay down. You spread your arms."


Teach about "hostile intent." Classroom instruction and hands-on training are needed to teach how to make the critical decision of shoot or not shoot.

Elite warriors train often for close-quarters battle and learn to differentiate quickly between hostile enemy and innocent noncombatant. But 4GW makes that high level of care and discipline necessary for the grunts and other conventional troops.

Regner said training scenarios greatly help teach Marines to differentiate between different situations and players and help them better determine "hostile intent" in the chaos of a real operation. Platoons have trained in urban warfare, such as clearing rooms, and get hands-on training and classroom discussion. This year, Regner dispatched his top lawyer to visit units and give classes on hostile intent, so that "we aren't carried away in situations just because we see a woman with her arms behind her back," he said. "They all had to understand hostile intent, and the (judge advocate) puts that into plain English for our young Marines."

* * *

The driver of the car in the March incident is one lucky guy. Any of the Marines, if they felt threatened by him, could have opened fire.

Regner said hostile intent "did take place," but he credits good training, discipline and quick decision-making on the part of the six Marines. "Did the Marines have an inherent right to protect themselves? Absolutely," he said. "Was there hostile intent? Yes, there was."

What would have happened if the driver had continued on to the nearby tents housing the command operations center? Had the driver taken his vehicle to the command center, "I am sure that young man would not have been alive today," he said. "But he went through another gate, which was not a manned gate at that time" and turned around.

"A lot of decisions had to be made, just like that, by the young Marines," he added.

? 2003 Gidget Fuentes.

Sempers,

Roger

[BLUEHAWK]

Roger -
Fascinating piece...

1. Although it is extremely unlikely, if not impossible, for the Baathist Iraqi military itself to reconstitute, would it be true to find a functional parallel between Viet Cong tactics and the current-day guerrilla fighters against our troops there?

2. Since our training methods and systems are openly discussed, what is to prevent the Iraqi guerrillas from quickly developing counter-measures and tactics?

3. Has anyone explained in public the reasons why the enemy has not yet successfully used every possible technological cyber-weapon to interfere with or attack our military activities in Iraq itself?