Small War Tactics: Lines of Operations
Our new book, the Small War Tactics: Professional Handbook is now out on Amazon Kindle and you can order it through the link below. We hope it becomes a valuable addition to your tactical library. The following article is drawn from the book’s introduction, summarizing the various “lines of operation” covered in the book and discussing how to integrate those efforts towards a strategic endstate.
There is no fixed way to structure efforts and operations so they integrate together effectively. The key is for leaders to think creatively and collaboratively about the specific problem and the resources/capabilities available to come up with a unique and effective solution. The following generalized example might offer some insight on how to do this. As you move forward and read the individual chapters in this book many of these concepts will come up again.
Force Protection and Population Security
It often makes sense to focus on force protection and population security first. It is difficult to accomplish the more complex, higher level objectives necessary to winning small wars if you are constantly suffering casualties and the population is terrorized. By focusing on force protection and population security first you are setting the conditions for other efforts in the future.
Your own security and population security are also interrelated. The easiest way to secure your own troops is to barricade yourselves in a heavily defended forward operating base (FOB) or combat outpost (COP) and never leave. However, by hiding behind the wire, you are giving the insurgents free reign to dominate the environment and control the local population. Therefore, as soon as you exit the wire you will be at great risk. The better way to ensure your own security is to get out among the population as much as possible and secure the population from insurgent threats. We will discuss these concepts in more detail in the force protection and population security section.
Operations and Intelligence
Intelligence is an absolutely critical component in small wars and is related to all other efforts and lines of operation. It is particularly important to integrate operations and intelligence. This is related to the common practice of creation operations and intelligence “fusion cells.” These fusion cells ensure that intelligence drives operations and that operations continually collect more intelligence to improve the battlefield “common operating picture.” The operations-intelligence cycle never ends.
An important note to realize that intelligence is particularly connected with efforts to win the support of the local population. Most of the intelligence you will collect in a small war will come from the local population. It is very difficult to establish an accurate battlefield picture without help from the population. Thus, not only does intelligence help facilitate the other lines of operations, but other efforts and lines of operations can contribute to your intelligence collection as well.
Another example of this is the interplay between intelligence and direct action targeting. When executed correctly, direct action targeting missions are not just about eliminating a single insurgent threat but rather the intelligence collected from one mission drives the next mission. Capturing one insurgent leads to another until you have rolled up the entire insurgent network.
Since intelligence is relevant to all types of operations, it is not covered in a single section but rather included in all of the various sections of this book dealing with operations. Intelligence is critical for operations at all levels. Once difference between small wars and large wars is that traditionally, intelligence personnel and analysts operate no lower than the battalion level. In small wars it is necessary to create company level intelligence sections or “cells,” to manage company level intelligence collection, analysis and dissemination. Individual platoons and squads must also contribute to the intelligence effort.
Civil Reconstruction
While force protection and population security will set the conditions for future success, they are comparatively passive or defensive efforts. Eventually, to win any small war you will have to take offensive action by going out into the area and doing things, changing your environment for the better. One of the most critical of such efforts is helping to improve the lives of the local population.
Small wars frequently cause the deterioration of society. Local people experience constant power outages and lose access to clean water. They may run out of food and grow hungry. They might not have access to medical care. Children might not be able to go to school. As the local society falls further and further into disrepair, the economy will collapse, small businesses will fail and there will be very few jobs available.
One of your most important jobs is to correct these problems and give local people a better life. This will improve the overall operational situation in a number of ways and contribute greatly to your ultimate objective of defeating the insurgency. We will discuss civil reconstruction operations in more detail in the civil reconstruction section.
Direct Action Targeting
As you start to take the offensive and make positive changes to help the local population, your insurgent and terrorist enemies will likely try to subvert your efforts. Defensive force protection and population security efforts can help counter these enemy actions but ultimately you will also have to take the offensive against the insurgents, putting them on the defensive so they cannot take offensive action against you.
When targeting enemy insurgents, it is important to integrate your targeting efforts with other lines of operation. For example, targeting an IED (improvised explosive device) maker will help support your force protection efforts. You can protect yourself from IEDs by executing defensive, counter-IED measures, or you can go after the person who builds the IEDs and remove him from the equation.
You may also target enemies that are interfering with your civil reconstruction efforts. For example, you may rebuild the local hospital but find that people are afraid to visit the hospital because an insurgent cell is targeting anyone who tries to seek medical aid. You may learn that the same insurgent cell is drawing up plans to bomb the hospital. You may be able to eliminate this threat by targeting and capturing the members of the insurgent cell.
These are just a few examples of how you can use direct action targeting to support the overall operational objectives. It is important to remember that direct action targeting is rarely effective by itself. The reason for this is that while you are eliminating insurgents, the insurgents are recruiting new operatives and supporters.
To offer an analogy, if you continue mopping the floor without stopping the leak you will just continue mopping the floor forever as more and more water spills out. You need to mop the floor while simultaneously plugging the leak. By focusing on civil reconstruction efforts and psychological operations, you will dry up the insurgent recruiting pool making your direct action efforts more decisive. We will discuss direct action targeting in more detail in the civil reconstruction section.
Psychological Operations
For the sake of simplicity, we will disregard the various nuances in terminology between psychological operations (PSYOPs), military information support operations (MISO) and information operations (IO) etc. For our purposes we will refer to any effort or unit in this realm as PSYOPs.
PSYOPS is absolutely critical in any small war and relates to every other effort and line of operations. For example, when it comes to civil reconstruction operations, it is not enough just to cause positive change for the local population, but you also need to publicize and advertise that change so the effort has maximum positive impact on public perception. If you go in and fix the local roads, the people will likely be happy but they will not necessarily know whofixed the roads or why. For all they know the insurgents might have fixed the roads.
When you execute a successful civil reconstruction operation it is critical to compliment that operation with a psychological operations campaign to showcase what you did for the population and tie that action into a larger narrative you are building about your overall efforts in the region.
The same principle applies to your direct action efforts. Before you capture or kill a terrorist or insurgent leader, you should execute an extended psychological operations campaign to demonize that leader and show the population all the horrible crimes that leader is responsible for. The leader must become an enemy of the people.
After you capture or kill the leader you should follow up with new messages explaining how the leader’s removal was a great benefit to the local population. You may also want to emphasize how the leader was treated humanely and given a fair trial etc. If local forces participated in the operation, you should use PSYOPS to showcase their involvement, building people’s confidence in their own security forces.
You can also combine multiple narratives together. For example, if the insurgent leader in question had plans to blow up the new hospital, you might want to conduct a PSYOPS campaign showing how your efforts not only eliminated a menace to society but also ensured that the new hospital is safe for all to use. These are just a few examples of how you can use psychological operations to support and enhance your other lines of effort. We will discuss psychological operations in more detail in the psychological operations section.
Training Local Forces
Training local forces and building the locals’ confidence in their own government and institutions is one of the most critical factors in achieving final victory in a small war. In most cases, the objective of a small war is not for the occupying force to remain there indefinitely but rather to hand off responsibility to the locals so they can maintain a stable and prosperous society on their own.
Therefore, success in small wars is not just about conducting effective force protection, civil reconstruction, direct action and psychological operations on your own. You must be able to teach the locals to do all of these things and more without your help. It is common for leaders waging small wars to forget this and try to win themselves without thinking about the effect this will have on the local government.
In some cases, the more effective the efforts of occupying forces, the more those efforts will delegitimize and degrade the local forces. If you do everything for the local security forces, not only will they not learn to get better, but they will lose confidence in their own abilities and the population will lose confidence in their own security forces as well. Local capabilities may also wither away or atrophy if an outside occupying force carries the weight for too long. We will discuss training local forces in more detail in the section on training local forces.
The excerpt above was taken from Small War Tactics: Professional Handbook, now out on Amazon Kindle. We hope you found the excerpt informative and for more details on the concepts discussed above you can order the book below.
