Small Wars Journal

Operation Dragon Spear Demonstrates Army Strong

Sun, 08/16/2015 - 12:38pm

Operation Dragon Spear Demonstrates Army Strong by Drew Brooks, Fayetteville Observer

… On paper, the exercise known as Operation Dragon Spear was a joint forcible entry exercise demonstrating Army and Air Force capabilities. But it also was an opportunity for the U.S. military to show those capabilities to the world.

"In my mind this is also about deterrence," said then Army Chief of Staff Raymond T. Odierno. "We're making sure everybody understands we have a capability where, if we have to, we can force our way into an area if it's in our nation's best interest."

Odierno hosted the exercise earlier this month at Fort Irwin, California, alongside Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command.

Dragon Spear showed the strength of conventional and special operations forces and how each could work together to take on what the military calls a "near peer" threat.

Officials said the training scenario was not based on any one potential enemy, but they acknowledged similarities to the ongoing Russian military intervention in eastern Ukraine.

Leaders have repeatedly called Russia the nation's top threat…

Read on.

Comments

Bill C.

Tue, 08/18/2015 - 11:28am

In reply to by Bill M.

Bill M:

I'm pretty much with you here. But let me expound:

Our enemies today -- those that seek to halt and roll back our efforts at expansion in their neck of the woods/their sphere of influence/their backyards -- these such enemies would seem to be:

a. Using UW today

b. Much as we did in during the Cold War and

c. For the exact same purposes, to wit: to address the expansionist efforts of one's enemy.

Thus, during the Cold War, and in our neck of the woods/our sphere of influence/our backyard (Latin America), the United States used UW to "spoil" and otherwise undermine various attempts by the former USSR, and its affiliates, to transform the states and societies of our region more along communist political, economic and social lines.

Likewise today, and using this exact same playbook (and for the exact same reason), such nations as Russia and Iran use UW today to try to "spoil," and otherwise undermine, our various attempts to transform states and societies, in their region of the world, more along modern western political, economic and social lines.

In this regard, and as to confirm your thoughts on how these such efforts harm the lesser states and societies where such conflicts occur, consider this from a recent "War On The Rocks" article entitled "America Did Hybrid Warfare Too:"

"In the early 1980s, Central America had gone from backyard backwater to flash point in the Cold War. Walter Cronkite’s first question for President Ronald Reagan shortly after his inauguration was about El Salvador. Reagan reassured the American public that — less than a decade after the American tragedy in Vietnam — he had no intention of sending U.S. combat forces into a Central American quagmire. His administration then built on Jimmy Carter’s reactive stance to contain the spread of Cuban-inspired, Soviet-aligned revolutions from Nicaragua to El Salvador and beyond through a combination of measures. Some of them were prosaic, others unorthodox and controversial in the extreme. In El Salvador, light footprint counterinsurgency held off Latin America’s fiercest guerilla army while a democratic political strategy took hold. Covert action supported insurgents, the Nicaraguan Contras, who kept the Sandinista government off balance and mired in war. U.S. military forces on permanent exercise menaced from across the border in Honduras. Aid programs pumped U.S. dollars into the underdeveloped region. Desultory diplomatic negotiations mollified regional actors, allies, and the U.S. Congress. Information operations aimed at the homeland audience featured images of Soviet tanks headed toward Harlingen, the first American city at the southern tip of Texas.

The purpose of all this? Defending America from hostile foreign interference — the Monroe Doctrine. But it was also a “forward strategy for freedom,” as Secretary of State George Shultz called it, which above all served to demonstrate that America had revitalized its will to oppose the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Whether or not hybrid war as employed in Central America was a good thing or bad is a matter of political judgement. It associated the United States with unsavory allies and terrible human rights violations, while the misguided evasion of Congressional restrictions on covert action led to the Iran-Contra scandal that nearly wrecked the Reagan administration. Certainly the consequences of protracted war were very costly to the people of the region, even if they could be said to have benefited from the advent of democracy. Objectively, the United States did achieve its stated aims, specifically containing the spread of leftist revolution elsewhere in Central America and reversing it in Nicaragua; lasting peace coincided with the end of the Cold War itself, but it cannot be said that the wars in Central America made any contribution to that outcome."

http://warontherocks.com/2015/04/america-did-hybrid-warfare-too/

All-in-all -- and based on the evidence provided above -- what we appear to be having is a reverse Cold War (the implications of which, for the United States, and re: such things as legitimacy, political warfare, UW, use of force, etc., are astounding!).

So, and continuing with my analogy to (1) similar US efforts, (2) made during the Cold War, to (3) spoil/undermine Soviet attempts at expansion in our backyard:

a. What would have been the message that the United States was supposed to received from, for example, a "Dragon Spear-like" exercise, conducted by the Soviets, back then? And

b. What would likely have been our reaction, back then, to such a (provocative) exercise/message???

Move Forward

Tue, 08/18/2015 - 8:23am

In reply to by Dave Maxwell

Nice article Dave. Especially liked this paragraph:

<blockquote>The state of the current train and equip program is yet another chapter in this record of failure and an example of the misuse of special operations methods. Resistance organizations fight for their causes, not for ours. Washington’s demands that its allies and proxies fight U.S.-designated enemies (rather than the enemies a group has determined to be its real, immediate, and existential threats) will hinder future American foreign policy efforts.</blockquote>

Sounds like the reported insistence that trainees vow to fight only ISIL and not Assad. But that also points out the weakness in your and the UW argument. The President, NSC, and their decisions are all that matter these days and the military must learn to live with their directives. As a result, when they are looking to avoid making waves with the Russians and Iranians, that's when we get decisions like the above "vow" and the unwillingness to arm insurgents and even the Ukrainian army.

If you have a domestic agenda or one that requires a Pacific pivot, Middle East and European conflicts are a distraction to the game plan. If you are pushing the Affordable Care Act and Climate Change while postponing its hard costs or minimizing their effect, then you become an isolationist and hope that minimalist UW efforts will suffice.

But must disagree with your article's mention that the 2001 CIA/UW/Airpower exercise in Afghanistan was going to fix the long term problem. Likewise, as Bill M points out, any airpower approach in Syria was not going to create an effective Sunni government alternative that was not extreme, or fighting internally as in Libya. Likewise, LTG Cleveland's and your mention of an SF/173rd force in Kurd-controlled territory was not going to overthrow Saddam Hussein and his armor by itself--and let's face it the 173rd was the most potent part of that force. UW alone would never defeat Russian and separatist armor and artillery. SF/SOF, light infantry, and medium Marine forces are great, but they don't do well against heavy armor, artillery, effectively employed helicopters and UAS/RPA, or jet fighters.

Only big Army in conjunction with effective helicopter and fixed wing airpower supported by logistics and over-the-shore firepower from the sea (when able to get sufficiently close) can rapidly achieve deterrence, defense, offense, and stability operations after the fact. 2002 Afghanistan and 2003+ Iraq would have reverted to chaos immediately if UW was all we brought afterwards, just as we see it happening in Libya today despite the initial success in overthrowing Qaddafi. A viable long term governing alternative must exist or its just long term whack-a-mole.

Bill M.

Tue, 08/18/2015 - 4:09am

In reply to by Bill C.

Bill C.,

The two types of UW you described are certainly possible policy options, but not the only policy options that UW can serve. The U.S. has conducted UW for many decades with mixed results, and arguably over the long term the results in many cases have been undesirable. Protracted conflicts in hindsight seem to damage a society's psychic core and can destroy its social norms, which leads to long term instability (Afghanistan, El Salvador, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, and so forth). Of course that is a personal view after reading many case studies and witnessing in some cases the post conflict period, so at best it is correlation and not necessarily causation, but it worth further study. Regardless, it isn't always the case. UW can be a viable tool at times, but we need to avoid falling into the rut of pursuing UW like Billy Mitchell pursued strategic bombing as the answer to our strategic problems. It works in certain conditions, and not others.

UW is war, so can it prevent war? In theory, and in practice, UW can prevent larger and much more dangerous wars. The U.S. and USSR fought each other using UW to pursue a favorable balance of power for decades, which arguably prevented a larger scale war that could have been devastating. If we just get rid of the term UW temporarily to free our minds of the possible, I think it will become apparent that the collateral skills associated with UW can be applied in a number of collateral ways to shape the security environment that don't fall under the classic definition of UW. The UW zealots kept UW alive in Special Forces, but the same zealots can kill it when they try to make problems conform to UW instead of our unconventional operational approach conform to the problem.

The case study that wasn't is Syria.

Syria is a hotly debated, and now neither side can prove its case regarding the claim we should have going in earlier and supported the resistance (as though it was collective whole). I differ with that opinion, there were over a 100 different resistance groups, done strong enough to overthrow Assad, not even with our help. If we provided conventional support via airpower in support of the resistance elements we supported, that may have tipped the scales enough to oust Assad, but then what? The only groups organized enough to have any chance of maintaining power were the extremists. More than likely we would have simply got bogged down in another quagmire.

You get the point, UW may have accomplished something in the short term, but would it have been in our interests in the long term? Hard to tell, but plenty of reason to suspect that it wouldn't have. Perhaps the lesson, which many of us in Special Forces tend to believe, is that if we had connections in these countries of concern prior to conflict we would have a better understanding of the human domain. That would then present "informed" and feasible options on the ability to conduct UW feasible as a main or supporting effort. That would be proactive, yet defensive. We wouldn't execute unless their was a crisis.

The so called UW we're doing in Syria now is a sad joke for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with potential of UW or the people running it, and everything to do with the astrategic policy wonks. However, we have the recognize our own weaknesses and develop feasible strategies based on who we actually are versus who we want to be. Seems like some true patriots developed a plan based on a Reagan era political environment. That isn't the era we live into today.

COL Maxwell's excerpt below, I believe, suggests two aspects of UW:

a. The reactionary kind; which is used, for example, to halt the expansionist agenda of a rival. And

b. The pro-active kind; which is used, for example, to facilitate the expansionist agenda of one's own country.

In reactionary UW, one might be seeking (as the United States did during the Cold War) to halt efforts made by a rival (the former USSR) to expand its power, influence and control in one's own backyard (for example, in Latin America). Whereas,

With pro-active UW, one might be seeking (as the United States has post-the Cold War) to facilitate one's own efforts at expansion; and this, specifically into the backyard (Russian borderlands; Greater Middle East) of one's rivals (Russia and Iran respectively).

Thus:

a. With "reactionary UW," "they" have an expansionist agenda, and "we" are on a "containment/roll-back" mission; this, to protect what we consider to be our "sphere of influence." Whereas,

b. With "pro-active UW," "they" are on the "containment/roll-back" mission; this, so as to address the threat posed by our expansionist efforts in their region of the world/their sphere of influence.

If we look at the contemporary world through the lens offered immediately above, then exactly what is the message that Operation Dragoon Spear is supposed to be sending to our rivals, to wit: those that seek to "contain" us -- and/or otherwise extricate us from their "backyards?"

(Herein, I may be agreeing with Bill M. below; this, by likewise suggesting that "pro-active UW" -- as envisioned by me above -- would not seem to be either designed for, or capable of, preventing war.)

Dave,

I got all that and agree with it. I'll be the last one to call being proactive absurd. What I called absurd, are the semantics of conducting UW (warfare) to prevent war. If we're conducting UW you're pretty much at war to achieve an unlimited (regime change) or limited (change an adversary's behavior) goal. If we're conducting (UW) warfare in a proactive way to achieve our objectives it makes perfect sense. Obviously the U.S. and the USSR often conducted UW in a proactive way to pursue their interests without waging conventional or nuclear warfare.

If you're in the camp that is arguing UW is in the middle space between war and peace then your semantics makes sense. I'm not sure where you stand on UW being war or something else?

Since you cited Sun Tzu and the acme of skill, I'll fall back on that. Sun Tzu clearly pointed to the need for strategy short of war to prevent war. Conceptually our war fighting doctrine, to include UW is sound enough to serve as a guide. However, our shaping doctrine in the space short of war and warfare (which can and should consist of proactive measures), is deficient in theory and practice.

Dave Maxwell

Sun, 08/16/2015 - 8:07pm

In reply to by Bill M.

Bill - the definition of proactive is below. While you can interpret preventing potential problems to be preventing war (which of course is he acme of skill according to Sun Tzu and certainly the ideal) I think a read of the white paper and the USASOC concepts falls under the first part of the definition below "creating or controlling a situation by causing something to happen rather than responding to it after it has happened: Yes the ideal would be to prevent war but as we all know the enemy has a vote in that. But it is better to be pro-active when appropriate than to always be reactive. And we should recall the wise words of Eliot Cohen and John Gooch in Military Misfortunes: all military failure are a result of three failure: failure to learn, failure to adapt, and failure to anticipate. Being proactive is part of anticipating.

This exercise illustrated the concept of being proactive by engaging with the indigenous forces over time before conventional military operations became a necessity. It may be absurd to you but I hope people can grasp the simple reason behind combing unconventional warfare and proactive.

And MG Bowra's article can be accessed at the link below. "Regional Engagement: An ARSOF
Approach to Future Theater Operations" by Major General Kenneth R. Bowra and Colonel William H. Harris Jr

https://www.dvidshub.net/publication/issues/8272

And a lot of ground has been plowed over the years on all these "new concepts" of special warfare and political warfare. You can review all the Special Warfare Magazine editions at this link: http://www.soc.mil/swcs/swmag/archive.html

proactive |prōˈaktiv|
adjective
(of a person, policy, or action) creating or controlling a situation by causing something to happen rather than responding to it after it has happened: be proactive in identifying and preventing potential problems.
DERIVATIVES
proaction |prōˈakSHən| noun.
proactively adverb.
proactivity |ˌprōˌakˈtivətē| noun
ORIGIN 1930s: from pro-2 (denoting earlier occurrence), on the pattern of reactive.

Bill M.

Sun, 08/16/2015 - 7:04pm

In reply to by Dave Maxwell

While I understand the concept, it seems a bit absurd to call warfare (whether UW or another form of warfare) a proactive means to engage and prevent war. MG Bowra's 1998 article on Peacetime Engagement seems to more effectively capture the shaping aspects of what we're attempting to accomplish in the Phase 0 and Phase 0+ space. His concept was also very much proactive and focused largely on leveraging what we in SOF now call the human domain. His article is well worth a re-read. Since there has been a lot of water that has passed under the bridge since it was published it needs to be updated. Nonetheless, it seems there is potential to nest his concept with modifications and the special warfare doctrine to more fully address how DOD, with SOF playing a large role, can be employed in conjunction with the interagency and other partners to defend or advance U.S. interests.

Dave Maxwell

Sun, 08/16/2015 - 1:06pm

We have come a long way in general purpose and special operations forces integration and interdependence. The SOF contribution to this operation could be "proactive fashion unconventional warfare" as outlined in the USASOC SOF Support to Political Warfare White Paper. See pages 20 and 21. It can be downloaded here but I have pasted the paragraphs below the article. http://bit.ly/1Ccy7dZ

Excerpts:

QUOTE: Odierno said the Army has been training for the hybrid threat that Russia poses, with both conventional and insurgent capabilities.

He said U.S. forces need to be able to work together. They need to be expeditionary, scalable and tailorable, and able to deploy quickly.

"A true deterrent is one where people are worried that if they do conduct operations, there will be some level of response," Odierno said. END QUOTE
...
A good scenario:

QUOTE The situation bares a resemblance to the Ukraine situation, where Russian-backed separatists continue to fight against Ukrainian forces.

In Operation Dragon Spear, U.S. troops came up against a separatist militia as well as conventional forces and criminal organizations taking advantage of the conflict's chaos.

Dragon Spear began days before spectators arrived at the National Training Center for the joint forcible entry exercise.

Like they would in nearly any other situation, Green Berets led the way.

An official with the 10th Special Forces Group said soldiers, in theory, would have been in the allied nation for years before Dragon Spear took place, training and working with Atropian forces.

In the training scenario, the soldiers had been in nearby mountains for days scouting enemy forces ahead of the airborne operation.

Hours before the assault, a U.S. armor regiment that was also in the country for a regional training exercise helped set the stage for the sudden infusion of paratroopers.

The M1A1 Abrams tanks controlled by the 11th Armor Cavalry Regiment partnered with mortarmen and Apache helicopters from the 1st Infantry Division to destroy a Donovian armored reconnaissance force that had pushed into Atropia from the northern border.

That cleared the way for soldiers operating M142 High Mobility Rocket Systems to destroy anti-aircraft weapons miles away, which ensured U.S. planes could safely enter the disputed airspace.

Hours later, and after a round of bombing from F-15E fighter jets and unmanned aerial vehicles, the operation's first wave of troops to come in via air landed at the contested airfield.

In CV-22 Ospreys, the 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment seized the airfield from enemy forces.

With the moon rising over the Mojave Desert, sporadic gunfire was heard as the Rangers mopped up the opposition before the sky filled with parachutes of the 82nd Airborne Division.

Six C-17s and 10 C-130s dropped nine pieces of heavy equipment and more than 600 paratroopers over a roughly 15-minute span.

The 2nd Brigade Combat Team then pushed out from the airfield, securing the surrounding areas and clearing the way for U.S. planes to safely land with more troops and equipment, including a platoon of armored Stryker vehicles from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division from Joint Base Lewis-McChord. END QUOTE

From the Political Warfare White Paper:

(3) UW in a Proactive Fashion (Pr-UW)

Traditional UW's definition emphasizes the endurance, if not victory, of the local indigenous resistance or insurgency as a metric of success; as such it may limit UW's ability to function as a strategic framework in which U.S. as opposed to indigenous interests are paramount. Such an indigenous-focused concern does not characterize adversary prosecution of hybrid warfare.

Additionally, American UW concepts emerged from the OSS' WWII experiences as well as from a post-war context where the Soviet Union had overrun several European states and threatened to do so to others, either through subversion or expansionist warfare. UW was thus understood as a means of response and reaction to a condition already imposed by an outside power on areas of concern to the U.S. Both in the European context as well as in later experiences in Latin America, therefore, UW was used to "fight fires."

UW in a proactive fashion is not a revision or evolution of the traditionalUnconventional Warfare addressed above; rather it is an approach advocates the use of UW activities to "prevent fires" through small footprint, scaled application of force campaigns in order to develop persistent influence among potential UW constituencies; deepen understanding of significant individuals, groups and populations in the Human Domain of the potential UW operational area; and build trust with SOF's likely UW partners in regions before U.S. leaders are constrained to react to crises.

UW in a proactive fashion is thus an extended duration, though low-investment, use of SOF and whole-of-government assets in a region where UW may become desirable and appropriate as conditions evolve. It can evolve establishing awareness of and non-committal relationships with political dissident groups and disenfranchised populations in states whose policies are tending towards the adversarial. In this respect, the proactive liaison with and low visibility support to an indigenous resistance movement can be an effective counter to current or future actions counter to U.S. national interests by an adversarial governing power. If the groundwork has been laid well in advance, the ability to assist disaffected groups could influence the cost calculus of countries acting against U.S. interests. In effect, UW in a proactive fashion conducted in this fashion becomes long-term, slow-boil coercive UW, or "coercion light."

UW in a proactive fashion is thus also an enabler of a more aggressive application of UW, reducing the likelihood of a cold-start campaign in the midst of crisis. Essentially extending the first three doctrinal phases of UW, preparation, initial contact, and infiltration, far back in time while engaging in certain elements of the fourth, organizational phase, UW in a proactive fashion seeks to achieve preparation of the environment (PE) objectives with the great focus and depth implied in current doctrine.79 Prosecuted over a period of time with whole-of-government and JIIM partners, UW in a proactive fashion allows the U.S. to gain and maintain entree to areas of concern; establish trust with significant individuals, groups, and peoples while developing allies; and ensure cognitive and moral access in the region. This kind of access requires an understanding of the physical, human, and enemy situations, and grants the legitimacy and credibility necessary to form an alliance of interests with those who could prove critical to acting against adversary elements of state and society.

Finally, and with true strategic benefit, proactive application of UW increases the likelihood of producing effects associated with coercive UW without the need to execute all phases of UW itself. By holding out the possibility of achieving traditional UW effects with a particularly small footprint, and by laying the groundwork for a more robust, better-informed conduct of UW or C-UW should the need arise, UW in a proactive fashion is therefore a fundamental component of Strategic Landpower doctrine of "rebalancing... national security strategy to focus on engagement and preventing war."80