Foreign Internal Defense (Indigenous Forces)
Joint Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for Foreign Internal Defense (FID) - Joint Publication 3-07.1. This publication establishes joint tactics, techniques, and procedures (JTTP) for the Armed Forces of the United States involved in or supporting foreign internal defense operations. It discusses how joint operations, involving the application of all instruments of national power, support host nation efforts to combat subversion, lawlessness, and insurgency.
The Advisor Newsletter - US Central Command's weekly newsletter published each Saturday.
Advising Indigenous Forces: American Advisors in Korea, Vietnam, and El Salvador - Robert Ramsey III, US Army Combat Studies Institute Occasional Paper. Mr. Robert Ramsey’s historical study examines three cases in which the US Army has performed this same mission in the last half of the 20th century. In Korea during the 1950s, in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, and in El Salvador in the 1980s the Army was tasked to build and advise host nation armies during a time of war. The author makes several key arguments about the lessons the Army thought it learned at the time. Among the key points Mr. Ramsey makes are the need for US advisors to have extensive language and cultural training, the lesser importance for them of technical and tactical skills training, and the need to adapt US organizational concepts, training techniques, and tactics to local conditions. Accordingly, he also notes the great importance of the host nation’s leadership buying into and actively supporting the development of a performance-based selection, training, and promotion system. To its credit, the institutional Army learned these hard lessons, from successes and failures, during and after each of the cases examined in this study. However, they were often forgotten as the Army prepared for the next major conventional conflict.
Advice for Advisors: Suggestion and Observations from Lawrence to the Present - Robert Ramsey III, US Army Combat Studies Institute Occasional Paper. CSI is publishing this occasional paper as a supplement to Occasional Paper 18, Advising Indigenous Forces: American Advisors in Korea, Vietnam, and El Salvador. In that important study, Mr. Robert Ramsey distilled the insights gained by the US Army from its advisory experiences in Korea, Vietnam, and El Salvador. In this anthology, Mr. Ramsey presents 14 insightful, personal accounts from those who advised foreign armies in various times and places over the last 100 years. Unlike most of the monographs in our GWOT Occasional Paper series, this volume is an anthology. The articles are from past and present advisors, and they are presented without editing or commentary. Each one presents valuable lessons, insights, and suggestions from the authors’ firsthand experiences. Readers will thus make their own judgments and analysis in support of their unique requirements.
The Long Small War: Indigenous Forces for Counterinsurgency - Lieutenant Colonel Robert Cassidy, US Army. Parameters article, Summer 2006. The United States and its partners are prosecuting a protracted war against insurgents and terrorists who are animated by an ideology stemming from a radical fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. As of early 2006, the American national security bureaucracy began to use the appellation the “long war” in place of the Global War on Terrorism. At least one document describes this long war as the defining struggle of our generation, one that shifts emphasis from large-scale conventional military operations to small-scale counterinsurgency operations. The long war may last for decades. In distilled form, the corpus of current national strategic and military documents calls for American forces to leverage allies to help defeat insurgent and terrorist enemies in this perennial effort. For instance, the National Security Council’s November 2005 National Strategy for Victory in Iraq calls for the development of Iraqi security forces while simultaneously carrying out a counterinsurgency campaign to defeat insurgents in Iraq. It identifies Iraq as a principal arena in the war against terror, stating that success there is an essential element in the long war. As another example, the February 2006 National Military Strategic Plan for the War on Terrorism, the American military-strategic framework for prosecuting the long war, tasks the American military both to enable partner nations to counter terrorism and to help counter international ideological support for terrorism. Most recently, the March 2006 National Security Strategy of the United States of America states that the United States must “strengthen alliances to defeat global terrorism” and stresses the need to work with allies and to build indigenous security forces to defeat terrorists and insurgents in Iraq and elsewhere.
Training Indigenous Forces in Counterinsurgency: A Tale of Two Insurgencies - Lieutenant Colonel James Corum. US Army. US Army Strategic Studies Institute monograph, March 2006. The author examines the British experience in building and training indigenous police and military forces during the Malaya and Cyprus insurgencies. These two insurgencies provide a dramatic contrast to the issue of training local security forces. In Malaya, the British developed a very successful strategy for training the Malayan Police and army. In Cyprus, the British strategy for building and training local security forces generally was ineffective. The author argues that some important lessons can be drawn from these case studies that are directly applicable to current U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine.
The Importance of Building Local Capabilities: Lessons from the Counterinsurgency in Iraq - Anthony Cordesman. Center for Strategic and International Studies report, July 2006. This report argues for fundamental changes in the way the US plans to fight counterinsurgency and counterterrorism campaigns. It argues that the US must place far higher reliance on local allies in both counterinsurgency and counterterrorism campaigns. It also argues that the US must work with existing allied governments and seek reform and transformation at the far slower pace that Middle Eastern and other nations and societies in the developing world can accept.
Civic Action: The Marine Corps Experience in Vietnam - Peter Brush. According to a 1939 US Army Field Manual, the ultimate objective of all military operations is the destruction of the enemy's armed forces in battle. Decisive defeat in battle breaks the enemy's will to continue fighting and forces him to sue for peace. This early Clausewitzian doctrine served the US well in World War II, but by the 1960's the teachings of Mao Tse-Tung, Lin Piao and Che Guevara became relevant to an understanding of the nature of "people's wars" or "wars of national liberation." The most effective strategy for opposing communism in wars of this type was of a dual nature. The destructive phase would address the conventional force threat, while the constructive phase was concerned with the political, economic, social, and ideological aspects of the struggle. The Marines understood this duality best. According to British counterinsurgency expert Sir Robert Thompson, "Of all the United States forces [in Vietnam] the Marine Corps alone made a serious attempt to achieve permanent and lasting results in their tactical area of responsibility by seeking to protect the rural population." This appreciation of the value of pacification was part of the historical baggage that the Marines brought with them to Vietnam.
Combined Action Platoons: A Strategy for Peace Enforcement - Major Brooks Brewington, USMC. US Marine Corps Command and Staff College thesis, 1996. The concept of the Combined Action Platoon, as it evolved in Vietnam, has potential applications in operations other than war, particularly Chapter VII UN Peace Enforcement missions. FMFM 1-1, Campaigning, cites the Combined Action Program as an example of a short-lived but successful concept. If the Combined Action Platoons were successful, then how would the concept interface with today's doctrine in Peace Keeping/Enforcement missions? The Combined Action Platoon's (CAP) genesis was not a deliberate plan from a higher headquarters, rather, it was a solution to one infantry battalion's problem of an expanding TAOR. The concept of combining a squad of marines with local Popular Forces (PF's) and assigning them a village to protect proved to be a force multiplier. The CAP concept was effective in denying the enemy a sanctuary at the local village level. The Pacification campaign seemed to work under the CAP concept, and the Marines fully embraced it. Objectively, there is no solid proof that the CAP concept was a resounding success; however, subjectively the evidence suggests otherwise. Counterinsurgency operations and, in particular, the establishment of a foreign internal defense lends itself for the greatest utility of employing a CAP-style organization. Recent operations in Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia suggest a CAP-style organization could accomplish the assigned mission.
Did the Marines Better Understand the Nature of the Vietnam Conflict and Was the Combined Action Program More Suitable than Civil Operations Revolutionary Development Support in Dealing With Insurgents? - Major Kenneth Eugene Wynn, USMC. US Marine Corps Command and Staff College thesis, 2000. During the Vietnam conflict the Marines of 3rd Battalion 4th Marines reconstituted a program which was utilized during military action in Haiti, Nicaragua and Santo Domingo conflicts. The Combined Action Program was an effective means of combating insurgents/guerrilla actions. The Viet Cong relied heavily on the popular support of the people and the Marines best understood the importance of separating/safeguarding the people from the guerillas. By doing this the Marines effectively reduced the Viet Cong’s requirements to exist: food, ammunition, supplies, money and most importantly recruits. Without the support of the people the Viet Cong would eventually cease to function and their cause would be suppressed. General Westmoreland failed to understand how important this lifeline was or just chose to believe that it was not a factor. Instead, he pursued the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Regular Army through conventional warfare. Civil Operations Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) was established in Vietnam in 1960 and was a myriad of civilian agencies providing support to the South Vietnamese people. However, it was not until 1967 under the leadership of Robert Komer did these agencies combine their efforts in conjunction with the U.S. Army. Although the new CORDS (civil-military) experienced some success in the cities and heavily populated areas it failed to address the much need concentrated focus in the hamlet and villages where sympathy and support for the Viet Cong were prominent. Under the philosophy of guerrilla warfare the Viet Cong avoided the enemy and continued to plague the smaller isolated hamlets. CORDS was too much, too late, and in the wrong place. The Marines were still left with the responsibility of confronting the overwhelming insurgency problem until the lack of money and resources forced them to abandon the concept. If the United States Military is involved in future conflicts which focus on insurgence, civil unrest or guerrilla actions, senior military leaders must carefully review revolutionary/guerrilla strategy and the four models which can be used against them: Foco, Maoist, Leninist and Urban.
The U.S. Marine Corps Combined Action Program (CAP): A Proposed Alternative Strategy for the Vietnam War - Major Curtis Williamson III, USMC. US Marine Corps Command and Staff College thesis, 2002. The Vietnam War was a war against an insurgency sustained by the resources drawn from the South Vietnamese peasant. The CAP offered a viable alternative to the strategy taken in Vietnam, challenging the sustaining infrastructure of the guerrilla, while providing security for the largely agrarian populace. Taking a lesson from Mao Tse-tung's insurgent rise to power in an agrarian setting, Ho Chi Minh and General Vo Nguyen Giap implemented a guerrilla-based strategy to liberate and unify Vietnam. Placing heavy reliance on the populace of South Vietnam to provide both men and food for the NVA and VC, the village represented a center of gravity for the Communist movement. Incapable of viewing Vietnam as anything but a conventional battleground, General William C. Westmoreland applied the unsuccessful strategy of "search and destroy," and wholly ignored the insurgent underpinnings of his enemy and their grip on the populace. Possessing a belief that the war was among the people, the Marines spawned combined action, that of combining a Marine rifle squad with a platoon of South Vietnamese Popular Forces who cohabitated together within a particular village. Never growing beyond 2,500 men and 114 platoons, the program achieved unsurpassed success towards providing security for the populace, threatening the guerrilla infrastructure, empowering the local and regional leaders to govern, and killing the enemy. Additionally, all attempts by senior Marine leaders to convince General Westmoreland of the CAP's validity as a fitting strategy for all ground forces failed to overcome his conventional inclination towards the nature of the war.
Combine Action and US Marine Experiences in Vietnam, 1965-71 - Phillip Ridderhof. In the summer of 1965, US Marine units moved out of their coastal enclaves in the I Corps region of South Vietnam. The main idea was for the Marines to take a more active part in engaging the Viet Cong insurgents in the area. As Marine combat units moved into the hinterland and began engaging large Viet Cong and North Vietnamese units, a problem presented itself to Marine commanders. Marine resources were stretched in attempting an offensive strategy and also defend rear areas which found themselves under attack. A specific example was the Phu Bai combat base, south of Hue. This was a major US base and the site of an airfield. Almost every night this airfield was subjected to mortar attacks from the surrounding area. Actual airfield security could not cover out to the range of the Viet Cong mortars. There were Marine infantry units in the area, but they were mainly conducting search and destroy operations. They could not occupy the area around the airport and maintain their offensive missions at the same time. This dilemma that threatened security around Phu Bai called for a solution. The solution was found in the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment. The battalion, commanded by Lt. Col. William W. Taylor, had within its tactical Area of Responsibility (TAOR - it was within a units geographic TAOR that it conducted operations), the villages around Phu Bai that were thought to be the source of the Viet Cong mortar attacks. According to Lt. Gen. Lewis Walt, the commanding general of the Marines in Vietnam, the idea came from Captain John J. Mullin, Jr. and plans were made up by Major Cullen B. Zimmerman, both officers from this battalion. On 3 August 1965 the first Combined Action Company (CAC) was put into operation.
The Marine Corps’ Combined Action Program and Modern Peace Operations - Common Themes and Lessons - Major William Go, USMC. US Marine Corps Command and Staff College thesis, 1997. The mixed performance of U.S. forces in recent low intensity conflicts or "small wars", i.e. Vietnam (counterinsurgency) and Somalia (peace operation), has been due in part to a failure to understand the political, economic, social, and cultural factors at work in the area of operations. The Combined Action Program (CAP) of the Vietnam War has been frequently cited by military historians as an example of a successful small wars operation, this because the CAP did have cultural aspect. The U.S. Marine Corps-led Unified Task Force (UNITAF) portion of the 1992-1995 UN operation in Somalia was successful partly because it applied lessons learned from Marine Corps small wars experience from the Central American "Banana Wars" of the 1930's and the CAP in Vietnam. Counterinsurgency and peace operations are similar in that they both involve adversaries often indistinguishable from noncombatants and that operations frequently occur in an environment totally unfamiliar to Americans. Even more than conventional operations, they are characterized by ambiguity, uncertainty, and friction. In both cases, success depends on a well defined mission, properly trained and equipped forces, intelligently designed Rules of Engagement, and an in depth knowledge of the political, economic, social, and cultural aspects of the target area. As in conventional warfare, successful resolution of the conflict will depend on a political, not a military, solution. The Combined Action Program in Vietnam and UNITAF in Somalia both demonstrated that well trained and well led conventional forces can be successfully adapted to some unconventional roles. Both cases also demonstrated that military might, no matter how skillfully or how massively applied, cannot solve the underlying political cause of a conflict. Political problems require political solutions and the viability any political solution is wholly dependent on the characteristics of the native population. Presently, there is much that the U.S. military can do to improve the ways that it prepares forces for participation in peace operations. Too much emphasis is currently placed on tactics, techniques, and procedures and not enough is placed on cultural appreciation of the target area. A common failing of virtually all of our recent small wars experience has been that our forces have deployed "culturally under armed."
The Combined Action Program: Vietnam - Captain Keith Kopets, USMC. The program, undertaken by the USMC during the Vietnam war, was an innovative and unique approach to pacification. In theory, the program was simple; a Marine rifle squad would join forces with a South Vietnamese militia platoon to provide security for local villages. CAP's modus operandi made it unique. While assigned to combined units, Marines would actually live in a militia unit's village. CAP was a response to the conditions in Vietnam. As the senior command in the I Corps Tactical Zone, the Marines were responsible for securing more than 10,000 square miles of land that included the five northernmost provinces of South Vietnam. More than 2-1/2 million people lived in the I Corps area. Using the militia for local security made sense; there were not enough Marines to go around.
Marine Alternative to Search and Destroy - Vietnam Magazine article. A standard definition of military strategy is that it is the art and science of employing the armed forces of a nation to secure objectives of national policy by the application of force or the threat of force. More than 150 years ago Karl von Clausewitz wrote in On War, "The ends of strategy, in the final analysis, are those objectives that will finally lead to peace." To understand why, by these definitions, the United States failed to employ properly its forces in Vietnam, we must first look at the experience that influenced the strategies of search and destroy and of attrition. American operations based on conventional methods made little real progress in defeating the VC or the NVA during the period from 1965 to 1968. MACV, nevertheless, continued to stand by the strategy of attrition as the only way to fight the war and win it quickly. The strategy of counterinsurgency and pacification operations would take too long and become too drawn out. Thus, America continued to try to replicate the massive firepower approach that had proved so successful in World War II, and to a lesser extent in Korea. But as Westmoreland argued in his book A Soldier Reports: "Critics presumably saw some alternative, for the essence of constructive criticism is alternative. Yet to my knowledge, nobody ever advanced a viable alternative that conformed to the American policy of confining the war within South Vietnam." But the commandant of the Marine Corps, General David M. Shoup, and General Krulak both offered constructive criticism and on more than one occasion presented alternatives directly to Westmoreland and McNamara. Their recommendations included the enclave strategy, the clear-and-hold or ink-blot strategy, and the Combined Action Program. These were all viable alternatives that conformed to the overall American policy of confining the ground war to South Vietnam.
Personal Experiences with the Combined Action Program in Vietnam - US Marine Corps Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities Qucilook Report, March 2004. The Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities (CETO) conducted a professional military education discussion on March 5, 2004 concerning the Combined Action Program (CAP) in Vietnam.1 The guest speaker was Mr. Ed Matricardi, currently an attorney in Northern Virginia, who was a U.S. Marine corporal and served as a CAP squad leader in Vietnam during 1967. Mr. Al Paddock, Ph.D., an historian and retired U.S. Army Special Forces colonel who served three tours in Vietnam also participated in the session, as did the CETO staff.
Vietnam: We Could Have Won - Major John Frenzel, USMC. On the 25th Anniversary of our withdrawal from Vietnam, it is constructive to look back and ask if the U.S. military ever discovered the elements of a strategy in South Vietnam that, given the proper circumstances, might have achieved American objectives. Had those elements and circumstances existed how could they have been combined into a strategy that could have served American objectives at an acceptable cost? In retrospect, that is, how could we have won? During the eight years from 1965 to 1972, America's involvement in Vietnam fluctuated from massive escalation to gradual withdrawal. American strategy also wavered in its approach, from unilateral U.S. "Search and Destroy" tactics designed to atrit the enemy, to combined "Clear and Hold" operations which focused on pacification programs and Vietnamization. A number of critics continue to declare our defeat in Vietnam as predestined, citing a milieu of political, military and cultural factors which contributed to our defeat. However ruinous our involvement ultimately was, our defeat should not be regarded as preordained: just as American intervention was decisive in prolonging the war by postponing a North Vietnamese victory, America's defeat was ultimately determined by its own strategic failures during those eight crucial years. Ultimately, Hanoi's multi-faceted strategy of insurgency and protraction proved an elusive target for America's rather one-dimensional strategy of attrition. A revised alternate strategy, incorporating those elements which proved successful from 1965 to 1972 could very well have achieved U.S. policy objectives at an acceptable cost. More specifically, a revised Limited Shield/Pacification strategy incorporating the vital elements of strategic defensive operations, an expanded Demographic Frontier Program, accelerated Vietnamization, diplomacy and limited offensive operations could be effectively combined in a comprehensive strategy, and applied in three phases: Reversal of the Insurgency (Phase I); Diplomacy and Vietnamization (Phase II); and, Limited Offensive Operations and Settlement (Phase III). Had a Limited Shield/ Pacification Strategy been employed at the outset, it is possible that a viable and enduring peace settlement could have been reached by 1972 and an American defeat in Vietnam could have been averted.
So You Want to Be an Adviser - Brigadier General Daniel Bolger, US Army. Military Review article, March - April 2006. BG Bolger, one of the Army’s top advisers in Iraq, offers a vivid description of what it is like to train Iraqi security forces. A combat adviser influences his ally by force of personal example. You coach, you teach, and you accompany in action. Liaison with friendly forces becomes a big role, and you ensure independent ground-truth reporting to both your counterpart and your own chain. Finally, an adviser provides the connection and expertise to bring to bear fires, service support, and other combat multipliers. accolades go to the leader you support. That, at least, is the idea. The people advising today’s Forces have learned to fight what T.R. Fehrenbach so rightly and ruefully called “this kind of war.” the opening rounds of this enduring, twilight struggle, our wily enemies wear civilian clothes and strike with bombs and gunfire without regard to innocents in the crossfire. The battles feature short, sharp exchanges of Kalashnikov slugs and M-4 carbine bullets, the fiery death blossom of a car bomb, the quick, muffled smack of a wooden door going down and a blindfolded figure stumbling out at gunpoint. Dirty little firefights spin up without warning and die out in minutes. But the campaign in will last years, and will not be cheap in money or blood. Since the present advisory effort began to accompany forces into action, we have lost 8 killed. In today’s major theaters, most of the fighting is done by Afghans and Iraqis. They have signed on, but they could use our help. So you want to be an adviser? If so, read on.
The United States Military Advisory Group in El Salvador, 1979-1992 - Major Paul Cale, US Army. US Marine Corps Command and Staff College thesis, 1996. That the United States Military Advisory Group in El Salvador helped an emerging democratic nation combat a communist supported insurgent threat. That U.S. Army personnel assigned to the Military Advisory Group, and those deployed to that nation for training, helped in transforming the Salvadoran Armed Forces (ESAF) into a professional military force. Did the expanded U.S. Military Advisory Group in the Republic of El Salvador achieve the political / military goals set for them by the United States Ambassador to El Salvador and the Commander, United States Southern Command, during the period 1979 through 1992? The Government of El Salvador and the FMLN signed a United Nations brokered peace agreement in 1992 following twelve years of armed conflict. This agreement could not have been signed without the assistance of U.S. military aid, specifically the augmented Military Advisory Group. What did they do? How did they do it? What did they achieve? Will the peace agreement last? What has the United States learned throughout this conflict? This paper will answer these questions.
Whither Aviation Foreign Internal Defense? - Lieutenant Colonel Wray Johnson (USAF). Aerospace Power Journal Article, Spring 1997. In 1994 Air Force Special Operations Command stood up the 6th Special Operations Squadron (6 SOS), the first--ever USAF squadron dedicated to the foreign internal defense (FID) mission area. With roots in special air warfare dating back to the Vietnam War and even as far back as the Second World War, the 6 SOS was created to advise, train, and assist foreign aviation forces in the application of airpower in internal defense and development. Since that time the squadron has expanded its mission to include coalition support roles and combat advisory operations in keeping with the emerging missions that comprise operations other than war (OOTW). Nevertheless, the core mission has remained intact: inculcating in foreign air forces the idea of the utility of airpower across the conflict spectrum.
