Operation Dragon Spear Demonstrates Army Strong
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…
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
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.
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.)