The Mission, the Men, and Pete Blaber
July 28, 2009 by Steven OHern · 2 Comments
Pete Blaber has written an excellent book, The Mission, the Men, and Me that uses examples from his Delta Force career to illustrate some leadership lessons. But intelligence officers and users of intelligence would gain much from applying the same lessons to the craft of intelligence.
One lesson that is particularly applicable to intelligence that is conveyed by Blaber is “Always listen to the man on the ground.” Blaber learned this lesson both as a leader of a team trying to gather as much information as possible about a target and as the commander of a unit that had information vital to Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan that was ignored by higher commanders. Blaber’s account of Operation Anaconda is gut wrenching as he details what information was available from his teams whose members had infiltrated the high ground of the Shahi Khot Valley and were providing a detailed and current situation report as well as directing devastating air strikes against the al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the valley. Yet that information was not just overlooked, it was ignored by the commanders planning and leading the insertion of a Navy SEAL team and the Quick Reaction Force sent to rescue a SEAL and an Air Force Combat Controller who were stranded during the SEAL team’s attempted insertion.
The higher up (and further back from the battle) commanders were lulled into thinking they had sufficient situational awareness to make decisions without listening to the man on the ground because of their access to satellite radio transmissions and aerial views from UAVs. Blaber describes the UAV imagery as looking through a soda straw. You can see, but only so much and without the context of the wide angle view.
Blaber’s account of Operation Anaconda provides insight to intelligence personnel as it is another example of the military’s and intelligence community’s love affair with high-tech that makes many in those communities prefer what is obtained from technology over information obtained from the use of shoe leather (or synthetic hi-tech boot soles) and from talking to people. Similar to the lessons in The Intelligence Wars, Blaber’s book gives examples of the military’s propensity to not share information. At one point, Blaber was advised that he was cooperating too much by sharing information with the 10th Mountain Group and the CIA. Blaber also does a good job of explaining how rigid the Army’s planning process it and how it locks the Army into bad results by not allowing new information to affect decisions already made, but not implemented.
The man on the ground provides the best sense of what is going on and what is possible – whether the man on the ground is a commando on a mountaintop dug into a well-hidden observation post or a HUMINT operative in the same village where your target is. When will our leaders learn this lesson?
SEALS Link HUMINT to Action
July 15, 2009 by Steve · 1 Comment
In The Sheriff of Ramadi author Dick Couch details how SEALs in Iraq successfully fused human intelligence with operators who could act upon the HUMINT and contrasts the SEALs willingness to share information with the tendency of other SOF units that don’t share intelligence with other military units.
The key to the SEALs’ effective intelligence operation is its dedication to developing and sharing intelligence. SEALs deploy to the fight in “Task Units” which are composed of a SEAL squadron (generally two SEAL platoons) and support personnel including a robust intelligence element referred to as the N2 section. Couch describes the N2 on pages 49-50 of his book:
Within this N2 shop there will most usually be an intelligence cell and a targeting cell. Personnel-wise, these two vital components may have anywhere from twelve to twenty intelligence specialists and support personnel and two or more officers. The N2 is also responsible for a task element known as the Advanced Special Operations unit whose missions and methods are classified. The ASO component will have a variety of specialists, including veteran SEAL operators. Their responsibilities range from the analytical to the operational. . . Other personnel assigned to the N2 shop range from interrogation specialists to linguists to civil-affairs officers. The collective job of the N2 section is to comb through the myriad of available intelligence information that passes through military channels for information that may relate to task unit mission requirements. They also manage the ongoing human and technical collection efforts so important to the TU’s targeting cell. Every SEAL I spoke with, from the TU commanders to the platoon operators – the shooters – could not say enough about the importance of their intelligence and targeting cells. Indeed, the SEAL assault elements and their Iraqi scouts seldom went into the field without knowing exactly where they were going and exactly who they were looking for, as well as the risk parameters going in, on target, and coming back out.
And in another section of Couch’s book (page 116), he quotes U.S. Army Captain Mike Bajema who served with SEALS at Ramadi regarding the Army infantry officer’s observation of the differences in working with Army special operations forces and the SEALs, especially their willingness to share information with others:
But one thing that came across right away with [the] SEALS I met that dat was their honesty. They didn’t care about a man’s branch of service or rank or physical size. I found that the SEALs tended to judge a man on his character, his courage under fire, and his determination to kill the enemy. I was never treated as anything less than an equal and always given the respect of being a different type of warrior on the battlefield. My preconception of the SEALs was solely abased on my experience working with the Army Special Forces teams. Those experiences were not positive, as the Army SOF community, in my experience, is quick to assert their sense of importance in most situations. First meetings are always a ‘tab check’ of who has the most Army [shoulder] tabs and school identifiers – airborne, Ranger, Special Forces, sapper, et cetera. This never happened with the SEALs. They only cared how a man performs or reacts when in contact with the enemy. . .
The Army SOF community I worked with previously was very reluctant to share their information with conventional forces. It seems like the information they had is too valuable or too secret to get passed on to others in the battlespace. The SEALs always followed the rules of disclosure but they worked really hard on passing information down to the conventional guys on the ground. In return I passed all informants I came across to the SEALs to develop as sources, as I was restricted as to how I could task these informants in the gathering of intelligence. The SEALs had the specially trained folks that could task and even pay sources for information.
ANALYSISCouch’sThe Sheriff of Ramadi demonstrates the importance of two critical points: First, linking intelligence analysts and targeting people with HUMINT collectors and the operators who go after the bad guys works well. It is clearly more efficient than the bureaucratic and disjointed method the conventional Army follows of separating the intelligence analysts from the collectors of information. Note the benchmark that should be the goal of intelligence in counterinsurgency: the operators always knew where they were going and who they were going after. This is much more effective COIN than patrols from main bases and cordon and search operations.
Second, the SEALs’ effectiveness was enhanced when they promoted the sharing of information. The testimony of the Army infantry officer who immediately noticed and appreciated the difference between Army SOF units who play “I have a secret” and don’t share intel and the SEALs who want to share information points to the utility of sharing information. Sharing information with other forces in the battlespace did more than make the SEALs popular with their fellow warriors. It caused others to refer human sources to them for exploitation because the people who referred the sources to them knew they would ultimately benefit from the intelligence developed.
