The Mission, the Men, and Pete Blaber
July 28, 2009 at 3:40 pm by Steven OHern
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?
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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…..