The Strategic Landpower Task Force, two years into its work to promote the “human domain” of warfare and develop a doctrine dealing with how to influence and leverage the behavior of local populations in an area of operations, is hopeful that finalizing its doctrine in the next year or two may make it easier to secure funding for the international exercises needed to build greater cultural understanding.
Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Friday, Maj. Gen. Christopher Haas, director of force management and development for U.S. Special Operations Command, said the task force–a combination of Army, Marine Corps and SOCOM planners–is currently reviewing existing doctrine that addresses human aspects of military operations and looking for gaps that need to be filled.
“As we move forward, our intent is to get this concept approved, and then once that’s approved then what you will see is a concept that informs the employment of existing and emerging capabilities across our services and our combatant commands, as well as identify the new capabilities, competencies and disciplines that are required to operate inside what SOCOM is describing as the human domain,” he said. Understanding the human domain and learning to successfully operate in it is hugely important, Haas said–unfamiliarity with cultures in regions the military operates in means that warfighters aren’t able to predict the risks and challenges they’ll face, and they’re unable to form the right partnerships that could prevent conflict or help defeat an enemy faster.
Brig. Gen. Kevin Killea, director of the Marine Corps’ Futures Directorate and commanding general of the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, emphasized that this work does not take away from planning and resources for the higher end of the range of military operations, but rather represents “a new awareness of what we’ve been overlooking , if you will, in those earlier phases of warfare.”
Haas noted during the question and answer session that, though there is widespread for this initiative among the ground forces community–and in the Navy, which he called the task force’s biggest ally–finding enough funding to execute some of the ideas may be challenging. Though understanding the human domain and incorporating human aspects of military operations (HAMO) in campaign planning doesn’t have a price tag, military officers will need to be culturally attuned–they’ll need real-world experiences working with foreign militaries, tribal leaders and other types of communities; seeing non-American lifestyles; learning new languages; and more. Exercises and partnership-building activities sponsored by the geographic combatant commanders were among the first things to be cut when military budgets began declining–operations and maintenance accounts have taken the brunt of the cuts in many cases–putting at risk the military’s ability to create a human awareness and cultural understanding.
Haas added that once HAMO is written and accepted as military doctrine, it will be easier to fight for funding for these types of activities in the geographical combatant commands.
The speakers at CSIS all agreed that operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have proven the need for better cultural understanding, and that need won’t go away any time soon. Maj. Gen. William Hix, deputy director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center at U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, offered one example from Iraq. Early on, U.S. forces took out a bridge in Anbar Province that connected a phosphate fertilizer plant to the town.
“That bridge was of no military significance, irrelevant,” Hix said. “Moreover, it had no effect on Baghdad, the government, the army, Saddam, irrelevant. But we hit it because that’s what we do. We have to change that,” because the ultimate result was to deprive local farmers of their source of fertilizer right at the start of planting season.
Haas said special operations forces have struggled too. When the United Arab Emirates wanted to join SOF’s campaign in Afghanistan, particularly in the Helmand region, the UAE wanted to bring in armored vehicles and heavy tanks. Haas said there was a big debate over how that would be seen by locals. On the one hand, any tanks could be perceived as the Soviet Union’s invasion all over again. But on the other hand, it could be seen as “Muslim tanks” meant to protect the local villagers instead of American tanks invading.
“We couldn’t get back to the real keen in-depth understanding of how this would be perceived by the local populations and how it would be perceived by the Taliban… which was, whoa, the coalition just introduced some new fire power on the battlefield, we’ve got to relook at our tactics,” he said.
Killea said that this debate won’t go away any time soon–improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are a global threat, not just problems in Iraq and Afghanistan. And with lives at stake, the military can’t waffle on a decision–they need to send in the right vehicles to keep troops safe as a number one priority, but the HAMO doctrine should help force the discussion of trying to avoid eliciting negative responses from the local populations.