COIN: The Ability and Willingness to Adapt

Posted by Maximus on the Small Wars Council and Marine Corps Gazette discussion boards, I thought this Q&A with a Marine Corps lieutenant would be of interest to SWJ Blog readers.

Council member Maximus is an active duty Marine Corps captain (infantry). He served in Iraq as a rifle platoon commander, rifle company executive officer, and as a combined anti-armor team platoon commander.

Where a military acronym is used I have inserted an explanation or edited the original term for clarity sake.

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I thought you'd be interested in an After Action Review-type discussion with a Marine Corps lieutenant recently back from Ramadi:

Q: What was your billet?

A: Initially I was the 4th Platoon Commander / Mobile Assault / Quick Reaction Force (QRF) Platoon Commander for my company. I held this billet for 2 months until taking over a rifle platoon. I held that billet for 5 months.

Q: What was your Area of Operations (AO)?

A: Initially the northeast sector of Ramadi, but as my company had success our AO expanded to where we had most of the area north of Route Michigan and some areas to the south by the time we left.

Q What do you mean by success? My perception is that many folks think

all Iraqis in Ramadi hate Americans. Is this true?

A: Initially my company had a rough time and minimal positive relations with the people. This changed though right around the 2-month mark as we began using less aggressive tactics. For example, while serving as the MAP (Mobile Assault Platoon) Commander, I executed most of the raids for the company. At first our TTP (Tactics, Techniques and Procedures) involved locking the target area down and then going into the building hard, sometimes using an explosive breach. After a while though, I / we began to realize that our intelligence was rarely 100% correct and even when it was we almost never found anything of significance at the target site or we messed up doing site exploitation / filling out paperwork. So we'd end up detaining a bunch of military age males with little evidence to justify detaining them only to have them released and back at their houses days or weeks later.

At about the 2-month mark, my company changed tactics. For example, unless given very specific intelligence that described an immediate threat, whenever conducting a raid or cordon and search, I'd still lock the target area down, but rather than kick down the door, break / blow open the gate, rush the building, etc., I tried knocking on the door and waiting for the family to answer. After all, I had the objective isolated and also had a lot of Marines / firepower with me. Once the home owner came to the door I asked to come in, took off my helmet and shook hands and then began asking him questions. Sometimes I spoke about random things for 5-10 minutes just to get a feel for whether the intelligence was legit. If yes, after 10 minutes I'd have my interpreter explain that I had to detain him for questioning from higher. I also calmly explained what was happening to his family.

Q: Did you search the houses?

A: At first yes, but after doing so many times we realized the insurgents aren't stupid; rarely will you find illegal weapons, IED (Improvised Explosive Device) making material, etc. in a house. They know by now to hide this stuff elsewhere. So, again, after the first 2 months we stopped searching houses for the most part. My thought process was for the 1 in 100 houses where we would actually find something chances are we'd piss off the other 99 families and thus create more enemies.

Q: How bad was the IED threat?

A: You're going to start noticing a trend. First 2 months real bad. Lots of QRF missions for casualty evacuations. The IED threat significantly decreased when we started doing things differently. For example, when I got the rifle platoon we generally operated out of a company firm base located in the middle of the town. From this position we were almost always out as individual squads or 3 squads operating separately doing ambush operations in the vicinity of known or suspected IED / ambush locations. This played a large role in reducing the IED threat.

Q: Please explain urban ambush ops more. What'd they look like? How'd

you occupy? What'd you bring with you?

A: Depends on whether going in an abandoned structure or a house with a family inside.

Abandoned structure: stepped off on a foot patrol in the dark and didn't occupy until late at night. Once inside we'd clear using NVGs (Night Vision Goggles) in order to maintain the element of surprise (white light equals immediate compromise) and then establish eyes-on with a fire team, 1 team would be responsible for security and 1 team on rest. We rarely occupied a platoon-sized ambush position. (After he said this I asked him about distributed ops and whether he had multiple squads out at the same time and if yes how they communicated). We often had squads occupying different buildings because angles in the urban environment usually only allowed Marines to observe a NAI (Named Area of Interest) from 1 or 2 windows. By occupying multiple squad-sized ambush sites that mutually supported each other, the platoon had much better observation. Each squad had plenty of communications capability.

If occupying a house with a family present: much like lessons learned from above, we would still occupy late at night but do our best to quietly get through gates before quietly knocking on doors and asking / politely telling owner that we were coming in. If lights were off in the house, we'd only use NVGs to do a cursory search before occupying. Again, 1 team eyes-on, 1 on rest / engaging family with squad leader and interpreter (critical asset that we didn't always have), and 1 on security. At first we separated the family and forced them to stay in specific rooms and also prevented them from going to work, school, etc. After a few days though we realized this wasn't helping our cause so we simply explained the ground rules and then let the family go about its normal life. My logic was let the father go to work. Chances are he's not going to tell the enemy that we're in his house because he doesn't want his family caught in a cross fire and / or house destroyed. Plus, by not letting parents work and kids go to school you're automatically raising suspicion levels. Worst case, someone tells that we're in the house so insurgents don't plant an IED or we get attacked while we're in a position of advantage. In a sense this is still a win for us.

Q: How'd the people respond to your living in their houses for multiple days?

A: We never had a problem. In fact, in every case the family offered us food and plenty of chai (tea) and eventually Marines not on security or maintaining eyes-on the NAI ended up having conversations with the older males and playing with the children. Operating in this way proved to be a great way to get to know the people and to build relationships with them.

(As he said this he remembered one particular ambush op....)

One night we occupied a little early, call it around 2000-2100. As I walked in the house I looked into a room and saw 30-40 middle aged to older men. Initial thought was what have we walked into! After having a short discussion with the home owner I found out that the men were in the house because they had just returned from a funeral. As I was expressing my sorrow for the loss the men began to explain that an IED had inadvertently killed a member of their family. Through sheer luck or simply because I treated them like human beings, the men then told me where 2 other IEDs were located and also who was responsible for planting them. I quickly called EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) and they eliminated the IEDs. We also detained the guys who set them up. Big picture - this taught me that the average person in Ramadi is fed up with the fighting and will help us if we give him reason to.

Q: Did your company ever kill / capture insurgents laying in IEDs or other

types of ambushes?

A: Yes, I don't recall exactly how many but at least 3 or 4 insurgents. As we did these ops though fewer and fewer IEDs were set-up in our AO so the opportunities decreased. That said it's critical that you do everything possible to maintain the element of surprise throughout the operation.

Q: What gear did you bring with you on these patrols?

A: Normally 80-90 pounds of gear. Operated a lot in the summer so we needed lots of water, enough food for 3 days, ammo, night optics, digital cameras, IR (Infra Red) marking devices, radios and extra batteries and we also often took 40-50 lbs pieces of ballistic glass (HMMWV windshield glass) with us. I had to force my Marines to take the glass initially but when we were compromised once and a sniper hit the glass directly in front of one of my Marines, the complaints ceased.

Q: After observing a recent DO (Distributed Operations) communications training package where Marines were taught to take pictures with digital cameras, download on small tough-book computers and then send imagery over their radios, I asked if he had this capability and if not would he have wanted it in order to get imagery / data to higher headquarters ASAP?

A: No we didn't have this capability. And, yes I definitely would have wanted it. There were multiple times where we had pictures / other intelligence that we wanted to get to higher but didn't want to leave the positions in daylight or before mission completion.

I was impressed with the lieutenant's ability and willingness to adapt, understanding of the nature of the fight, etc., as I am disappointed that we keep learning the same lessons over and over again - at great cost. Success in COIN (counterinsurgency) has proven in so many ways nothing more than understanding human relations 101.