Beyond Tacit Approval: Embracing Special Operations Civil Affairs Support to the Intelligence Information Report

Beyond Tacit Approval: Embracing Special Operations Civil Affairs Support to the Intelligence Information Report

Benjamin F. Ordiway

Context

This paper is from the viewpoint of a Special Operations Forces Civil Affairs Team Commander tasked to support Special Operations Command-Europe lines of effort and U.S. embassy mission goals. Though informed by experiences drawn from multiple episodic engagements and a Civil-Military Support Element (CMSE) rotation, its themes may apply broadly to Special Operations Forces Civil Affairs (SOF CA). The views expressed are mine and do not reflect the official policy or position of U.S. Special Operations Command, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

Background: The Post-Deployment Brief

When Special Forces (SF) train foreign partners, I can know how many bullets exited a rifle and how many foreign partners eventually qualified on the weapons range. I’m just not sure I can see what your Civil Affairs Teams accomplished during their deployment. What can you show me? This unfortunate line of inquiry is a representative sample of a recent post-deployment brief to Special Operations senior leadership and is illustrative of the existential need for SOF CA to perpetually “sell itself” in the service of maintaining relevancy. Special Operations Forces Civil Affairs Teams (SOF CATs) operate in multivariable environments to achieve effects in the human domain. Compounding this complexity is a lack of actionable lines of operation tailored to the countries where leaders deploy SOF CATs—teams are still sent to “go do CA” as if it were a verb. Just because SOF CA can operate with minimal guidance does not mean it should be the norm. Nearly as ambiguous, SOF leaders “empower” teams with the broad mandate to identify, attribute, deter, and counter a nation’s malign indirect action. In the face of such ambiguity, SOF CATs continue to create operational effects in support of Special Operations lines of effort and interagency goals. These effects—projecting U.S. influence in information-contested regions, improving understanding of the human geography, or informing interagency partners of developments at the local level—do not readily lend themselves to quantitative metrics. Difficulty in measuring CA effects, when combined with a lack of provided metrics and end state, leads to the growth of skepticism or downright cynicism for all parties involved. A clear and respected metric is available to SOF CA, though it is one that CA does not exploit due to uncertainty of wider SOF receptiveness—the intelligence information report (IIR).

A Measuring Contest

The IIR is a “formatted message utilized as the primary vehicle for providing human intelligence information to the customer via automated intelligence community databases,”[1] Because of the persistent drumbeat that SOF CA “doesn’t do intelligence,” teams are unsure if they should intentionally support IIR generation, much less highlight any occasional successes in doing so through post-mission reporting. Embracing SOF CAT support to IIR generation means giving more than a tacit nod. Embracing means removing self-imposed obstacles, institutionalizing CA’s relationship with the United States Intelligence Community (IC), and educating the wider SOF enterprise on SOF CA’s capabilities in supporting the IC. This paper attempts to address some organizational, leadership, and doctrinal obstacles preventing SOF CATs from deliberately and openly supporting IIR generation before, during, and after CAO. 

From an organizational perspective, SOF leadership should consider engaging embassies to rethink team employment so teams can best identify, assess, and potentially leverage critical physical and human infrastructure within the civil component to achieve operational and strategic effects. This may mean reducing the use of standard defense partner capacity building and interagency programs as the primary enabler of a SOF CAT’s access to areas and populations. Relying primarily on defense partner forces and interagency programs impedes team effectiveness by reducing engagement with civil society. SOF leadership should encourage and resource SOF CA partnerships with governance partners and civil society organizations (CSOs). SOF leadership, in collaboration with the IC, should leverage the SOF CAT’s strength—freedom of maneuver—to increase overt and passive information gathering to address IC requirements.  

From a leadership perspective, senior SOF commanders should embrace SOF CAT support to IIR generation as a measure of performance (MOP). This MOP could support an operational and strategic-level measure of effectiveness (MOE) through feedback regarding IIR status. For example, did an analyst evaluate it? Did it lead to a finished product? Was it briefed to a decision-maker? Was a decision made?

From a doctrinal perspective, embracing SOF CAT support to IIR generation entails directly addressing uncharitable interpretations of CA doctrine which inhibit SOF CA/IC interoperability. It also means addressing those audiences who worry that leaning forward on SOF CAT information gathering to support IC requirements would be equivalent to producing “collectors.”

Organization: Retaining Freedom of Maneuver—New Partners

“Reconnaissance assets must retain battlefield mobility to successfully complete their missions. If these assets are decisively engaged, reconnaissance stops, and a battle for survival begins.—U.S. Army Fundamentals of Reconnaissance[2]

The SOF CAT is essentially a reconnaissance element which conducts CAO to achieve effects within the civil component of the operational environment (OE) throughout the competition-conflict-return to competition continuum described in Multi-Domain Operations (MDO).[3] Often in the service of CAO, teams become decisively engaged with a defense partner or interagency program. These decisive engagements do more than limit a team’s freedom of maneuver; they create a battle to distinguish a team’s unique contributions. At best, this can marginalize the SOF CAT specifically and CA in general. At worst, it jeopardizes the mission set’s long-term survival. SOF CAT partner force capacity building of partner nation defense organizations quickly muddies the waters between Special Forces (SF) and CA. Also, it lends credence to the whispered suspicion on the part of senior leaders in the SF community that CA is merely doing what SF already does. Moreover, focusing a SOF CAT’s efforts on defense partner capacity building creates a transition problem which may produce a vacuum of engagement. Invariably, the justification for maintaining a SOF presence in the partner nation becomes increasingly attenuated once SOF achieves partner capacity objectives.

Often at the team level, leaders are instructed to “Work yourselves out of a job.” Still, some senior SOF leadership equally claim that deterrence, as part of great power competition, does not have an end-state. Until the great powers in question believe the vacuum created by U.S. SOF disengagement is no longer worth filling, that job is not complete. SOF leadership should consider divesting SOF CA from partner force capacity building in those countries where the overarching concern is great power malign indirect action. These are the countries that require a persistent presence and updates to the civil common operating picture. Understanding and describing the dynamic and complex human geography is a primary task performed by SOF CATs. Unless we expect our partners to conduct operations on its domestic population while in occupied territory and then share that information with U.S. SOF, attaching a SOF CAT’s presence to defense partner forces is shortsighted. 

Some may confuse CA partner force capacity building with developing a proxy element which may then serve in an underground or auxiliary function in an unconventional warfare environment. Ostensibly, SOF CA partner forces would conduct CAO through these proxy forces throughout the conflict aspect of MDO. However, given the overt nature of SOF CA forces in the competition aspect of MDO, it would seem improbable that these SOF CA partner forces would remain viable networks in the auxiliary or underground. The adversaries conducting indirect action would likely have identified members of the partner force and developed appropriate courses of action to neutralize these partner forces and their networks upon occupation.

SOF CA support to building resilience and resistance capacity through a defense partner neglects the population-centric efforts required to support a partner country’s “total defense,” a whole-of-government resistance framework.[4] For total defense to be viable, the country must build resilience and resistance capacity in the “whole of society.”[5] CA should partner with governance and CSOs to enhance total defense efficacy. In some countries, Civil Defense Organizations (or Civil Protection Administration in other countries), whether they be volunteer-based or fully funded and staffed organizations, sometimes fall under the authority of the Ministry of Defense. These atypical defense organizations are often linked to local government, emergency response elements, law enforcement, hospitals, and evacuation centers. Additionally, these organizations often educate succeeding generations through school engagements on measures individuals can take to protect themselves in emergencies. If SOF CA must have a defense partner in a specific country to maintain freedom of maneuver, then it should consider civil defense/civil protection organizations as they are a better fit for CA capabilities. These organizations provide the most reach throughout a country and allow for the multi-layered engagement with civil society and increase team awareness of civil vulnerabilities and existing threats to civil society.

The civil vulnerabilities exploited by the tentacles of malign influence extend beyond a partner or allied nation’s Ministry of Defense. Hybrid warfare presupposes that bad actors provide support to ethnically and historically aligned populations, CSOs, and government leaders vulnerable to or outright accepting of foreign influence. Civil vulnerabilities are, at best, only tenuously addressable through theater security cooperation in the form of defense partner capacity building. Furthermore, from the MDO perspective of anti-access and area denial,[6] civil vulnerabilities contribute to key population and associated geographic area denial for U.S. forces. Increasing direct SOF CAT engagement with historically disenfranchised populations, CSOs, and local governments during the competition aspect of MDO can degrade and disintegrate our adversary’s ability to leverage civil vulnerabilities as a component of its anti-access and area denial system. The two primary SOF CAT tactical tasks of civil reconnaissance (CR) and civil engagement (CE) however, are designed to identify and address malign influence and civil vulnerabilities.

CR is “a targeted, planned, and coordinated observation and evaluation of specific civil aspects of the environment such as areas, structures, capabilities, organizations, people, or events.”[7] It is the primary method and lens through which teams view and analyze the OE. CE is a “deliberate or spontaneous activity or interaction between Civil Affairs forces and nonmilitary individuals or entities, designed to build relationships; reduce or eliminate civil interference and causes of instability; gather, confirm, or deny information; foster legitimacy, or promote cooperation and unified action.”[8] In short, it is the tactical task for interacting with civil society.

 Information gathered through CR and CE allows decision-makers within SOF leadership and the wider interagency an increased capacity to monitor indirect action and develop informed courses of action. When such monitoring is tied to a partner force, then SOF CAT obsolescence becomes a self-imposed obstacle. Regional SOF commands should become comfortable with and supportive, both in word and in resourcing, of SOF CAT “partnership” with CSOs and other non-defense institutions. In conjunction, embassies ought to market this partnership to our partner/allied countries as an advantage of allowing CA to work in the country, as CA undoubtedly assists local governments, CSOs, and the wider community. Embassies should avoid lumping CA in with the Office of Defense Cooperation (ODC) or attaching CA to other programs. Instead, embassies should seek to understand how SOF CATs can support the integrated country strategy through the existing SOF CA program which is civil-military engagement (CME). CME is a “formal [United States Special Operations Command] program of record that facilitates the interagency, host nation authorities, intergovernmental and non-governmental partners, and the private sector to establish, sustain, or enhance civil capabilities and capacities that mitigate or eliminate civil vulnerabilities to local and regional populations. [9] In summary, this is what a SOF CA team is doing while deployed as a CMSE.

Organization: Retaining Freedom of Maneuver—OPM=OPP

Using “other people’s money” (OPM) may mean inheriting other people’s problems (OPP). SOF CAT reliance on DoD and interagency programs to gain access to areas and populations leads to unintended consequences that run counter to the team's overarching purpose. First, it can quickly create an optic on the part of senior embassy leadership that a SOF CAT is not bringing value to the embassy—the SOF CAT is merely redistributing value. It is difficult to justify a CAT’s occupancy of an embassy office if the team is only serving as an extension of another department. Moreover, it places SOF CATs in a precarious relationship through subordination to the funding stream and goals of the agency and program in question.

At a recent leader professional development conference attended by the author, unit leadership advised that SOF CATs nestle under the wing of the ODC while deployed. The hypothesis is that, through identification, monitoring, and management of Overseas Humanitarian, Disaster, and Civic Aid (OHDACA) projects, SOF CATs can conduct the necessary CR and CE in areas and populations of interest to the supported Special Operations Command. An ethical problem may arise though, as this blurs the line between the noble aim of humanitarian assistance and the need for SOF CATs to gain access to those areas and populations which may not necessitate humanitarian assistance. Furthermore, operating in the ODC humanitarian assistance space does not easily highlight SOF CA unique contributions to the U.S. embassy country team.

Building standard defense partner force capacity and relying on existing U.S. DoD and interagency programs as platforms to gain access to areas and populations are proven approaches to gathering information. Unfortunately, these approaches do not exploit a SOF CAT’s strength. These methods of maintaining a persistent presence create obstacles to a team’s freedom of maneuver and can reduce interaction with civil society. Reduced engagement with civil society adversely affects the SOF CAT’s potential to support IIR production by limiting its ability to address a broad spectrum of IC requirements. This is not to say teams should not develop access and engagement opportunities through the use of OPM; rather, teams should do so rarely and only as necessary.

Leadership: Exploiting Freedom of Maneuver

By design and geographic placement, a U.S. embassy directs much of its attention toward state institutions and maximizes influence within the capital to achieve effects that support U.S. policy. Because of the capitol focus, municipal-level engagement tends to be more sporadic. SOF CATs have the authorities, training, and organic resources to access nearly all regions within the deployed country. This freedom of maneuver is often surprising to interagency partners. When an ambassador has a question concerning a distant and rarely visited municipality, a SOF CAT can usually say, "Here I am, send me," while other department heads struggle to nest the effort under an existing program. This is not to say that SOF CAT engagement will magically solve the problem, but the team may bring back enough information and context to support other departments in developing an informed solution. While conducting CAO throughout a country, SOF CATs also incidentally gather a considerable amount of information that is important to the IC though it often goes uncaptured. Sensitization—increasing a SOF CAT’s awareness of IC information requirements—would effectively counter this loss of information.

If routinely sensitized to IC requirements, SOF CATs could utilize their access and freedom of maneuver to support better those customers who require accurate and timely information on vulnerabilities and threats to the civil society. Sensitization is currently sporadic, personality dependent, and lacks institutional support within the SOF community.  This seemingly random “wink and a nod” approach to sensitizing SOF CATs to IC requirements is insufficient. It places teams in an untenable situation when the time comes to communicate effects and at the tactical level by forcing teams to decide whether it is appropriate to discuss direct support to IIR generation as a measure of performance.

A SOF CAT can quickly find itself without freedom of maneuver, or the freedom to maneuver directly to the nearest airport, should a team begin to act as intelligence agents. However, sensitizing teams to IC requirements before a team conducts CR and CE in a specific locale does not equate to direct tasking. Teams are already gathering information to support IIR generation. It is what they are best equipped to do as part of their charge to understand the OE—even if some SOF leadership does not acknowledge or embrace it. SOF leadership should collaborate with the IC to support a more deliberate approach which formalizes SOF CAT support to IIR generation.

Formalizing sensitization before and during a SOF CAT deployment will enable a refined understanding of the OE for the interagency and IC, ultimately helping create more options and opportunities for policymakers. Moreover, IIRs are an indisputable, quantitative metric that teams can rely on for validation within the SOF umbrella. Some may ask, what is wrong with just broadly focusing on understanding the OE? The answer—the OE is overwhelming, and our adversaries exploit its ability to overwhelm us.

The first SOF Imperative, “Understand the Operational Environment”[10] translates to “Understand the Operational Variables.” It is akin to telling a team to understand the entirety of the political, military, economic, social, information, infrastructure, physical environment, and time (PMESII-PT) variables. When combined with the civil considerations of areas, structures, capabilities, organizations, people, and events, the multivariable permutations produced are overwhelming. While a SOF CAT Commander has the moral imperative to prepare the team to conduct operations in a foreign country, there is no expectation of mastery—nor should that be the goal. Supported commands already charge SOF CATs with answering the priority intelligence requirements (PIR). Senior U.S. SOF leadership should equally charge the Theater Special Operations Command (TSOC) with producing a vetted list of answerable PIR relevant to the countries where SOF CATs operate. It is not a PIR if a commander does not have a decision attached to it. A thoughtful list of PIR and sensitization to appropriate IC requirements enables the SOF CAT to demonstrate greater value by focusing on what the DoD and interagency partners do not know about the OE.

Clearly, there is compartmentalized information that SOF CATs should not, and will not, be made aware. Still, for every requirement that is beyond the scope of a SOF CAT’s mission profile, there are countless others that SOF CATs could address in reporting following a mission. For a SOF CAT to remain ignorant of IC requirements relating to civil vulnerabilities and threats to civil society does the team, its supported command, and the interagency a disservice. Moreover, it suggests a lack of confidence in team competency and maturity, which is the same as saying that SOF CA does not have confidence in itself.

Doctrine: The Great Arbiter

CA doctrine does not prevent SOF CA from deliberately gathering information to support IIR generation for the IC; instead, it has a history of indirectly supporting it. A nuanced reading of CA doctrine leaves the reader wondering if resistance to SOF CA deliberate support to IIR generation is unwittingly transferred by well-meaning instructors to each generation of students in the Civil Affairs Qualification Course via a misinformed oral tradition.

CA doctrine’s concern over appearances, regarding teams being view as intelligence operatives, while at the same time expressing how CA supports the IC is problematic and likely contributes to SOF CA’s uncertainty of its relationship with the IC. In FM 3-05.40 Civil Affairs Operations (September 2006) offers a nod toward supporting the IC in one sentence while pulling back in the next sentence, cautioning that “CA Soldiers must not appear to be active intelligence gatherers. They do, however, have unique [information requirements]—items of information on the enemy and his environment that may affect mission accomplishment.”[11]

The same manual then details nearly 60 general information requirements which CA forces should expect to answer. The problem with a general list, however, is that it is general. Addressing a broad list of things that may be useful can quickly consume a SOF CAT’s most precious resource—time. For example, the list describes everything from an “area’s hydrography to a population’s dietary habits, to a government’s political heritage, to identifying the core of a resistance movement.”[12] Commanders at all levels are obliged to refine, prioritize, and share information requirements with units on the ground.

Additionally, FM 3-05.40 states, "information collected can supplement the intelligence effort"[13]—hardly a red line against a SOF CAT deliberately supporting IIR generation. Furthermore, SOF CATs are already expected to support answering TSOC priority intelligence requirements. Arming teams with country-specific IC requirements is the logical next step. While the manual warns that CA personnel must not have the “appearance of being intelligence agents,” it says nothing of SOF CATs serving as informed (sensitized) agents. Sensitizing SOF CAT leadership to IC requirements does not make one an "agent," "spy," or "spook"—it encourages the formulation of thoughtful questions during CE and more deliberate planning of CR.

FM 3-57, Civil Affairs Operations (April 2019) contributes to a culture of ambivalence regarding SOF CA support to IIR generation. Though the manual states, “CA must not be tasked as active collectors of threat information,”[14] it does not disqualify teams from gathering information to deliberately support IIR generation through overt and passive means during the conduct of CAO. Never mind that the same manual declares that “CA forces interact with unified action partners (UAPs), IPI [indigenous populations and institutions], other civil entities, and the interagency through the planning and execution of [Civil Affairs Operations] to set the conditions for the mitigation or defeat of threats to civil society.”[15] A rigid and uncharitable reading of CA’s newest manual creates unnecessary obstacles to achieving greater effects. Furthermore, an unwillingness to support a SOF CATs ability to better inform the interagency of threats to civil society through embracing the team’s ability to support IIR generation is not without cost. It impedes a team’s ability to mitigate or defeat threats to civil society through timely and accurate reporting directed toward IC requirements while contributing to inefficiencies at echelons above the tactical level, specifically within the intelligence fusion working group.

Joint Publication 2-0 (Joint Intelligence) describes intelligence fusion as a “deliberate and consistent process of collecting and examining information from all available sources and intelligence disciplines to derive as complete an assessment as possible of detected activity.”[16] FM 3-57 ties intelligence fusion directly to CA when it declares intelligence fusion working groups are supposed to capture reporting from Civil Affairs Operations.[17] By joint doctrine, SOF intelligence fusion should incorporate CAT reporting, but it is hard to fuse a cumbersome CA operations summary (OPSUM) which may or may not contain actionable information buried in the body of the report. Sensitization to IC requirements relating to civil vulnerabilities and threats to civil society would allow SOF CATs to strip away the chaff or at least highlight areas of the OPSUM which address known requirements. Without narrowing the scope through sensitizing teams to IC requirements, voluminous OPSUMs could, at best, overwhelm an intelligence fusion working group with less useful (useless) information, or, at worst, be relegated to the “nice to know” dustbin. Relegation due to inundation comes at a price. It hinders the supported regional SOF command from better understanding the broader OE and violates SOF imperative "Provide sufficient intelligence."[18] More importantly, deliberately withholding IC requirements from SOF CATs in the spirit of "protecting CA integrity" hinders the fusion cell's ability to "address immediate or emerging threats," as SOF CATs are less able to perceive the indicators and warnings within the OE. The OE is a vast dark expanse—there is an unnecessary opportunity cost of having SOF CATs shine a flashlight of CR and CE into every dark space by not sensitizing SOF CATs to IC requirements.

Was This Even About IIRs?

Perhaps by now, the reader is beginning to wonder if embracing SOF CAT support of IIR generation is a problem that needs solving. Furthermore, are the organizational, leadership, and doctrinal sub-problems outlined in this paper even issues that need addressing? The reader would be right to wonder. After all, struggling to convey to a senior SOF leader what the SOF CAT accomplished perhaps has less to do with qualitative versus quantitative metrics. It may have more to do with the lack of a clearly defined end state shared by SOF and DoS leadership within a given country. It is difficult to weigh an effort if that effort is not pointing toward something that is defined.

From the author’s perspective, the Combatant Command (COCOM) defers oversight and guidance to the TSOC, which defers to the regional SOF element, which largely defers oversight to the U.S. embassy, which defers to the SOF CAT. This waterfall approach practically forces a team to design its lines of operations and execute missions with limited guidance. Following redeployment, it leaves the team out to dry when it comes time to brief Special Operations leadership on what the team quantifiably accomplished.

If detailed reporting (complete with geospatial products, on ground photos, contact reports, and infrastructure assessments) which describes shifts in population sentiment toward state government, which illuminates radical political party growth in far-off municipalities, which raises awareness of marginalization of ethnic outgroups by local security forces, which defines population perceptions surrounding past U.S. Government projects, which actually identifies Chinese or Russian indirect action, which highlights charismatic and hopeful leaders being drowned out by political corruption, which may ultimately recommend persistent “non-kinetic” engagement with CSO’s to achieve effects are too qualitative, at least let a SOF CAT lean on IIRs as a concrete, quantitative rebuttal to the tired question that began this paper.        

Recommendations

• SOF leadership should acknowledge SOF CA direct support to IIR generation and encourage it.
• SOF leadership should facilitate SOF CA coordination with the IC throughout the deployment cycle to ensure teams are sensitized to appropriate requirements and are routinely debriefed. 
• SOF leadership should advocate for an expanded definition of “partner” to enable enduring and resourced CA partnerships with non-defense organizations.