The main and obvious difference between peace enforcement and war is impartiality. In peace enforcement, military operations are directed against anyone who has violated agreements or the formally expressed will of the international community. The key difference from war is that there is no designated ‘enemy.’ In war, the enemy has to be rendered powerless. In peace enforcement, the idea is not to render him powerless—the aim of ‘victory’ takes second place to the achievement of measures, which will guarantee a more stable situation. 1
One of the less conventional force elements that landed in East Timor in the shadowy half-light of a September dawn in 1999 was the Response Force. A vital component of the International Force in East Timor (INTERFET), the Response Force was employed as both the early-entry taskforce and, subsequently, as a light precursor force. The Response Force comprised specially selected and trained personnel drawn from all services, and possessed a particular and appropriate combination of unconventionality and discreet expertise. In East Timor the liaison and communications functions of the Response Force reflected the unique position that they occupied as a result of being directly responsive to the commander.
The raising of a Response Force represented a substantial challenge to conventional military thinking. Response Force doctrine is a recent development, a flow-on from the success of the Joint Commission of Observers in Bosnia. Within that conflict, observer teams were used for a myriad of tasks that ensured liaison between supported and higher headquarters, and the provision of compatible communications. The observer teams’ other tasks included requesting medical and casualty evacuation, calling in and providing close air support, staffing outposts, and negotiating and monitoring enclaves. The observer teams used in Bosnia were adopted as a model for the design of the Response Force.
The design of any Response Force must focus on the need to create a unit that will be able to take advantage of the defining moment in an operation. This point is normally reached when factions or stakeholders seek to assess the resolve of the force. While this challenge may take many forms, a robust, impartial and proportionate response is critical to establishing the credibility of the force. While the experiences of the Joint Commission of Observers were vital to the underpinning concepts, there were essential differences in the reaction of the stakeholders in Bosnia and those in East Timor. Unlike the Bosnian warlords, the East Timorese militia made an early decision to abandon their factional representation inside East Timor and to operate from enclaves in West Timor. The subsequent decision by Indonesia to abandon its sovereignty over East Timor was another crucial difference between the Bosnia and East Timor experiences.
The force’s primary function involved communication and liaison; its secondary responsibility was ‘ground truthing’. This term emerged during the 1991 Gulf War when the United States embedded liaison teams with coalition forces in order to double-check their locations and to verify requests for fire support. The term refers to the ground verification of signals and imagery intelligence, and/or the verification that friendly coalition forces are actually occupying the position at which they claim to be. Additionally, the Response Force had the capability to conduct discreet and highly compartmented tasks under the direction of the commander. These tasks ranged from specific surveillance and monitoring to the selective apprehension of targeted individuals. Such capabilities were critical in countering false-flag activities2 and some of the more covert aspects of the Timor crisis.
Ground truthing proved to be a vital Response Force function. The speed at which media reporting took place and the interpretations that were often accorded to that news required the commander to be immediately and accurately informed of the situation throughout the area of operations. Complaints and problems—whether they originated from internal factions or from within the coalition—required a rapid response, and teams provided the commander with a direct and trustworthy ‘directed telescope’. Secure communications from critical areas at decisive times were key to the success of this process.
Response Force teams also established liaison between deployed national contingents as well as with local authorities. Boundaries were carefully constructed and sometimes crossed, in the pursuit of impartial and appropriate liaison. Teams were able to support follow-on force planning as they dispersed throughout the area of operations. This support included the identification of routes and important terrain in order to facilitate planning. In addition, the teams were able to identify key local figures and make incoming commanders aware of them. This knowledge helped conventional forces settle into their areas of operation.
Teams provided protection to the force commander and other key personnel, including local political figures, as they travelled about the area of operations. While team personnel themselves were vulnerable as potential hostages, their superior training and operating procedures minimised the likelihood of their being taken prisoner. They were equipped at all times with emergency beacons and iridium phones, and they carried signed letters of authority. Care was taken in the employment of other liaison elements that were not as well selected, equipped or trained. Given the particularly symbolic nature of Response Force operations to the entire INTERFET campaign, the liaison role became a key task, the value of which cannot be overestimated.
The ability of the Response Force to generate operationally necessary effects makes it essential that the force’s achievements be carefully analysed. Response Force operators are divided as to the reasons for the success of their efforts. Many believe that their success was due to the force’s ability to access information and to shape how that information was disseminated while also generating an intense operational tempo and denying information to potential opponents. Other operators argue that the Response Force was the product of its superior training and that the operation of the force demonstrated the value of the investment that had been made in its personnel prior to deployment. The key ‘drivers’ behind the force were technological advancement, conceptual innovation and organisational adaptation. Other reasons for the seemingly disproportionate success of this relatively small force ranged from the value of effective basic training, including rigorous selection, to the clever use of plain, ordinary innovation. A number of operators considered that perhaps this operation represented an opportunity to test non-linear, short-war concepts. Many of these ideas had been under development for some time, and this was the first time that Australian troops had the opportunity to employ them in an operational theatre.
Yet another perspective on the success of the Response Force is represented by the views of those operators who argued that their achievements simply demonstrated the advantage enjoyed by the Response Force over those other combat elements that had not updated their modus operandi. Admittedly, those units contributing to the Response Force had access to advanced technology; for example, the force was able to demonstrate the hunter-killer concept espoused by the US Army’s rapid force-projection initiative. Under this concept, when:
stand-off killers are used with advanced forward sensors and digital C4I, using appropriate tactics, techniques and procedures, training, leader development and organisation, then early entry forces will be provided with increased lethality and survivability and can operate at higher tempo. 3
US doctrine aside, this article argues that the innovation represented by the formation of response forces constitutes a small-scale Revolution in Military Affairs. There was clear evidence of a simultaneous and mutually supportive change in the way that operations were conducted. This development was largely a result of the effective utilisation of the three key drivers: technological advancement, conceptual innovation and organisational adaptation.
The technological edge available to the force included advanced communications capabilities, the ability to apply force with extreme discrimination and the opportunity to promote security through the use of stealth. The Response Force was unique in its ability to manage large volumes of information. Combat elements were able to take advantage of strategic intelligence and to optimise military geographic information. Similarly, any tactical electromagnetic and optical information that was captured by combat elements could be transferred directly to multiple recipients using sophisticated, multi-band communications equipment incorporating e-mail and imagery. This information flow was directed through fixed and deployable communications stations that allowed real-time target data transfer. The use of permanent information exchange nodes provided a firm foot on the ground and reachback options from any tactical area of responsibility.
Another characteristic of the Response Force was its ability to employ a broad range of weapons. These included non-lethal weapons and an array of small arms including modular weapons systems. Consequently, each individual soldier had a variety of weapons options available to him. Their advanced night-fighting ability allowed teams to operate with impunity against the militia. As a result, the Response Force was able to employ a superior precision engagement capability that enhanced its stealthy activities
Security was not just a consequence of producing a physical advantage. This principle of operations was upheld by the policy of identifying key local figures and, where possible, involving them in the creation of local conditions of security. Of course, the application of this concept involved a calculated assessment of risk.
The combination of doctrine derived from the Joint Commission of Observers’ experience in Bosnia with cutting-edge technology demonstrated the essential importance of conceptual innovation. Over a number of years prior to the operation, the units that contributed to the Response Force had embarked on a program to develop troops that are mentally agile, are capable of broad-spectrum operations, and adopt a problem-solving approach to countering asymmetric warfare. This was ably demonstrated in the crisis preceding the lodgment, in which the forward-deployed taskforce conceived the ‘continuum of personnel recovery.’ Under this approach, innovative and flexible force teams were simultaneously able to conduct both discrete evacuations and larger personnel recovery operations as well as carry out search-and-rescue operations. Crucial to the successful implementation of this concept has been the maturing of skill sets within the units that contributed to the Response Force. The result of this training has been the creation of multi-roled sub-units that are equipped to perform all assigned tasks. Furthermore, by successfully integrating Response Force and aviation elements, an operational focus has developed that allows deliberate ‘earliest available launch times’ to approximate those normally associated with emergency actions.
The synergistic effect that results from conceptual innovation led to the development of apprehension, detention and disarmament tactics that often allowed Response Force elements to assault on converging axes. This flexibility enabled a relatively small force to raid large targets and to truly fight above its weight. The ability of close-quarter, battle-disciplined troops to assault from 360 degrees was the result of applying apprehension tactics. These tactics included executing fight-through in multi-floor combat to the use of dead ground on converging axes. The Response Force headquarters initiated most of these apprehension operations, and it was able to bridge the gap between the tactical and operational information flows.
Many Response Force operators would argue that there was nothing new in their use of vertical envelopment tactics and the employment of patrol commanders in strategic battles. Nonetheless, at the conceptual level, these operations saw maximum strength and minimum force replace surprise, and offensive action become even more reliant on speed. On peace enforcement missions where the distinction between war and peace has become blurred, the interpretation of the conventional principles of war needs to take into account the often ambiguous context in which operations take place. In East Timor, the Response Force was able to maintain impartiality with both the militia and the pro-independence forces. However, by exercising support and positively influencing the pro-Independence FALANTIL forces, the Response Force was able to help launch FALANTIL on the path to demobilisation. This approach demonstrated the importance of establishing close contact with local stakeholders in the peace process and illustrated the complexity of the new art of war and peace. Accordingly, we need to adjust our thinking about the manner in which we apply traditional principles. On complex operations such as this one, maintenance of morale is best expressed as moral influence, which can be exercised through appearances, the maintenance of legitimacy and by fulfilling promises. Economy of effort involves maintaining the interest of the local populations and their key authorities so as to preserve order. The principle of flexibility amounts to providing local stakeholders in the peace process as well as the Response Force with an acceptable exit from any situation that might be a source of non-productive conflict.
While regrouping within units is a conventional tactic, the Response Force made tailored forces something of an art form in East Timor. In a display of organisational adaptation, combat elements continually reorganised every twenty-four hours. This reorganisation was comprehensive, and included changes to equipment and tactics. The ability to morph a five-platoon sub-unit was the result of a combination of factors, not least of which was the counter-asymmetric mindset of many of its members. These reorganisations allowed the force to generate a tempo that approximated battle speed. Combat elements were able to operate within this chaotic environment as they had routinely trained to do so. Other contributing factors included multiskilling, the high retention of skilled personnel in recent years, the presence of troops with linguistic skills, and interoperability with like foreign forces. Consequently, it was with relative ease that the Response Force packaged diverse groupings with skills that enabled them to conduct operations ranging from light strike through to developing situational awareness. The Response Force headquarters initiated and directed most of these options, and was able to exploit the nexus between the tactical and operational levels with a flexible but very light digital C4I centre. When command support systems proved too slow, however, operators made a hasty resort to paper as the tool of choice for developing situational awareness and issuing orders.
The inherent flexibility and utility of the Response Force allowed its combat elements to deploy quickly, unobtrusively and with operational-level awareness based solely on knowledge of the commander’s intent. In essence, Response Forces demonstrated the potential of the forecast Enhanced Combat Force concept in comparison with the current Army-In-Being. This observation begs the question of whether the innovation represented by this force was simply the test part of a model-test-model warfighting experiment. We must now ask what should early-entry taskforces or light forces do differently next time to achieve early effects? The ability to adapt constantly is a trait that is characteristic of a learning organisation culture and is one that must be fostered in training. There is no doubt that planners of future peace operations must remain flexible in configuring troops and equipment to the task. It is also important to maintain a sense of perspective when considering the lessons of East Timor. It should be remembered that the militia were merely ‘thugs in thongs’ compared with more sophisticated belligerents such as those encountered in Kosovo.
Notwithstanding this warning, in an increasingly unstable world, there are obviously many variations of peace enforcement that will take place. Contemporary deployed forces have to operate in the zone that exists between operations that enjoy the consent of the local population and those that do not. What is more, they have to be seen to act impartially in an environment where impartiality is increasingly difficult to maintain. Perhaps the real challenge is to apply Response Force doctrine to other peacetime asymmetric threats such as illegal immigration, drug running, and piracy. Increasingly, there is a narrowing of the operational continuum between peace and war, and the long-hallowed principles of war appear to have evolved to form the basis for a new art of war and peace. In this new environment, Response Forces represent an efficient and effective capability for the Australian Defence Force. As a force-packaged and task-organised capability, Response Forces have become the option of choice in those circumstances where we are confronted with opponents that are willing to wage conflict asymmetrically. To assert our own advantages we need to access high pay-off technologies; selectively apply digitisation; exploit innovative ideas, growth paths, and systems integration; and explore innovations in doctrine and organisational concepts. By doing so, response forces can provide potentially low-cost, high-return capability enhancements to the defence force as a whole.
Endnotes
1 C. Bellamy, Knights in White Armour, The New Art of War and Peace, Random House, London, 1997, p. 252.
2 ‘False flag’ is the term used for a type of covert activity in which the author of the action attributes the activity to a second party for propaganda or deception purposes.
3 TXLO 74/98 Report on the US Army Rapid Force Projection Initiative, dated 28 August 1998.
