Preparing Our Soldiers for Operations Within Complex Human Terrain Environments
Abstract
This paper examines whether Army is preparing our soldiers with the skills to operate within a complex human environment. Recent operational experience has outlined that the key to success on operations is winning over the hearts and minds of the local population and denying support to the insurgents both physically and morally. Currently, our training is predominantly focused on providing the hard warfighting skills to be successful in a conventional war. There is no argument that this is important; however, our training also needs to provide soldiers with the key soft warfighting skills which are critical if we are going to be successful within a complex human environment.
Machines don’t fight wars. Terrain doesn’t fight wars. Humans fight wars. You must get in the minds of the humans. That’s where the battles are won.
- Colonel John R Boyd (USAF Ret)
Introduction
It has been over four years since the Chief of Army’s Senior Advisory Committee (CASAC) endorsed Complex Warfighting for use as the Future Land Operating Concept (FLOC). Adaptive Campaigning – The Land Force Response to Complex Warfighting has built on this concept and the two documents combined have become Army’s FLOC. The FLOC discusses the concept of the complex human terrain and states that war is fundamentally a human activity; therefore, warfare in the land environment is ‘human centric’. Adaptive Campaigning takes this further by describing warfare in its entirety through five interdependent and mutually reinforcing ‘lines of operation’. A fundamental premise of adaptive campaigning is the ability to influence populations and perceptions. To be able to do this the land force must be capable of developing intimacy with the population while conducting operations within a complex environment. Land Warfare Doctrine One (LWD 1) – The Fundamentals of Land Warfare, identifies one of the major challenges of land warfare as the perception battle—the battle for hearts and minds to canvass support of domestic and international audiences—as a decisive element of warfare.
The current Chief of Army (CA), Lieutenant General Ken Gillespie gave a speech at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, in which he said,
contemporary operations are characterised by the need for our deployed land forces to work among the people, and establish a broad relationship with the supported population .... Such warfare requires small teams of highly skilled and flexibly employed soldiers, who can rapidly transition between different types of operations ... and it leads us to an environment that demands we prepare our people for levels of contextual awareness, flexibility, expertise sensitivity and precision which have rarely been required of the soldier in past conflicts. 1
Australian doctrine states quite emphatically that if we do not understand the human component of warfare it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to win the land battle. The CA also said that ‘the conduct of operations is our core function and we must constantly pose questions to ourselves on how we can better enable the success of our deployed soldiers’.2 This article will examine the question of whether Army is providing soldiers with the skills to operate within a complex human terrain environment on operations.
The Perception Battle And The Complex Human Terrain Of Warfare
Complex Warfighting examined twenty-first century conflict from the perspective of land forces and identified that war is fundamentally a human, societal activity rather than a technical or engineering problem. It points out that globalisation has caused a corrosion of religious beliefs and eroded the fabric of traditional societies, contributing to social, spiritual and cultural dislocation. Due to this, conventional warfare has ceased to be the major form of military confrontation and asymmetric warfare has taken primacy.3 The concept identifies the conflict environment as complex, with armed forces having to deal with insurgents, terrorists, criminals, government agencies, civilians and many other elements, often in a short period of time. This makes understanding the human dimension4 of warfare more important than ever. Complex Warfighting acknowledges this specifically by identifying complex human terrain as one of three ‘complex terrain’ environments.
The land force response to Complex Warfighting—Adaptive Campaigning—emphasises the importance of understanding complex human terrain in contemporary warfare. It states the purpose of ‘adaptive campaigning is to influence and shape the perceptions, allegiances and actions of a target population and control the overall environment to allow peaceful political discourse and return to normality’. Shaping and influencing perceptions is a human activity that requires personal contact, proximity and an enduring presence.5 To achieve this Adaptive Campaigning outlines five interdependent and mutually reinforcing ‘lines of operation’: Joint Land Combat, Population Support, Indigenous Capacity Building, Population Protection, and Public Information. Each line of operation relies on land forces being able to effectively shape and influence the perceptions of the local populace, in order to be successful in a land environment.
Complex human terrain is where numerous population groups coexist in the same physical space, most likely in an urbanised area. These groups may coexist peacefully, ignore each other or compete.6 When land forces operate in this environment, it can be very difficult to distinguish the various groups and requires the soft skills7 of cultural understanding, negotiation and language. The application of force in this type of environment can have unintended consequences. Soldiers need to have an understanding of the potential second and third order effects of their actions; not just the strategic consequences, but more importantly the impact of their actions in the area in which they are operating. A recent example of this occurred in Afghanistan where it was reported that Taliban detainees were locked in ‘dog pens’. This immediately received international and local media attention. The media reported that the Islamic community leaders in Australia reacted with fury to the Australian Defence Minister’s admission that four suspected insurgents were held for 24 hours in a compound to house dogs. Muslims consider dogs to be impure. The Afghan Ambassador to Australia, Mr Jayhoon, said that ‘it was a matter of concern because ... it provides propaganda for the Taliban’. The effect of these actions had a widespread impact at the strategic and tactical levels. It was later discovered that the detainees were not held in ‘dog pens’; however, this information came out too late to change the perception amongst the local and international community. This perception battle is described in The Fundamentals of Land Warfare as the battle for the hearts of minds of domestic and international audiences and is acknowledged as one of the major challenges of land warfare.8 It also discusses the human dimension of land power that requires close human interaction, by stating:
to local populations, soldiers represent the human face of warfighting. Tough, courageous and aggressive in combat, they also show flexibility and initiative, and demonstrate discrimination and compassion when required to do so.9
To be successful in the perception battle and the human dimension of warfare, our soldiers need to have an understanding of the complex human terrain in which they are operating. This can be supported by training in cultural awareness, information operations, language, media, community engagement and negotiation skills, as well as enhancing those intangible skill sets that enable rapport-building with the local populous.
The Current Operating Environment
Our contemporary operations are characterised by the need for deployed land forces to work among the people, and establish a broad relationship with the supported population. We must ensure that our force protection measures don’t compromise that capacity to actually work with people. We cannot separate ourselves with multiple layers of armour if we expect to establish the kind of repoire that is essential to success in the type of operations we currently find ourselves conducting.
- Lieutenant General K J Gillespie, AO DSC, CSM, 29 October 2008
The current military operating environment is complex. Contemporary warfighting indicates that the present environment of diverse groups, each with different beliefs, allegiances and behaviours will continue. Therefore, the outcome of current conflicts will increasingly be decided by the hearts and minds of the local and international audiences rather than on the battlefield. To succeed in this environment the land force will need to use soft warfighting skills and discriminating force to shape and influence perceptions of the target population. This requires soldiers to operate in close proximity with a number of diverse groups. Therefore, ‘close combat’ remains the key to operating in a complex human environment10 and it is still the most effective way to influence that environment.
An adaptive approach to counterinsurgency operations was recently undertaken by the 1st Reconstruction Task Force (RTF) in Afghanistan. The underlying principle of this operation was that winning the adaption battle was key, based on the premise that denying the enemy support of the people would make the Taliban irrelevant. To do this the RTF operated in the cognitive realm by winning over the hearts and minds of the local population and denying support to the insurgents, both physically and morally. Members of the RTF describe that what made the operation complex was not necessarily the physical terrain but the human terrain. The intricacy of the human dimension of Oruzgan was a challenge as the environment was constantly evolving as a result of the actions of coalition forces, the Taliban, governments and locals.11 The RTF continually adapted to the changing security situation in Oruzgan; this was a result of the RTF learning about its strengths and weaknesses, and acting upon them through a comprehensive after action review process. Lieutenant Colonel Mick Ryan, the Commander of the RTF, states that ‘military organisations must be able to adapt themselves, from top to bottom, to be able to remain effective and a relevant option for governments in countering the likely range of insurgencies in the coming decades’.12
In a recent article from the US Infantry magazine, the members of Task Force Dragon of the 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team discuss the importance of human terrain mapping. In the article the authors state that the centre of gravity in all counterinsurgency operations is the population, and you must have an ability to influence and shape a population to dislocate the insurgents through lethal and non-lethal means. In order to be able to do this you need to ‘truly get to know the population, you must really understand it’.13 The authors argue that the US military was not attuned to this during Operation IRAQI FREEDOM; however, through the experience of multiple rotations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US military now recognise it is central to the current fight. They now consider the population as the centre of gravity and the key to their success was finding ways to separate the insurgents from the population. To gain an understanding of the population, Task Force Dragon, operating in south-east Iraq, used ‘human terrain mapping’ to fill the void of the information gap of what they knew and what they needed to know. To attain this information the entire battalion focused on the systematic collection of information about the people. The method used was decentralised patrols to gain the required information. The commander of the patrols focused on building relationships with key leaders and individuals, while other members would talk to as many individuals as possible to answer particular intelligence requirements. Often the patrols were reinforced with civil affairs teams, human intelligence collectors and psychological operations teams. A company commander of the task force said:
I believe it was vital to the initial impressions of the locals in our [area of operations] that they saw us out walking amongst them, knocking on doors, shaking hands and asking specific questions to that family or tribe. I feel it put a human face on our company and opened the door to many of the initial dialogues that we are currently exploiting with great success.
The authors noted that counterinsurgency operations are probably the most complex because there is a requirement for soldiers to interact with human beings. They state that building a relationship with the population is not hard; however, it does take a significant amount of time and effort.
This experience of the task force taught them that the benefits of human terrain mapping were not just having the information but, more importantly, also the ‘doing’: getting out and building relationships to attain the information that will shape and influence the environment. This was an example where the experience gained on operations predominantly contributed to their success, rather than the training they had received prior to deployment.
Just as Australian and US forces have adapted to the complex human terrain on operations, it is important that Army adapt to provide training to soldiers on how to effectively operate within a complex human terrain environment. Effective training and comprehensive handovers will reduce the requirement of the current ‘learn by doing’ approach.
The Current Training Focus
As Army changes, so too is there a requirement for Training Command-Army to change. Our structures and practices are still rooted in the post-Vietnam peacetime Army and while we are good at delivering training, and deliver good training, we are not evolving at the same rate of the environment in which we operate changes. We need to better support the individual soldier. We need to better support the combat force. We need to better support the Army.
- Major General R G Wilson, AM, 3 April 2007
In 2007, the previous Training Commander, Major General Wilson, noted that Army had transitioned from an army at peace to an army at war. He acknowledged that in some areas our processes and structures have not made the transition and that we need to evolve our training to best meet the challenges of contemporary warfare.14
One of the biggest challenges of contemporary warfare is the ability to operate effectively within complex human terrain and win the perception battle. Has our training adapted to meet this challenge? An analysis of the content of the training programs of the current 2008 All Corps Officers’ courses at the Land Warfare Centre determined the following:
Figure 1. The Module Breakup of the Current Grade Two Course15
Figure 2. The Module Breakup of the Current Grade Three Course16
This analysis of training at the All Corps Officer level at the Land Warfare Centre indicates that we are predominantly focused on conventional warfare tactics with little attention given to how to effectively operate within a complex human terrain environment. One of the major issues in focusing on conventional warfare is that it often ignores the complex human terrain and emphasises lethal rather than non-lethal options. It also has a tendency to focus on only one line of operation—Joint Land Combat—and can ignore the other lines of operation of population support, indigenous capacity building, population protection and public information. These lines of operation require soldiers to have well developed soft warfighting skills to be able to operate in the capacity building stage of warfare. These soft skills are predominantly only available to select sections of the Army; namely our linguists, special forces, intelligence and civil and military liaison personnel. This type of training needs to be broadened to provide all members of the Army with the skills to deal with the complex human terrain across all the lines of operation. There have been recent moves to address this with a heavier emphasis on contemporary warfare, in particular urban operations. However, the focus is still on urban ‘tactics’ rather than the soft warfighting skills, which are crucial in winning the perception battle.
The battle operating system (BOS) that most closely aligns to having an in-depth understanding of complex human terrain to win the perception battle is the Information Dominance and Influence BOS. The recently released developing doctrine Information Actions LWD 3-2-0 states that gaining ‘information dominance over the enemy is critical to the perception battle’. Joint doctrine uses the better known terminology of information operations (IO) and describes how IO activities are conducted to influence the will, understanding and capability of a target audience.17 To be effective in achieving information dominance you need to train soldiers on how they can influence and shape perceptions through their actions and the messages they give out. This would require soldiers to be trained in understanding the complex human environment in which they are operating and an ability to apply soft skills to win over the hearts and minds of the target populace.
If you look at each of the other seven BOS you will note that we spend a significant amount of time training our soldiers to be effective at operating within that BOS alone. However, the Information Dominance and Influence BOS does not have any formal training construct within Army. The major reason for this is that the Information Dominance and Influence BOS is relatively new and does not come under a particular corps, as it is rightfully considered an all corps responsibility. By providing formal training on how to achieve information dominance and influence it will, in part, address some of the issues discussed within this paper.
A Way Forward
The previous Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Peter Leahy, outlined his development intent to modernise the Army to operate across the five lines of operation through the conduct of sustained close combat to win the land battle. He provided fourteen guiding principles to meet his intent. Of those guiding principles the following have particular relevance for developing a force that can operate within complex human terrain:
• The Army is to apply a command philosophy, training and education system that empowers junior leaders for complex, unpredictable tasks.
• The Army is to regard linguistic and cultural capability as a combat capability in its own right, and is to train, organise, and employ combat linguists and regional specialists accordingly.
• The Army is to develop a comprehensive array of non-lethal capabilities throughout the force both at the individual and collective level.
• The land force is to be capable of planning, integrating, balancing and executing actions across all five lines of operation at the individual, Combined Arms Team, Battle Group and Joint Interagency Task Force levels.18
The very nature of ‘Complex Campaigning’, of which Lieutenant General Leahy based his development intent, means that to modernise the Army we must equip soldiers with soft as well as the hard warfighting skills19 to operate effectively across the five lines of operation. It could be argued that four of the five lines of operation will be more reliant on soldiers having the soft skills of cultural understanding, negotiation and language to be successful in winning the land battle. The question that needs to be asked is, are we equipping soldiers with these skills or are we still predominantly focused on providing them with hard warfighting skills? The answer to most of us involved in the day-to-day training of soldiers would be that our focus is on using hard warfighting skills to win the land battle with minimal training being provided on soft skills. There have been several directives recently released that address this issue, either directly or indirectly. The key points from these directives are:
• CA Directive 26/07 – Adaptive Campaigning Implementation Directive. The directive outlines Line of Development (LOD) One as being organisational learning and adaptability. Lieutenant General Leahy stated: ‘Ensure Army remains a world class and fully capable, learning organisation able to defeat highly innovative, adaptive adversaries employing both asymmetric and symmetric capabilities. This will be achieved through relevant and adaptive doctrine, training, education and leadership aimed at enhancing professional mastery throughout Army.’ One of the key intents of this is to ensure the Army is able to operate across all five lines of operation and win the land battle in complex warfighting environments. The CA Development Intent also outlines the requirement for Army to be optimised for sustained close combat, predominantly in urbanised terrain, as part of a joint inter-agency task force.20 When operating in urban environments there is a requirement to have an in-depth understanding of the human terrain as well as the physical aspects of the tactical environment.21 This development intent will require Army to train soldiers on how to operate in a complex human terrain as well as the complex physical and informational terrain environments.
• Commander Training Command Individual Training and Education Development Directive 2007-12. The directive provides specific guidance within LOD Two where it states Training Command must redesign training and education to ensure expertise in contemporary warfighting. ‘Army training must reflect the way that Army will fight.’22 As well as providing training in weapons and tactics, training must also provide the soft skills needed to successfully navigate the complex human terrain—language, media and cultural training must be routinely available to all soldiers.23 To meet this intent, training command establishments have been tasked to develop an urban operations training capability, and Training Command will establish a ‘soft skills’ training and education capability which will include language, culture and negotiation skills training.
• Commander Training Command Project Directive 01/08 – Army Strategic Plan. In this directive the Training Commander states that ‘Commanders and instructors are to seek opportunities to ensure training is contemporary and meets the needs of the combat force. Our training needs to be relevant and be delivered at the right place at the right time.’ He also outlays a requirement for training and education to change to meet the requirements of an ‘army at war’. Within the individual training and education plan he outlines that soldiers require expertise in contemporary warfighting; the knowledge, skills and attitudes required to operate within a complex human terrain environment being key areas to be developed. He also states that complex warfighting is to be adopted as the default training context, and urban terrain as the default operational environment for Training Command-Army courses.24
• Languages Other Than English and Cultural Awareness Capability Implementation Plan. The previous CA’s vision within this plan is that ‘Army’s soldiers are prepared for the challenge of operating in complex human terrain’. He states that the ‘Land Force must be capable of developing intimacy with the population while conducting operations within the complex operating environment. Influencing people and their perceptions is fundamentally a human activity which requires personal contact, proximity and an enduring presence.’25 The implementation plan outlays a requirement to increase the number of linguists within Army and provides a framework for providing cultural awareness training to the broader Army. Headquarters Training Command-Army has been tasked with conducting a training needs analysis on the inclusion of language and cultural awareness training as part of the all corps soldiers and officer training continuum.26
The direction provided is clear. Training establishments need to adapt to meet the requirements outlined by providing training that is contemporary, relevant, and assists trainees in attaining the skills to operate within complex human terrain.
The Answer To The Question
Are we preparing our soldiers with the skills to operate within a complex human terrain environment on operations? You may have your own conclusions but from my perspective the answer is ‘no’. We are still predominantly focused on providing hard warfighting skills to operate within a conventional warfare environment. There is no doubt that this is critical, as conventional warfighting skills provide the foundation for all types of operations. However, what we do need to do is find time for training soldiers in those equally important soft warfighting skills of cultural awareness, language, media, community engagement, information operations and negotiation skills. It is acknowledged that this is being done to varying degrees throughout different sections of the Army; however, what is required is a concerted effort to train all members with these skills before they deploy by making it a regular part of the training cycle.
Finding the right balance between training soldiers in hard and soft warfighting skills is not easy, and we must be careful that we do not over-emphasise a single type of warfare at the cost of another to achieve the training requirements. This was well stated by Lieutenant General Sir John Kiszely, Director of the UK Defence Academy, in his article ‘Post Modern Challenges for Modern Warriors’ where he says that
we should recognise that over focus on a single type of warfare—large scale, conventional warfare—inhibited understanding of other types of warfare, and of warfare as a whole. We should, therefore, beware the potential over-focus on post modern warfare having the same result.27
There are several directives within Army that outline a way to achieve a more even balance between hard and soft warfighting skills training. Time will tell whether Army has had the ability to achieve a more even balance and has the flexibility to adapt.
Conclusion
This article has examined whether Army is preparing our soldiers with the skills to operate within a complex human terrain environment. The FLOC states that war is fundamentally a human activity. Therefore, warfare in the land environment is ‘human centric’ and requires the land force to be able to develop intimacy with the population while they are conducting operations within a complex environment. Recent operational experience of US and Australian soldiers has outlined that the key to success on operations is winning over the hearts and minds of the local population, and denying support to the insurgents both physically and morally. Currently, our training focus is predominantly based around providing the hard warfighting skills to be successful in a conventional war. There is no argument that this is important; however, our training also needs to provide soldiers with the key soft warfighting skills that are critical if we are going to being successful within a complex human terrain environment. This training requirement has been acknowledged, either directly or indirectly, in a number of recently released directives. Implementing these directives will see a greater emphasis on providing soldiers with the soft skills required to operate within a complex human terrain environment and will even the balance between hard and soft warfighting skills training.
Endnotes
1 Lieutenant General Ken Gillespie, ‘Getting the Thinking Right’, Chief of Army speech given to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 22 August 2008.
2 Ibid.
3 Complex Warfighting, Department of Defence, Canberra, 7 May 2004, p. 3.
4 The human dimension encompasses the moral, physical and cognitive components of soldier, leader and organisational development and performance essential to raise, prepare and employ the Army in full spectrum operations. Taken from ‘The US Army Concept for the Human Dimension in Full Spectrum Operations 2015-2024’, US Army Training and Doctrine Command <http://www.tradoc.army.mil/tpubs/pamndx.htm>.
5 Adaptive Campaigning – The Land Force Response to Complex Warfighting, Department of Defence, Canberra, 24 November 2006, p. 1.
6 Ibid, p. 5.
7 Soft skills are essentially people skills, the non-technical, personal habits, personality traits that determine your strengths as a leader, listener, negotiator and conflict mediator.
8 Land Warfare Doctrine 1 - The Fundamentals of Land Warfare, p. 15
9 Ibid, p. 18.
10 Complex Warfighting, p. 25.
11 Lieutenant Colonel Mick Ryan, ‘Implementing an Adaptive Approach in Non Kinetic Counterinsurgency Operations’, Australian Army Journal, Vol. IV, No. 3, p. 127.
12 Ibid.
13 Jack Marr, John Cushing, Brandon Garner and Richard Thompson, ‘Human Terrain Mapping: A Critical First Step in Winning the COIN Fight’, Infantry, January–February 2008.
14 ‘Individual Training and Education Development Directive 2007–12’, Commander Training Command – Army.
15 Statistics were taken from Grade 2 Course Program 19 May to 27 June 2008.
16 Statistics were taken from Grade 3 Course Program 7 April to 15 May 2008.
17 Australian Defence Doctrine Publication 3.13 – Information Operations, Department of Defence, November 2006.
18 ‘Adaptive Campaigning Implementation Directive’, Chief of Army Directive 26/07, 11 December 2007, Annex A.
19 Hard skills are the technical skills required within the work place.
20 ‘Adaptive Campaigning Implementation Directive’, Annex A.
21 Land Warfare Doctrine 3-9-5 – Urban Operations Developing Doctrine, Department of Defence, 31 March 2005, p. 1–9.
22 ‘Individual Training and Education Development Directive 2007-12’, p. 3.
23 Ibid, p. 4.
24 Commander Training Command – Army, ‘Project Directive 1/08 Training Command – Army Strategic Plan (TC-A 2016)’.
25 Army Headquarters, ‘Languages Other Than English Capability Implementation Plan’, Department of Defence, Canberra, 4 November 2007, p. 1.
26 Ibid, p. 12.
27 General Sir John Kiszely, ‘Post Modern Challenges for Modern Warriors’, The Shrivenham Papers, No. 5, December 2007.
