Thoughts for Australian Planners in Afghanistan
Abstract
Afghanistan is an increasingly complex environment set to test our traditional approaches to planning and problem solving. With an evolving commitment, an ambitious force development plan up to 2030 and competing demands, there is a need for planners from all services to consider more innovative and adaptive approaches to mission planning. This article offers a few thoughts based on the author’s experience in Afghanistan to aid in stimulating new approaches to both this and future operational thinking and planning.
With the release of the Defence White Paper 2009 in May, it is clear that in the short term, Afghanistan will be Australia’s primary operational focus. Additionally, in the long term, the ADF will be called upon to solve increasingly complex problem sets in support of Australia’s national security, economic and diplomatic interests. While this White Paper sets ambitious goals for 2030, in terms of the acquisition of air and maritime platforms, it is also clear that the ADF will need to find increasingly innovative means of meeting its directed objectives. Consequently, it is prudent that ADF planners at all levels re-focus their efforts on the most appropriate approach to planning and conducting meaningful operations in the various theatres, particularly Afghanistan. Standard operating procedures and doctrine may provide little more than a framework around which to build a plan that truly meets the commander’s intent—as well as getting inside the adversaries’ decision cycle.
This article is a thought piece informed by the author’s own experiences, which include operational planning for kinetic targeting and strike in Afghanistan throughout 2006 as well as subsequent reflection. It considers the need for flexible and perhaps non-traditional approaches to the processes of operational and tactical level planners deployed in Afghanistan. Ultimately, this piece offers planners—and perhaps commanders—a few thoughts on different ways to approach planning and execution. It will not focus on Australian-based campaign planning issues to any great degree.
Afghanistan is a unique operating environment, with a coalition that brigades a plethora of loosely coordinated assets across the battlespace. Every part of this environment is constantly changing. However, the planner’s kitbag of tools—such as doctrine, experience, imagination, assets, and other partners’ assets—allow one to adapt and harness available resources in order to achieve successes in the spheres of import.
Afghanistan is a microcosm of warfare in the twenty-first century full-spectrum conflict. Increasingly defined as ‘Hybrid Warfare’ (or in official US lexicon, ‘Irregular Warfare’), this modern paradigm implies more than simply asymmetric and conventional conflict, and more than counterinsurgency and the ‘three-block war’.1 Afghanistan has become a petri dish of experimentation and development. It blends the new and the medieval—and that is just the adversaries’ approach to conflict. In coalition terms, Afghanistan has been exposed to several distinct styles of operations since October 2001. Commencing with a special operations and air support-enabled rout of the Taliban by a loose conglomeration of militias, it has been followed by elements of classic counterinsurgency; pockets of conventional and combined-arms operations executed in linear fashion, as well as through traditional peace support and humanitarian assistance operations. At any point in time, the nature of conflict varies between provinces and regional commands. Operation ENDURING FREEDOM is the US counterterrorism operation that continues alongside the NATO/ISAF stabilisation and counterinsurgency operation. With more than twenty nations comprising ISAF, each maintains a multitude of unaligned intents and caveats. As a result, the likelihood of true unity of effort remains low and the complexity of Afghanistan’s operating environment is further multiplied.
Australia’s operational experience in Oruzgan province has seen its own complexity, with a blend of special operations, close combat, reconstruction and indigenous mentoring undertaken by not less than four partner nations in the same battlespace. This ensures that the planning principles and assumptions contained within Adaptive Campaigning are particularly relevant.2 However, given that this operational concept has not yet achieved deep absorption within Army, the following are some nested thoughts for consideration and application.
Provocatively, almost four years after Australia’s military re-engagement in Afghanistan, a clear and coherent campaign plan for Australian operations would only just seem to be emerging; a process no doubt complicated by the most recent troop increases and updated objectives. At task force and task group level, there have been ‘campaign’ or operational plans (OPLAN) created in an attempt to provide purpose, order and meaning to tactical operations. Anecdotally, most of these plans have not survived the rotation of deployed contingents, although once again there is some evidence that this may be changing. In the past, this has come from the lack of an overarching plan and the natural impact of commander’s individual personalities. Tactical level planners need to be cognisant of this during their tours. Their bias should be toward generating effects and sequencing operations that support enduring military objectives, which naturally transcend the rotation of contingents.
Another danger for deployed planners is the generation of operational plans and documents that read well, but are more difficult to action and are perhaps unrealistic in their objectives. It is unrealistic for the ADF to suggest that it might bring peace to Oruzgan in six months through the conduct of isolated operations with domino-like effects. In 2006, a coalition element generated a ‘campaign plan’ with a mission statement that clearly advocated indigenous capacity-building on a grand scale. This was supported by appropriate specified tasks. However, the element did little to achieve the mission, and instead spent most of their tour attempting to target leadership (an unstated task) using armed uninhabited aerial vehicles (without ground-based observation), and through launching unilateral kill/capture missions. In addition, their intelligence was usually dubious, single-source material; their plans hasty and flawed; and their support elements dispersed and confused by the contradiction between campaign plan and activity. The coalition element failed to achieve their stated and executed mission. Accordingly, they failed to meet their higher commander’s intent or contribute to the success of the theatre campaign plan. As much as one might suggest this could not happen to Australians, this example reinforces the importance of creating a realistic overarching plan at each level and actioning it.
The Military Appreciation Process (MAP), when used effectively, remains one of the most meaningful ways of avoiding such pitfalls. It is the most applicable foundation for a planning methodology we have. However, it must be tailored for the Afghan operating environment and must not assume a prescribed ‘battle rhythm’ can be maintained with uniform windows for planning. Planners should be prepared to use a combination of the individual (IMAP) and the joint (JMAP) approach in modified format. The tempo experienced by a small task group headquarters allows little opportunity for traditional ‘JMAPing’. However, tempo is no excuse for haphazard planning. Planners must be able to commence a mission analysis at the individual level or in a small group, concurrent to identified ‘S’ codes and nodal liaison officers, hunting and gathering resources and assets. A compressed Course of Action (CoA) analysis and back-brief to the commander allows for rapid CoA development.
Development using a joint working group inclusive of coalition contributors. This can bring the plan to an actionable state in only a few hours following streamlined analysis. If a few hours are not available, then variations on existing feasibility assessments can provide some structure to the use of intuition, which at times is more appropriate than detailed MAP. In all cases practitioners should avoid templated solutions. To follow the last operational experience—or someone else’s experience—and doctrine alone, is to do so at one’s peril. However, at the same time, all of these offer something to a new plan, which must be unique and borne of a thorough appreciation.
Fusion. If planners cannot operationalise the intelligence cycle through realistic and robust fusion of information, targeting and planning, they have little chance of out-manoeuvring the adversary physically or temporally. Fusion and targeting relies on an intelligence cell that is agile in its process, operates beyond the traditional intelligence cycle and has organic inter-agency representation. The process requires that planners work in lockstep with both analysts and those responsible for choosing targets. Despite the inference, this process is not just about enabling offensive or kinetic operations—it can be universally applied. While adaptation of this nature has occurred within Australian task groups, it is not yet enshrined in education and training, and is subject to interpretation. A mixed blessing of our small size is the need to multitask and overlay responsibilities, which lends itself to the process of fusion. However, planners need to actively shape and focus the process every day, linking it back to lines of operations in the OPLAN. With so much information available, there is a constant danger of the intelligence staff becoming a ‘mile wide and inch deep’ in their analysis, resulting in them becoming a news and interpretation source rather than an operational support tool. However, with this in mind, information and fusion will only get a staff so far.
Harvest assets beyond the immediate and the obvious. Australians are famous for being ‘good blokes’ and good fighters. It is amazing what an impromptu trip down to the A-10 Squadron or the French compound for a ‘grip and grin’, a brew and an offer of some good jobs can do for the task group. Despite national caveats, most coalition partners—particularly US units—are enthusiastic about supporting a dynamic task with clear and tangible outcomes. The Special Operations Task Group’s first successful effort to clear a valley of Taliban in 2006 was achieved over a ten-day period, using assets and in excess of 500 personnel from no less than seven nations. These resources were corralled (not without frustrations) through the efforts of the operations planners, the intelligence staff and the network of liaison officers. By visiting every coalition unit they could access, staff were able to outline the plan and successfully arrange specific inputs. In its smallest form, one partner provided one sortie of one aircraft, for one photographic pass, on one suspect location in order to improve the intelligence picture prior to execution. This sortie was well worth the effort. When meshed with the contributions of other coalition partners, these resources provided the Australian task elements with the best chance of success.
Rebuilding Afghanistan through security sector reform, economic growth and social prosperity are three of the key objectives of both NATO and UN strategies. These strategies rely heavily on international donors and sponsorship. Australian task groups have in the past used local knowledge and networks to seek out resources from USAID and non-government organisations in order to enhance the effects of their operations. While often stockpiled and warehoused, the distribution of aid has proven problematic from a logistics and security perspective. An offer from the ADF to distribute aid as part of its patrolling and local confidence building operations in Oruzgan province has provided a cost neutral option, and is encouraged in support of future operations. Just like harvesting military assets, brigading other less obvious resources is also a force multiplier. Whether the focus is man hunting, humanitarian assistance or construction, Australian activities remain the enabler for every other agency and department that has resources to impart on the province regardless of nationality. They are an enduring resource base that can have significant impact on priority lines of operations and should be exploited.
Having got this far, planners must avoid adopting a scattergun approach to operations. This is a statement of the obvious. However, similar situations have developed amongst Australian task groups on a limited scale, and across coalition elements on a broader and more prolific scale. Planners must maximise and reinforce continuity and collaboration between Australian and coalition elements in the same battlespace. Colonel H R McMaster’s simple philosophy of taking a town (or a Province) one piece at a time through a ‘Clear, Hold, Build’3 approach is not new and has significant merit for Oruzgan. By way of simple example, there is little sense in conducting intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations in Western Oruzgan if all reconstruction and Afghan National Army-mentored operations are occurring in the north and east of the province. This is an issue that should not be affected by national caveats, and with a little work it is best achieved at the tactical level.
In kind, planners need to maximise continuity between rotations. The operations of Australian task forces and task groups—not to mention the operations of most coalition partners—harbour numerous examples of initiatives and objectives that were not sustained and reinforced between elements and across their rotation cycles. Operating anywhere in Afghanistan is like the proverbial act of putting one’s hand into a bucket of water. You can dip it in, splash it around, have any number of immediate effects, but as soon as you remove your hand, the water will retain no memory of you ever having been there. In an attempt to counter this phenomenon, Australian planners must attempt to nest plans and actions to make the transition between rotations seamless and subordinate to a homogenous national and international plan.
Finally, never forget the Taliban have proven to be more agile at exploiting open source media and conducting information operations than the coalition. On 28 April 2008, following the ADF’s announcement of Commando NCO, Lance Corporal Jason Marks’ death in Afghanistan, The Sydney Morning Herald suggested Prime Minister Rudd was proving to be a credible wartime leader by not demonstrating shock or doubt as the Taliban might have hoped.4 Suggestion or implication or reinforcement of what the Taliban’s hopes might be illustrates their global reach and span of influence. While the combat action was tactical in nature, the Taliban may study the effect on the Australian people and its psyche through the open source media in order to divine higher order effects. The Taliban may also study the proliferation of tactical information related to ongoing operations in the media. Using an adaptation cycle that appears at times to be more responsive than Western cycles, the adversary will attempt to use this information against us. Hence, it is the purview of planners to ensure their planning and decision cycle is as responsive as possible and cognisant of the Taliban’s capacity to exploit any and all information available.
This article may appear simplistic in nature. It is certainly not an intellectual tome. However, international military forces will almost always be on the back foot. It does not mean the Taliban and other protagonists cannot be outsmarted versus outlasted. Naturally, Australia is not going to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan. Without a significant change in policy, Australia will not bring peace to Oruzgan unless it chooses to take responsibility for the province. However, the Australian elements deployed in Afghanistan are capable of greater efficiencies and innovations in their approaches to planning and operations. It is a particularly dynamic point in time as concepts such as ‘war amongst the people’ and ‘complex adaptive systems’ are gathering momentum and starting to influence the concepts for capability building and decision-making in the near future. In the non-linear battlespace of Afghanistan, where influence is more important than systems overmatch, Australian planners are encouraged to depart from traditional methods and use them rather as the foundation for more adaptive processes.
About the Author
Lieutenant Colonel Brett Chaloner is a member of Special Operations Command. He served in Afghanistan in 2006 as the Plans Officer for the Special Operations Task Group. He has fulfilled other operations planning roles in Iraq, as an embedded officer in the United States and within the domestic security environment.
Endnotes
1 Frank Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. Arlington, Virginia, December 2007.
2 Directorate of Future Land Warfare and Strategy, Adaptive Campaigning – Army’s Future Land Operating Concept (AC-FLOC), Department of Defence, Canberra, 2009.
3 H R McMaster, Interview, Frontline, <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/endgame/interviews/mcmaster.htm…;.
4 Peter Hartcher, ‘Rudd emerges as a credible wartime leader’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 29 April 2008, <http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/rudd-emerges-as-a-credible-wartime-…;.
