Haligonian
Sr. Member
- Reaction score
- 381
- Points
- 880
I was lucky enough to spend the last 10 days in the UK and France on a staff ride of the Western Front from WW 1 with the British Army. The Brits have done a similar ride every two years for the last six years and have been using it for force development purposes so it's less about the history of a specific battle and more about what we could draw from that battle that is relevant to future operations.
While I gained a ton of lessons, one point that kept coming out was the importance of some of the principles and particularly surprise. Our discussions led us to believe, unsurprisingly, that surprise would continue to be important to successful offensive actions in the future. Considering the proliferation of cheap UAVs and many of our potential enemy's focus on EW, not to mention all the less novel surveillance and reconnaissance assets out there, achieving surprise seems to be becoming more difficult.
This led discussions to the importance in the future of opsec and deception. Opsec presents challenges on multiple levels for the Canadian Forces. Most of us, particularly our younger soldiers are used to broadcasting their lives on social media. Our headquarters are huge and blast the EM spectrum making them light up like a Christmas tree. More concerning is the impact opsec could have on mission command. In WW 1 Hague imposed heavy opsec on his formations with those being aware of future operations being kept to a very small number of people. We now want informed commanders and soldiers who are empowered to make decisions independently. Could we severely restrict information on future operations without damaging our command culture (or what we think is our command culture)?
I don't think we do deception very well. Most commanders in the CA will have few opportunities to do what I call high fidelity training (essentially force on force of at least Ex MR quality) where you are fighting a thinking enemy who you could actually deceive as opposed to a place holder enemy controlled by the DS or exercise staff. We noted that deception needs to be resourced and credible. It is ideally targetted at making the enemy to make a decision that is inappropriate for your chosen course of action. The more resources dedicated the more credible it will likely be. A deception plan that sees you dropping some smoke to the enemy's left when you're coming right is less likely to work than a deception plan that put an actual sub unit there. Deception will be most effective when you have a good understanding of the enemy's culture/biases and their commander specifically. This can allow you to get in their head and show them what they want or expect to see. An instructor told me once the best lie is a half truth.
Resources for deception are always a problem, paradoxically, the fewer resources you have compared to your enemy the more you need to rely on deception. Our sr mentor compared this to a bar fight. If I'm going to pick a fight with a guy twice my size the more I need to rely on distracting him before striking.
I had a discussion with my CO a few weeks back and if we don't think we can successfully hide then perhaps the answer now is to flood the enemy with signatures. Essentially this would be numerous decoys of maneuver forces, headquarters, logistic sites, and anything else that might get the enemy to juke when he should jive and provide us with increased force protection.
Just a few musings after a particularly good professional development experience.
While I gained a ton of lessons, one point that kept coming out was the importance of some of the principles and particularly surprise. Our discussions led us to believe, unsurprisingly, that surprise would continue to be important to successful offensive actions in the future. Considering the proliferation of cheap UAVs and many of our potential enemy's focus on EW, not to mention all the less novel surveillance and reconnaissance assets out there, achieving surprise seems to be becoming more difficult.
This led discussions to the importance in the future of opsec and deception. Opsec presents challenges on multiple levels for the Canadian Forces. Most of us, particularly our younger soldiers are used to broadcasting their lives on social media. Our headquarters are huge and blast the EM spectrum making them light up like a Christmas tree. More concerning is the impact opsec could have on mission command. In WW 1 Hague imposed heavy opsec on his formations with those being aware of future operations being kept to a very small number of people. We now want informed commanders and soldiers who are empowered to make decisions independently. Could we severely restrict information on future operations without damaging our command culture (or what we think is our command culture)?
I don't think we do deception very well. Most commanders in the CA will have few opportunities to do what I call high fidelity training (essentially force on force of at least Ex MR quality) where you are fighting a thinking enemy who you could actually deceive as opposed to a place holder enemy controlled by the DS or exercise staff. We noted that deception needs to be resourced and credible. It is ideally targetted at making the enemy to make a decision that is inappropriate for your chosen course of action. The more resources dedicated the more credible it will likely be. A deception plan that sees you dropping some smoke to the enemy's left when you're coming right is less likely to work than a deception plan that put an actual sub unit there. Deception will be most effective when you have a good understanding of the enemy's culture/biases and their commander specifically. This can allow you to get in their head and show them what they want or expect to see. An instructor told me once the best lie is a half truth.
Resources for deception are always a problem, paradoxically, the fewer resources you have compared to your enemy the more you need to rely on deception. Our sr mentor compared this to a bar fight. If I'm going to pick a fight with a guy twice my size the more I need to rely on distracting him before striking.
I had a discussion with my CO a few weeks back and if we don't think we can successfully hide then perhaps the answer now is to flood the enemy with signatures. Essentially this would be numerous decoys of maneuver forces, headquarters, logistic sites, and anything else that might get the enemy to juke when he should jive and provide us with increased force protection.
Just a few musings after a particularly good professional development experience.
