Civil Affairs ‘needs to evolve’
Inside Pentaqon
Senior planners from U.S. Special Operations Command and U.S. Joint Forces Command are in the early stages of drafting a new capabilities-based assessment for civil affairs, with the goal of carving out a large niche for such operations in the future, according to a senior SOCOM official.
“We are still in the process of scoping that capabilities-based analysis,” the command official said at an Oct. 29 irregular warfare symposium in Arlington, VA. That work is being headed up by the civil affairs division in the command’s operations directorate (J-3), in conjunction with the joint warfighting center (J-7) at JFCOM.
In April, Defense Secretary Robert Gates tapped SOCOM to be the joint proponent for civil affairs operations.
The SOCOM official could not comment on the specifics of the pending CBA, since both commands are still early in the coordination process and awaiting Joint Staff approval to officially begin the assessment.
But he noted the development of the CBA was one of the primary recommendations to come out of the command’s “senior warfighting forum” held in September.
At that time, top brass from the special operations and civil affairs community -- including Maj. Gen. David Blackledge, commander of U.S Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command (USACAPOC) -- agreed that some sort of in-depth analysis was needed to further integrate civil affairs capabilities into irregular warfare operations.
“The one big recommendation” to come out of the forum was the need for a capabilities-based assessment for the civil affairs community, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“That idea originally germinated out of the Marine Corps. They are the ones who originally suggested that to [SOCOM] early on . . . and that was the big, overriding recommendation in the forum,” he added.
The need for such guidance, the official said, stems from the increasing role that civil affairs operations have assumed in four of the five major irregular warfare missions: counterinsurgency, foreign internal defense, stability operations and counterterrorism.
“You cannot escape that fact,” he said of the growing importance of civil affairs in irregular warfare. “Doctrinally, [it] needs to be updated and [the civil affairs] role needs to evolve.”
As part of that evolution, officials in SOCOM’s civil affairs shop plan to hold the third annual civil affairs “proponency conference” in January, according to the official, noting such powwows are the “primary forum” in which SOCOM is able to glean new ideas and perspectives from the “larger civil affairs community.”
“Those [meetings] were initiated once the [joint] proponency discussion started,” the official said. “Some forward thinking folks down at SOCOM pushed that through.”
The proponency conference will focus on the short-term training and equipping for current and future civil affairs operations, the official said. “We are going to try and kick that effort off with some e-mails and [video teleconferences] to get that process started,” he added.
On the plus side, the CBA proposal indicated that SOCOM and the overall civil affairs community “now has some COCOM buy-in to look at, in some detail, key elements of civil affairs,” according to the official.
“The bad side of it is that CBA’s typically have a very focused activity,” he said, noting that many in the civil affairs community may assume a potential CBA may cover those key issues “a mile wide and a mile deep, and we are probably only going to cover 500 yards wide and about 100 yards deep.”
Another issue that could hinder any future work by SOCOM on the civil affairs CBA is the ongoing organizational transition at the command.
Organizationally, SOCOM is “in a state of change,” the official said. SOCOM is currently exploring reorganization options, shifting away from its “centers-based” structure and back to a “J-staff” model, he said. SOCOM announced the plans for the “new, flatter headquarters staff organization,” in a Sept. 8 statement.
“This will, in ways that I do not quite know right now, affect” how the command’s efforts to institutionalize civil affairs will play out, the official said. Currently, civil affairs within SOCOM is handled by the command’s operations directorate (J-3), he added.
It remains uncertain on where the proponency responsibility for civil affairs will end up, due to SOCOM’s ongoing staff reorganization, the official said. In addition to civil affairs, the command also holds joint proponency for psychological operations and security force assistance. “Where will those proponencies come up?” the official said.
The current discussion within the command is that civil affairs could be shifted under the command’s knowledge and futures directorate (J-7/9), the official said. “That is the ongoing discussion. . . that is where we stand,” he added. -- Carlo Muñoz
PENTAGON-25-44-12