BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF CFET MISSION

Mission Formulation-The Intelligence Element

Mission drives intelligence and intelligence in turn drives tactical operations or battle. Stating the mission as protecting our forces from enemy attack is not a well defined mission statement. We need to take into account the threats before they materialize and the attacks before they are launched by the enemy. Proper Mission Planning and Analysis is required to understand the battle.

Defend.

Defending our installation, our troops, our information is a priority. We need to understand our vulnerabilities, our weaknesses. At the same time we need to know the threat so as to strengthen those weaknesses. What exactly is the threat aimed at. To properly defend ourselves we have to both harden ourselves(meaning pose before the enemy a hard target) and at the same time resort aggressively to HUMINT/CI to know the enemy and hunt him down. Our primary Defend mission is to protect our battlespace,our Area of operations.

Diminish.

Diminishing the enemy’s resources is our next mission. The enemy’s logistical networks need to be identified. All facilitators of the enemy,its support systems,its weapons caches, its safe houses where it stacks communications equipment,weaponry and all supply routes need to be identified with aggressive application of intelligence.We need to choke off, destroy these logistical and facilitation networks,thus crippling the enemys combat capability.


Deny.

Denying the enemy a pull-back safe area or safe haven is our next mission.The insurgents resort to hit and run tactics.When the hit us,attack us they do so with the surety that they have places to retreatto,back-up places where they are hidden,safe.The stronger this assurance the greater impunity with which they launch attacks.They also fall back in the human terrain—the communities of our area of operations where they easily mingle.Using intelligence as well as counterintelligence we need to identify these physical and human terrain based safe havens.We must identify the community members who lend them support.We ned to strike and strike hard these safe havens, make them feel very unsafe. It is in these safe havens that planning of operations are conducted.Itvis here they are least aware of any impending surprise attack.We can catch them off-guard and destroy them if and only if with the proper application of intelligence we are able to locate these safe areas of the enemy.We must make it a point,a verty strong point at that , that if they attack us by encroaching on our area of operations, we attack them with 10 times the might at ‘’their’’ safe havens. We must Deny them the sanctuary of safe havens, fall back positions—they will have nowhere to escape.

Defeat.

Defend,Diminish and Deny all go into making the enemy very vulnerable to our attacks.We destroy their sense of safety while hardening their attack objectives and choking off their supplies.Thgis , if properly executed,that is the 3 mission objectives of Defend,Diminish and Deny , then we can be sure of defeating the enemy right to the core.Thus DEFEAT BECOMES OUR FOURTH AND FINAL MISSION OBJECTIVE.

Conclusion.: Thus Intelligence is not only crucial but an ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY FUNCTION to determine enemy intentions in advance.Without intelligence we are NOWHERE—its like the tiger without its teeth.We may be formidable with advanced weaponry platforms with accurate delivery capabilities , we might have a formidable manpower strength but we fail to realize that intelligence , although it is in the information domain and not belonging to the firepower BOS—NEVERTHELESS IT HAS AN EQUAL DESTRUCTIVE CAPABILITY…DESTROYING ENEMY INTENTIONS AND ALSO SUPPORTED BY CI DESTROYING ENEMY COMBAT CAPABILITY , ITS PHYSICAL AND HUMAN RESOURCES BY PROVIDING TARGETING GUIDANCE TO THE COMMANDER.Intelligence is the foundation of military operations.

All the above boils down to one fact. We need intelligence and counterintelligence to be always in the lead. Intelligence is the most important prerequisite for any mission to be successful. Without intelligence, however well armed we may be, however qualified officers we have, however strong our support and ancillary units may be, we can never be sure of defeating the enemy.

Hence we should formulate our mission by taking into account these 4 basic mission variables.

INFORMATION HERE IS UNCLASSIFIED AND VERY LIMITED WRT THE ACTUAL MISSION OF CFET.

 

CFET WILL BE ADDRESSING THE NEED FOR INTELLIGENCE IN :

  1. COUNTERINSURGENCY
  2. ANTITERRORISM
  3. POLICING
  4. TACTICAL OPERATIONS

 

THE PRESENT IS FREQUENTLY WITNESSING ASYMMETRIC WARFARE , TACTICAL BATTLES AND CONVENTIONAL FULL SCALE WAR OR MAJOR CONFLICTS ARE RARE.

 

WE ARE NOW MORE CONCERNED WITH BATTLES THAN WARS.

TACTICAL OPERATIONS ARE NOW DISTRIBUTED OVER A WIDE BATTLEFIELD , A BATTLEFIELD WHICH CAN BE AN URBAN CITY WITH INNUMERABLE PHYSICAL OBSTRUCTIONS LIKE STRUCTURES , HOSPITALS , MOSQUES AND PASSAGEWAYS , ALLEYS ETC.

 

SIMILARLY LIKE IN THE INDIAN NORTH EAST WE HAVE AN AREA OF OPERATIONS WITH DENSE FORESTS , WATERWAYS,HILLS,SNOW, AND THE ELEMENT OF LOCAL POPULATION AND POLITICIANS WHO ARE IN PART MAY OR MAYNOT BE SYMPATHIZING WITH THE ENEMY.THE PHYSICAL AND HUMAN TERRAIN DOES NOT ALLOW FOR THE CONVENTIONAL INTELLIGENCE PREPARATION OF THE BATTLEFIELD WHERE WE ASSESS THE ENEMYS STRENGTH , ORDER OF BATTLE , TOE , ORGANIZATION ETC AND PRIMARILY HIS INTENT , WHETHER OF ROUTINE TACTICAL MOVES OR THE MOST IMPORTANT ELEMENT IN ANY SCENARIO—THE PRIME KNOWLEDGE  REQUIREMENT OF THE COMMANDER –SURPRISE.

 

IN SUCH A DIVERSE ENVIRONMENT , BE IT URBAN , RURAL OR JUNGLE TERRAIN , TECHNICAL INTELLIGENCE ASSETS AND OVERHEAD SURVEILLANCE PLATFORMS CANNOT FUNCTION WELL—FOR EXAMPLE CONCRETE BUILDINGS AND DARK NARROW ALLEYS IN BETWEEN OR THE THICK FOLIAGE/CANOPY IN A JUNGLE ENVIRONMENT DOES NOT MAKE A GOOD LINE OF SIGHT AVAILABLE TO OVERHEAD SENSORS.

 

THE NEED OF THE HOUR IS THE SOLDIER ON THE GROUND—WATCHING , OBSERVING , LISTENING , CASUALLY ELICITING FROM THE LOCALS ANY INFO, QUESTIONING AND INTERROGATING , WITH HIS TEAM PROBING FURTHER IN ENEMY TERRITORY ACCOMPANIED BY PSYCHOLOGICAL AND FIRE SUPPORT TEAM FOR TARGET DETECTION , NOMINATION.WE NEED HUMINT.WE NEED CI.