Reflections On Targeting

I've been dwelling a bit recently on my third deployment and 1-14 Cav's operations in Diyala Province, Iraq. As I was leaving the country I wrote a post about my thoughts at the time. I stated I felt like the mission was incomplete and that there was so much more to do and individuals we should have removed from the battlespace. Part of the reason for those feelings came from the high standards I set for myself, especially since 1-14 had some pretty good initial success at targeting our high value individuals. However, a lot of my frustrations came from the pressures I felt on a daily basis coming from our operations officer and the troop commanders.


There's a saying in the military, "intelligence drives operations". The general meaning of that is information and intelligence gathered should be telling a unit where to send patrols, who to talk to, what areas to conduct clearances, who to detain, etc. Essentially, intel needs to be ahead of ops, not the other way around.


Sounds good on paper, but is often difficult to practice in reality. In my case, intel was hard to come by due to multiple hurdles, one of which was a lack of sources/informants to provide information. This lead to our technical means of collecting information to be weak. Often we were forced to defer to the Iraqis on where operations should occur...which honestly isn't all that bad and in a counter insurgency deferring to the native security forces is usually the best practice.


Unfortunately, the operations officer was not pleased with this and I heard several times from him (both ops officers in fact since the original went up to brigade and was replaced) that my section was failing. The troop commanders also seemed frustrated that I wasn't coming to them daily with compounds and villages that needed to be searched or the exact location of a wanted individual. Multiple times I was told to start targeting like the special ops guys target or to demand from SOF the intel they were getting.


Flash forward to my time in Afghanistan, both at the detention facility and at IJC. In both positions I had daily knowledge of who was being detained or killed and what type of organizations were doing the targeting. Since Afghanistan in 2012-13 was similar to Iraq in 2009-10 (in terms of how spread out units were and their mission) this was a good way to compare 1-14 Cav's time in Iraq to other conventional units and their targeting abilities.


I found that conventional units are doing very little capturing of individuals, it's almost all special forces. SOF have more assets and analysts that have specialized training/experience in conducting the type of targeting that is often required in fighting an insurgency. Conventional units are busy doing the necessary, but somewhat mundane, tasks such as partnership, route clearance, or in the specific case of 1-14's time in Iraq, maintaining checkpoints. They don't have the bodies on the ground and rarely get the intel that leads to something actionable, and when they do they often pass it off to the SOF guys who can further develop and action a target more quickly and efficiently.


This revelation has made me feel better about 1-14's time in Diyala Province. We did what we could and did pretty damn well, especially due to the fact that for a good chunk of our time we were tied to checkpoints and had a very limited number of platoons that could operate to gather information that could then be integrated into our targeting efforts. I have enough demons on my back from that deployment that I don't need to add to them.

X-Files: Kabul?

Remember during my last deployment to Iraq how 1-14 Cav had some strange shit flying around COP Cobra and nearly shot down a national level aerial asset? No? Well here's the link so you can catch up. I bring this up because I had assumed that when I came to ISAF Joint Command I'd probably never look up to the night sky and say, "what the hell is that?!"

I was wrong.

This story is not quite as interesting as my Diyala UFO story but it's slightly weird nonetheless. It occured last night as I was walking home. A plane was coming in to land and as I watched it something caught my eye. Looking up I saw three, very bright, very orange, stars in the shape of a triangle (I am aware that any 3 points are going to look like a triangle). After about a second the stars/lights/whatever were gone. My first thought was that they were flares.

But flares don't burn away that fast. They were way too high to be flares anyway. What about the landing plane? If it had shot off flares they would have been behind the aircraft. These were in front of and waaaaaaaaaaaaay above. Another plane? I didn't see anything else in the sky.

Perhaps it was the blimp that floats over the Green Zone/US Embassy/ISAF HQ? Nope, the blimp was blinking its standard lights and was pretty low to the ground from my perspective.

The hell did I see?

Like I said, not as interesting but still strange.

But back to the Diyala story...I now have more to add. A college buddy of mine found himself here at NKAIA for a couple of days about two weeks ago. I just happened to tell my "UFO's flying over my combat outpost" story and he gives me a funny look. Apparently he had been talking to someone awhile back to was in Iraq at USF-I HQ around late 2009. This individual told my friend the story of some trigger happy jackasses on a patrol base who tried to shoot down a US aircraft.

Hell yeah, I'm one of those jackasses. Perhaps trying to shoot down US aircraft is why we had so much trouble getting collection assets...

Been Awhile Since I Had This Much Hate

Rage..

...rage and revenge.

I'm currently focused on Green on Blue (Afghan Security Force members who attacked Coalition Force soldiers) targets and in the course of developing one of the targets I read the unit's incident report of the attack. I can't get into details about it but the way the attack was conducted builds up the anger. But it's not how the attack played out that is making me rage right now. It's who it was against.

1-14 Cav and 502nd MI.

This fuck and some of his buddies attacked soldiers from two of my old units.

I take all the GoB targets seriously and put the same effort into all the targets. However, this one is personal for me. My rage just adds more motivation. The hellfire for this guy can't come quickly enough.

Diyala...I Can't Quit You: Part II

This post is one of those posts that, if he reads it, will make my old warrant officer shake his head and say something along the lines of, "damnit sir."

I had a serious Diyala regression a couple of days ago. My curiosity got the best of me and I began to look up old reports from the Jalula-Tibij area just to see who was getting reported on and what 2-14 Cav was dealing with after 1-14 Cav left. I'm not proud of myself.

After 1-14 took over for 5-1 Cav in NE Diyala I would occasionally receive emails from 5-1's old S-2 asking about the situation and how things were going. I even got an email from him after we left Iraq. That guy really couldn't let Diyala go. As 1-14 was sitting around Balad Air Base waiting to go back to the States my warrant officer specifically warned me against emailing the 2-14 S2. "Just let it go," he said.

Well, I couldn't fully let it go. I never emailed 2-14 but followers of this blog know that I kept up on what was going on through open source news. There were just too many unanswered questions. Too many puzzle pieces left lying around. Too many nights staying up thinking about my mistakes and failures. It was the most painful, challenging, frustrating, glorious, amazing, and life-changing time in my life. I likely will never let Diyala go completely.

So I regressed and started looking up reports. But what did I find out?

- One of our top high value targets, hell he may have been my top guy by the end, I can't remember, with the initials ZM likely died in either Mosul or Baghdad from tuberculosis. Good, that guy pissed me off.

- Another of our HVTs, who Brigade nicknamed Bigfoot because they didn't think he existed, apparently took over AQI operations in the area and possibly began to have influence all the way to Baqubah. There was even a report I found on the guy that would have had me, and the S3, jumping for joy. Information, with specifics, that could have allowed us to use a UAV to find a track him. Actionable intel like that doesn't come around very often.

- Ansar Al Sunna was mentioned a few times. We had no reporting of AAS in the area while I was there except from the Iraqi Brigade S2 who claimed there were some individuals claiming to be AAS running around. I knew AAS had been in the area a few years prior to our arrival but had assessed they were either gone or had joined AQI or JRTN. Was my assessment wrong, had AAS returned, or did AQI, JRTN, and AAS just share members?

- There may have been more contact and coordination between the AQI group around Jalula and the AQI group in the Nidah Tribal Region than I thought.

Here I am doing research on my old stomping grounds when I should be focused on the current conflict. Diyala is more a part of me than I am willing to admit.