Notes from Assessing Irregular Warfare: A Framework for Intelligence Analysis

Assessing Irregular Warfare: A Framework for Intelligence Analysis

by Eric V. Larson, Derek Eaton, Brian Nichiporuk, Thomas S. Szayna

***

In December 2006, after considering a number of alternative definitions for irregular warfare and acknowledging the many conceptual and other challenges associated with trying to define this term with precision, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved the following definition:

A violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant population.

 

the outcomes of IW situations depend on both the level of one’s understanding of the population and the deftness with which non-military and indirect means are employed to influence and build legitimacy.

The central idea of the framework is that it is an analytic procedure by which an analyst, beginning with a generic and broad understanding of a conflict and its environment and then engaging in successively more-focused and more-detailed analyses of selective topics, can develop an understanding of the conflict and can uncover the key drivers behind such phenomena as orientation toward principal protagonists in the conflict, mobilization, and recruitment, and choice of political bargaining or violence.

the framework allows the analyst to efficiently decompose and understand the features of IW situations—whether they are of the population-centric or the counter- terrorism variety—by illuminating areas in which additional detailed analysis could matter and areas in which it probably will not matter.

 

 

Step 1 provides the necessary background and context for understanding the situation; step 2 identifies core issues or grievances that need to be mitigated or resolved if the sources of conflict are to be eliminated; step 3 identifies key stakeholders who will seek to influence the outcome of the situation; step 4 focuses on com- piling demographic, economic, attitude, and other quantitative data.

In the second activity, detailed stakeholder analyses, the analyst conducts a more intensive analysis of each stakeholder. Step 5 is an assessment of each stakeholder’s aims, characteristics, and capabilities, both military and non-military; step 6 is an analysis of leaders, factions, and/or networks within each stakeholder group, as well as connections to other stakeholder groups and their leaders; step 7 is an analysis of key leaders identified in step 6.

In the third activity, dynamic analyses, the aim is to make sense of the data and insights collected in the previous steps.

Dynamic analyses can include a wide variety of activities—for instance, trend analyses of significant activities data, content analysis of leadership statements and media, and analysis of attitude data from public opinion surveys, as well as the use of models and other diagnostic or predictive tools.

Background to the Study

National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC), is the primary producer of ground forces intelligence in the Department of Defense (DoD)

NGIC asked RAND to provide assistance in developing an education and training curriculum for improving the capabilities available to NGIC analysts for IW-related intelligence analyses.

In consultation with the sponsor, we divided the problem into two phases. The first focused on identifying the intelligence and analytic requirements associated with IW and developing a framework for intelligence analysis of IW operating environments that subsequently could be translated into an education and training curriculum. The goal of the second phase was to translate this framework into a more detailed education and training curriculum for NGIC. This mono- graph documents the results of the first phase of the overall effort.

 

viewed the IW environment through different methodological “lenses,” including expected utility modeling, social network analysis, media content or communications analysis, public opinion analysis, and major theories related to IW, mobilization, and other relevant phenomena.

In developing a framework for IW intelligence analysis, the study team aimed to identify those features of the IW environment that best captured the inherently dynamic and changing character of IW situations, including mobilization, escalation, coalition formation, bargaining, and influence. Ultimately, this led to a logically related set of analytic tasks that, taken together, are highly likely to lead to complete and comprehensive analyses of any given IW environment.

Historical U.S. experience with internal conflicts around the world provides ample testimony to the challenges of conducting successful military operations in environments where military and political fac- tors are tightly interwoven—consider, for example, the Philippines and China at the turn of the 20th century, Russia after World War I, Central America and the Caribbean in the 1920s and 1930s, the Chinese civil war after World War II, Vietnam in the 1960s, Lebanon in the 1980s, Somalia in the 1990s, and Afghanistan and Iraq in the present decade.1 Intrastate conflicts are the most prevalent form of warfare in the world.

U.S. participation in future IW operations has been and is likely to remain—barring a fundamental redefinition of U.S. interests—a persistent feature of U.S. defense policy.

IW is a complex, “messy,” and ambiguous social phenomenon that does not lend itself to clean, neat, concise, or precise definition.

IW is a form of warfare. As such, it encompasses insurgency, counterinsurgency, terrorism, and counterterrorism, raising them above the perception that they are somehow a lesser form of conflict below the threshold of warfare.

Official Definition:

A violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant populations. IW favors indirect and asymmetric approaches, though it may employ the full range of military and other capacities, in order to erode an adversary’s power, influence, and will. It is inherently a protracted struggle that will test the resolve of our Nation and our strategic partners.11

11 DoD, Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States, JP 1, Washington, D.C., May 14, 2007, p. I-1; and IW JOC 9/07, p. 1.

 

First, the threats generally are asymmetric or irreg- ular rather than conventional. Second, success hinges in large measure not on defeating forces but on winning the support or allegiance—or defeating the will—of populations. On this second point, both definitions emphasize that such psychological concepts as credibility, legitimacy, and will are the central focus in IW. They also emphasize such political concepts as power and influence in the competition for sympathy from, support from, and mobilization of various segments of the population, as well as a reliance on indirect and non-military rather than military approaches. Finally, both imply that the use of violence must be carefully calibrated so as to ensure that it does more harm than good in the attempt to win support from the indigenous population.

The U.S. Army’s Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate (CADD) treats IW as consisting of four distinct missions: counterinsurgency; support to insurgency; foreign internal defense; counterterrorism.

IW includes operations that are essentially offensive in nature (e.g., counterterrorism and support to insurgency or unconventional warfare) and operations that have a mixed, or more defensive, quality to them (e.g., counterinsurgency and foreign internal defense).

 

IW operations generally can be thought of in terms of two main types:

  • what one might call population-centric IW, which is marked by insurgency and counter- insurgency operations that may also include other activities (e.g., foreign internal defense, SSTRO, and counterterrorism operations);
  • counterterrorism operations, whether conducted in the context of a larger counterinsurgency or other campaign or conducted independent of such operations as part of SOCOM’s campaign for the war on terrorism.

 

the doctrinal sources we reviewed suggest that there is substantial agreement about combat operations, training and employment of host nation security and military forces, governance, essential services, and economic development being critical lines of operation that span IW. Some documents also suggest that strategic communications and information operations and intelligence should be included as separate lines of operation; indeed, FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency, takes the view that strategic communications and information operations are the most important LLOs in counterinsurgency warfare.

Chapter Conclusions

  • Population-centric IW operations. These are characterized by counterinsurgency, foreign internal defense, and large-scale SSTRO campaigns of the kind being waged in Iraq; their success depends on some measure of security being established and a preponderance of the population being mobilized in support of U.S. aims.1
  • Counterterrorism operations. These run the gamut from tactically precise direct action or raids in a larger, geographically focused IW (e.g., counterinsurgency) campaign, to the type of campaign being waged against the Al Qaeda organization, a glob- ally dispersed network of ideologically committed jihadists cum terrorists.

CHAPTER THREE

A Framework for Assessing Irregular Warfare

In this chapter, we consider the intelligence analytic requirements of each of these two types of IW operations.

Population-Centric Irregular Warfare Operations

Whereas the success of conventional warfare depends primarily on military factors, success in IW depends primarily on a wide range of irregular features of the operating environment—features less important in or entirely absent from conventional warfare.

As IW JOC 1/07 states:

What makes IW different is the focus of its operations—a relevant population—and its strategic purpose—to gain or maintain control or influence over, and the support of that relevant population.

To achieve this understanding [of the IW operating environ- ment], the Intelligence Community will establish persistent long- duration intelligence networks that focus on the population, governments, traditional political authorities, and security forces at the national and sub-national levels in all priority countries. The joint force will leverage these networks by linking them to operational support networks of anthropologists and other social scientists with relevant expertise in the cultures and societies of the various clans, tribes, and countries involved.

In constructing this framework, the team aimed to provide a simple, top-down procedure for intelligence analyses of IW that would

  • highlight, through a number of complementary analytic passes, the key features that drive IW situations, rather than simply com- pile lists
  • synthesize disparate literatures (doctrine, academic) to identify alternative lenses, analytic techniques, and tools that can be employed in IW analysis
  • Address unique military features of IW but also focus on the political and other non-military features at the heart of IW, including the shifting sympathies and affiliations of different groups and their mobilization to political activity and the use of violence.

Put another way, the framework was designed to enable analysts to “peel the onion” and thereby uncover critical characteristics of any given IW operating environment.

The central idea of the framework is that it is an analytic procedure by which an analyst, beginning with a generic and broad understand- ing of a conflict and its environment and then engaging in successively more focused and detailed analyses of selective topics, can develop an understanding of the conflict and uncover the key drivers behind such phenomena as orientation toward the principal protagonists in the conflict, mobilization and recruitment, and choice of political bargaining or violence.

Initial Assessment and Data Gathering

this activity consists of four steps:

beginning with the analyst focusing on gaining an overview of the origins and history of the conflict; what various classified and unclassified secondary analyses have to say about the key political, socioeconomic, and other drivers of the conflict; and the key fault lines or other structural characteristics of the conflict

In the second step, the analyst explores in greater detail the core grievances underlying the conflict and the key proximate issues currently in contention. Among the sorts of questions of interest in this step are, What issues or grievances are being exploited to mobilize different groups? Which issues or grievances just beneath the surface of the conflict are really driving various parties to the conflict? Have these issues or grievances changed over time?

In the third step the analyst identifies, in a relatively comprehensive fashion, the key stakeholders that have grievances or otherwise are likely to seek to influence the outcome of the conflict through various means. This effort involves identifying major political, demographic, social, military, paramilitary, terrorist, and other groups or factions seeking or that may seek to influence the outcome. This entails look- ing at domestic groups, factions, movements, and other stakeholders, as well as at international and transnational institutions, groups, and actors, and states that are allies or adversaries.7

In the fourth step, which can be undertaken in parallel with and cued by the results of the other steps, the analyst compiles basic demo- graphic, economic, and other quantitative data that relate to the drivers and fault lines identified in the earlier steps.

This effort includes collecting basic data on military, paramilitary, police, and insurgent numbers, weapons, and other capabilities, as well as collecting political, economic, social, and other data on national and sub-national groups and characteristics that may help to account for key fault lines, spatial patterning of violence, and other phenomena.

this step aims to provide data that can assist the analyst in refining his understanding of major forces and fault lines that might explain factionalization, coalition formation, and other such phenomena. These data can speak to demographic, political, economic, social, ethnic, religious, sectarian, tribal, ideological, etc., fault lines; urban versus rural distinctions; and have and have-not distinctions. Data of interest include current national and sub-national snapshots, trend data, and forecasts related to civilian considerations.

The basic data that need to be collected for IW analysis are most often geospatially distribute, so maintaining and displaying these data in a geospatial form can greatly facilitate analysis of IW environments.

Organizing disparate sorts of data by location may, through visualization and spatial analysis, help to establish correlational patterns that otherwise might be masked, leading to fruitful insights about the dynamics of IW that might not otherwise occur to analysts.

Detailed Stakeholder Analyses

At the highest level, these characteristics include the stakeholder’s basic worldview, historical or cultural narrative, motivations, and views on key issues in contention; the importance or salience of the conflict or issue in dispute to the stakeholder; aims, objectives, preferred out- comes, and strategy; and morale, discipline, and internal cohesion or factionalization. They also include general and specific attitudes and beliefs related to the underlying conflict, as well as historical, cultural, religious, and linguistic characteristics, economic circumstances (e.g., income, unemployment rate), and other factors.

In this fifth step, the analyst also estimates each stakeholder’s capabilities, both non-military and military. Non-military capabilities include the size of the stakeholder group (in terms of both raw numbers of members and estimates of the numbers of people it can mobilize or send into the streets) and its political, economic, and other non- military resources and capabilities.

Another critical part of this step is making force assessments of each stakeholder’s military, paramilitary, and other capabilities for undertaking violence. For the government, in addition to detailing conventional military organizations and their capabilities, force assess- ments must include various paramilitary, police, border, and other security forces.

Detailed in this step are the estimated number of actual fighters associated with each stakeholder group or organization; basic organizational and order of battle (OOB) information; and estimates of readiness, discipline, effectiveness, penetration, corruption, and other factors that may affect performance.

Also included are assessments of operational concepts used, including doctrine; tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs); leadership and organization; command, control, and communications (C3); and weapons system facilities (e.g., garrisons, weapons caches) related to organizations capable of employing violence. Finally—and especially for non-governmental organizations—it is important to understand the arms markets and networks that are the sources of weapons and systems.

The sixth step, stakeholder network and relationship/link assess- ment, involves a detailed analysis of formal organizational characteristics within and among groups, as well as informal links and net- works, and the identification of leaders and influential individuals within the network. Formal organizational structures and relationships can be understood through the collection and analysis of organiza- tional charts and tables of organization, and legal, administrative, and other materials can illuminate formal/legal authorities, control over resources, and other phenomena. Informal networks and relationships can involve people, domestic groups and institutions (e.g., banks, busi- nesses), and external groups and institutions (e.g., states, transnational movements).

 

a second critical lens for unpacking the IW operating environment can be characterized in terms of overlapping or interlocking networks. This approach provides a view of a number of key features of the broader political society, including key leaders, their critical relationships, and their sources of authority, power, and influence. Networks can be used to characterize a host of formal organizations and hierarchies, whether they are political, military, bureaucratic, or administrative; economic or business-oriented; or tribal, religious, or sectarian. They also can be used to characterize informal networks, including personal and professional networks, networks characterizing patronage relationships or criminal enterprises, jihadist discourse, or influence. In addition, physical networks, such as telecommunications, command, control, communications, and computers (C4), and utilities, translate naturally into link and node data.

Stakeholder leadership assessment, the seventh step, involves detailed leadership analyses where indicated. Such analyses tend to focus on key leaders. Assessments involve compiling and reviewing basic biographical information, as well as psychological profiles, assessments, and psychohistories; analyzing past decision making for patterns; and carrying out other analyses that can illuminate individual-level motivations, aims, objectives, intentions, leadership preferences, pathologies, vulnerabilities, and decisionmaking styles, as well as connections to other individuals, groups, and places; favored communications channels; and other characteristics. Also important are the nature of bar- gains and social contracts between stakeholder leaders and followers (i.e., what leaders must provide to followers to retain their loyalty).

Dynamic Analyses

The final step in the IPB process is the integration of intelligence information to determine a threat’s likely course of action (COA) and to understand the possible trajectory of the situation. We refer to these sorts of activities as dynamic analyses.

IW environments can be quite dynamic, and it is critical to monitor a wide range of developments that can presage change and, where possible, to make forecasts regarding the possible future trajectory of these situations. That the different types of IW conflict and threats are often nested, linked, and simultaneous (e.g., insurgency coupled with terrorism) increases the challenges of dynamic analysis of IW.

Agent-based rational choice or expected utility models. A family of models—agent-based rational choice models—has been developed to provide computationally based forecasts of complex, multi-actor, real-world political issues such as IW situations. These models incorporate insights from spatial politics, social choice theory, game theory, and expected utility theory in a form that enables policy-relevant fore- casts based on fairly modest data inputs. Even more important, some forms of these models have an impressive record of predicting the out- come of a wide range of political phenomena—including conflict— with an order of 90 percent accuracy.

See, for example, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, “The Methodical Study of Politics,” paper, October 30, 2002; and James Lee Ray and Bruce Russett, “The Future as Arbiter of Theoreti- cal Controversies: Predictions, Explanations and the End of the Cold War,” British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 26, 1996, pp. 441–470. A detailed discussion of these models, and a more complete review of claims about their predictive accuracy, can be found in Larson et al., Understanding Commanders’ Information Needs for Influence Operations, forthcoming

 

 

Perhaps the most prominent feature of these models from the standpoint of assessing IW environments is that they enable dynamic forecasts based on a relatively small subset of the factors identified in our analytic framework:

  •  The existence of many different stake holder groups that may seek to influence the outcome of the contest between the government and its challengers
  •  the possibility that different stakeholder groups may have different grievances or objectives, or take different positions on various issues related to the contest between the government and its challengers
  •  Differing relative political, economic, military, organizational, and other capabilities of stakeholder groups
  •  differences in the perceived importance of and level of commitment to the dispute for each stakeholder group, with some potentially viewing the stakes as existential while others remain disengaged or indifferent.17

the ultimate question for the analyst conducting a dynamic assessment of an IW environment is the nature of the political equilibrium outcome that is forecast and whether that equilibrium outcome meets U.S. policy objectives. In some, perhaps most, cases, the predicted equilibrium may be well short of what the United States is hoping to accomplish.

 

Analytic tools for IW analysis identified in doctrine. Available Army doctrine identifies a number of analytic techniques and tools suitable for IW analysis, some of which we have already discussed in the context of our analytic framework.19 These include

  • Link analysis/social network analysis, which can be used to understand critical links between individuals, institutions, and other components
  • pattern analysis, which can illuminate temporal or spatial patterning of data and provide a basis for insights into underlying correlational or causal mechanisms that can be used to evaluate a threat and to assess threat COAs
  • cultural comparison matrixes, which can help to highlight similarities, differences, and potential points of congruity or friction between groups
  • Historical time lines, which list significant dates and relevant information and analysis that can be used to underwrite a larger historical narrative about the sources of grievances, onset of violence, and other phenomena, as well as provide insights into how key population segments may react to certain events or circumstances
  • perception assessment matrixes, which can be used to characterize the cultural lenses different groups use in viewing the same events
  • spatial analysis/map overlays, which can be used to assess spatial relationships or correlations between disparate geographically distributed characteristics
  •  psychological profiles, which can assist in understanding how key groups, leaders, and decisionmakers perceive their world.20

 

Additionally, trend analyses—a form of pattern analysis—may be a particularly fruitful approach for IW analysts. Whether focused on time series data describing significant activities (SIGACTs), changing media content or population attitudes, or exploring correlations between disparate variables, trend analyses can help further illustrate dynamic processes.

Other diagnostic models. In addition to various worthwhile scholarly efforts that have systematically addressed dynamic aspects of intra- state violence, there are several other policy-relevant diagnostic tools that either share some features of our analytic framework or accent somewhat different phenomena that may be useful to IW analysts.21

Anticipating intrastate conflict. Because early diplomatic, military, or other policy action can in some cases reduce the prospects of full- blown conflict emerging, intelligence analysts sometimes require tools for anticipating intrastate conflict.

  •  Identify structures of closure. In this step, the analyst identifies structural factors that close off political, economic, or social opportunities for stakeholder groups and may thereby lead to strife.
  •  Map closure onto identifiable affinities. In this step, the analyst identifies which stakeholder groups—whether based on kinship, race, language, religion, region, culture, or some other factor— are facing which types of closure.
  •  Identify catalysts of mobilization. In this step, the analyst identifies factors that may mobilize excluded stakeholder groups—e.g., a change in the balance of power, “tipping events,” the emergence of policy entrepreneurs who seek to exploit dissatisfaction, increased resources and improved organization, and external assistance.
  • Assess state capability. In this step, the analyst assesses the state’s political capacity to accommodate aggrieved stakeholder groups, its fiscal capacity to compensate them, and its coercive capacity to suppress them.
  • Forecast likelihood of violence. In this step, the analyst estimates, based on an analysis of the government and its opponents, the likelihood of political conflict using game theoretical reasoning.23

 

While not predictive of intrastate violence, this model can help assess whether the conditions for such violence are present or not, improve the analyst’s understanding of the drivers of conflict, and point out data needs and limitations.

Trigger and risk factors for religious groups choosing violence. Work done by RAND colleague Greg Treverton on the analysis of religious groups identified five potential triggers and risk factors for violence that had some interesting parallels to our conception of dynamic IW analysis:

  • Belief in victory. Belief that the use of force can achieve the desired political end encourages violence.
  • Fear of annihilation. Existential threats can cause and sustain violence.
  • Inability or unwillingness to participate in politics. Being blocked from or uninterested in “normal” politics leaves force as the other option for pursuing goals.
  • Young and inexperienced leadership. Youthful leadership is some- times risk taking and inexperienced, and in crisis situations may aggressively lead a group into violence.
  • Political and economic crisis. Economic collapse combined with political crisis enhances the ability of religious groups to wage war by increasing their ideological and material appeal.

Counterterrorism Operations

Our review of existing doctrine suggests that it tends to treat terrorism and insurgency as largely identical phenomena and does not differentiate between the intelligence requirements for counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations.

although the intelligence analytic requirements of a global jihadist insurgency are somewhat less distinct than those of typical insurgencies, counterterrorism operations do appear to share many of the analytic requirements of the population-centric IW environments discussed earlier. For example, terrorism— the terrorizing of a civilian population—is an extreme form of coercing and influencing a government or population, the success of which is susceptible to analysis using the framework for population-centric IW situations.

Put another way, like insurgents, terrorists compete for the support or compliance of the larger population

In addition, terrorists’ actions play to an audience of their own supporters, demonstrating the terrorists’ ability to effectively conduct operations. In this way, they enhance morale and support.

Terrorist networks also share many of the conceptual features of other adversary networks, including insurgent networks, that are already the subject of detailed intelligence analysis for targeting and other purposes:

All enemy networks rely on certain key functions, processes, and resources to be able to operate and survive. These three elements are an important basis for counter-network strategies and can be defined as follows:

— Function (Critical Capability): A specific occupation, role, or purpose.

— Process: A series of actions or operations (i.e., the interaction of resources) over time that bring about an end or results (i.e., a function).

— Resource (Critical Requirement): A person, organization, place, or thing (physical and non-physical) and its attributes. In net- work vernacular, a resource may also be referred to as a “node” and the interaction or relationship between nodes described as “linkage.”

According to NMSP-WOT 2/06, terrorist and other adversary networks comprise nine basic components:

  • Leadership
  • safe havens
  • finance
  • communications
  • movement
  • intelligence
  • weapons
  • personnel
  • ideology

It also is worth mentioning in this connection David Kilcullen’s work, which treats counterinsurgency as a “complex system” and the larger war on terrorism as a “global counterinsurgency.”

there are no apparent inconsistencies between Kilcullen’s approach, which focuses on key nodes, links, boundaries, interactions, subsystems, inputs, and outputs, and our analytic framework. Although Kilcullen’s application of complex systems theory appears still to be embryonic, he has written a number of interesting papers dealing with counterinsurgency and the war on terrorism that may prove useful for IW analysts and may suggest research directions deserving of further exploration.

That said, there are some features of counterterrorism intelligence requirements that differ from population-centric IW and bear discus- sion. We next describe features associated with two different categories of counterterrorism operations—tactical counterterrorism operations, and operations against transnational terrorist networks—that might lead to some slight differences in intelligence analytic requirements.

 

Tactical Counterterrorism Operations

From a strict doctrinal perspective, counterterrorism is a SOF mission, typically involving direct action by SOF. Mission doctrine and intelli- gence requirements are the responsibility of the special operations com- munity. Most of this doctrine is not available to the public.

at the operational level, as with population- centric IW environments such as counterinsurgency, such factors as safe houses, enclaves of popular support, arms smuggling networks, networks for recruitment and training, weapons caches, and other phenomena are of great interest to the intelligence analyst.

Operations Against Transnational Terrorist Networks

largely for reasons of classification, the intelligence analytic requirements of the United States’ broader strategy for the greater war on terrorism are less well developed in the open literature.33 The unclassified NMSP-WOT does, however, list a number of annexes that suggest a number of discrete counterterrorism activities, each of which would be presumed to have associated with it a set of intelligence and analytic requirements.

Comparison to the Standard IPB Process

Doctrinally, the purpose of the IPB process is to systematically and continuously analyze the threat and environment in a specific geo- graphic area in order to support military decision-making, enabling the commander to selectively apply his combat power at critical points in time and space. This process consists of four steps:

  • Defining the operational environment: In this step, the analyst seeks to identify for further analysis and intelligence collection the characteristics that will be key in influencing friendly and threat operations.
  • Describing the operational environment: In this step, the analyst evaluates the effects of that environment on friendly and threat forces. It is in this step that limitations and advantages that the operational environment provides for the potential operations of friendly and threat forces are identified.
  • Evaluating the threat: In this step, the analyst assesses how the threat normally operates and organizes when unconstrained by the operational environment. This step is also used to identify high-value targets.
  • Determining threat COA: In this step, the analyst integrates information about what the threat would prefer to do with the effects of the operational environment in order to assess the threat’s likely future COA.

 

When one looks down the columns of the table, it should be clear that our analytic framework involves activities that are conducted under each step of the four-step IPB process. For example, three of the steps in our framework’s preliminary assessment and basic data collection phase are congruent with the first step of the standard doctrinal IPB process, and three are congruent with the IPB process’s second step. The reason for this congruence is that existing Army doctrine fully supports the gathering and analysis of extensive information on the civilian and societal characteristics of the area of operations.

 

our analytic framework might best be viewed not as an alternative or competitor to IPB, but as providing an efficient analytic protocol for IW IPB analysis, one that is suitable for operational- and strategic-level intelligence analysis and that complements the IPB process’s tactical-operational focus.

 

 

CHAPTER FOUR

Conclusions

 

The aim of this study was to develop an analytic framework for assessing IW situations that could subsequently be used as the basis of an educational and training curriculum for intelligence analysts charged with assessing IW situations.

The framework we developed takes the form of an analytic procedure, or protocol, consisting of three main activities—initial assessment and data gathering, detailed stakeholder analyses, and dynamic analyses—that involve eight discrete analytic steps.

our framework—and its constituent analytic activities and tools—is compatible with the military IPB process and its supporting analytic techniques. The framework also shares some characteristics of other policy-relevant models that have been developed as diagnostic tools for different purposes—e.g., anticipating ethnic conflict or assessing the prospects that religious groups will choose to resort to violence.

 

APPENDIX A

A Review of Defense Policy, Strategy, and Irregular Warfare

The growing importance of IW to the defense community, which is largely a result of the U.S. strategy to deal with global jihadists, and the range of specific challenges the United States has encountered in the Afghan and Iraqi insurgencies, have led to a high level of policy- and strategy-level attention to the requirements of IW.

The National Defense Strategy of the United States of America and National Military Strategy of the United States of America of March 2005 divided threats into four major categories: traditional, irregular, disruptive, and catastrophic.1 In the view of these documents, the principal irregular challenge was “defeating terrorist extremism,” but counterinsurgencies, such as those faced in Afghanistan and Iraq, were also included.

 

The National Defense Strategy also identified terrorism and insurgency as being among the irregular challenges the United States faces, the dangers of which had been intensified by two factors: the rise of extremist ideologies and the absence of effective governance. It described irregular threats as challenges coming “from those employing ‘unconventional’ methods to counter the traditional advantages of stronger opponents” [emphasis in original],2 and identified “improving proficiency for irregular warfare” as one of eight JCAs that would pro- vide a focus for defense transformation efforts.

 

The February 2006 QDR (Quadrennial Defense Review Report) also identified IW as an emerging challenge:

The enemies in this war are not traditional conventional military forces but rather dispersed, global terrorist networks that exploit Islam to advance radical political aims. These enemies have the avowed aim of acquiring and using nuclear and biological weapons to murder hundreds of thousands of Americans and others around the world. They use terror, propaganda and indiscriminate violence in an attempt to subjugate the Muslim world under a radical theocratic tyranny while seeking to perpetuate conflict with the United States and its allies and partners. This war requires the U.S. military to adopt unconventional and indirect approaches.5

In the post-September 11 world, irregular warfare has emerged as the dominant form of warfare confronting the United States, its allies and its partners; accordingly, guidance must account for distributed, long-duration operations, including unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and stabilization and reconstruction operations.6

Another document, NMSP-WOT 2/06, identified six objectives for the global war on terrorism: (1) deny terrorists the resources they need to operate and survive; (2) enable partner nations to counter terrorist threats; (3) deny WMD technology to U.S. enemies and increase capacity for consequence management; (4) defeat terrorist organizations and networks; (5) counter state and non-state support for terror- ism in coordination with other U.S. government agencies and partner nations; (6) counter ideological support for terrorism.

The IW JOC 9/07 argued that IW was likely to become an increasing challenge for the U.S. Government:

Our adversaries will pursue IW strategies, employing a hybrid of irregular, disruptive, traditional, and catastrophic capabilities to undermine and erode the influence and will of the United States and our strategic partners. Meeting these challenges and combating this approach will require the concerted efforts of all available instruments of U.S. national power. . . . This concept describes IW as a form of warfare and addresses the implications of IW becoming the dominant form of warfare, not only by our adversaries but also by the United States and its partners.

Unlike conventional warfare, which focuses on defeating an adversary’s military forces or seizing key physical terrain, the focus of Irregular Warfare is on eroding an enemy’s power, influence, and will to exercise political authority over an indigenous population.

the September 2006 draft of the IW JOC put it:

In either case [of offensive or defensive IW], the ultimate goal of any IW campaign is to promote friendly political authority and influence over, and the support of, the host population while eroding enemies’ control, influence, and support.24

The NMSP-WOT has a slightly different description of the national strategy for the greater war on terrorism and the military strategic framework than does the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, described earlier – the strategy’s “ends” are twofold—to defeat violent extremism as a threat to the American way of life as a free and open society and to create a global environment inhospitable to

APPENDIX B

Irregular Warfare Analysis Doctrinal References

 

The following are the doctrinal sources we identified as addressing vari- ous aspects of IW analysis:

Air Land Sea Application (ALSA) Center, Multi-Service Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for Conducting Peace Operations, FM 3-07.31, October 2003.

Headquarters, Department of the Army, Army Special Operations Forces Intelligence, FM 3-05.102, July 2001. Not releasable to the general public.

————, Civil Affairs Operations, FM 41-10, February 2000.
————, Civil Affairs Operations, FM 3-05.40, September 2006. Not releasable

to the general public.

————, Civil Affairs Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures, FM 3-05.401, September 2003.

————, Counterguerilla Operations, FM 90-8, August 1986. Not releasable to the general public.

————, Counterinsurgency, FM 3-24, December 2006.

————, Counterinsurgency (Final Draft), FM 3-24, June 2006.

————, Counterintelligence, FM 34-60, October 1995.

————, Foreign Internal Defense Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for Special Forces, FM 31-20-3, September 1994. Not releasable to the general public.

————, Human Intelligence Collector Operations, FM 2-22.3, September 2006. ————, Intelligence Analysis, FM 34-3, March 1990.

————, Intelligence and Electronic Warfare Support to Low-Intensity Conflict Operations, FM 34-7, May 1993.

————, Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield, FM 34-130, July 1994.

————, Intelligence Support to Operations in the Urban Environment, FMI 2-91.4, June 2005. Not releasable to the general public.

————, Open Source Intelligence, FMI 2-22.9, December 2006. Not releasable to the general public.

————, Operations in a Low-Intensity Conflict, FM 7-98, October 1992. ————, Police Intelligence Operations, FM 3-19.50, July 2006.

————, Psychological Operations Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures, FM 3-05- 30, December 2003. Not releasable to the general public.

————, Reconnaissance Squadron, FM 3-20.96, September 2006. Not releasable to the general public.

————, Special Forces Group Intelligence Operations, FM 3-05.232, February 2005. Not releasable to the general public.

————, Urban Operations, FM 3-06, October 2006.
Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for Foreign Internal

Defense (FID), JP 3-07.1, 30 April 2004.

U.S. Army Intelligence Center, Intelligence Support to Stability Operations and Support Operations, ST 2-91.1, August 2004. Not releasable to the general public.

 

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DoD—See U.S. Department of Defense

Federal News Service, Comments of Mario Mancuso, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Combating Terrorism, Hearing of the Terrorism and Unconventional Threats Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, Subject: Irregular Warfare Roadmap, September 27, 2006, September 30, 2006.

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————, Full Spectrum Operations, initial draft, FM 3-0, Washington, D.C., June 21, 2006.

————, Intelligence, FM 2-0, Washington, D.C., May 2004.
————, Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield, FM 34-130, Washington,

D.C., July 1994.
————, The Operations Process, FMI 5-0.1, Washington, D.C., March 2006. ————, Urban Operations, FM 3-06, Washington, D.C., October 2006.

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Tarrow, Sidney, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Tilly, Charles, From Mobilization to Revolution, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978. ————, Politics of Collective Violence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

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————, Irregular Warfare (IW) Joint Operating Concept (JOC), Washington, D.C., January 2007.

————, Irregular Warfare (IW) Joint Operating Concept (JOC), Version 1.0, Washington, D.C., June 2007.

————, Irregular Warfare (IW) Joint Operating Concept (JOC), Version 1.0, Washington, D.C., September 2007.

————, “Memorandum for Correspondents,” Memorandum No. 046-M, March 2, 1995. As of January 2007:
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————, National Defense Strategy, Washington, D.C., June 2008.

————, National Defense Strategy of the United States of America, Washington, D.C., March 2005.

————, National Military Strategy of the United States of America: A Strategy for Today; A Vision for Tomorrow, Washington, D.C., March 2005.

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