Chosen Soldier - Dick Couch [142]
“You’ll have only a single day to work up your courses of action and present them to the commander tomorrow morning. Give these options a lot of thought, and which one you will recommend and why. Captain Santos, you will be the team leader for this one. The rest of the assignments are posted on the board. Good luck, gentlemen.”
Miguel Santos smiles slowly and shakes his head. He seems to have known he would be tapped for the final problem. It’ll be 912’s most difficult challenge in Phase III, but Captain Santos is perhaps the best planner in the student ODA.
“OK,” Santos says to his team after James leaves, “who’s my intelligence sergeant?”
“Right here,” answers the captain from the 75th Ranger Regiment.
“Get started on building an intel file and see that everyone is read into the problem. Also start listing additional information requirements we’ll ask for as we move into the problem. Who’s my assistant detachment commander?”
“Right here, Miguel.”
“You and the team sergeant start building a timeline and milestones leading to the courses of action briefing at 0800 tomorrow morning.” Santos checks his watch. “For the next few hours, it’s a mission-analysis drill. What you don’t find in the scenario file and message traffic, get it on the information requirement list. OK, guys, let’s get it done.” ODA 912 breaks into a flurry of activity.
The officers work through lunch and send out for pizza for the evening meal. About 2100, Major James drops by to see how they’re coming on their courses of action. He studies each one carefully. The one they have selected and directed much of their extended planning effort on is not what he had in mind.
“That’s why you have to war-game each of these approaches; look weeks down the line at where each course of action will take you. Think about how long you’ll be in the field under this scenario. What happens if there’s no aerial resupply? What if the guerrillas fail to provide the mobility you need? If this is your initial target list, how’re you going to move about to hit them all? And think about these targets. Your job is to do what a smart bomb cannot do, like snatching a Pineland leader from a moving vehicle or hitting an armory to get arms for your guerrillas.”
After some discussion, a new “recommended” course of action is chosen, and 912 goes back to work. They work through the night, and at 0800, a weary group of captains briefs Major Brooks on the range of options considered for the mission and the course of action they think will best serve the mission and the commander’s intent.
With a course of action chosen, the heavy lifting of planning an unconventional-warfare mission shifts into high gear. Information is fed to ODA 912 by the training cadre as they respond to intelligence data requested by the student ODA. There are briefings from the scenario command-staff intelligence officer on current events in Pineland and from the command-staff operations officer to refine the commander’s intent, key tasks, and the desired end state of their mission. Other briefings, with cadre sergeants serving as support staff personnel, cover communications, medical support, and logistics. Nine-one-two also speaks to the pilot who will be supporting the mission and interviews a refugee from Pineland. There’s also a briefing by a legal officer from the 7th Group. Part of what he tells 912 is exercise related and a great deal of it is real world.
“You’re always going to have rules of engagement—ROEs will be a fact of your deployed life. And, you’re always going to be concerned with the safety of your men. That said, the basis of ROEs is ‘proportional response.’ ROEs are rooted in political, military, and legal parameters. Civilians are protected persons, and you are accountable for any harm that comes to them through your actions. You have a right to self-defense, but if civilians get hurt or killed, you’ll have to be able to articulate your position in the action. Know and understand the standard ROEs and how those ROEs