Thursday, December 26, 2013

MISO Support For Marine Reaction Force?



The situation in South Sudan was dire enough to call for the deployment of a 150 Marine quick reaction force from Spain. (See: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/2013/1224/US-rescue-operation-in-S.-Sudan-to-test-post-Benghazi-Marine-reaction-force - which is also the photo source).

At the moment (1715 Pacific Time on 26 December 2013), the mission is billed as a NEO + security mission. The Marines are charged with protecting the American and other citizens as well as the American Embassy. They are also tasked with providing security to any non-combatant evacuation operation (NEO).

Unlike the similar scenarios I’ve worked on for exercises, this one promises not to be a totally permissive environment with a clear potential for combat operations.

Today’s post is more of a question than a posting – what sort of MISO support should this task force have? Is Marine MISO robust enough to insure that the task force can be a pure play Marine operation? If not, will the Army have to deploy MISO support and if so – has the mechanism for the assessment and subsequent manning been sufficiently developed and tested?

I don’t have an answer and am hoping that one of my readers can help out.

Other complications such as allied nations, the UN and perhaps even a security force composed of forces from several African States will muddy the operational waters. However, I believe it is fair to say that this kind of incident certainly typifies more of the ‘rule’ in the 21st Century than the exception.

This will be my last posting for 2013, may you all be blessed with a healthy, happy and rewarding 2014.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This may be interesting: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/01/06/measuring-hearts-and-minds-in-afghanistan/

Anonymous said...

Excellent discussion. One of the key issues at hand is that there has been a consistent move from active MISO forces to move away from supporting USMC forces. Since the 2003-2004 this has been an ongoing issue and even today is hard to get SOCOM MISO support for Marines. It is for this reason why the Marine Corps had to source their own organic solution, albeit still working within the MISO Series, programs, authorities and coordination channels. Therefore, why should Sudan be different than any other worldwide commitment. It seems like SOCOM must determine if it has the willingness to make a full time commitment to supporting USMC requirements, otherwise, they should at least help steward the efforts of the USMC MISO community, as they are supplementing, not competing in any way shape or form with SOCOM MISO assets

Voodoo said...

I've trained Marine at the MCIOC, and NEO's are a task they're specifically trained on. What we need are some metrics on their performance operationally.