Too Many Targets: Challenge for PSYOP and EW

 

One of the topics on everyone’s mind at the recent Association of Old Crows (the trade association for EW vendors and their customers) was  “Managing The Chaos of Electronic Warfare” (see:  (see: http://breakingdefense.com/2014/10/battle-management-cuts-through-chaos-of-electronic-warfare/ which is also the photo source.

The point of the article is contained in one key paragraph:

“Once upon a time, the “ducks” we had to keep track of were relatively few and well-defined: Soviet air-defense radars and headquarters radio transmitters, for example. But today there are more cellphone users in Afghanistan than people who know how to read, and some of them are Taliban, using those cheap, low-power, and widely available civilian systems to coordinate military operations.”

An incredible array of potential targets which is the same challenge facing PSYOP  as well. The information battlefield is strewn from rural, undeveloped lands where literacy rates approach 100% to urban mega cities where mobile phones are almost ubiquitous as cockroaches.

Given the tightening budget noose and the constant struggle between domestic and defense needs, the PSYOP Community faces the daunting challenge of being prepared to tackle the range of information landscapes without the luxury of planning that went into previous war planning efforts.

Large national potential foes such as the USSR and North Korea spawned libraries of contingency planning, OPORDERs, exercises, etc. Today’s political and economic climate does not foster such background type planning. While templating might have worked to lay out how a Russian Division might have been deployed, there is no such template for how non-state actors such as ISIS fight or communicate or what axis of influence may exist.

How do we meet these challenges?

1.     Stay informed – be aware of how the world’s events are taking shape.

2.     Employ non-US sources to appreciate viewpoints outside the US.

3.     Recognize the evolution of information channels in the same way we understood Lines of Communication, Main Surface Roads, etc.

4.     Work with individuals or groups that were a part of the target or at least have the capability of mirroring target response.

5.     Travel when you can – doesn’t matter where, just as long as it’s somewhere you’ve never been. Look, listen, eat and enjoy. You’ll be absorbing the culture as a by-product of your adventure.