Saturday, July 11, 2009

PSYOP Training – A Joint Approach


The post on the PSYOP Regiment received the comment reproduced below. I felt this was such an important topic that it required a special posting. In my mind there are several aspects of training and qualification posed by the comment.


“What are your thoughts on training for PSYOP training for Officers and NCOs from the Air Force and Marine Corps? Each of these Services now have a requirement for PSYOP training - should their personnel be held to Army standards for PT and "soldier skills"? Or is it more important for them to receive ROBUST training in the theory, planning, TAA, development and execution of PSYOP?As of this writing MOST of the sister service officers will never be assigned to the POGs or the Bns (the Air Force is working on establishing a "detachment" at 4th POG - but that is a long way off IF it happens) - but there will be personnel assigned to JMISC and the JPOTF. Must these personnel be "JUMP" qualified to practice PSYOP? Even if they graduate from POQC (as approx 10 Air Force officers are ever year - they continue to be challenged by Army PSYOPers as not being "real" PSYOP Officers - what is the discriminator that makes a "real" PSYOPer? Is it graduation from the POQC? Language skills? Product development? Assignment to a TPD? Jump school? or simply you can't be a "REAL" PSYOPer unless you are IN the Army and assigned to the POG?”


My personal views:


Physical Training (PT) – it seems to me that the most logical approach is that service members must pass the PT tests of their services.


Airborne Qualification – it is my feeling that being airborne qualified is not a prerequisite for PSYOP. Some PSYOP support missions to airborne units may require airborne insertion, if this is the case then I would endorse the concept of airborne qualification as a necessary qualification to support airborne units.


PSYOP Training - successful completion of the PSYOP Qualification Course (POQC) is the foundation for any PSYOP assignment. For the sake of uniformity and transparency, the POQC should be required prior to PSYOP assignments. Non Army personnel can add value by virtue of the uniqueness of their service experience. They are also in an excellent position to leverage the assets of their service for PSYOP purposes.


Language Training – language training is always key to success, however, experience shows that PSYOP work product requires a level of language proficiency not generally achieved by non-native speakers. Consequently language training is useful on critical missions where the PSYOP team needs to be self-sufficient.


“Real PSYOPers” – over time we will observe more non-Army personnel assigned to PSYOP missions. Air Force PSYOP in particular is likely to grow significantly since the Air Force as a knack for following the money and for being at the leading edge of many new warfighting trends. Non-Army personnel are and can be real PSYOPers, however it is important to point out that the PSYOP Regiment is an Army only organization.


Reader input, as always is encouraged.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hell, most psyopers in the army aren't real psyopers! Only a few even understand the big picture of psyop, their own importance or even the stills they need to get the job done. Most TPT guys are completely unaware of how to understand social networks or even why a social/informational network is something they should be understanding.
We are rarely used properly, as our supported unit simply move us from place to place and not allow us the autonomy and authority to build real relationships with locals needed to pull strings and insert a message into the populace with any credibility.
I'd bet money that only about 50% of psyopers could even tell you what the 7 stage process is.
So the fact is that the army has never really committed to a psyop mission, or given psyopers the tools and training they need to complete their missions.
If anything the AF will do it better and we can learn from them.
The army has to have people that can think outside the box, but punishes people that do unless they are SF. Until we get that kind of respect and commitment from the army, we won't get anywhere.

Lawrence Dietz said...

Blog Comment 12 July 2009
First of all, thanks for your candid feedback.
I’m curious as to your thoughts on the source of the problem and, more importantly how to correct it. Recently MI has re-vamped its schoolhouse officer training to encourage more original thinking by increasing the number of case studies and unstructured exercises. Do you think this would help?
Are the base issues a function of: age of the PSYOP team? Their experience in previous deployments? SWC training or service culture? While I’m not sure I consider the Air Force an ‘out of the box group’, I have found that the Marines were consistently the most creative and adaptive of all the services.
PSYOP, like other disciplines is often not optimally employed by supporting units because their CDR and staff are not properly trained in how to do that. Another historic detriment is that the senior PSYOPer at the HQ lacks sufficient rank or sales expertise to get into the inner circle of the CDR and his staff.
In addition to all of this, it is my personal view that the movement of RC PSYOP out of the SOF Command Chain has created an internal split that can exacerbate perceptions issues.
Confirmation from other readers that there are such problems and suggestions on how to solve them are encouraged.

Anonymous said...

There are so many issues involved in this. One is the selection process. It needs to be harder cognitively. They are so hard-up for people that getting through psyop school is only hard physically, not mentally. It should be both.
My comment about the AF comes from my experience training at AF SOF schools. They are all about skill building and competence. They spend their day learning things with a lot of money. In the army we spend our time being smoked, and when we are supposed to learn we are incredibly tired and hurting. AF guys complain about this when they come to our schools. One PJ in training complained that he went to airborne to learn how to jump out of a plan, but spent his time getting smoked rather than learning.

The other issue is the reliance on the reserves. I think that the res. give us the best way to make sure that people have various views and can think outside the box and have many different skills, but the op. tempo really only allows civil servant employees to stay in. You get a lot of EMS, cops, city workers, etc... Cops make great psyopers, but this has lead to TPT's acting like cops (crisis management). That's part of the job, but not the only job.
I'm an anthropologist, which is kind of the civilian version of a psyoper, and while I can handle many short deployments like the active branch, I can't handle so many 12 month tours. It becomes my career or the army. I have a year left and I don't see how I can stay in. One of the best psyopers in the army, a friend, just got out so he could finish school uninterrupted. When we deploy we should get mixed in with active guys to learn from them and they can learn from us. Once a reservist really learns the job, he usually has to leave because he's on his second 12m deployment in 3 years.

This also leads to the fact that while we are the most educated MOS in the army, with language skills, and tactical ability we get no respect. A majority of us have a degree, yet there is no officer or warrant branch! If I could go warrant, I'd probably stay. If I re-up I'm going officer, so I can't be a psyoper.
Every time our guys get back from a JRTC with an infantry unit they come back demoralized, because they are basically ignored. We believe that we could win any war before it starts, yet we are ignored and that's demoralizing.

I also agree with you that it's been the Marines that have been the most adaptable. This is because they are so selective.

More than any of this its the organization of psyop. As long as we are just one small slice element in the total battle plan, it will be this way. We have a unique and separate job, like SF. Until we are given that kind of autonomy and respect, it will be like this. It shouldn't be, "ok, here's what psyop is going to do in the plan." We should have our own plan that we integrate into their plan. This is actually how it's supposed to work, but it never does. Infantry guys are basically interested in getting back alive, everything else is gravy. If it's a choice between risking their lives to mingle with the population, and winning hearts vs. killing whoever they have to to make sure that everyone comes back regardless of what it does in the long run, they're gonna kill.
They are not big picture thinkers. They don't realize that they are putting their men's lives in greater danger over the long term. Psyop isn't day to day, but infantry is. These are often incompatable.

I'd like your feed back.

Lawrence Dietz said...

Here are my thoughts:

Selection Process – concur that selection for PSYOP must include mental acuity. It is, however, difficult to quantify that characteristic. Perhaps administering an aptitude test that is also used to determine suitability for marketing and sales might help. Also, appropriate education or on the job experience would suffice.

Airborne training – I am not Airborne qualified, but it is my impression that Airborne School is more of an initiation into espirit and traditions than merely jumping out of airplanes. If the Warfighter requires an extensive supply of soldiers who must jump out of airplanes then the skill should be taught as such. Physical training should only be as much a part of the training as needed to control the jump and land with a minimum of harm.

Being Smoked – strangely enough inflicting fatigue on trainees is not a new invention. I can recall similar (in my view) nonsense at Signal Officer Basic Course a very long time ago where we did a onetime simulated escape and evasion. Avoid the 82nd Airborne aggressors and make it to the finish line and you ride home. Make it half-way, check in and avoid detection and you walk home (some number of miles beyond 10?), get captured and suffer the consequences. I learned more about escape and evasion growing up in Brooklyn than I ever did in the Army. Some of the ‘smoked philosophy’ is likely to be good, some of it not.

RC PSYOP – clearly RC PSYOP adds depth and breadth to the overall force. Being labeled as support for “the Big Army” is a ridiculous premise for the Army Reserve. The Army is engaged and will be engaged for the foreseeable future. The Reserve force was established as a ‘reserve’, not an alternative resource. For the past few years it seems the only difference between the AC and the RC is that the Reservist is supposed to go back to a civilian job. The more Reservists stay off the job, the more their civilian career path is negatively impacted.
From my experience RC PSYOP personnel come from a variety of civilian careers although there is a tendency to see a lot of government employees, especially police officers because their employers have very good policies to support the employees (pay, health benefits continuing, etc) while they are deployed.

PSYOP is an Army Officer branch. I think it is fair to say the career path of AC PSYOP officers is intertwined with SF, and it should be noted that AC PSYOP officers are able to command Reserve Units. Given that the PSYOP field terminates at 06, it’s not the way to go if you feel you are GO potential. I believe that the concept of PSYOP Warrant Officer hasn’t been fleshed out enough to determine if it makes sense, or not. You could argue that a Warrant Officer would make a great TPT leader and help bridge the experience/credibility gap we addressed in earlier postings.

I cannot argue with your statements on respect and I don’t personally feel we’ll see an increase in big picture thinkers commanding combat units any time soon. This makes it doubly important for PSYOP to ‘sell’ its way into the Command tent. Perhaps when GOs and FOs (Fleet Officers) have a core appreciation for PSYOP this will change, but that doesn’t seem to be happening or at least happening at the rate it needs to in order to make a difference.

Anonymous said...

"Selection Process – concur that selection for PSYOP must include mental acuity. It is, however, difficult to quantify that characteristic. Perhaps administering an aptitude test that is also used to determine suitability for marketing and sales might help. Also, appropriate education or on the job experience would suffice."

I was thinking about this after the last post and you're right, this isn't an easy quality to determine. I feel that no psyop is better than bad psyop, though.
This skill set isn't something that is really natural to anyone. Some people are good as some aspects naturally, but never all. Even with my degrees, when actually in a psyop situation I still fumble, and it's all about practice. I need to work on the things that aren't natural for me, as all psyopers do.
I think the issue is that we aren't really allowed to practice fully. This leads to a particular kind of 'f&%k it' attitude among the branch.

E.g., (I'm gonna be vague for op-sec) I recently sat in on a brain storming session for one of those international war games some of our guys were going to. They were given the classic psyop mission and told to come up with TAAWS, PAWS, POs, and SPOs, etc... and really use their imaginations. (If you don't know the acronyms then you're not supposed to)

Everyone at the table fought the process, and were kind of pissed about it. This is because they knew when they got there everything they put together would be tossed out and they'd be given a frago and opord and they'd be completely at the mercy of real action of a classic big army war scenario.
That's not only demoralizing, but it also tells psyopers that they will never actually get to use the skills they learned in school, so why bother remembering them.
These guys are so talented though.

I think a lot of the GOs get it, but it's about an entire culture. Our army, which is designed to kill and break things, is being forced into a law enforcement role. The transition isn't smooth. Psyop operates as smoothly in war and peace, but we are thought of and used in a classic WWII type way. In the COIN paradigm of war, we shine but only if we are given independence to shine.

This isn't all big army's fault. There are plenty of TPT TCs that integrate too well and basically do really cool tactical stuff all day, but ignore their other duties.

crandieberry said...

What do you think of "creating an information warfare branch," written by Major George C.L. Brown? http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/milreview/brown2.pdf

Lawrence Dietz said...

I'm not in favor of a special branch for IO at this point. Perhaps I would feel differently if the USG had an overarching information engagement strategy (see this week's post).

Anonymous said...

No PSYOP is DEFINATELY better than bad PSYOP. But, for all of the "thinking outside the box" (God, I hate that expression) and social networking that "seems" to be important, the most important factors that PSYOP seems to be missing is discipline, common-sense, and initiative (also known as drive). -all my opinion.
It is not a natural skill to all, but it is a skill that can be learned! Give me someone that has never even heard of PSYOP, but is motivated, disciplined, and somewhat intelligent over one of these 18X SF-baby failures ANYDAY!! My opinion? There should be a "selection" process, not a Psyop course. How do you judge Soldiers for potential to perform a job that is inherently vague? Brutally honestly. That's the other problem; there are some dishonest folks within the community that "look out for their buddies." But, that is what seems to be common in many of the "communities" that are within the Army. (Think Masons) All we can expect is that a "new breed" of Leaders and Soldiers will take over soon and rise to the expectations of our great nation.

"E.g., (I'm gonna be vague for op-sec) I recently sat in on a brain storming session for one of those international war games some of our guys were going to. They were given the classic Psyop mission and told to come up with TAAWS, PAWS, POs, and SPOs, etc... and really use their imaginations. (If you don't know the acronyms then you're not supposed to)

Everyone at the table fought the process, and were kind of pissed about it. This is because they knew when they got there everything they put together would be tossed out and they'd be given a frago and opord and they'd be completely at the mercy of real action of a classic big army war scenario.
That's not only demoralizing, but it also tells psyopers that they will never actually get to use the skills they learned in school, so why bother remembering them.
These guys are so talented though."

-and there is the problem. You do what you are TOLD to do! So what if you think your work was in vain. So what if nothing you did was useful! Did anyone die? Did any US Soldiers get killed? Were you able to reinforce you skills? Were you able to use the event as a training platform for your Soldiers? Did they gain ideas and techniques to use next time? Have you ever heard the phrase; "Don't get married to the product?" If 95% of the stuff we do never gets used because it's crap, but 5% is good, effective PSYOP; then that is 5% that is out in the "battle space" that wasn't there before. Remember our goal is to INFLUENCE FOREIGN TAs. If that's ONE person, we're successful. Where does it say that a certain percentage of the populace... so on and so on.
Quit whining, do what you are TOLD. Be proactive. Have initiative. Learn, learn, and keep on learning!! Just because you are in Special Operations doesn't make you special. You make yourself special! That is what my definition of a true PSYOP Specialist is!

Lawrence Dietz said...

I like the idea of a way to do some 'selection'. Tactical PSYOP on the ground requires talents that often cannot be measured. Perhaps an unstructured insurgent orient FTX should be the final hurdle. You don't pass, you don't get the MOS.

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