SEEING THE MOST GEOLOGY: US SPECIAL OPERATIONS’ DOCTRINE AND THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT, WHAT’S MISSING?

Thus far in 2017, US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) has deployed its operators to over 70% of the countries in the world (n=138) to help build partner nations’ capacities. These operations range from two-to-three-man teams completing “surveys” for the embassy to international-news worthy operations like the killing of Osama Bin Laden. All in all, SOCOM likely interacts with the physical environment more than any other entity on the globe. Despite needing a keen understanding of the global physical environment to plan and execute complex operations, this insight is expected of the operator—not formally recognized, trained or developed beyond reading topographic maps. Using word-use analyses of select US small-wars doctrine (n=17), 15 words were analyzed and combined into three categories: “thinking (0.54% word use),” “environment (0.26%)” and “mission (0.19%).” Overall, 0.99% of words were related to a “thinking” operator recognizing his “environment” towards “mission” end. The US Army Techniques Publication, Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (2014), the “doctrine on how to systematically evaluate the effects of significant characteristics of the operational environment,” most used these terms (1.51%) and, by far, provided the most usage of words in the “environment” category (0.95%). Specifically, the use of the words “geologic*” occur only three times in the over 1.4 million words and are associated with air mobility and landing-zone designation. Logically, geology is not a focus of military doctrine; however, increases in the recognition of a thinking operator working in/with the physical environment is a step in the right direction. Because SOCOM is overused and abused due to an excessive operation tempo, the military needs to leverage other specialized troops for indirect operations in support of capacity-building efforts. A renewed focus should be placed on small, egalitarian development teams, which use soldier-scientist hybrids who are physical, biological, human and/or engineering professionals. Until the US military formally recognizes that some of its personnel bring special and unique skills able to increase its efficacy, they will continue to spend time, money and words (doctrine) that are misdirected and founded in conventional warfare strategy and tactics.