CJTF Al Ouadiyya: Part VII: “Combat Tourism”

Situation

It has been 30 days since the U.S. Mission in Al Ouadiyya and the CJTF officially partnered with the Nuzuri tribe and contracted their militia as “auxiliary forces,” or AUXFOR (pronounced “oxford” by your Marines), for the security and stability mission on the island nation. You remain the Company Commander, A Company, 1st Bn, 1st Mar, and despite a non-punitive letter of caution from your battalion commander for exaggerated reporting of enemy forces in the midst of an attack on your COP (combat outpost), you are beginning to think you may stay in command of “Red Death” for the roughly two months remaining in this deployment … if you live that long.

Your Company’s area of operations in the Al Mumeet Mosque neighborhood is still dynamic. The ubiquitous presence of Nuzuri AUXFOR patrols and checkpoints has reduced or at least forced anti-MUGA forces into the open. In other words, the enemy is more interested in attacking the “oxfords” than your Marines or the MUGA commandos attached to your company. The Nuzuri presence does nothing to demonstrate stability or rule of law in the area as groups of fighters, many as young as 12 or 13, “patrol” through this section of the city in Chinese-made pickups with crew-served weapons, and equally armed groups man random roadblocks, searching travelers and collecting a “service charge” for their work. Unlike the anti-MUGA Islamic extremists, whose preferred terror tactic was beheading, the “oxfords” employ “necklacing:” placing a car tire soaked in gasoline around the neck of a bound detainee and setting it on fire. If the captive is lucky, smoke inhalation is quick. Your Marines who have encountered the results often comment that “at least the beheadings didn’t stink so bad.” You have consistently reported these incidents, but, to date, no action has been taken or directed. You have the following forces and supporting arms available:

  •  1st and 3rd Platoons, Company A 1/1: 58 effective Marines, 1 1stLt and 1 SSgt platoon commanders; 1 Hospitalman 1st Class (Independent Duty Corpsman), plus 2 Hospitalmen 3rd Class
  •  2 Battalion radio operators
  •  2 4-man Scout Sniper teams (2 SASR and 2 M40A5 sniper weapons)
  •  1 Machine gun Section (-) (4x M240B 7.62 machine guns)
  •  1 Assault Squad (2x SMAW 83mm rocket launchers)
  •  1 Joint Tactical Air Controller (JTAC) Team
  •  2 Interpreters (CJTF contracted)
  •  1 MUGA Commando Platoon (rein): 48 Commandos total, equipped with AK-47 rifles, rifle grenades, two RPK Machine gun Sections (8x RPK 7.62 machine guns) and their own interpreters (English, Arabic, and the Nuzuri dialect)

Fire support remains limited to the battalion’s organic mortars, and Marine rotor-wing CAS on alert +15 at the battalion FOB.

The battalion’s alert +5 section of medevac helicopters has a dedicated radio net. Response time is less than 10 minutes, and the JTF Level III treatment facility is 45 minutes flight time.

Communications remain limited to unencrypted, VHF and UHF voice-only radio, wire (analog field telephones), and couriers. The local commercial telecom enterprise (landline and cellular) is also functional although unreliable and unsecure. You have sufficient radios to maintain a company tactical radio net, one battalion tactical net, and the infantry battalion mortar net. Your JTAC team also has uncovered UHF radios to coordinate RW CAS and medevacs.

Your Company has been tasked to provide security for one of the senior U.S. officials in country and a media team. Darla Hayman, a war correspondent and on-screen personality for one of the largest worldwide news networks, and her producer and cameraman are accompanying the Honorable Grainger LaSalle, Deputy Chief of Mission for the U.S. Mission in Al Ouadiyya. He has a three-man personal security detail with him. LtCol Darrin Douxe, the MEB PAO; CWO3 Yvonne Shadee, the PA Chief; and two combat camera Marines are escorting the party. The group is scheduled to RON (remain overnight) at your COP.

After issuing your orders to the company for the visit, you also instruct your platoon commanders and all NCOs to drill everyone in the COP on the current public affairs guidance from the CJTF.

The group arrives by MV-22 after your Marines secure an LZ and move to your position without incident. However, several teams of AUXFOR make themselves very visible as they overwatch the group’s arrival.

Shortly after their arrival, the MEB PA team takes Mr. LaSalle to the roof of the COP for his photo op. Ms. Hayman asks if she and her crew can “just wander around the outpost and talk to the Marines.”

After talking with your Marines for several hours, she also asks you “off the record” whether you think the Nuzuri AUXFOR are helping stabilize the country and if their support is worth $1.5 million cash the U.S. has paid to the tribal leadership and MUGA officials. Do you think the U.S.-led coalition should continue funding a regime that employs children as security forces?

 

Requirement A

What do you tell her? Do you continue to allow her and her team unescorted access to you Marines? If not, how do you prevent such contact?

Later that evening, LtCol Douxe shares with you that he is a Reserve officer with a lucrative career in public relations in New Orleans. Prior to leaving active duty, he was an infantry platoon commander deployed to Helmand Province, Afghanistan, in 2009. After this collegial preamble, he informs you that he will be taking the PA team on a patrol to collect footage of the Al Mumeet area. If you have any security patrols planned, he proposes combining the two patrols for added security and unity of command with him as patrol leader.

 

Requirement B

What do you do? Do you permit the PA team to patrol in your AO? If so, do you combine this effort into one of your security patrols or keep the patrols separate? If you combine the patrols, what mission and tasks do you assign them? How do you task organize this patrol? Who is the patrol leader: the PAO, one of your Marines, or do you make a different decision?

 

Instructions

Quickly formulate your plans and issue your orders. Provide a brief discussion of the rationale behind your actions. Submit your solutions by email at [email protected] or to the Marine Corps Gazette, TDG 01-18, Box 1775, Quantico, VA 22134. The Gazette will publish solutions in an upcoming issue.

Part II: “Red Death” Patrol

by the Staff, Marine Corps Gazette

Situation

You are the new commanding officer of A Company, 1st Bn, 1st Marines. You have been in command for one week since the relief of the previous company commander following an “unauthorized deadly force incident.” Your predecessor had ordered his Marines to “shoot down” a commercial quad-copter hovering over the company position with automatic weapons. Rounds fired in this engagement killed two Ouaddiyan children, and several more locals in the surrounding farmland were wounded. Your battalion commander relieved the former “Red Death Six” for a loss of confidence in his ability to command and reassigned you from duty as his assistant operations officer.

Since this incident, the battalion FOB (forward operating base) has been periodically hit by sporadic mortar and rocket fire. These indirect fire (IDF) attacks appear to be unobserved with no evident adjustment of fire, and no more than seven rounds per volley. The timing of some attacks corresponded to the muezzin’s calls-to-prayers from several local mosques while others occur at random times—both day and night. To date, only three Marines have been wounded by these attacks. The battalion’s counter-mortar radars have been largely successful in locating the points of origin for these attacks; however, these have uniformly been located in congested residential and commercial areas in the surrounding farmland and on the outskirts of Minna Sultan Usween. As a result, counter-fire has not been authorized.

After these indirect fire attacks began, the intelligence and surveillance efforts of the entire JTF have been brought to bear to identify and locate the anti-government factions conducting the attacks so they can be neutralized and prevent further disruption of the JTF’s mission. Multiple IMINT (imagery intelligence), HUMINT (human intelligence), and COMINT (communications intelligence) sources confirm that teams armed with small arms and mounted in commercial trucks are moving 82mm mortars and 3.5 inch rockets in improvised launchers around the battalion’s perimeter using populated areas as covered and concealed firing positions. Intelligence reports and pattern analysis indicate that the area around the Al Mumeet Mosque on the outskirts of the city northeast of your company’s position has the most frequently used firing positions and may also contain a “workshop” where the improvised rocket launchers are being assembled and stored.

Company A’s mission is to conduct a series of combined combat patrols to establish observation posts in the area of these points of origin in order to neutralize the anti-MUGA forces conducting the mobile indirect fire attacks. You remain responsible for securing the eastern entry point into the battalion FOB.

Your battalion commander’s intent is as follows:

Get out there, establish presence in the area of the Al Mumeet Mosque and the next time a crew attempts an IDF attack, kill or capture them. Locate any workshops or weapons caches and destroy them.

You have decided to personally lead the first patrol made up of your 3d Platoon partnered with a platoon of MUGA Special Forces commandos. The commandos are organized just like U.S. Marine infantry, and 2ndLt Zaar leads this platoon of 40 commandos.

The following attachments and supporting arms are available to you:

• 1 machinegun section (-) (4x M240B 7.62 machineguns).

• 1 assault squad (2x SMAW 83mm rocket launchers).

• 1 joint tactical air controller (JTAC) Team

• 2 interpreters

The commando platoon is equipped with AK-47 rifles, rifle grenades, and is reinforced with an RPK machinegun section (4x RPK 7.62 machineguns)

There is a CAS “stack” of USAF F-15 Strike Eagles with tanker support continuously on station. Response time is approximately 12 minutes from authentication of “troops in contact” (TIC).

The battalion maintains a section (two) U.S. Army Reserve medevac Blackhawk helicopters on five minute alert at the battalion FOB. Response time is less than 10 minutes, and the JTF Level III treatment facility is 45 minutes flight time.

You have designated the four-story building (formerly clerics’ offices, now home to two families of squatters) immediately west of the mosque as the patrol’s objective and you intend to establish a squad-sized OP (observation post) after negotiating with the squatter family elders. The patrol has moved without incident to the outskirts of Minna Sultan Usween.

As the patrol approaches the mosque area from the southwest, a single rifle shot is heard. 2ndLt Dhan, your 3d Platoon Commander who was moving with the lead squad, drops with an “armpit shot”—entry wound through his right shoulder under the body armor. About five seconds later a second shot hits the platoon corpsman, HM3 Smith, under the helmet behind his left ear. He is killed instantly. You now have one “urgent surgical” and one “routine” medevac. Your Marines and the commandos have all taken cover as best they can. No one can see the shooter.

As you task the Platoon Sergeant to set up a landing zone in the fallow field to your southeast for the medevac, both he and your JTAC report that none of the radios or tablet devices are working. The JTAC also reports that blue force tracker is down and your personal commercial GPS receiver and radio is inoperative. Lt Zaar reports that his radios are down as well.

What are your orders?

Requirement

Quickly formulate your plans and issue your orders. Include an overlay sketch and provide a brief discussion of the rationale behind your actions. Submit you solutions by email at [email protected] or to the Marine Corps Gazette, TDG 03-17, Box 1775, Quantico, VA 22134. The Gazette will publish solutions in an upcoming issue.

1. You always have the right to defend yourself, your unit, and other personnel directly supporting JTF operations.

2. The use of force, including deadly force, is authorized to protect the following: yourself, your unit, and friendly forces; Prisoners and detainees; Civilians from crimes that are likely to cause death or serious bodily harm, such as murder or rape; Designated civilians and/or property, such as personnel of the Red Cross/Crescent, UN, and U.S./UN supported organizations.

3. Use only the force necessary to protect yourself and accomplish your mission.

a) Positive identification (PID) is required prior to engagement. [PID is a reasonable certainty that the proposed target is a legitimate military target. If no PID, contact your next higher commander for decision.]

b) Do not engage anyone who has surrendered or is out of battle due to sickness or wounds.

c) Do not target or strike any of the following except in self-defense to protect yourself, your unit, friendly forces, and designated persons or property under your control: civilians, hospitals, mosques, national monuments, and any other historical or cultural sites.

4. Do not fire into civilian-populated areas or buildings unless you have PID of forces using them for military purposes or if necessary for your self-defense. Minimize collateral damage.

5. Do not target local infrastructure (public works, commercial communications facilities, dams), lines of communication (roads, highways, tunnels, bridges, railways) and economic objects (commercial storage facilities, pipelines) unless necessary for self-defense or if ordered by your commander.

6. Do not enter mosques or other religious sites unless you have PID of forces using them for military purposes or if necessary for your self-defense.

7. Treat all civilians and their property with respect and dignity. Do not seize civilian property, including vehicles, unless you have the permission of a company-level commander and you give a receipt to the property’s owner.

8. Detain civilians if they interfere with mission accomplishment or if required for self-defense.