US MIL lacking Sys admin info readily available.

US MIL lacking SysAdmin info readily available.

Seminal ontological paradigm. G

Genius Military leaders, heads up, working towards

integrating cultural info sources towards defeating the Taliban.

To win the hearts and minds US needs to expand the focus.

Rather than focus exclusively on killing the enemy, expand the focus to how

the enemy fits into the cultural net.

And how to turn the cultural net against the Terrorist and actions to support

that action.

Excerpts from:

Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan.

By Major General Michael T. Flynn, USA

Captain Matt Pottinger, USMC

Paul D. Batchelor, DIA

Lacking sufficient numbers of analysts and guidance from commanders, battalion S-2 shops rarely gather, process, and write up quality assessments on countless items, such as: census data and patrol debriefs; minutes from shuras with local farmers and tribal leaders; after-action reports from civil affairs officers and Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs); polling data and atmospherics reports from psychological operations and female engagement teams; and translated summaries of radio broadcasts that influence local farmers, not to mention the field observations of Afghan soldiers, United Nations officials, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). This vast and underappreciated body of information, almost all of which is unclassified, admittedly offers few clues about where to find insurgents, but it does provide elements of even greater strategic importance – a map for leveraging popular support and marginalizing the insurgency itself.

Some battalion S-2 officers say they acquire more information that is helpful by reading U.S. newspapers than through reviewing regional command intelligence summaries.

The second inescapable truth asserts that merely killing insurgents usually serves to multiply enemies rather than subtract them. This counterintuitive dynamic is common in many guerrilla conflicts and is especially relevant in the revenge-prone Pashtun communities whose cooperation military forces seek to earn and maintain. The Soviets experienced this reality in the 1980s, when despite killing hundreds of thousands of Afghans, they faced a larger insurgency near the end of the war than they did at the beginning.

Given these two lessons, we must ask why, out of the hundreds of intel analysts working in brigade-level and regional command-level headquarters, only a miniscule fraction study governance, development, and local populations – all topics that must be understood in order to prevail. “Why the Intel Fusion Center can’t give me data about the population is beyond me,” remarked the operations officer of one U.S. task force, echoing a common complaint: “I don’t want to say we’re clueless, but we are. We’re no more than fingernail deep in our understanding of the environment.”

Great analysis:

read full report here:

http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/AfghanIntel_Flynn_Jan2010_code507_voices.pdf

The piece indicates they are lacking the Sys admin info to be successful.

I HOPE THIS WORK GET WIDE DISTRIBUTION INSIDE THE BELTWAY.

Why this needs fast implementation. “State of the Insurgency: Trends, Intentions and Objectives” “The Afghan insurgency can sustain itself indefinitely,” 

By

MG Michael Flynn

Director of Intelligence

International Security Assistance Force, Afghanistan

U.S. Forces, Afghanistan

AS OF:  22 DEC, 2009

GERALD

Anthropologist

DEF:
System Administrators (SysAdmin) The “second half” blended force that wages the peace after the Leviathan force has successfully waged war. Therefore, it is a force optimized for such categories of operations as “stability and support operations” (SASO), postconflict stabilization and reconstruction operations, “humanitarian assistance/disaster relief” (HA/DR), and any and all operations associated with low-intensity conflict (LIC), counterinsurgency operations (COIN), and small-scale crisis response. Beyond such military-intensive activities, the SysAdmin force likewise provides civil security with its police component, as well as civilian personnel with expertise in rebuilding networks, infrastructure, and social and political institutions. While the core security and logistical capabilities are derived from uniformed military components, the SysAdmin force is fundamentally envisioned as a standing capacity for interagency (i.e., among various U.S. federal agencies) and international collaboration in nation-building, meaning that both the SysAdmin force and function end up being more civilian than uniform in composition, more government-wide than just Defense Department, more rest-of-the-world than just the United States, and more private-sector-invested than public-sector-funded.
SOURCE: http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/glossary.htm


.