Combat Analytics Blog

December 27

Effective Assessments a Way to Counter Insurgency Success

In a recent article in the Baltimore Sun, "Force alone not way to win" (www.baltimoresun.com/news/world/bal-te.b ragg26dec26,0,5278496.story), describes the actions and activities of US Army Special Forces Teams and Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT) to begin to address population concerns as a larger strategy to combat the growing insurgency in Afghanistan.

A central quote in the article describes the absolute requirement for effective assessments to gauge counter insurgency success"

"A critical piece of this new approach is to set goals and carefully measure results.

Special Forces soldiers monitoring the school-police conflict, for instance, might judge their success by counting the number of violent incidents, attendance by local Afghans at village meetings or the number of tips about insurgents received from local villagers.

Derleth teaches soldiers and aid officials to first meet with villagers to ask some basic questions. Has the village population changed in the past year (to determine changes in security)? What are your greatest problems? Who do you trust to resolve them? What should be done first?

"If you go into a place and ask, 'Would you like a school?' Well heck - sure! Everybody wants a school," Derleth told a group of soldiers. "You want to know what their priorities are."

Ask questions, take action and measure the results. Adjust, act and measure again."

However, US Military forces often lack the training on effective data and survey driven assessment processes. Often times, US soldiers, NATO forces, and PRT teams can effectively identify key counter insurgency success indicators that lead to operational success. However, when it comes to building the structure of a successful assessment scorecard, they often lack the training. Assessment skills such as: data definition and structure, building effective data collection plans, and designing a comprehensive data driven scorecared that reflects the unit's counter insurgency mission are all key skills that are often untaught. Finally, data driven metrics will only get a unit so far. That is why using a survey methodology for key friendly force personnel to gauge and track their opinions over time is an additional key measure. True counter insurgency mission effectiveness is driven by both key data indicators and key leader opinion.

Combat Analytics is a process that over six separate divisional elements from Special Forces Units to US Army Units, and the US Marine Corps have used for OIF and OEF rotations.

Chad Storlie, Founder

Combat Analytics

WWW.COMBATANALYTICS.NET

4:28 AM GMT | Read comments(0)

Combat Analytics

A Comprehensive System and Methodology to Create Specific, Unified, and Easy to Implement Mission Assessment Tools That Improve Counter Insurgency Effectiveness