MANEUVER: Fight the Enemy — Not the Terrain

Maneuver is the employment of combined arms forces through movement, in combination with fires and information to achieve positional and informational advantage with respect to the adversary to accomplish the mission; or according to U. S. Army Field Manual (FM) 3-0, Operations, “the means by which commanders concentrate combat power to achieve surprise, shock, momentum, and dominance.”1 This article shares the experiences of the troopers from Grim and Fox Troops, Sabre Squadron, 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment, Iraq. These troops are equipped with nine M1A2SEPv2 tanks, thirteen M3A3 Bradley fighting vehicles, one Bradley fire support team (FIST) vehicle, two M1064 120mm mortar carriers, and maintenance and recovery tracked vehicles. Once in theater, we were equipped with M1114 and mine-resistant, ambush-protected (MRAP) wheeled vehicles. Without mobility support, these platforms cannot maneuver freely in difficult terrain. The current operating environment in Iraq offers a diverse array of challenges in terms of physical and human terrain. The physical terrain includes open deserts, dense palm groves, large crowded cities, small villages, high power lines, jerry-rigged power lines, canals, rivers, plowed fields, lakes, hills, mountains, bridges, narrow crossings points over canals, huge wadi systems, paved roads, dirt roads, and thousands of culverts. This is not an all-inclusive list by any means — we cannot forget about ancient ruins, rubble, unmarked minefields, etc. Important Maneuver Factors: The Terrain, Population, and Canals During training, most of us experience various types of terrain. The majority encountered by the mounted force includes open fields and deserts, hills, ridge lines, and perhaps a few narrow passes. We tend to avoid close/restricted terrain as it limits the stand-off capabilities of our weapons systems and makes us more vulnerable to dismounted adversaries. Most installations have military operations on urban terrain (MOUT) facilities of varying size and configuration that enable units to exercise some training in close urban terrain. In a counterinsurgency operation, the center of gravity tends to be the population — secure the population then isolate the insurgents and deny them access/safe haven among the local populace. As in most parts of the world, the majority of the population of Iraq resides in urban areas. In this instance, the area of operations for this unit included the city of Balad Ruz with a population of about 200,000. The town of Balad Ruz was relatively secure due to the robust presence of Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), which conducted daily patrols and manned dozens of checkpoints. The area south of town had dozens of small- to medium-sized villages, which had little or no U. S. forces or ISF presence or interaction. In the area south of Balad Ruz lies what was once a fertile farming region. Because of the antiquated nature of irrigation in Iraq, this area has an intricate lattice of hundreds of interconnecting minor and major canals. These range from small branch canals that are easily stepped over to massive canals that are many meters deep and wide. This area has very few improved roads. Really, there is only one paved road and it is in poor condition with hundreds of potholes and old improvised explosive device (IED) craters. The majority of the roads are dirt, with little to no improvements. Most of these roads intersect or cross canals at primitive crossing points, making excellent choke points almost always laden with mines or IEDs. To make matters more difficult, most of these canals have berms that run along both sides, ranging in height from 1 to 3 meters. Visibility is further obstructed by the growth of reeds in these canals that often eclipse the height of the berms by 1 to 2 meters. Combined, these factors cause the canals to be major obstacles for mounted movement and afford the enemy excellent covered and concealed avenues of approach. Without deliberate mobility improvement operations, using bulldozers and bucket loaders, or ‘shovels’ as the Iraqis refer to them, crossing with vehicles is all but impossible. We were first introduced to this method by an Iraqi Army battalion with which we conducted combined clearance operations in another district involving a similar canal network. When engineer assets are brought in to create crossing points and enable mounted maneuver, two factors emerge. First, these crossing points take time to construct to support the weight of our armored and uparmored vehicles. Using this method, you lose the element of surprise and allow the enemy to flee the area and/or make preparations for our arrival. Incorporating intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) assets (unmanned aerial vehicle or rotary wing aircraft) can mitigate some of the risks associated, but not all. The second factor is securing the crossing point. Due to the dispersed nature of the insurgents and local sympathizers in the area, their dispersion of tactical caches, and the ability to use the canals as covered and concealed routes, the insurgents proved able to reseed the crossing points once coalition and Iraqi forces had moved on. Even with friendly forces literally parked on the crossing point, insurgents could get within meters of the position due to the concealment offered by the canals. Securing the crossing point requires planning, analysis, and decisionmaking prior to executing amounted operation — do we/can we secure all of the crossing points or do we cut another route? To retain freedom of maneuver using a cut route, each crossing point has to be secured. The insurgents will find the one and only vulnerable crossing point and use it to emplace an IED. Securing each crossing point consumes a large portion of available combat power. Another option is to cut an exit route out of the objective area. Relying on a second exit route temporarily isolated our maneuver element and added risk for resupply and casualty evacuation operations; it also drastically slowed the exfiltration of friendly forces once the actions on the objective were complete. To clear these canals, the reeds and vegetation were removed. We used numerous field expedient methods to burn out the canals (M203 flares, hand flares, AWT flares, and good ol’ gasoline) to expose enemy caches and hiding places and reduce concealment for dismounted enemy approach. This is a time-consuming effort because many of the canals hold just enough water in the bottom to douse the flames before the canals completely burn out. It is important to note that using this method often reveals caches when the munitions begin to cook off, so keep your distance! Once the canal was completely burned out, U. S. and Iraqi security forces would walk the canals looking for caches or weapons. This method was time consuming and deliberate, but yielded results. We discovered and eroded insurgent resources during every canal-clearing operation. Based on location and composition of these resources, we confirmed that insurgents in this area changed their methods and no longer used massive caches to store their resources, which was based on the success of previous units operating in the area and their ability to locate and reduce large caches. The enemy had been burned out multiple times when large stockpiles of materiel were located and destroyed, and thus adapted using the difficulty of the terrain and dispersion to reduce their risk of losing their weapons and ordnance. They were no longer putting all of their eggs in one basket. It was obvious that the insurgents were well dispersed, which allowed them access to caches, and enabled them to move to the point of attack without transporting their weapons, thus reducing the risk of attracting attention and increasing their speed of movement. Dismounted Elements We often employed dismounted elements to clear ahead and on the flanks of amounted column. Due to the slow and deliberate nature of required mobility improvements to breach the canals and build crossing points, the dismounted elements were able to quickly outpace the mounted elements despite moving with full combat gear over broken, sun-hardened plowed fields in the heat of the Iraqi summer day. To assist maintaining some momentum, we developed a few methods. Mounted elements would traverse the large open fields between canals to conduct mounted reconnaissance to locate possible bunkers or caches, provide water resupply to the dismounted elements to reduce their load, and provide overwatch. Mounted elements were required to secure crossing points, as well as provide overwatch at the “Due to the dispersed nature of the insurgents and local sympathizers in the area, their dispersion of tactical caches, and the ability to use the canals as covered and concealed routes, the insurgents proved able to reseed the crossing points once coalition and Iraqi forces had moved on. Even with friendly forces literally parked on the crossing point, insurgents could get within meters of the position due to the concealment offered by the canals.” “The use of ATVs augmented the dismounted force by reducing the amount of water and other supplies the troops had to carry. Troopers mounted on the ATVs could also clear large open areas more quickly than dismounted troopers.” 36 — breach side for the engineers, which made taxi service minimal. Depending on the distance and range of dismounted communications, the mounted elements also assisted in relaying communications between the mounted column and the dismounted elements. Air Insertion Air insertion was used extensively, especially when speed and surprise were required, during operations such as surrounding and isolating an objective and preventing egress of suspected insurgents. There were two drawbacks to this method: the lack of available aircraft and extraction. Rarely, was there enough aircraft to accommodate every soldier needed on every mission. Based on long lead times to obtain high-demand air support, missions had to be planned in advance. Extraction was also a huge disadvantage; either plan a not later than (NLT) end of mission time, which is often difficult to determine based on the time it takes to do thorough search and sensitive site exploitation (SSE), or have a ground extraction plan. If you plan to insert by air and remain in the objective area, or march to another area, you must also consider how you will resupply. The preferred method was air resupply because creating a secure ground line of communications (LOC) could be time consuming, even if you do not encounter any IEDs or other enemy resistance. Two major considerations in using air resupply include the availability of aircraft and the weather forecast. During one operation, we inserted an Iraqi Army battalion and our troop, minus one platoon (about 375 combined U. S. and Iraqi Army soldiers) to isolate a large village suspected of harboring insurgents, while isolating the larger objective area to deny enemy egress. There was no open ground resupply LOC — opening and securing a LOC took 48 hours due to multiple IED strikes, primitive road networks, and limited availability of engineer assets. Fortunately, weather permitted air resupply and evacuation of detainees until the ground LOC was open. One of our sister troops incorporated all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) into its maneuver plan during a clearance operation in which troopers were inserted by air. The use of ATVs augmented the dismounted force by reducing the amount of water and other supplies the troops had to carry. Troopers mounted on the ATVs could also clear large open areas more quickly than dismounted troopers. This allowed dismounted troopers to focus on structures and canals similar to the discussion above using the mounted column. To achieve surprise, shock, momentum, and dominance, troopers had to rapidly expand their skill sets, revise their procedures, and demonstrate agility. These troopers conducted six major air insertion operations, during the day and at night. One of these air insertion operations was the largest during OIF 07-09, even though there was no prior training in garrison. These troopers conducted scores of dismounted patrols in urban areas to engage the population, mentor the ISF, and bring a sense of security to the people. They conducted dismounted clearance operations to clear hundreds of kilometers of farm land, canals, and villages to erode resources, kill or capture insurgents, and assist ISF in establishing security in areas where it did not exist. When mounted forces think of maneuver, they tend to fixate on getting their platforms to the fight and maximizing their capabilities, which was not feasible or effective in this case. The 3d Armored Cavalry began its service to the Nation as a “regiment of mounted riflemen,” which was an idea reinforced during the rotation as we used any and every means available to maneuver our troopers to the fight. Capitalizing on an organization of combined arms at the lowest level coupled with adaptability and a solid foundation in basic soldier skills, allowed us to fight the enemy — not the terrain. Mounted leaders preparing formations for combat are encouraged to consider this case. Notes 1Headquarters, Department of the Army, U. S. Army Field Manual 3-0, Operations, U. S. Government Printing Office (GPO), Washington, DC, February 2008. Captain Robert Green is currently a member of the concept writing team, Joint and Army Concept Development, Army Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC), Fort Monroe, VA. He received a B. A. from the University of Minnesota. His military education includes the Armor Captain Career Course, Scout Leader Course, and Armor Officer Basic Course. He has served in various command and staff positions, to include commander, G Troop, Sabre Squadron, 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment (ACR), Fort Hood and Iraq; commander, Headquarters and Headquarters Troop, Sabre Squadron, 3d ACR, Fort Hood; regimental plans officer, 3d ACR, Fort Hood; and scout platoon leader, 1st Platoon, G Troop, 3d ACR, Fort Carson and Iraq. First Sergeant James Adcock is currently the first sergeant, Headquarters and Headquarters Troop, Sabre Squadron, 3d ACR, Fort Hood. His military education includes Advanced Noncommissioned Officer (NCO) Course, Basic NCO Course; Scout Leader Course; and Bradley Master Gunner Course. He has served in various positions, to include first sergeant, G Troop, Sabre Squadron, 3d ACR, Iraq; S2 NCOIC, Sabre Squadron, 3d ACR, Iraq; observer controller trainer, 85th Division (Training Support), Fort Knox, KY; and platoon sergeant, B Troop, 1st Squadron, 7th U. S. Cavalry, Fort Hood. “When mounted forces think of maneuver, they tend to fixate on getting their platforms to the fight and maximizing their capabilities, which was not feasible or effective in this case. The 3d Armored Cavalry began its service to the Nation as a ‘regiment of mounted riflemen,’ which was an idea reinforced during the rotation as we used any and every means available to maneuver our troopers to the fight.” — 37