The U. S. Army Future Concept for the Human Dimension

3-5. Conclusion

The cost of failing to establish and maintain an Army founded in strong moral ethical values, aligned with those of the Nation, is so unacceptable that this chapter rises to near primacy in the conveying the importance of studying the human dimension . Yet it is but one of three principal components that make up the human dimension. Much of the foregoing moral component discussion is timeless, well-established treatment of enduring truths about human nature in warfare. What is truly new is the growing complexity of future operations that in turn increases ambiguity confronting the future Soldier with decisions that in the past fell to far more senior and more experienced leaders. The challenges facing future Soldiers outlined in this chapter are just part of the equation leading to a model of holistic fitness essential to meeting tomorrow’s demands. Consider these challenges in context with the physical and cognitive components of the human dimension treated in the next two chapters.

Vignette

Ranger Team Rangoon pulled their boats up in four different spots on the Seingar Kampar River banks and stashed them in the lush underbrush. It was pitch black and deadly still with only the sounds of birds and insects in this remote section in the middle of Sumatra. The air was hot and palpably thick with moisture. Team members moved rapidly up the cart path on the south bank to their designated rally point.
First Lieutenant Sam David wondered if the aircraft that inserted their boats ten miles downstream had alerted any defenders. Nothing showed on his tablet screen but the dots representing the rest of his team, and they were a pleasant and reassuring blue. He adjusted his helmet to be able to read the tablet on the visor while navigating with the infrared image from the integrated helmet mounted cameras. Theirs was a passive mission until 0300 unless they stumbled onto Ibn Ander or any of his forces—a possible windfall given the way Ander moved around.
Ibn Ander was the one-time governor of the Central Province in Sumatra. Now he had proclaimed his former province the Central Caliphate. He’d either co-opted the GOI forces to join his insurgency or drove them out. GOI was too weak to react and now Ibn Ander was calling for an international jihad to support his eventual capture of the rest of Sumatra and—presumably—all of Indonesia. David’s Ranger platoon was on loan to the lead elements of TF Green, the U.S. Army component of the coalition mounted to oust Ibn Ander. The Rangers were tied in with other special operations forces and tasked with covert actions to oversee potential joint heavy lift landing areas, capture Ander’s key leaders, and pave the way for the final forcible entry operation aimed at liberating the captured capital city of Pekanbaru.
A Company, 2^nd Ranger Battalion had its platoons working the landing areas in AO Aerie east of the capital. At 0300 the SEALs would be creating havoc north of the city as a diversion to mask the approach of 1^st Marine Expeditionary Brigade in their V22 Ospreys. If all went as planned the assault would start at nightfall around 1800 that day. Laying low and not being discovered by the fishing boats and local farmers would be fairly easy for David’s platoon as they were in an heavily forested triple canopy copse of jungle on the south edge of AO Aerie. AO Aerie was actually an immense cultivated patchwork of smaller fields with rice, potatoes, wheat, and sugarcane. The huge Condors would discharge an entire FSV battalion that night. They would move directly on the road network and cleared fields to the eastern suburbs of the capital.
David knew the plan. His job was to make sure the planned flight approaches were clear. He had twenty hand-launched Hummingbirds that would map the area to supplement the satellite shots using millimeter wave and optical scans to uncover any active aerial mines or anti-aircraft systems. Any they found they’d either disable or mark for avoidance. The Hummingbirds were small and nearly silent. Time to get them up.

Sergeant First Class Mike Foster, the first platoon sergeant, was David’s ace in the hole. Both had worked together before in David’s first platoon command back in Germany. Ranger leaders normally had to command a line unit of comparable size before taking command in the Ranger Regiment. David and Foster had seen action in Afghanistan. They had brought that experience to A Company, but this was special operations now and not a standard infantry platoon.
“Sergeant Foster, report,” David typed in.
“In position, launching set one now.” Foster replied.
An hour later, all the Hummingbirds had swept the area. Only one showed anything of concern—an emission from a cell phone on a GOI frequency from a small village two kilometers from David’s position. As he analyzed this data, the company and battalion analyses meshed with TF Green’s larger view. It was Ibn Ander himself or at least someone from his inner circle! They could capture or kill him now and put an end to this operation!
The information flow was fast, so fast that someone in Washington had already ordered an immediate engagement. Cruise missiles or smart bombs would obliterate the position in minutes.
“Check fire! Check fire!” Foster broadcast. “Civilian women, children, and men detected sleeping in tents all around the target site.” They would have to take the headquarters out conventionally or just keep an eye on it until the cavalry arrived.
David suggested sending a patrol in closer and company agreed. He picked Foster to lead while he kept the rest of the platoon hidden in overwatch positions. Their piece of AO Aerie was three times the size of what a platoon covered ten years ago. They could surveil so much more and put lethal and nonlethal fires virtually anywhere in their sector. “This is pretty dicey,” David thought to himself. They were hanging out way too far and with far too little force to take on Ibn Ander’s army. Surely the Emir had a nearby protective force.
“Stand off as far as possible,” he told Foster, “and get some more images and scans of those tents. We don’t want to trigger an evacuation of Ander and his henchmen, but, if they start to move, the rules of engagement are clear: take them out.”
“Roger, sir,” Foster adjusted his faceplate. “I just hope we don’t run into any awake farmers like that sea-air-land team (SEAL) in Afghanistan.”
“Yeah, well, you know what to do if you do, right?”
“Try the nonlethal stuff? You know that’s not very reliable, Lieutenant. Is this important enough to not let some innocents compromise our mission?”
“Just use your best judgment, Sergeant. Good luck.”
Foster’s patrol took nearly an hour to traverse the edge of the jungle. They’d remained unexposed, or so they thought. What they didn’t detect were perching sensors linked with fiber optics to Ibn Ander’s security team. By the time the patrol took up hide positions in view of the village it was nearly dawn. Not knowing they’d been detected, Foster made sure the entire patrol got completely camouflaged and settled in to wait and watch.
David thought about his conversation with Foster. Did he mince words on the rules of engagement? Foster’s mention of the SEALs bothered him. The whole special operations force community had hashed that event over thousands of times. “If they’d just killed the shepherds they’d have lived,” the hardcore guys argued. Lord, it was never so simple.
As the sun rose and the fog started to burn off Foster’s patrol saw lots of activity around the tents. Women and children tending fires and other people moving about like they were on a camping trip. Why the noncombatants? Soon the answer came. Mortar’s popped in the midst of the small crowd! Foster could just barely make out the tubes. The whistle and thump came about 45 seconds later right on the wood line! Right where the patrol had set up! Foster heard shouts and a scream. His guys were getting pummeled. All he had to do was fire the surface-to-air weapons to take out the mortarmen, but the women and kids? “Dammit! Pull back!” He shouted, no longer concerned about noise. He couldn’t bring himself to order shooting back in spite of how he’d run it through his head over and over again.
“Launch a pair of Wasps,” he whispered to the team leader. “We’ll get those bastards later!” With tears of anger Foster grabbed his wounded communications specialist and melted into the jungle to the patrol rally point.
This story has multiple messages pertinent to the moral and ethical aspect of the human dimension. Special operations forces such as this Ranger unit frequently confront conflicts between their drive to accomplish the mission and the actualities of the situation. So will conventional forces. This vignette illustrates the critical need for all Soldiers to learn when to pull the trigger and when to relent, often in a crisis where, as Sergeant First Class Foster discovered, a leader needs to decide between Soldiers’ safety, and the mission, or using lethal force on innocent civilians. Certainly, training and discipline are premium qualities of elite forces such as the Rangers, but as Foster remembered the tragic fate of Navy SEAL Team 10 in Afghanistan, even the most highly trained can face daunting dilemmas.