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

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Pekanbaru, Sultan Sayref Qasim II International Airport, Sumatra, Indonesia, April 2020
The small delegation from the UN moved slowly through the crowd of foreigners struggling to get on a flight out of Sumatra. They had come at the invitation of Ibn Ander, self-proclaimed Caliph of the recently declared Holy Islamic Anderian Caliphate. Ander and his staff wanted to show the delegates that the Caliphate was a noble and benign regime. In four carefully orchestrated days of visits to model neighborhoods in Dumai, Padang, and Pekanbaru, the nine men and four women in the delegation were almost ready to buy Ander’s line. They’d seen nothing but tidy streets with busy shops and bustling crowds. Their keepers, they knew, were steering them away from the inevitable slums they had expected, but the schools and hospitals they had seen were clean and functional. They remarked among themselves that it looked like Singapore in many ways. Pekanbaru’s reputation as the cleanest city in Indonesia was no exaggeration.

Any charade ended yesterday when word of a Coalition force moving by air and sea and close enough to land reached the capital. Armed Anderian Soldiers appeared everywhere along with their curious mix of Russian, Chinese and French combat vehicles. The anticipated invasion set off a mad scramble to escape the Central Province of Sumatra. All the roads were jammed as were the ports, ferry stations, and airports. Pekanbaru International was a madhouse. After eighteen months of phony war with Ander manipulating a band of pirates plying the Strait of Malacca, the GOI had convinced the Coalition to act.
American, British, Australian, and New Zealand ships were reported to be less than a day’s steaming from the southwest side of Sumatra. Every indication was that the Coalition would attack to seize Padang and then strike across the mountains toward Pekanbaru. Anderian defenses were ready. They would inflict devastating destruction on any Coalition attempt to land near Padang. Whatever made it ashore would then face a withering hail of missiles, armed Unmanned Aerial Systems and Anderian forces’ fires as they withdrew into the thick jungles and up the slopes of the western ridge mountains rising to over 12,000 feet.
Ibn Ander knew he couldn’t defeat a determined Coalition offensive, but he thought he could force a negotiated peace that left him in charge of the Caliphate. It had happened elsewhere when the westerners lost the stomach for casualties and drawn out conflict. They called it asymmetric warfare. He would fight the information war and play the economic cards he’d drawn all the while giving them as much asymmetry as he could manage. That was why he was letting the UN delegation get out. Surely, they would go back and tell the world how different the Caliphate was from the rest of corruption-ridden Indonesia.
“These Infidels never learn,” Ibn Ander said to his Chief of Staff of the Armed Islamic Warriors. “All we need to do is control the information operations and kill their precious men and women until they cave under the pressure of public polls. How comforting, General Dumai, don’t you agree?”
“Holy and Honorable Caliph,” the former GOI general replied, “I’m afraid I don’t share your disdain for the Coalition’s might or their failing memories. Let me reinforce the garrisons on the Strait of Malacca just in case. These Coalition officers, especially the Americans, won’t be fooling around, but you already know that Ibn,” Dumai said, carefully using his leader’s first name as he’d been instructed.
“And that’s the key, Dumai! Draw them in. Create a quagmire. Isn’t that one of their favorite descriptions for their military fiascos? With all their sophisticated equipment, our mountains and jungles will swallow them while your warriors pick away at them. It’s all as we’ve planned, my friend. Just another page from Imam Osama, God be good to his soul. We must be patient.”
General Dumai was not at all naïve. He’d risen in the Indonesian Army attending British and American staff and war colleges. He knew he couldn’t think like the Brits or Americans, but he knew how they thought. While he didn’t dare oppose Ibn Ander, he didn’t relish facing the western forces closing on Sumatra. He burned his bridges when he joined Ander. Maybe the former governor was right. Maybe their relatively small force could stall the Coalition. He’d certainly laid the groundwork to make landing at Padang more costly than the beaches at Normandy. His fleet of gunboats would swarm on the Seabase, as the Americans called their assemblage of ships, sink several large warships and channel the others into the minefields. What the mines didn’t get, the new Silkworm VII antiship missiles would take care of. He took great pride in his air defense array. If the coalition wanted to practice their Ship to Objective Maneuver doctrine with their V22’s and CH-53XMs, his automated and man-portable integrated defense would take out a bunch of those vaunted machines and their precious cargo. He remembered the U.S. Army’s operational maneuver from strategic distances concept, but discounted their ability to execute this ambitious idea of launching an attack from fort to fight. Just let them try to follow their own concepts. Maybe his forces could just pull this off, he silently prayed.
The loudspeaker announcements resounded throughout the Pekanbaru terminal throwing the already chaotic mass of passenger aspirants into a maelstrom of bodies pushing to get to the outside doors and out of the terminal. The UN group tried to stay together under Tony Dodson’s control. Dodson was the Chief of Delegation. A former Marine (still a Marine if you asked him), Dodson could hardly believe what he heard. They’d been in the terminal all afternoon. Nightfall was minutes away and now the Anderian’s were announcing an infidel airborne assault on the airport! Dodson thought, “they’re coming to evacuate the noncombatants.”
The first stick of nearly 50 paratroopers landed precisely positioned around the control tower, their global positioning system guided chutes collapsing as they snapped off the harnesses and sped to the tower stairs. Another platoon of the 3^rd Infantry BCT assault force secured the jet fuel tank farm. Other platoons seized entry points around the perimeter of the airfield while a whole company landed between the runways and taxiways with the mission of securing and clearing the runways. An Air Force combat control team that parachuted in with the first wave ordered taxiing jumbo jets to return to the terminal. Other brigade units reinforced the initial terminal assault force as they took out Anderian security teams with their directed energy weapons. It was absolutely crazy in the terminal, but so far, the only injured civilians were those trampled by the crowd.
In less than two hours, the 3^rd BCT owned the airport. Minutes later, the first elements of a BCT airlanded in C-17s discharging a combined arms battalion of FSVs.
Ibn Ander screamed at General Dumai whose ashen features reflected his utter shock at the capture of the international airport. All communications with his subordinates were severed except for the intricate network of messengers they’d established to relay commands and reports. All reports were universally horrible. Somehow, coalition forces had jumped over his defenses, neutralized his anti-aircraft array, and landed practically on top of the capital. He expected to hear the shot that would end it all at any moment.
What Dumai and Ibn Ander didn’t know was that coalition forces had seized the Port of Dumai, the general’s home city, and that a U.S. Marine task force (TF) reinforced with an Army Stryker Brigade was leap-frogging toward Pekanbaru unopposed. They also didn’t know that the British led amphibious force had cut Padang off from the north and south without having to fight through Anderian defenses. Meanwhile, a second BCT rushed toward the capital from the southwest after insertion by Condor joint heavy lift aircraft. By dawn they would be in position south of Pekanbaru ready to begin a coordinated assault on the city with the Marine TF from the north.
This fictional account presents a very plausible picture of what might occur in future hotspots like Indonesia, an island nation with the largest Muslim population in the world. Future adversaries, inspired by earlier successes in failing or failed states, may well arise like Ibn Ander, filling voids and creating states within states with many of the modern trappings illicit funding can buy. In this story, the coalition reacts at the request of the legitimate GOI with a lightning fast joint forcible entry operation that rapidly overwhelms the Anderians. It demonstrates an aspect of full spectrum capabilities of the future joint force and the Army operational and functional concepts for 2015 to 2024. It also serves to validate the capabilities those concepts call for to meet the challenges of the future OE.