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Understanding Populations is Key to Middle East Success
By Jerome W. Mapp, DISA Corporate Communications

Army LTG Francis H. Kearney III, deputy commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, is a seasoned special forces leader who knows that it takes more than boots on the ground today to defeat terrorism abroad. During his plenary session presentation, Kearney challenged the audience of military, government, and industry leaders to think beyond yesteryear's battlefield and to instead focus on developing technology that gives coalition forces an edge in the global fight against terrorism.

Prior to assuming his current position, Kearney led special operations forces within the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility. His firsthand knowledge of Iraq, Afghanistan, and other areas of the Middle East provided a unique perspective into the needs of special operations warriors as they wage an unconventional war against an equally unconventional enemy.

"There clearly is a challenge today with irregular warfare in finding the enemy inside the crowds and in population centers, given the networks in which they operate," Kearney said.

Kearney believes that the evolution of warfare from kinetic conventional warfare designed to propel nation states to do the will of the international community to irregular warfare, which has been defined by the Pentagon as the "fight for relevant populations inside of nations to support their government," has created a different need for information technology for U.S. forces operating abroad.

"That [evolution] creates a completely different information requirement than it did for land warfare, air warfare, and surface warfare, where we were terrain-focused and enemy-focused with the idea of destroying the army, navy, and air force of some nation state and imposing our will upon that government," Kearney said. "Today we find ourselves competing with populations."

"Intelligence-preparation on the battlefield has changed. It's about knowing the population. Human terrain is where we're really focused today," Kearney said.

Kearney said that exposing the population data in a certain region is key to understanding the motives of individuals in that region. Calling it data exposure, a term he credited to Marine Corps Gen James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former commander of the U.S. Strategic Command. Kearney said believes that data exposure provides U.S. forces in the Middle East with the advantage of understanding the targeted population in a given region.

"One of his [Cartwright's] key messages is how do we get at the data that's out there? What do we want from it? As a special [forces] operator, what I want from it is to be able to predict the behavior of humans as the core of the organizations or the networks that we're fighting out there," Kearney said.

Kearney described how his office in Baghdad was a mass of wires and variant computer screens needed to converse with U.S. and coalition forces operating in the region and to reveal information on the enemy. He then challenged the industry leaders in the audience to develop the technology that simplifies how he receives information from and sends information to the approximately 8,000 special forces operatives scattered throughout Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We need portable communications for the commanders to move anywhere on the battlefield and [to be able to] sit down and command and control. That's a big challenge," Kearney said. "I believe that many of you in industry believe that we can do that. One of my messages to you is [to] find a way for me to command and control from anywhere."

He stressed the need to develop a more permanent communications infrastructure in the region. We need to think in terms of a permanent, rather than a temporary, infrastructure, because "we wind up staying longer than expected."

Kearney believes that industry can be instrumental in providing the necessary secure communications links that will get information quickly into a region of Iraq or Afghanistan, so that U.S. and coalition forces can better communicate with each other.

In closing, he said, "This is a personal business for me. Since 9-11, I've spent all but 14 months in this business. My son serves in Iraq, and I lost a nephew in Afghanistan. We have walked many, many miles and made great progress, but we have a lot further to go."

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