Story by Staff Sgt. Joseph Truckley, 95th CA Brigade.

Civil Affairs Soldiers with the 92nd Civil Affairs Battalion, Special Operations, Airborne, conducted a cultural immersion exercise in Chicago, Ill. May 17-23.

The 92nd Civil Affairs Battalion is regionally aligned with Europe and the immersion with the ethnic Lithuanian population, approximately 100,000 in the Chicago metro area, provides an insight prior to deploying forward to support their respective mission.

“It is rare that you can work alongside your partner nations and learn from them prior to being deployed,” said the team’s leader. “This was a great experience being able to learn about the rich history and culture of Lithuanua.”

This exercise allowed the Civil Affairs team to interact with the Consulate General of Lithuania located in downtown Chicago and speak with the consulate’s primary diplomat to learn more about the country’s current state. The Consulate General, Mantvydas Bekesius, found the meeting beneficial to both parties, “learning and working together is a two-way street, the exchange of experience, no matter the nationality, is definitely beneficial for not only the U.S. military, but Lithuania itself.”

The outlying areas surrounding the city provided an opportunity to interact with the Lithuanian diaspora community who have been settled in Northeastern Illinois since the early 20th century; Chicago having the largest population of Lithuanians of any municipality outside of Lithuania itself. This included a tour of the Lithuanian World Center in Lamont, Ill. that hosts 40 Lithuanian organizations and provides a cultural and linguistic education to the area as well as the Belzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture in Chicago that has been serving their community for over 50 years.

Training opportunities like this is what separates Special Operations Force Civil Affairs from other conventional units, said the team’s medical sergeant. “The cultural diversity within the city of Chicago provides a great opportunity for the team to conduct cultural immersion training prior to deploying as well as conducting this mission training which provides us the opportunity to speak to real people instead of practicing with role players with a script. We are able to develop relationships that will help us down the line during our deployment.”

Instead of training solely on military installations, we are able to not only conduct our necessary training but also have the ability to see the city of Chicago and experience everything the city has to offer that I would not have had the opportunity to do so in most conventional units, the sergeant added.

SOF Civil Affairs teams can find themselves stretched far across the country while validating and preparing for onward deployments across the globe. Teams find themselves in cities such as Miami, Washington D.C., Nashville, El Paso and even Flagstaff, AZ to name a few. The interaction with local leaders allows them to get a better understanding of how these cities operate and how to adopt the best practices to carry onward keeps the Civil Affairs teams ready to engage on a global level no matter the environment.

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Photo: Soldiers from the 92nd Civil Affairs Battalion, 95th Civil Affairs Brigade, Special Operations, Airborne, meet with the Consul General of Lithuania, Mantvydas Bekesius in Chicago, May 18, 2021. Photo by Staff Sgt. Joseph Truckley, 95th CAB (SO) (Abn).

Original Story. This story by Staff Sgt. Joseph Truckley of the 95th Civil Affairs Brigade (Special Operations) (Airborne) was originally published on May 21, 2021 by the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service. DVIDS media is in the public domain.

By Lisa Litchfield, USACAPOC, Feb 11, 2021.

Maybe this has happened to you. You’ve been friendly with the local farmer near your basecamp, exchanging waves and occasional greetings, when suddenly one morning, without warning, he is unexplainably hostile and his friendly greetings have digressed into exchanges of gunfire.

Participants in the Agricultural Development for Armed Forces Pre-Deployment Training (ADAPT) program know what went wrong.

“The program really came into its own in Afghanistan,” explained Col. Bradford “Brad” Hughes, who is the Functional Specialty Team (FxSP) Chief for the 351st Civil Affairs Command (CACOM)
out of Mountain View, California.

“During the training we did in January we had a guest speaker, retired two-star, Maj. Gen. Darren Owens, from the Texas National Guard,” said Hughes. “He’s considered kind of the architect of the ADTs, agriculture development teams … with respect to Afghanistan, I want to say this went on for about 10 years while things were pretty active there.”

The message of ADAPT is to provide fundamental training in basic agricultural systems in regions where are troops are going to deploy or mobilize, whether it be for humanitarian aid, or for long term conflict operations. The goal of the program is to ensure Soldiers have a base understanding of the situation before they leave, some awareness of the landscape and its relationship to food insecurity and stability operations while they are down range, and also some very basic intervention techniques they can use, and have continued to use, to build trust with the local population. This allows them to affect a small amount of incremental change during their mission.

One of the goals of the January familiarization training was to expose the entire FxSP to the concepts of food security, and ensure each team member had at least some exposure to information about the influence of agriculture on U.S. missions, both abroad and at home.

The 351st CACOM conducted the ADAPT familiarization for personnel across the Civil Affairs and Security Cooperation ecosystems, including personnel from U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, U.S. Army Pacific, the 9th Mission Support Command and it’s 322nd Civil Affairs Brigade, and units under the U.S. Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command (Airborne) footprint, including the 350th CACOM, the 351st CACOM the 352nd CACOM, and the 353rd CACOM.

Training focused on quick impact, practical, agriculture and food security intervention techniques in pre/post disaster scenarios, and in under-governed regions. Keynote speaker, Maj. Gen. (R) Darren Owens discussed lessons learned and battlefield effects from the Agribusiness Development Team (ADT) mission and Afghanistan, while Dr. Bill Erysian and Mr. Paul Sommers (ADAPT Program Leads) reviewed triggers for food systems insecurity, framing their insights towards Theater Security Cooperation goals within the USINDOPACOM area of responsibility (AOR).

The FxSPs are a way to leverage our “soft power.” A grouping of highly educated experts with specialized career experience and unique skill sets, the teams are brought together to gain influence through human interactions. The FxSPs currently have command and control over the 38G area of concentration. The holders of the 38G MOS are Military Government Specialists and they have a subset of an additional 18 individual skill identifiers where the real expertise lies.

Amongst those specialties lies the 6U skill identifier: Agriculture, business and food individuals. The ADAPT program is designed to give everyone a baseline exposure to what these 6U Soldiers specialize in, and the January training was part of that exposure.

Hughes considers the January ADAPT seminar to function as a sort of preview for Soldiers.

“The familiarization was just a teaser. The full-blown program is 3-5 days and they teach you enough where you can intelligently enter a conversation.” Hughes went on to add that although the team members obviously don’t know as much as the instructors, a key benefit to the training is having that network of people who are available for you to call on in any given situation.

While the training you get through the ADAPT program may not cover every type of agriculture you may encounter, it gives a base understanding of issues and solutions and allows you the capability to reach back to Fresno State and as part of the institutional alignment to provide that reach back support.

Hughes pointed out that, as Americans, and especially Servicemembers, we have sort of a “fix-it” mentality where we want to go in and put something in, make it work, apply the band aid to the situation. With ADAPT, this isn’t the way to sustainability.

“Culturally with some of these nations, things take time to evolve… technology isn’t always the answer,” explained Hughes. “I think what we would leave behind, if we are able to really be culturally attuned and assist, is that reach back. In Civil Affairs it’s all about relationships. Hopefully, at the end of the day, when we leave… these nations know who to call if there’s an issue.”

Building that bridge, establishing that connection is the legacy that these functional specialty teams leave behind in the areas that they are assigned to.

“This is a good program,” enthuses Hughes. “It supports institutional alignment, support geo-strategic reach back and supports the efforts of the Strategic Initiatives Group (SIG) and everything that USACAPOC is wanting to do with the 38G program.”

ADAPT instructors are a group of 15 core personnel who together represent 75 countries of experience. The curriculum, made up of 20% classroom lecture and 80% field work, can be taught in three- or five-day blocks, and can utilize partial or full VTC remote learning. Although useful for all Soldiers deploying, the program was specifically designed with Civil Affairs and the FxSP mission in mind.

Because the ADAPT team has such a broad knowledge base with expertise across all AORs and agro-climatic environments, focusing on the specific AOR that the teams are preparing to assist is an easy task. Actual training during the course is focused on building situational awareness of the assigned region. That base knowledge of the relationship between agriculture, food insecurity, and instability in a given theater of operation greatly enhances the ability to engage and built trust in our partner nations.

The SIG is working hard to establish relationships for each one of the 18 special skills, aligning them with academia, with a university or with an organization like the Smithsonian or the Federal Aviation Administration, whichever relates to that ASI. For food security, or agriculture, business and food, that institutional alignment is with Fresno State in California. Bill Erysian, Ph.D., is one of the key instructors for the ADAPT program and brings with him a wealth of experience and knowledge.

Erysian recalls the roots of the ADAPT program going back to approximately 2010 when he and a group of colleagues, who had spent a considerable amount of time overseas working in various agricultural development and rural reform projects, realized that there were just a lot of places they couldn’t get to because of conflict.

Tired of being shot at, and having gained exposure to the Civil Affairs mission through a working relationship with a visiting Marine Corps officer on a goodwill mission to the Fresno area, Erysian identified a gap in pre-deployment education.

Erysian and company developed a program, endorsed by the DoD, that allowed them to engage in training various Soldiers prior to their departure and deployment to different parts of Afghanistan.

The message of ADAPT is to provide fundamental training in basic agricultural systems in regions where are troops are going to deploy. The goal is to make sure they have a base understanding of the situation before they leave, some awareness of the landscape and its relationship to food insecurity and stability operations while they are down range, and also some very basic intervention techniques which they can use, and have continued to use, to build trust in the local population. This allows them to affect incremental change during their mission.

Once the drawdown of forces in Afghanistan began, the program made a switch to focus on the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) region which aligned geographically due to the institution being on the West Coast.

With most of the instructors for the program being veterans, active-duty members, or civilians with conflict environment experience, the program managers decided that their services, program, training principles, and paradigm would be useful for USINDOPACOM given the expertise most of them had in tropical agriculture. This led to a relationship with the 351st CACOM and their subordinate units.

The same principles apply to USINDOPACOM that applied to Afghanistan. Incremental change, an understanding of the local environment, and particularly, do no harm while downrange. This was the training that Hughes and company attended in January.

With the 351 CACOM aligned with Army Pacific, active with Task Force Oceania and having a presence on several of the Indo-Pacific islands, there is the understanding that food is important.

“It really has cultural ramifications, we think there is value there to build rapport, establish credibility, and show that we’re interested in helping these nations, these communities and these cultures,” enthused Erysian.

With over 130 attendees from the USINDOPACOM area of operations and heavy participation from the USACAPOC (A) CACOMs, the January training filled an agricultural knowledge gap that defines the relationship between food insecurity and conflict, and laid the groundwork for future mission success.

Oh, and that farmer? The troops took a shortcut across a field of “weeds” late one night destroying his entire wheat crop. An ADAPT graduate would have known better.

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For more information about how to join Army Reserve Civil Affairs, contact the USACAPOC(A) Task Force Manning recruiting officer at: usarmy.usarc.usacapoc.list.ca-recruiting@mail.mil

For more information about the 351st Civil Affairs Command, Functional Specialty Team (FxSP) contact: Col. Bradford “Brad” Hughes, FxSP Chief, at: bradford.l.hughes.mil@mail.mil

For more information on the ADAPT program contact: Bill Erysian, Ph.D., Jordan College of Agricultural Sciences & Technology, Fresno State University at:
bille@csufresno.edu

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Photo: USAR soldiers attend Agricultural Development for Armed Forces (ADAPT) pre-deployment training with representatives from the Jordan College of Agriculture at Fresno State University, in Fresno, CA, in an undated photo. (courtesy photo USACAPOC)

Author: This story was originally published on February 11, 2021 by the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS) and is in the public domain. Story entitled “ADAPT and overcome”, by Sgt. 1st Class Lisa Litchfield, U.S. Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command (Airborne).

The Joint Special Operations University has released a new report that explores the use of special operations forces Civil Affairs as a key element for competing below the level of armed conflict. “Great Power Competition” will likely see Civil Affairs assume a more prominent role as the United States and its competitors (Russia, China, and a few others) seek broader influence across the Global South.

In this JSOU report Major Travis Clemens provides an overview of how Civil Affairs can contribute in new and highly valuable ways in the great power competition. For the past two decades the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) has dramatically increased its capability to conduct kinetic counterterrorism (CT), counterinsurgency (COIN), and countering threat networks. However this new era of great power competition will see USSOCOM utilize its vast experience with populations-centric missions and influence-oriented capabilities.

A return to great power competition (GPC) has changed how the Department of Defense intends to employ its military forces in the coming years. U.S. military forces must be prepared for a major general war involving planes, ships, and tanks. However, the DoD has recognized that it must also perpetually seek political and military advantage below the level of armed conflict. Its activities for shaping the environment for advantage must be aligned with (and oftentimes in support of) interagency, intergovernmental, multilateral, and corporate partners.

SOF CA has, for the past two decades, focused on stability operations and counterinsurgency. SOF CA will need to widen its range of potential operations in this new era of GPC. The report outlines four principal roles for SOF CA:

• Initial Entry
• Reconnaissance
• Engage and Influence
• Support to Resistance (STR)

Contents of the report:

• Chapter 1. Operational Art and CA Doctrine for Great Power Competition
• Chapter 2. Special Operations CA
• Chapter 3. The PRC
• Chapter 4. Russian Federation
• Conclusion
• Acronyms and Abbreviations
• Endnotes

This report details how SOF CA can help the U.S. military as it faces its adversaries in the many aspects of international competition. It also provides an ‘consolidated’ explanation of the role that SOF CA plays within great power competition. In the conclusion the author offers recommendations for changes needed in doctrine, organization, training, and equipment to further develop the capabilities of SOF CA in great power competition.

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The author, Major Travis Clemens, is an active duty civil affairs officer in the U.S. Army. He holds a master’s degree in defense analysis with a specialization on special operations and irregular warfare from the Naval Postgraduate School and a bachelor’s degree in engineering from California Polytechnic State University. Clemens has multiple SOF and conventional force deployments. During his career he has worked with Naval Special Warfare, U.S. Army Special Forces, and Marine Special Operations units and teams.

Special Operations Forces Civil Affairs in Great Power Competition, by Travis Clemens, JSOU Report 20-4, Joint Special Operations University, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, 2020, PDF, 126 pages.
https://jsou.libguides.com/ld.php?content_id=56753304