Unconventional warfare (United States)
The legal definition of UW is: Unconventional Warfare consists of activities conducted to enable a resistance movement or insurgency to coerce, disrupt or overthrow an occupying power or government by operating through or with an underground, auxiliary or guerrilla force in a denied area.
The earliest US soldiers involved in UW were in the Philippines, soon allied with Filipino forces, and who declined to follow Japanese orders to surrender, such as Wendell Fertig.
A few experienced soldiers' ability to train and lead a quite large resistance was a guiding principle of the formation of United States Army Special Forces in 1952.
[1] Later in Southeast Asia, SF personnel, often assigned to the Studies and Observation Group, carried out SR missions against infiltrators from the North, directing air strikes and assessing damage.
When they can direct, using long-distance secure communications, air and missile strikes on targets, the guerrillas need not risk their limited resources in raids and ambushes.
[6][7] In 1998, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, then USSOCOM commander and later Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Robert E. Kelley "Unconventional warfare is not a viable mission for Special Forces.
Kelley also cites the October 1997 Army Special Forces Vision XXI as saying "Dissident elements are the key to UW mission potential in any region.
Later in the Vietnam War, SF-led units conducted offensive actions against opponents on the Ho Chi Minh Trail and other infiltration paths.
Unconventional warfare is a form of insurgency, which exploits grievances to influence or overthrow a government believed repressive by the supporters of the UW force.
"[5] The ability to create or support resistance forces expands the range of options available to national leadership, filling a niche intermediate between diplomacy and all-out warfare.
Faced the reality of wars of national liberation from the mid-fifties on, President John F. Kennedy gave the first public endorsement to special forces, as a means of countering communist expansion in the third world, a very different problem than the original UW concept of leading resistance movements after a Soviet invasion of Europe.
Since countries are assigned to UCCs, the government in exile will work with both American diplomats and an appropriate level of SF organization.
For example, in Afghanistan in 2001, CIA paramilitary personnel made the initial contact with leaders of the Northern Alliance, who agreed to accept SF teams that would train and fight with the Afghan resistance.
These CIA officers were inserted ahead of the SOF because of their ability to get on the ground quickly, their language skills and knowledge of the terrain, and their existing contacts with anti-Taliban groups.
Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, and the Arabian Sea, while the CIA continued to increase its activity in the region, adding logistics hubs, communication sites, and command and control centers and capabilities.
Early in an insurgency, electronic communications should be avoided, as enemy SIGINT might learn of activities simply by detecting an unexpected radio signal.
SF personnel, possibly supplemented with communications and security experts in the AO, as well as support organizations outside the country, create the clandestine cell system to be used by hidden units.
The operation increases recruiting, and may begin clandestine intelligence collection and subversion, and possibly some hit-and-run raids and ambushes that have a high probability of success and a low risk of compromising security.
For example, if it is known that the enemy has limited supplies of fuel, attacks against tanker trucks, pipelines, refineries, and storage farms all contribute to damaging their petroleum, oil and lubricants (POL) system.
One relevant U.S. doctrine is identified by the CARVER mnemonic, although CARVER tends to emphasize air, artillery, direct action raids rather than UW:[16] Major target systems vulnerable to UW interdiction operations include railway, highway, waterway, airway, communication, power, water supply, fuel supply, and air defense systems.
UW raids can be simply to disrupt an enemy force, to capture usable equipment, for taking prisoners for intelligence exploitation, and destroying installations.
A well-planned ambush can have the element of surprise, possibly achieve temporary local superiority, fight from cover, and have preplanned withdrawal routes to avoid being encircled.
[18] Since such devices rarely have a means of distinguishing between a combatant and a noncombatant, there is a very real risk to civilians, and continues to be in areas of the world where there has been much guerrilla warfare.
The United States has not ratified the 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, known informally as the Ottawa Treaty.
Since a guerrilla force expects to have the population become increasingly loyal to it, there is an obvious psychological problem with leaving an area with active explosive devices.
Snipers, when the term is used properly, are highly skilled riflemen that use specialized weapons and tactics to attack specific personnel and equipment far outside normal rifle range.
An excellent example, which reflects societal characteristics that might not be obvious to Americans, is sabotaging an airfield that provides a widely used commodity that must be fresh, such as khat in Somalia.
[2] Subversion is formally defined as "action designed to undermine the military, economic, psychological, or political strength or morale of a regime.
During the Vietnam War, for example, the general U.S. rule was that Vietnamese allies could see only SIGINT information that had a SECRET or lower classification, and that did not carry the additional restriction "handle through COMINT channels only".
[26] The SF support detachment has the responsibility for delivering supplies to the UW units in the field, by means specific to the situation, ranging from clandestine parachuting to armed conventional convoy crossing to the AO.
