Non-kinetic operations
"active, as opposed to latent." Dropping bombs and shooting bullets—you know, killing people—is kinetic. But the 21st-century military is exploring less violent and more high-tech means of warfare, such as messing electronically with the enemy's communications equipment or wiping out its bank accounts. These are "non-kinetic."
The kinetic part is easily defined: using the military to kill
terrorists “with a global reach,” disrupt their infrastructure,
and dissuade those who fund terrorists and their state sponsors upon threat (and occasionally actual visitation) of physical injury.
The nonkinetic parts are often euphemized as the “drain the swamp” or, better, the “hearts and minds” problem. These nonmilitary aspects focus on terrorism’s motivation and recruitment patterns, the sociology of terrorist groups that leads them to mobilize, compete, and strike; and the underlying social conditions said to feed that motivation and those recruitment patterns.
Getting at the nonkinetic aspects of the war on terrorism
can be conceived as consisting of immediate, midterm, and
long-term parts. The essence at all stages, however, appears to
be fourfold:
- Stigmatize the idea of murdering civilians for any political cause whatsoever, just as slavery, piracy, and human ritual sacrifice were so stigmatized in previous generations.
- Identify and stop the flow of money and other resources at all levels from those who approve of terrorism to those who carry it out, redirecting that money and those resources to positive ends, as possible.
- Refute, tirelessly and skillfully, the almost endless distortions of U.S. policies and motivations that are promulgated by Islamist propagandists (and others) and that inexorably make Americans and their allies targets of hatred and violence.
- Work patiently at social, economic, and political reform (generally in that order) in Muslim-majority countries and among Muslim communities outside the Middle East and South Asia where terrorist cadres are known to have arisen.
Nonkinetic operations. Training units in non-kinetic operations requires establishing an environment in which human terrain predominates. In such an environment, units can employ nonkinetic resources such as civil affairs (CA) and psychological operations (PSYOP) teams and public affairs officers; and they can conduct leader engagements, disburse money, and participate in reconstruction. to provide the human terrain necessary to train nonkinetic operations, the NTC populates its towns and villages with up to 1,600 role players, of which 250 are Iraqi-Americans who remain in their roles and live in the field for the entire 14-day training event. Each role player is influenced by respective tribal and religious leaders and maintains familial, social, and business relationships throughout the rotation. Some role players have businesses and jobs; others are unemployed and disenfranchised, ripe for insurgent recruitment. Each urban area has its own government structure, police force, businesses, criminal element, and ethnic tension. Provincial government and police forces also exert influence on towns and villages.
The human terrain element makes leaders and soldiers engage with real Iraqis, a function that requires them to adapt to Iraqi culture and seek cooperation. Leaders conduct engagements and negotiate with provincial, town, and tribal leaders to gather information on insurgent activity and to find out who can create jobs, provide medical aid, or develop reconstruction projects. The human element also allows the training unit to employ CA and PSYOP teams throughout its area of operations to influence the role players. Iraqi role players' attitudes change based on unit actions.
The recently constructed Joint coordination center, modeled after facilities in theater, is the focal point of nonkinetic operations. It serves as a coordination center for those acting as coalition forces; Iraqi security forces; local government, tribal and religious leaders; local security and medical personnel; and nongovernmental organization (NGO) workers.
a Kinetic warfare situation where we are in all out war: dropping bombs, rolling in with tanks, shooting everything that moves. We have since moved on from a Kinetic warfare situation to a Expanded Warfare situation where our primary concerns are to maintain order, repair infrastructure, implement domestic services, and conduct warfare operations against those that wish to disrupt the previous objectives.