Welcome to One CA Podcast. Today, we have Captain Will Ibrahim, S-9 of 2/1 CAV, discuss how an Armored Brigade Combat Team sees Civil Affairs and how CA units can work successfully with a heavy unit.
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Transcript:
00:00:00 SPEAKER_02
You just talk about your personalities, talk about the training that you have, the experience that you have, and how best your element can support their mission, their maneuver element. It's not rocket science.
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Hi, and welcome to the 1CA podcast. My name is John McElligot, your host for today's episode. We're joined today by Will Ibrahim. who is a captain in the U .S. Army and serving as the S -9 for 2 -1 CAV. Will, welcome to the 1CA Podcast. Hey, John. Thanks for having me on. It's a pleasure. You got connected to us through a mutual officer who's in the Army Reserve, and he said that you guys went through the qualification process together and had served together on active duty. Were you trained in CA?
00:00:57 SPEAKER_02
Yeah, currently serving as the S -9 for the, as you mentioned, the 2nd Brigade 1st Cav here in Fort Hood. And yes, I'm school SWCC, that's SWC, Special Warfare School and Center, trained as a civil affairs officer.
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And was that something you came in, was there a different basic branch when you joined the Army? Yes,
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I did some time enlisted, did about five years enlisted time. I was an intel analyst. Back then it was, the MLS was a 96 Bravo. I got commissioned to OCS, and my basic branch was as an infantry officer. I did a couple years in the infantry, and then I switched over to civil affairs. After about three years or so,
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almost four, in the infantry.
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Okay. So why did you want to switch over to civil affairs? Had you heard about it from someone else?
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to be able to learn the language, to work in a small team, to do something outside of my basic branch and civil affairs appeal to me. I thought there'd be a lot of opportunities here, and there are,
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and there are, and so I jumped over.
00:02:13 SPEAKER_04
That's great. And so you took the D -Lab, I guess the Defense Language Aptitude Battery. What language were you trained in?
00:02:21 SPEAKER_02
I was only trained in just one language. And that's Indonesian, or Bahasa Indonesia, I would say. Why that one? I guess it was based upon needs of the Army, really. Yeah, I didn't really have a say to it. Like, we just, you know, we go through the qualification process, you know, put in your applications, you just prefer some languages. You know, you have your preference list of languages, but it's... It's not up to me the final language decision of which one I'm given and which one I start training for.
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start training for.
00:02:57 SPEAKER_04
Okay. Yeah, so it's not like you had any background in Indonesian. It was just you were good with languages and they gave you that one. Exactly. Yep, that's right. Well, I want to talk about your current role as an S9. What does an S9 do, and how do you think it applies to heavy BCT?
00:03:13 SPEAKER_02
The role as a Brigade S9 can really be... Well, down into two different areas, twofold. One, you're a civil affairs planner for the brigade. And two, you're the community relations liaison for the brigade as well. So these general guidelines apply to both like a heavy brigade, which I'm in right now, or a light infantry brigade. I've seen both sides of this. Bottom line, you're... As S -9, you're planning and synchronizing the civil engagements for the brigade commander.
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What are some examples during your training or if the brigade is going to go somewhere for a conventional unit? What are some of the civil engagements that you have planned for?
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When we deploy or when we go to these CTC rotations, there's always civilians. There's civilians in the area of operations, civilians on the battlefield. These civilian engagements are basically like KLEs, key leader engagements, SLEs, senior leader engagement, or meeting with local police officers, police chiefs, mayors, imams, sheiks, or it may be on the...
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So are you a one -man show? Do you have anyone else helping you in the S9 shop?
00:05:03 SPEAKER_02
That's correct. From a one -man show, the M -Tote across Big Army for the BCTs has changed over the last few years. This lot used to be for a major 04, but that has got downgraded to a captain because there's a shortage of civil affairs officers. But, yeah, one -man show. There's no NCO any longer at the BCT level for civil affairs.
00:05:32 SPEAKER_04
Okay. So you mentioned CTTs, and if people are not familiar with that, the military uses these combat training centers like National Training Center at Fort Urban, California, GRTC, the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana. And we use them to test warfighting concepts. A lot of it is about testing the ability of staff sections to perform their duties. And so CA teams and companies are certainly in those rotations. My unit will be providing support for 2 -1 CAV. And Marine Corps Civil Affairs units do similar exercises at 29 Palms in California and elsewhere. Yep. From your perspective, the S9th Brigade, what do you think that a CA team or CA company could provide and support as an enabler to 2 -1 CAV in that CTC or specifically NTC training environment?
00:06:22 SPEAKER_02
In my opinion, at the brigade level, the Civil Affairs Planner... To understand the operational environment, receive the brigade commander's intent. Sometimes you don't have a CA planner like myself on the staff. It's just that CA team or the CMOT chief, and they're the only interface for the civil affairs elements there. But receive the brigade commander's intent for civil engagements, and then... Start integrating the CA, PSYOPs, or SS, Special Forces, all those soft elements to support those efforts. And then lastly,
00:07:05 SPEAKER_02
synchronize the support elements within the formation. So those CA teams, PSYOP teams, or SF teams, or soft elements, synchronize those elements within the formations. The other part of that is that I believe the... The soft elements should take guidance from the S -9 and incorporate themselves into the information operations or non -lethal working groups in order to execute their CA doctrinal task,
00:07:35 SPEAKER_02
which supports that brigade battalion commander.
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Could you talk a little bit about the build on that, the non -lethal working group? Who are the people at that table and part of that working group?
00:07:45 SPEAKER_02
You should have a planner from the brigades, S -3 or a brigade ops cell. in there. You'll have the CA rep, probably myself,
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or the CMOC chief there. You'll have some of the SIOP folks. If you're lucky and you have one, you'll have an IO officer, an information operations officer there, or planner.
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PAO should be there. Other non -lethal enablers like the EWO,
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like the EWO, electronic warfare officer. And probably the S2 rep to be able to help with the non -lethal sales integration to the Intel side of the house as well. I actually got an excerpt from a smart paper from a gentleman named Kevin Merrill. He wrote it about a year ago. It states this, the non -lethal sale at the BCT, the beginning combat team. serves a critical role in aligning the ground commander's intent with the complex tasks of conducting unified land operations amongst the local population. In a decisive action environment, the non -legal cell focuses the commander's direct interaction with unified action partners on determining the conditions requisite or necessary for the return of responsibility to civil authority. Ultimately, that's what you're trying to do. Your plans, your actions, and that not only the working group want to take the brigade commander's intent and translate that to your actions so that you can ultimately transfer authority back to the local civil authorities.
00:09:33 SPEAKER_04
That's a really good summary. Thank you. What do you think a CAV battalion commander would like to hear from a CA team leader or a CMOC chief? in a capabilities brief to describe what his or her team can offer to support the battalion mission. Those battalion or brigade commanders, they want to hear how a CA team can support their maneuver tasks, i .e. something along the effects of we have language capabilities without the need of an interpreter in some cases, and if the battalion commanders want more to clear... or eliminate enemy forces from a particular city or town, the CA team's soft elements can set up some key leader engagements with the cities, with leaders in the surrounding towns or cities to communicate the appropriate themes and messages in order to gain the simple popular support against the enemy forces that you're facing. I would also mention that your element can
00:10:40 SPEAKER_02
Particularly CA, you can talk to local news agencies or PAO. You can talk to local news agencies to positively influence the information operations, which could suppress the enemy messaging in a given area. And lastly, tell that commander, battalion or brigade commander, about any special equipment that you have or special training that's going to assist you in accomplishing your mission.
00:11:05 SPEAKER_02
going to assist you in accomplishing your mission.
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Have you seen some examples where a brief like that goes terribly wrong? Not really. I think that, for the most part, elements prepare for it. It's not like something that's as strong as you might think. Sometimes you just talk about your personalities, talk about the training that you have, the experience that you have, and how best your element... can support their mission, their maneuver element.
00:11:40 SPEAKER_02
It's not rocket science.
00:11:42 SPEAKER_04
No, and I mean, from what I think, the team leader or team sergeant, since it is only a small team, that's it. You better know your people. You better know them well. Yeah. Will, do you think there's any CAV -specific terminology or lingo that CA troops should know before going into the box with a CAV unit? haven't been here long enough to hear a whole lot of stuff, but I'll throw out some stuff. It's just some basic stuff to know. So know, if you're having some conversation, know the difference between a spur ride, which is particular to cavalry units versus a prop blast, which is what takes place like an airborne unit or aerosol unit. Understand that army units are called cavalry, not cavalry. Calvary, you know, that's a biblical term where the hill in the Bible where Jesus Christ was crucified. But bottom line is just know your audience,
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research them, understand them, and any key words that matches like their lingo and the entity you're dealing with is going to be to your advantage.
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to be to your advantage.
00:13:01 SPEAKER_04
Right. I guess the CA units, CA personnel, we're trained to understand what kind of environment we're going into and should be able to do some of the background research before we arrive. So I'm anticipating that our company in supporting your rotation will be prepared and have done background information about 2 -1 CAF.
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00:13:35 SPEAKER_04
So from your perspective as the S9, what do you think success would look like to a CTC rotation? It's straightforward, but it's pretty simple in my eyes. So success, to me, would look something like whoever's deploying out there,
00:13:51 SPEAKER_02
deploying out there, like your company is coming out, those IOP teams are coming out. Just a better trained element, CA or PSYOPs, and also some better informed battalion and brigade commanders on the integration of soft enablers. Personally, during the rotation, I would like to see a continual integration of the civil affairs throughout the rotation. To help assist in that, we're actually planning on doing... some training local here like it's called the tactical information operations course and that'll that'll bring in the the electronic warfare folks fires pao psyops ca intel into these non -legal engagements to support brigade commander's tasks um so what we don't want the opposite of success for the rotation what i don't want i don't want the ca and psyop elements on the outside looking in, you know, after the first few days in the box.
00:14:59 SPEAKER_02
There's some ideas we've been floating around with the Brigitte XO, like the placement of the CMOC inside the Brigitte Talk, just so they're continually engaged and they're knee -deep in that planning process and they're not forgotten about during the CTC rotation.
00:15:19 SPEAKER_04
Yeah, that would be great because we've been on some rotations where... you're helping to meet the commander's intent, but sometimes the commander's intent is to avoid populations. And if that's the case, it's tough to say, hey, these are our capabilities, but as you're rolling through the rotation, yeah, you're not talking to people. That's the human domain you're missing. So it sort of depends on what situation you're going into and what that rotation of JRTC or NTC is actually testing.
00:15:48 SPEAKER_02
Yeah, you know, do your best, do your analysis of the civilian atmosphere. Gather as much information as you can, and then continue making recommendations to whoever you're supporting. Yeah, I mean, if that commander's like, I don't want to talk to civilians, I don't want to mess with them, then that's their call.
00:16:10 SPEAKER_02
And the CTC rotation, they'll probably end up paying for it.
00:16:14 SPEAKER_04
Yeah, be as prepared as possible, knowing you're going to make some mistakes, and those mistakes are how we learn. That's true. Yep. Absolutely.
00:16:27 SPEAKER_04
The terrain I know at NTC poses a lot of p