Welcome to the One CA Podcast. Today, MAJ Ian Duke discusses his recent paper, "Civil Knowledge Battalion: Integrating Civil Affairs Information with the Information Environment." MAJ Duke placed 3rd in the Civil Affairs Issue Papers presented in Tampa, FL, at the 2019 CA Symposium. His paper is one of five that the Civil Affairs Association's partners will publish.
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Transcript:
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00:01:01 SPEAKER_03
Because we're very good at talking to each other about the information we collect, but to have an objective organization sort of separate from the collection aspect of it, or the information gathering aspect of it, so it can focus on that, and then we can mass efforts into creating. information and taking that information and creating actual knowledge and then getting it out into the wider world, which is where it needs to be.
00:01:29 SPEAKER_04
Hello everyone and welcome to the 1CA podcast. I'm your host Sean Acosta and today's guest is Major Ian Duke, author of the paper titled Civil Knowledge Battalion, Integrating Civil Affairs with the Information Environment. Major Duke commissioned as a military intelligence officer in 2007. He deployed in 2008 as a research manager on a human terrain team for Task Force Kandahar. He served in the 75th Ranger Regiment from 2011 to 2015 on regimental staff, deploying twice to Afghanistan. In 2014, he attended civil affairs assessment and selection. He has deployed with the 98th Civil Affairs Battalion to Peru as a CIMC team commander. In 2019, he graduated from Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation with a Master's of Military Arts and Science. He currently serves as the Fox Company commander in the 83rd Civil Affairs Battalion.
00:02:23 SPEAKER_03
Sean, thanks. Yeah. Thanks for coming on.
00:02:24 SPEAKER_04
Thanks for coming on. And I know we were just talking a little bit offline about all this stuff, so we decided to turn it on and start capturing some of the good stuff. We were talking about the Civil Information Battalion that you posed during your paper. Right. I don't know if you want to kind of just start with the overall thought of what made you write this and what the concept of this Civil Information Battalion is and what led you to it.
00:02:49 SPEAKER_03
So one of the, I guess, keys to it was that just to see all the information that the teams are collecting to be utilized outside of the CA Regiment. Because we're very good at talking to each other about the information we collect. But to have an objective organization. sort of separate from the collection aspect of it or the information gathering aspect of it. So it could focus on that. And then we could mass efforts into creating information and taking that information and creating actual knowledge and then getting it out into the wider world, which is where it needs to be. And I think that's where civil affairs really needs to start heading out outside of ourselves into other elements.
00:03:34 SPEAKER_04
I agree with that. Your prior background was military intelligence, correct? Yes. And so having that background and you guys have, well, military intelligence has something similar to this. Is that kind of what led you to that,
00:03:38 SPEAKER_03
Yes.
00:03:44 SPEAKER_04
of what led you to that, your previous branching experience?
00:03:49 SPEAKER_03
Right. There's definitely some correlations to it where the collectors don't necessarily do the analysis. Right. So it keeps that separation. And that makes sense for a lot of different agencies. Intelligence agencies work that way as well. That just allows people to, again, mass efforts and have focused efforts on one thing or the other because one craft doesn't necessarily transfer to the other. And also one of the things I saw at the tactical battalions was that the teams were doing great things, but then there'd be a stalling point between the teams and the actual battalion sim section. Because the companies aren't designed to actually process things at a high level. They can process things, but just not at that high level where it can be used by the interagency, et cetera.
00:04:40 SPEAKER_04
That makes sense. I think that's one of the things I've noticed in my experience, too, especially within Special War First Center School and teaching those things. Civil reconnaissance is one of the tactical mission tasks we teach. However, analysis piece, which is pretty critical, is kind of glossed over.
00:04:57 SPEAKER_03
Right. And we can see, I think we started talking about the, instead of the CA NCO or the CANCO, it was the Human Network Analyst or something like that?
00:05:11 SPEAKER_04
I've heard something like that. I believe 95th is now calling them civil reconnaissance NCOs. Okay.
00:05:17 SPEAKER_03
I could be wrong about that,
00:05:17 SPEAKER_04
I could be wrong about that, but I think that's what they're referring to them as.
00:05:21 SPEAKER_03
Okay, well, so a civil reconnaissance NCO, I can see that person being tactically proficient, focusing on that. I see this separate unit being a second life for somebody. Either you could come up through your training, you're better at analysis than you are at collecting, because that just happens with a lot of people. They could focus on that from the beginning, or you get someone who's done a lot of recon work, and then before they move on to another job in the three shop or somewhere else in the greater, or get out of the Army altogether, we can take their, what they've... you know, collected and learned over a career and then analyze and make things at that. Because you learn so many things as you move on in your career and you see where things would have been more valuable later on. And that's where that analyst can add more to the picture. For example, if all the folks in Proponency, you know, DA civilians would be amazing if they applied their analysis to current information.
00:06:22 SPEAKER_04
Right.
00:06:22 SPEAKER_03
For example, I think that might have interesting results.
00:06:25 SPEAKER_04
No, I would agree with that. I think also one of the things that we,
00:06:29 SPEAKER_04
I don't know if it hinders this, but I think we could do a better job at is just that kind of that pathway of, okay, even the information we have now where it's analyzed, like we send that up. Sometimes it kind of gets lost in the. the stratosphere of information or wherever it is so we don't ever see exactly where is those what is this civil information actually doing for a commander to update their common operating picture how are they uh utilizing this information to to make better decisions right and then with that i think maybe these battalions could could assist in that and then push kind of hey this is some more of the civil data that we would like to collect the commander really likes this or etc you know could you guys focus in on this civil data more. So a couple of podcasts back with Chaplain Machici and Steren,
00:07:16 SPEAKER_03
a couple of podcasts back with Chaplain Machici and Steren, they talked about how storyboards weren't cutting it. And they did a whole survey of the CA enterprise and found that people didn't have confidence that their information was being utilized. And so this would be an element that would be mandated to focus on that and be rated on their ability to manipulate and integrate that into other agencies. And so I think it would help attack that problem or at least minimize that problem. I don't think it's ever going to go away collecting information that perhaps isn't as relevant as you thought it was when you first collected it. However, if you have something separate that can be – and it's not just a repository, but it's an active repository. So I had a few lines of effort where you do the human network analysis, which would be kind of your active stuff where you could stay as current as possible using AI techniques, machine learning. all the new, excellent, fancy stuff, and then turn that into engaging networks at a higher level that teams aren't capable of doing. And frankly, they're not designed to do. Teams are designed to operate at embassies, etc. But to get the knowledge integrated into areas where people will see value in having civil reconnaissance elements all globally positioned, that's a whole other level. of analysis that needs to take place. And I think you need a dedicated unit to be able to do it. Whether it's a battalion or not, that's kind of arbitrary. I just thought of battalion because it's an O5 and it's a commander and it's something the Army understands and can probably wrap their head around what it would kind of look like. But it doesn't have to be that necessarily.
00:09:03 SPEAKER_04
So you mentioned the lines of effort in your paper. Could you expand on those a little bit more?
00:09:09 SPEAKER_03
Okay, so yeah. I just noted three of them, and the first one being human network analysis, which the 95th and others are doing excellent work on. The battalion I'm part of, the 83rd, we have an excellent sim section, but it's vastly, it's undermanned. And they're not capable of doing high -level interagency work that would really benefit the teams. To have something dedicated to that to bring in other assets, that would be a line of effort right there. And then second, the network engagement, to actually engage those folks, to spend all that time integrating that knowledge and reaching out and keeping other types of networks alive, that would be a second line of effort. And then the third would be continuity and professional development. So the continuity piece, that's where you get a little bit of repository work. That's where you also get... knowing why we've been in a country for 5, 10, 30 years, what the changes have been over time. And, of course, with professional development, we can see, I think there's room for analysis of what, for example, a really good CA and CO. What's their future path after CA? What are they going to do when they get out of the military? There's plenty of options, and they should be able to feed back into the system. I see this as a... as an organization that should be a living organization that should be able to actively reach out to former members who are creating work that's worthwhile keeping and developing over time.
00:10:47 SPEAKER_04
Right. So I guess maybe what would your response be to some people that say we have some of those capabilities or assets at battalion level now? Is it just a size? So when we're talking about, like, human network analysis, we're looking at, like, SIM cells or H &A cells, I think, at the Brigade 95th. They have some of those. Right. And then when we're talking about kind of the network engagement, that kind of falls in line with that a little bit, too. Maybe reaching out to unified action partners, like civil liaison teams in the CMOX at battalion level. Is it just a size capability at that point, or is it a manning capability at the battalions?
00:11:28 SPEAKER_03
So, well, it's both. So you need some massing. So we need to take from, if it was a, for example, if we couldn't grow the force, we should take some of the elements from sim sections now and mass them together. Okay. And then you can flex them to different spots. For example, our... Sim Chief Jason Wagner, I mean, he's got a minimal team, but if he was able to call in a few more people to flex on a certain area over a given period of time, that would immensely help the effort. And there should be a unit that he should be able to reach out to in order to be able to do that. So I'm not saying completely eliminate a Sim person at a battalion, but if we could just... So getting the people there, and then you could do specialized training for those people. And then there's all sorts of things where someone could focus on it for a while. And then if someone gets good, there should be lines where they become possible DA civilians that are specialized in it. Because the real power of military intelligence is not necessarily the soldiers. It's the continuity through the analysts, the civilian analysts. And if anyone looks behind the curtain at any... Joint task force, they see it's these civilians providing continuity. And because the officers and the NCOs, they come and go too quickly. And they're too junior, quite honestly. And the senior ones have been in and out of multiple jobs, and they're more managers slash leaders at that point, as opposed to dedicated 10-, 20 -year analysts that have a wealth of knowledge. But, of course, the wealth of knowledge comes with risks as well because you can get... They can stagnate. But that's the point of trying to have tension between the different lines of effort. But that's a problem for the organization and the leadership of the organization itself.
00:13:23 SPEAKER_04
So I think that's a problem. I know I've had a lot of personal discussions with people about that same thing, where they've kind of talked about this, like a split, right? Who wants to go down the command path and who wants to go down the specialization path? Right. So they've talked about NCOs and officers being specialized. It's more, I think we discussed it more in like an AOR specific type thing where you kind of build up through an ASCC or a TSOC. But I think the specialty skill here would fall in line with that. And I think it also goes back to another thing within the regiment that we could address, right, is advanced skills after the schoolhouse and going through the qualification course. What advanced skills are we providing to our non -commissioned officers and officers to do that? In this case, analysis, whatever it