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Description
Reorganizing under the modular concept brought a tremendous increase in capabilities to both the brigade and battalion staffs, particularly in the new fires and effects cell (FEC) at both levels. [The Army recently renamed the FEC the fire support cell, or FSC.]
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After transforming in less than a year and deploying in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), Task Force (TF) Summit's or the 1st Battalion, 87th Infantry's (1-87 IN's) FEC quickly implemented this improved version of the fire support element (FSE) to conduct effects-based operations (EBO) in Baghdad.
Test Driving the "New Car." In August 2005, 1-87 IN deployed in support of OIF under the 1st Brigade Combat Team (BCT), 10th Mountain Division (Light), as the first fully transformed infantry BCT (IBCT) to deploy to a combat zone. TF Summit spent the majority of its deployment operating on the dense urban streets of western Baghdad, predominantly the districts of Al Shula, Ghazaliya and Amariya--all widely known for their high frequency of attacks on Coalition and Iraqi security forces as well as for Sunni/Shia sectarian violence.
After the successful national elections on 15 December 2005, 1-87 IN conducted a transfer of authority (TOA) of its area of operations (AO) to 2nd Battalion, 1st Brigade, 6th Iraqi Army Division (2/1/6 Iraqi Army)--a significant milestone along the path to the complete transfer of control of Iraq to its security forces.
Simultaneously, the battalion relieved the 1st Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment (1-11 ACR) of the force protection mission for the Abu Ghraib Internment Facility and the area around it, better known to local Iraqi's as Khan Dari. Although less than 30 kilometers west of 1-87 IN's previous AO, this primarily rural and agrarian community presented a far different environment than the urban streets on which the battalion had been operating.
Three months later, in response to the upsurge in sectarian violence after the Samarra Mosque bombing in March, TF Summit was given the mission to surge its operations in Baghdad in conjunction with 2/1/6 Iraqi Army and the newly activated Iraqi National Police. At this point, TF 1-87 IN was back in the urban areas of western Baghdad while retaining its force protection mission at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Abu Ghraib.
This combination of urban and rural terrain created a complex mission set for the 1-87 IN FEC. In western Baghdad, where the use of indirect fires is restricted due to the high risk of collateral damage and civilian casualties, attack aviation was the primary fire support asset, and it was integrated into every operation above the platoon level. 1-87 IN primarily used attack aviation for outer security and reconnaissance during raids and cordon and search operations and used it somewhat less often to support counter-improvised explosive device (IED) operations to supplement unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) coverage.
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The needs of the urban population differed greatly from the needs of the rural population. The city's primary concerns were security followed closely by essential services (sewage, water, electricity and trash, called SWEAT). These urban issues focus nonlethal operations on establishing and developing civil projects and local governance.
In contrast, FOB Abu Ghraib is mostly surrounded by farmland and small pockets of villages with little or no local government representation. In Khan Dari, we concentrated on integrating our mortars, Raven UAVs and attack aviation assets in support of the countermortar and counter-IED fights while focusing nonlethal operations on agricultural development and addressing the health... |
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