Shaping The Division Fight

Targeting Doctrine Reapplied

- Maj. Gen. Joseph Martin and Col. Rory Crooks

Targeting can confound staffs familiar with its application within stability operations yet attempting to apply it within decisive action. Developing target folders, dedicating multiple persistent intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance (ISR) assets to “soak” areas hiding suspected high-value individuals, and disrupting networks long enough for civil authorities to assume greater security roles bears little relevance when facing near-peer adversaries. As recent warfighter exercises (WFXs) demonstrate, threats present as formations rather than individuals. ISR platforms must loiter only long enough to positively identify, guide Fires onto a target, and conduct battle damage assessment (BDA). Platforms that linger become subject to enemy destruction or interdic tion through means of electronic warfare (EW), and acquisition of these lethal, mobile formations increases in difficulty. Rather than buying time for host nation forces, decisive action targeting objectives seek to shape enemy forces and thereby create exploitable conditions of relative advantage against them. The incompatibility of stability operations targeting in a decisive action operational environment (OE) lies not in the targeting principles but in their application.