Small Wars Focus Day: Monday, May 23, 2011

Sign-up for this in-depth and interactive series of workshops and examine current strategies and lessons learned in Irregular Warfare with a focus on emerging tactics and trends in Small Wars. Hear from leading researchers and innovative leaders on the technologies and processes that are revolutionizing the way Special Operations Forces (SOFs) are being utilized. These practical application sessions will deliver high impact knowledge led by recognized experts.

8:00am Registration & Coffee

8:30am-10:30am New Media for Small Wars: The New Media and Information Technologies: Capturing Irregular Warfare Lessons Learned, Best Practices and Emerging Concepts

This presentation will examine how “new media”, such as online publications, blogs, social media, and information technologies have impacted traditional roles, methods, and hierarchies in regards to lessons learned, best practices, and emerging concepts. The use of new media and information technologies in regards to strategic communications will also be addressed.

What Attendees Will Learn:

  • What new media and information technologies have done in regards to IW associated issues
  • How new media and information technologies have impacted “business as usual” within the U.S. Government and in particular the Department of Defense
  • Perspectives on the good, the bad, and the ugly in regards to strategic communications

How Attendees Will Benefit:

  • Develop an understanding of the “state of new media and information technologies” and its relationship with irregular warfare
  • Be introduced to what has worked, what hasn’t, and why
  • Be offered food for thought on the way ahead, or maybe, the way backwards

Mr. David P. Dilegge
Editor-in-Chief, Small Wars Journal, Director
Small Wars Foundation

10:30am-12:30pm Advancements in SOF Technology: Collaborative Technology Tools for Quick Response Teams

This session will focus on how collaboration tools have proliferated across both commercial and military enterprises with the intuitive assumption that improved visualization and the transfer of information and ideas can only help decision making processes. Collaboration tool prototypes have been employed by operational forces with no hard metrics documenting improved team collaboration performance. An independent assessment is an essential component of the documentation of improved performance while performing common repeatable valid mission scenarios in a natural setting. Assessments must consider team knowledge building, knowledge interoperability, state of situational awareness, and overall mission effectiveness. In addition, they must facilitate the collection of support metrics and system state, such as speed of decision cycle, required bandwidth, and data source connectivity.

What attendees will learn:

  • Mission assessment designed for outside the lab environment
  • Analysis of important metrics to consider for special operations
  • Increasing communication and information exchange

How attendees will benefit:

  • Learn about experimentation opportunities to develop, test and evaluate emerging technologies in a realistic environment
  • See how rapid prototyping techniques and a fast-paced experimentation schedule have moved new technologies into the field in months rather than years
  • Learn about innovative new capabilities for existing and next-generation SOF

Donald Jackson
Defense Technologies

12:30pm – 1:30pm Lunch

1:30pm-3:30pm Naval Post Graduate School Session: Small Wars Stability Operations

This workshop focuses primarily on the American approach to stability operations. These military operations have been variously described as ‘small wars,’ ‘low intensity conflict,’ and in current joint doctrine JP 3-07 (1995) ‘military operations other than war (MOOTW).

What will be covered:

  • Planning for interagency and multinational features of stability operations
  • Establishing criteria and evaluating the success and failure of stability operations
  • Military doctrine in relation to policy objectives

How you will benefit:

  • Learn theoretical tools and background to understand trends and issues in stability operations
  • Gain an understanding of how to develop strategy in contexts “other than war” and the basic relationships between policy, doctrine and operations

Professor Karen Guttieri, PHD
Department of National Security Affairs
Naval Post Graduate School

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