Dragoon Ready 20: CPT Edmund Wood (British Army) – Interview


CPT Wood discusses his experience in Joint Multinational Readiness Center and what the Soldiers of the British Army’s 77th Brigade (77X) are doing during Dragoon Ready 20. The 77th Brigade is a unit specializing in information warfare with multiple capabilities such as psychological operations, civil affairs and public affairs.
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Transcript

At JMRC, and we’re here in Hohenfels, in Kitenzie Town itself. We’re here currently supporting the role of Taskforce 80 in talk to and the deputy commander. So, the 77th Brigade Task Group roll into the INO cells lots of capabilities. The informations fair we do a lot of Psy Ops and deception. We do a lot of capture products and that’s either for counter propaganda or for the informations fair itself.

So 77th Brigade has been formed over the last five years. It is a new unit, it is being built at the moment. We are at quite a good capacity, but looking for much more people to join the unit. It is to project the British Army’s forward presence of information warfare and intelligence deployed and at home.

Sure. To apply for jobs at 77th Brigade you can come from any other unit and you apply to jobs through your board. Lot’s of different jobs in different spheres meaning that a lot of people come from different backgrounds. For instance, this team here has a Cavalry Officer, an Infantry Sargent, Logistics Corporal, and a Staff Sargent from the engineers.

Sure. The cells provide such different capabilities. Every member of the cell has to have different training. There is always a trained production cameraman who can provide the capture ability. We have a trained civic analyst who does the civil engagement stuff, which I believe you call CMOC. We have the team leader who is trained in planning for information warfare and lots of other things. We also do a little bit of deception training as well. Tac D and Mill Deck is what the American’s call it. But we just call it clear deception. There are lots of different capabilities we offer, and they all come from different training spheres.

It is not my first time at JMRC. I came here when I was at the military academy center to do my final exercise before commissioning.

Sure. So specifically, for this exercise, we sit and talk to informing the information battle. While we are currently in the defensive stage, we are trying to capture lots of images to work with the local population countering enemy propaganda. The NATO here not doing the right thing. We are projecting the truthful narrative and NATO. Helping the people and building infrastructure and projecting that forward.

So the civilian population are very good at what they do. There is a strong narrative and they all have different codes of how they can act. The way we interact with the civilian population is very much as you would in the real world. We approach them in a very non hostile way, very soft posture. As you can see I have my beret on today, no weapon. So I can go out and talk to people and gain the information we need to. Especially in a place like Kitenzie that has been secured by NATO and there is no enemy threat.

The training we’re dong here currently is really good for the team. We’re quite a small unit out here, however the allowance that we have had so far has meant we can achieve really quite big things. We have a big strong social media presence. We’ve had lots of opportunities to capture the right things for us to be able to count the enemy narrative. We’ve also had a lot of opportunity to put into practice Tac D level Brigade deception plans. We really are feeling that the training benefit we get here is huge.

Yes, very much so. If you take the team that we have deployed with, the planning cell, very much the planners, the deception planners and part of the civil engagement team. The actual team sits very much in the civil engagement, the political advisory and the capture.

Yes, I should make clear that this is the 77th Brigade unit patch and this is my original cavalry regiment unit patch. The Griffin on my left arm is the 77th Brigade Chindits Griffin which comes from an old Indian Brigade. That was deployed behind the lines, it conducted some information warfare along time ago. It has been reinvigorated to project the new 77th Brigade image.

My experience coming from a British cavalry regiment is we’ve worked a lot with other cavalry regiments globally. A lot with Canadians, American’s and the French. Sim Simregated Self and task group is an international organization. We exercise around Europe, in Poland and Estonia. We exercise out here with the Americans. We do a lot in Canada, Denmark, Finland and Sweden. There’s a lot going on internationally. But that’s just the training value, we also deploy globally.

So still newly formed. You could only say the unit is over tasked because the need for what we do is global and the British military really project that force. We have a lot of ongoing global campaigns where either SO3, SO2, single person deployments out to help engagements or the full team deploys on a tour. There are lots going on so we maintain readiness be having a team either globally deployed and teams at high readiness to deploy with other teams going through training so we can maintain a cycle of global deployments.

Yeah, working with the American Army is always fun. It’s amazing to share a language but have so many different things to bring to the party. We work really well together because we have some constraints and some freedoms that the American Army don’t have. The same for you. We can both bring things to the party that actually benefit both of us. I think the main thing is that you’re advisors in your SO3s are split up individually into civilian affairs and Psy Ops. They both are trained very, very, specifically where as we come from a broad network of bringing the team together. We’re learning a bit from your guys and hopefully they’re learning a bit from us.

It’s very nice to be able to exercise outside of the UK and it’s nice to be here in an environment nobody knows because getting used to training areas doesn’t always help us. Being able to come to a new place is really beneficial for us.

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