SSG Greg Hissey discusses his experience in JMRC 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.
Transcript
So, us as a brigade, and as a small team, we deal with both the psychological aspect of non-kinetic, and also the civic part of the military world. We can switch between roles, so we can do psychological objectives, if the commander wishes it, or we can then roll to be more humanitarian, do the CIMIC role and be that bridge between the military and the civilian NGO’s, and make sure that the commander’s intent, and role within an AO, is not interfering on the NGO’s role in the AO, and vice versa. What they’re doing doesn’t impact on what the commander’s trying to do within his AO ’cause that’s where the friction can come, because what we don’t want is to get civilians trapped in the middle. That’s the last thing we want. I used to based in Germany, but this is my first time ever to be at JMRC. So it’s the first time I’ve been on this training area. The capability you got here is fantastic. We tried to replicate this in the UK, and we got turned down because of the expense, ’cause we didn’t get the permissions in in time. This place ’cause it just creates it’s own sort of internal, protected social media bubble that doesn’t go into, obviously, the wider world, we can do what we would do in a real theater but without affecting the rest of Germany, and obviously beyond with the real social media, and that sort of atmosphere. Where in the UK we don’t have that capability. Static, we have to get it brought in. It costs a lot of money, where this place is, obviously, constantly in use, and it’s kinda constantly got this capability. So as a training establishment, or training area, it’s fantastic for what we do. So part of Dragoon Ready is like a two-way thing. Again, we’ve got a team that’s based back doing production. So all the stuff that we capture, whether it be video, audio, or stills, is then sent back to them, and then they can manipulate that by putting their overlays on it for word in, maybe change some of the colors and the contrast if it’s not that clear in picture, so like Photoshopping like we see in the public world. And then putting stuff on Twitter within this sphere, other social media platforms, into posters, onto news organizations whether that be printed, or radio, or TV. Just all that sort of thing, and then also the CIMIC side, so we can do it as a CIMIC side of things. So informing the public. So for instance, the people that are moving from east to west, what the safe routes to go at the moment to go north, so they’re not interfering with the battle plan that the commander’s got on this side, and also not going back towards potential enemy situation. So they’re not gonna get caught in the middle, which is the last thing we wanna do. Wanna get them out of the AO and to safety so that they don’t become casualties. And then we can also flip that on its head. So we can try and trip up the enemy. So it’s all about having a non-kinetic effect on an enemy before you have to resort to the good old fisticuffs, kinetic side of things. ‘Cause if we can get somebody to surrender, or lay down their arms, or think of going, doing something different because they don’t want to be on the other end of a, well, potentially being killed. It also works in favor for the home side, as well. It means we’re gonna have to put less people in danger, potentially, until the last minute. Yeah, we’re a lot on comes in. So we have people that specialize in, so we’re one team. So the team can split, because what you don’t want to do is, especially with CIMIC side, and the PSYOP side, there’s a bit of a gray area in the middle where if you’re working with, especially with the public of a specific area, if one minute you’re doing a PSYOPs campaign, and then the same person’s doing a CIMIC campaign, they can think, well, hold on a minute, is that distrust can start to form. So we can actually come as a team and split so that they don’t see what the PSYOP side of things are doing, but then they see what the CIMIC side of things, and they know they’re these two different people. So it’s not the same person doing two jobs which then can cause friction, ’cause then you can lose distrust with the public. So I’m a royal engineer in the British Army, which is the equivalent of a sapper in the American army. They’re just called sappers in American army. So what I do is I go with them. So I deal with explosives, bridge-building, all the construction side of the military side of life. But with doing that, I’m very much towards the CIMIC side of things because I’ve been on tours in foreign countries, and helped the general public, not the time known, 100% known that it’s a CIMIC task, because until I came to this job I wasn’t really in this world, but doing a CIMIC job, and then looking back on my career, I can actually now see that I’ve actually helped do CIMIC tasks without actually physically being told it’s a CIMIC task. So there’s a couple of ways you can end up in 77th Brigade. So we have what we call direct posting. So me, I’m in what you call a job where I’m told to go there, and it’s a legacy thing from when we used to, 77th Brigade used to be loads of different units before it came under one roof. There’s another process where you can go on a jobs list, so if you’re a different (mumbles) and you fancy a change, or something different in your career, to take a different career path, or just try something new, you can then apply for the job and hopefully get it. And then we also have a recruiting team now that goes ’round to regiments, so like our special forces will do it. We’ve got the same thing now where I go from regiments explaining who we are, what we do, so the commanders, especially the junior commanders, who are gonna be the senior commanders in the future, understand what we are and what we do now, so it’s not a shock trying to explain when they’re old hats and they’re used to one way of thinking. They’ve already got it in the back of their mind what they are, so when they become these future bigger commanders, they know exactly what 77th Brigade does. So you go through a process. If you get selected, you then have to do a number of courses. So the first kind of six months of your time within 77th Brigade, not constantly, is broken up into courses. So you’ll do a civil affairs course so you understand that kind of course, that kind of work. You’ll do a psychological course, just so you know what the other team are doing. So if you’re not doing it personally, you’ve just got an idea of what the other side of the team are doing, so you’re not in the dark. You’ll do what we call a DSoP. So it’s basically four-week photography course where you do a couple of weeks of stills, and then a week, two weeks of video/audio, and then how to edit that on like an Adobe Suite. Then you can also go and do specialized course. So we’ve got a female that’s not here today, but she’s back in the UK. She’s gonna do a gender awareness course, NATO gender awareness course. We’re also gonna get a couple of males on that, as well, so you can see the difference. I’ve done the NATO CIMIC course, so I’ve been to Italy, which is quite nice, spent a couple of weeks doing a CIMIC course there. There’s also a TAC PSYOPs course in Canada. So people can go and do that course. So once you’ve got the basic courses behind you, there’s also scope to go and do more accredited courses that are seen in the bigger world. So if you work with other nations, you can go that’s accredited by NATO, it’s accredited by the UN. They know exactly what it is, so they have that bit more of a foot in the door when you tip up to work for them, ’cause they understand that you’ve been accredited and you’ve done courses that, so their people do the same roles, have done as well. So it’s called a Chindit, and the reason why is in World War II there was what was called the Chindits. So they were pretty much what we do now, but way back in World War II, and the were in places doing psychological and CIMIC tasks, and they kind of fell, once World War II finished, it kind of fell to the wayside. And then what they did became separate units within the British Army, and then five years ago somebody brought all them units back together again and going through the history, they thought, well, in World War II it was called the Chindits, so obviously, it was reignited like a phoenix from the flames, came back out. The badge is slightly changed, it’s a bit more digitized now, and a bit more modern, but as I say, exactly the same picture, just obviously a modern, more digitized version of it. And we have a lot of looking if there’s still a lot of the veterans alive from World War II. So since I’ve been in 77th Brigade, we’ve had a Chindits dinner where we had some of the original Chindits, or their family members, if they sadly passed away, come and give sort of talks on their relatives, or if they were still alive, talks on what they did themselves. Then we had a Chindits weekend. So through social networking, and one thing another, we found a lot more Chindits that had been forgotten about, that were still alive. So we incorporated them, and we got a lot of history going on now. Unfortunately, ’cause obviously the age, we’ll keep going with that as long as we can, and then as there’s a new generation, we’re then take that on into the future. Yeah, so like I say, we used to be separate units. So there were a unit called MSSG, 15 POG, a couple other units that pretty much do what we do, but separate, and then what they did is they brought them all in house, under one roof, which were obviously the birth of the 77th Brigade. So the way it works is 2/3 of what we’ve got are reservists, but they’re specialist reservists. So they do this kind of work in their own field, in civilian history as well, so it’s part of their job. So we’ve got people that work for big companies like Siemens, Google, and sort of things. We’ve got people that are with advertising companies, ’cause advertising is a way of, it’s a PSYOPs campaign. It’s getting you to buy a product instead of buying somebody else’s product. So they specialize in that. We’ve got people that specialize in production, so they work for big, or they have worked, not necessarily still work, but they have worked for big advertising companies doing the photography, the filming, the editing, or TV studio, so on and so forth. We’ve got people that work for NGO’s themselves. So they work for non-government organizations like the Red Cross, Red Crescent, people like that. So they bring that specialist. So some are literally a few weekends a year, and then some are what we call full-time reservists. So they might have a two-year break from a civilian job and spend two years directly with those, and they go back to their civilian life afterwards. Yeah, so it’s a positive, I mean, I’ve worked with US soldiers before, but in my engineer role, so this is my first time I’ve worked in this role. So I met a couple of civil affairs guys, and CIMIC guys, and one thing or another. And there’s a good unity. The language barrier helps. So sometimes you work with other nations where they do speak very good English, but you can sometimes, things get lost in translation, where working with the Americans it’s a lot easier. Obviously, you bring a lot more to the party ’cause you got a bigger Army, you’ve got a lot more capabilities that we can piggyback on the back of, and then we’ve got things that we can do that maybe you’re not allowed to do ’cause of the old rules, ’cause everybody’s got their own sort of rules of engagement. It doesn’t necessarily mean being kinetic. You have to go through your legal department for some things, we have to go through our legal department for some things to get the tick in the box to say we can use it. ‘Cause the last thing you wanna do is, whichever nation you’re working with, or whichever nation you work for, is to do something wrong and then it comes back and bites you as an individual, and obviously, the bigger picture, you as a force, and then you as a government organization, and you as a country, which we’ve seen in the past. So it’s trying to keep on that fine line of being able to do our job, but not crossing it and upsetting people, and then obviously, the law coming down on us, and cause a lot more dramas. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it’s been a (mumbles). It’s amazing, ’cause the exercise you’ve got, we’re sorta doing our own exercise within your exercise, so we’re helping you, but we’re ticking off some of our training objectives as well, what we can’t do in the UK. So by having that relationship and being able to come and work with you, and then obviously, you get the experience of working with another nation, and how they do things, and you can cross deck information, and skills and roles. So there’s something you might do that we’ll go, “I like that,” we can take it back, get it approved for our system, and go, “Yeah, we can do that,” and vice versa. You can see something we do and go, “Right, we’ll take that information.” So yeah, we’re working in, obviously, this training area. Not that I’ve seen much of it yet apart from where we are today. Hopefully as the exercise goes on we’ll push further east and be able to see more of the training area. But we have had guys out here before, and they’ve literally gone, one of the guys that’s on the team has been here last year, and he literally went from west all the way to east with the American forces. So he pretty much saw the whole of the training area. It’s not the biggest training area in the world, but to control what you’ve got in it, it’s perfect. And like I say, the ability you’ve got to create your own sort of social media bubble outside of the public world is fantastic. It’s a great asset to yourselves for training, but it’s also a great asset that we’re allowed to come and use it alongside you.