in the same way as reconnaissance forces provide information on the enemy. In pursuing information on
the human factors in a conflict environment, “operational culture,” i.e., efforts to facilitate an understanding of the cultural environment in which Marines are
deployed, are the first step in improving civil preparation and civil-information management.
Civil Affairs support to MAGTF operations offers
multi-service application as well. Funding CA operations appears to be an often troubling concern shared
across services. These areas would benefit from joint
procedures to facilitate battle handover and interoperability, to facilitate transition of control from Marine
quick response units to those tasked with longer term
operations.
Maritime Civil Affairs
The reactivation of maritime Civil Affairs was actually a renaissance, not an innovation. Few CA practitioners are aware that California had a naval officer
as military governor before it was a state and that the
Navy had an extensive military-government operation in the Trust Territory of the Pacific. The Maritime
Civil Affairs Group (MCAG) was activated in 2006, at
the time that deployable CA capacity was in critically
short supply. The sine-curve pattern fits maritime
CA in that it was reorganized in 2009, merged with
security training, and then disestablished in mid-May
2014. Fortunately, the Center for Naval Analyses is
undertaking an effort to archive the materials the then
MCAG (later the Maritime Civil Affairs and Security
Training Command or MCAST) produced, gather lessons learned, describe best practices in Maritime CA,
and develop courses of action to maintain and reconstitute this capability.
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