immediately revealed the obvious capability and capacity gap of a lack of Civil Affairs support to rapid
conventional contingency operations. The Army’s solution, the creation of the 85th Civil Affairs Brigade,
further compounded the lack of unity within Civil Affairs. Currently, the 85th BDE aligns its battalions to
each Geographic Combatant Command (GCC), while
USACAPOC does the same with its reservist elements.
With the inclusion of USASOC’s 95th BDE and their
similar alignment, the Army has created a confusing
overlap of responsibilities between three elements of
the same branch that almost never interact with one
another. CA now has three distinct sub-branches, with
only the nominal consistency of a shared proponency
and its doctrine to unite them.
In a typical mission, CA forces could now enter a
conflict rapidly in support of SOF, transition after a
90-day period to an Active Component team, and then
finally pass the mission to reservists and their specialized civilian skills. However, this confusing overlap
rarely succeeds, as these involved elements lack common standards, familiarity, SOPs, data-sharing mechanisms, or even a means of identifying or communicating with one another prior to their brief turnover.
Calls to restore Army CA under a unifying command are politically charged and unlikely, despite the
fact that this organizational handicap is clearly recognized by all echelons of CA forces. While not necessarily a result of the so-called “divorce,” elements have
attempted isolated measures to unify CA’s vital Civil
Information Management (CIM) systems through
programs such as CIM-DPS and USACAPOC’s shortlived AxisPro system, acknowledging that after 13
years of continuous deployments CA still does not
have an effective and centralized program to manage
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