Background – DoD’s Current Approach
to CA SMEs
According to FM 3-57, Civil Affairs Operations,
USAR Functional Specialty Teams (FxSPs) should
have subject matter experts at the BN and BDE level in
public health and welfare, rule of law, infrastructure,
and governance. Additionally at the CACOM and
above level the FxSP should also have specialists in
economic stability and public education and information.6 This current FxSP specialty array does not align
well within the Army, Joint, and DOS stability framework and has also historically proven notoriously
difficult to man with qualified soldiers. Additionally,
within USAR CA formations, there are many civilian
skill set SMEs that are not slotted in FxSP positions.
Visibility of these soldier civilian skill sets is almost
non-existent outside the local command levels. USAR
CA soldiers struggled to prove how they could be a
value added asset to a commander not only in Iraq
and Afghanistan but also in previous CAO and CMO
in the Balkans and Haiti. Due to a variety of factors
such as manning shortfalls, mismatch of skill set with
seniority of position, and inefficient task organization
structures, many SMEs were often assigned to positions where their skills sets were not relevant or underutilized. Land owning maneuver commanders often marginalized these Soldiers when they could not
effectively action on CIM data and utilize their supposed functional skill set expertise. Failure in many of
these examples ultimately soiled the image for USAR
CA and how civilian SME skill sets translate to CAO
and CMO capability.
To address the apparent USAR CA FxSP shortfalls
there is currently new doctrine and task organization
changes being developed around the concept of creat74