Usage of the Armed Forces in not-war operations

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Armies have always accomplished various tasks apart from their combat rule. But in recent years the unlikely existence of a generalized conflict with the disappearing along the XXth century of the two big aggressive powers, namely the Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, has driven many armies to conduct a wide range of operations where activities are far from combat or are of a limited violence. In this study we went across the main doctrinal powers in the world to look for a taxonomy of these operations and then, taking advantage of the heterogeneity of the group with officers of the three services and from four different continents, we learnt how wide is the range of these operations and how we go from a quite organized and standardized multinational Peace support or relief operations to a very particular world where threats and environment play a critical role to determine how the forces will be employed. Law & Order, civil emergencies, environmental and animal control, border control and High Visibility Events (HVE) are the most repeated activities, with a different weight in each country. Other particular issue is how national laws affect these operations, either enforcing, as a subsidiary task or imposing constrains and restrains.Specific training and particular C2 arrangements were also analyzed in a try to find a common trend or differences. We finally will have some conclusions learned from the multinational study.