Joint Hearing of the Subcommittee on Terrorism and Unconventional Threats and Capabilities and the Subcommittee on Research and Science Education - The Role of Social and Behavioral Sciences in National Security
Statement
Joint Hearing of the Subcommittee on Terrorism and Unconventional Threats and Capabilities and the Subcommittee on Research and Science Education - The Role of Social and Behavioral Sciences in National Security
REP. SMITH: Excuse me, again, we're going to go ahead and call the committee to order because I know we've got witnesses and lot of the other folks who have places to be in. Hopefully while Mr. Baird and I are making our opening statements, Mr. Ehlers will show up.
Mr. Thornberry had a different briefing this morning and had already informed us that he would be a little bit late. So we'll just go ahead and get started.
So I call the committee to order, and the joint committee this morning between the Terrorism and Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee, and we are joined by Mr. Baird from the Science -- Subcommittee on Research and Science Education from the Committee on Science and Technology.
And I appreciate all of you being here. We are here this morning to discuss the role of social and behavioral science in national security. I have an opening statement, which I will submit for the record.
But having read the witness testimony yesterday, I think this will be a very interesting hearing, which touches on a number of different issues. Certainly, understanding the cultures of the communities that our military forces are going into are critical, wherever they are. And it varies for community to community, but it is a critical element in the type of warfare that we're fighting now especially, which is basically counter-insurgency where we are trying to win over the local population.
So understanding their cultures, their interests, and their human behavior and how it varies from place to place is critical. But also very interesting are some of the studies that are going on in terms of evaluating the overall populations so that you can begin to predict behavior of those populations. And predicting that behavior can have a huge impact on military decisions on a number of different levels.
And I -- and that is an area that, frankly, I don't understand. And I'm very interested to hear this morning about how we're developing that as well as the other issues that have been raised.
And with that, I will turn it over to my Washington State colleague from the Science Committee, Representative Baird for any opening statement that he has.
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REP. SMITH: Thank you. With that we'll go to our witness statements and then go to questions. I want to welcome our panel and introduce all of you first, and then go in order in terms of your testimony. First we were joined by Andre Van Tilborg, deputy undersecretary of defense for science and technology.
Welcome.
Colonel Martin Schweitzer, commander, 4th brigade combat team, 82nd Airborne Division; Doctor Mark Weiss, division director for division of behavioral and cognitive sciences at the National Science Foundation, and Doctor David Segal, professor of sociology and director of the Center for Research on Military Organizations at the University of Maryland.
And before you start, I just want to echo something that Congressman Baird said, and that is, is the importance of joint hearings, because what I am discovering in lot of the areas in national security, particularly now when we are looking at asymmetric warfare, counter insurgency, dealing with all these issues, there is so much cross over from agency to agency.
Traditionally, there has been an enormous amount of crossover in the Department of Defense just within their different agencies, but now increasingly we are seeing it move over into areas that are outside of the DOD.
So finding ways for those different organizations to work together and be coordinated is enormously important and we certainly need to start here in Congress. So I appreciate that aspect of this hearing as well.
And with that, we will start with Dr. Van Tilborg.
Please go ahead.
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REP. SMITH: Thank you all very much. I think we will go, stick to the five-minute rule for everybody and we will probably have time to go around for a second round of questions if you don't get all of them answered in the first five minutes.
I will start. The first question I'm interested in, and focusing on Afghanistan and Iraq, but this is going to play elsewhere, how do you gather the cultural information that Col. Schweitzer talked about in terms of how useful it was? How do you go about figuring out what the rules are in a given Afghan village or Iraqi village? Or I have also been to the Southern Philippians where we are doing some of this. You know, how do you gather that information and how do you basically make sure that it is reliable.
And I know Dr. Van Tilborg and Col. Schweitzer, you can answer that.
COL. SCHWEITZER: Sir, I will just summarize it if I could and expand it if there is a requirement. The human terrain teams, we embed them within the provisional reconstruction teams ahead of the operations that's going to be conducted. The provisional reconstruction teams by their very nature have incredible access to the population, but not trust nor do they understand the human dimension that they are operating within.
REP. SMITH: Right.
COL. SCHWEITZER: So using that access vehicle, the human terrain team then engage the community leaders, identifies who they are --
REP. SMITH: And the human terrain team -- sorry to interrupt -- is trained how? Are they a mix of military and civilian, just one or the other?
COL. SCHWEITZER: Well, they have some uniform personnel assigned to the teams, but the teams are built around the social science -- folks in the social science community that bring the unique skill sets and the processes used to do the human dimension analysis, to capture the norms, values and cultural challenges or ways that they operate on.
REP. SMITH: And they will have some background in the specific culture where they are headed to, I assume?
COL. SCHWEITZER: Sir, they may, but I got to tell you we found out that that is not a precondition.
REP. SMITH: Okay.
COL. SCHWEITZER: The precondition that we found out is the process that the anthropological community is being trained on their whole lives. And that process is much more important than their respective regional area of experience. Now, truly it helps.
REP. SMITH: In knowing what to look for, whether you have seen it before or not, okay.
COL. SCHWEITZER: Yes, sir. And it does help. I mean if they have experiences from that perspective, if you're an Afghan expert, absolutely its value added, but it's -- we found out that it's not a necessity. And so they collect up -- you know, through their engagements, through their -- that constant pressure -- and look, here is the other piece, it's not done on one visit. Nothing is done on one visit. This is a Afghan timeline, not a Western watch.
And so to get the human terrain teams down there to create the relationship, to get the dialogue going takes time. You've got to capture the assessments and analysis that they are making, and then they bring that back, they use their -- they reach back to the facility that I spoke to at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to confirm or deny behaviors. And then they turn that into useable information from maneuver commanders so we can properly engage and operate within those communities reducing friction.
REP. SMITH: Thank you. In terms of the number of these teams that we have, now there are a number of different places other than Iraq and Afghanistan that this is applicable too, I understand, but just focusing on those two places, how many HTTs do we have deployed in either Afghanistan or Iraq?
COL. SCHWEITZER: Sir, there's a total of eight as of today. A second team just came in yesterday to Afghanistan and is stationed in the northern portion of regional command East. And then there are six additional teams in Iraq is what my current understanding is.
REP. SMITH: To really cover those areas, how many would we need?
COL. SCHWEITZER: Sir, that's a great question.
REP. SMITH: Go ahead, throw a big number at me, that's fine.
COL. SCHWEITZER: Here's what I would tell you.
REP. SMITH: Right.
COL. SCHWEITZER: My assessment is, and this is just mine, that every battalion, every '05 command, needs a human terrain team assigned to it, and not just at game time. You know, deploying them is certainly an approach that enables that command to maneuver within the communities. But if we wanted to optimize the battalion's ability to make the people the center of gravity, to link people to their government, those human terrain teams need to be assigned to the units months before its deployment so you can train, develop the relationships, go to the training center, conduct a series of simulations. So you train just not the staff and just not the commanders, but the young staff sergeant who is on the ground in Afghanistan engaging that mullah or tribal leader within a particular village.
REP. SMITH: So we're talking dozens, yeah?
COL. SCHWEITZER: Sir, I -- for example, I had 12 '05 commands, 8 maneuver, 4 PRTs. I would like a human terrain team in each one of those '05 commands. Additionally, I'd like one at the brigade level which I currently have one that I used at the brigade level for planning, and then we would send it out to the subordinate formations for operational execution.
REP. SMITH: And how many members on an HTT?
COL. SCHWEITZER: Sir, it's scalable. Right now it's five to eight, and it's based upon the province size, density now. Frankly, it's still a pilot program, and I think the ultimate manning is yet to be determined.
REP. SMITH: Yeah, thank you very much.
Mr. Baird?
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REP. SMITH: Thank you very much. I just had a couple more questions. I want to follow-up a little bit on that last question as far as the, you know, the rigor of the -- these particular social sciences.
I guess, it is more -- well first of all, in terms of Colonel Schweitzer's experiences, when you go into specific cultures, you can get reasonably specific answers in terms of the norms and morays of that culture that are very helpful. Now, it is not a guarantee.
I am sure not every Afghan in a given village, adheres strictly to those cultures and morays, but it is probably a pretty high percentage. And that's -- my second comment is that really what you are dealing with here is percentages.
As you understand a broader population in a given area, you can say, you know, 80 percent of the time, we think this person will react that way and then they probably will.
I mean that's different than in physics where, you know, a hundred percent of the time, when I drop the rocket, it is going to hit the ground. But that is still incredibly valuable.
I mean through a basketball analogy out here if you -- you know, you picked who to put on the line; you pick the guy who shoots 80 percent instead of the guy who shoots 50 percent, not a guarantee. Maybe the guy who shoots 50 percent happens to hit those two free throws and the other guy doesn't, but it significantly ups your odds of success, and that is why I think these sciences -- social sciences are very, very valuable.
I did want to give Dr. Weiss the opportunity today to answer the question that Mr. Lipinski raised earlier, about how the national science foundation and the broader scientific community reacts to, sort of, if you will -- I will be a little bit more blunt than Mr. Lipinski -- being dragged into the military world, you know, and if there is any, you know, sort of push back on that or that you see that is an incredibly valuable part of what you are doing or is there more controversy within either in NSF or the broader scientific community.
MR. WEISS: Well, within NSF, I do not see a sense of being dragged into anything. NSF, as has been mentioned, supports basic scientific research, and what we have found over time is that we receive unsolicited proposal to conduct research, some of which has clear and obvious applicability to military settings as I alluded to in my oral presentation.
And other research that we fund does not necessarily have any obvious application, but as the research develops, and as the implications of the research evolve, what we find is that much of the research that, for instance, might have to do with the way that organizations are structured, may have very clear -- ultimately very clear applications in a military setting.
We have, on occasion, been involved in collaborative work with the Department of Defense. We, for instance, last year, collaborated with them on a solicitation, the topic of which was the detection of explosive threats that was initially going to be targeted at the math and physics communities, but indeed the social behavioral economic sciences became part of that, and indeed several awards were made, which deal with aspects of the psychology, detecting mal-intent.
REP. SMITH: Who is going to plant the bomb? I mean, if you look into a community, I mean, it is part of the counter IED approach. Instead of just focusing on the explosives you focus on the people, and if you find them, it is as effective as finding the bomb.
MR. WEISS: Absolutely. Technology is wonderful, or can be, but the fact is that a technology is used within a human context and you have to understand the human context as well.
REP. SMITH: Just one more question for Colonel Schweitzer and that was on, sort of, the role of our special operators. That's the jurisdiction of our subcommittee; we spend a lot of time focusing on it.
And they have some training in this area, certainly in a regular warfare and counterinsurgency, part of it is cultural awareness, and they have training within that. And I was wondering how, their efforts since they are such a large presence in Afghanistan, and their sort of cultural training meshes with the HTTs.
How, sort of short are they of what the HTTs have and how do the two work together.
COL. SCHWEITZER: Yes, sir. That's a great question, because I think that's -- that may be some of the confusion as they are not -- it is not the same. The cultural training that our special forces get is similar to the same training that the conventional forces get, with respect to cultural understanding and being able to grow the capacity of the individual soldier, his understanding of the cultures, the norms, and how the communities are there -- how their concerns and you know, what the friction points are.
What the human terrain teams do is they create access. What the human terrain teams do is they help us operationalize their values and norms so we can properly maneuver with them.
I would argue that the, and I can't speak for the special operation's community, but as they did operations combined -- in coordination with this, they absolutely leaned and relied on the products that the human terrain team produced.
REP. SMITH: Right, thank you. That's all I have.
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REP. SMITH: Thank you. And I will close simply by agreeing with everything Mr. Baird just said. I think that was the purpose of this hearing. I think it was very, very informative.
We look forward to finding ways within both of our committees to be helpful towards all of you who are working on, and I thank you for your testimony today.
We are adjourned.
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