Insurgent Center of Gravity 101

Excerpt from Notes of a Counterinsurgent

 

Insurgent Center of Gravity 101

Center of Gravity (COG) - is the population; without the population insurgents have no way to sustain the movement or to infiltrate and subvert society.

Critical Capabilities (CC) – are the insurgents warfighting capabilities e.g. intelligence, logistics, command/control, fires, force protection, recruitment, propaganda, etc.  Conventional forces bring their capabilities to the fight; insurgents have to rely mostly on the preexisting environment or surrounding countries for their capabilities.  This is why the population is the center of gravity.

Critical Requirements (CR) – Psychological dominance of the battlespace.  The insurgent requires the local populace to support him, or he cannot succeed.  If the insurgent cannot buy popular support, he will force popular support via terrorism, blackmail, torture, extortion, kill informants, etc.  Disrupt this and the counterinsurgent disrupts his operational capacity; the population will often side with the perceived winner to survive.

Critical Vulnerabilities (CV) - Social Seams, and varying reasons to fight, are most susceptible to attack.  The population supports the insurgent for different reasons; find those reasons, the seams, and fill that void if possible with alternatives so locals avoid terrorism and insurgency, or even fight against it.  This will allow the counterinsurgent to reserve killing for hard-core members while turning the population against the movement.  Exploit social seams and lack of trust…undermine the mutual trust, or leverage to the point where the population see the relationship with insurgents a liability…most of the tactical COIN effort should be spent here…everything else (COG, CC and CR) are tied to this, particularly the CR.