FM 7-100.1 Opposing Forces Operations

This manual is part of the FM 7-100 series, which describes a contemporary Opposing Force (OPFOR) that exists for the purpose of training U.S. forces for potential combat operations. This OPFOR reflects the characteristics of military and paramilitary forces that may be present in the contemporary operational environment (COE). Like those real-world threats, the OPFOR will continue to present new and different challenges for U.S. forces. The COE is constantly changing, and it is important for U.S. Army training environments to keep pace with real-world developments.

Introduction

Contemporary Operational Environment

Contemporary Operational Environment (COE) The operational environment that exists today and for the clearly foreseeable future.

The DOD officially defines an operational environment (OE) as “a composite of the conditions, circumstances, and influences that affect the employment of military forces and bear on the decisions of the unit commander” (JP 1-02). The contemporary operational environment (COE) is the operational  environment that exists today and for the clearly foreseeable future. There are some “constants” or common threads that define the general nature of this COE:

• The United States in not likely to have a peer competitor until <re2020 or beyond.
• However, nations will continue to field armed forces and use these forces as a tool to pursue national interests.
• As nations use their armed forces (or other instruments of national power) in pursuit of national interests, their actions may cause U.S. intervention, either unilaterally or as a coalition partner, with or without United Nations mandate.
• Nations that believe the United States may act to counter their national interests will develop diplomatic, informational, economic, and military plans for managing U.S. intervention.
• Nations will continue to modernize their armed forces within the con- straints of their economies, but in ways that may negate U.S. overmatch.
• Advanced technology will be available on the world market for a wide va- riety of nation-state and non-state actors.
• Non-state actors will play an important role in any regional conflict¾as combatants or noncombatants.
• All combat operations will be significantly affected by a number of vari- ables in the environment beyond simple military forces.

Thus, one of the constants is that there are variables. Those “variables” in the COE result in a number of different OEs that can occur in specific circumstances or scenarios.

Critical Variables

Critical Variables of COE Nature and Stability of the State. Regional and Global Relationships. Economics. Sociological Demographics. Information. Physical Environment. Technology. External Organizations. National Will. Time. Military Capabilities.

Any OE, in the real world or in the training environment, can be defined in terms of eleven critical variables. While these variables can be useful in describing the overall (strategic) environment, they are most useful in defining the nature of specific OEs. Each of these “conditions, circumstances, and influences” and their possible combinations will vary according to the specific situation. In this sense, they are “variables.” These variables are interrelated and sometimes overlap. Different variables will be more  or  less  important in different

situations. Each OE is different, because the content of the variables is different. Only by studying and understanding these variables--and incorporating them into its training--will the U.S. Army be able to keep adversaries from using them against it or to find ways to use them to its own advantage.

Nature and Stability of the State

It is important to understand the nature and stability of the state (or states) with which or in which the conflict takes place. Study of this variable measures how strong or weak a country is and determines where the real strength of the state lies; it may be in the political leadership, the military, the police, or some other element of the population. Understanding this variable will allow U.S. forces to better understand the nature of the military campaign and the true aims of an enemy campaign, operation, or action. It also helps determine what kinds of threats may be present in a particular country. The real threat to U.S. forces may come from elements other than the military.

Regional and Global Relationships

Nation-states and/or non-state actors often enter into relationships, which can be regional or global. These partnerships support common objectives, which can be political, economic, military, or cultural. An actor’s membership or allegiance to such a relationship can determine its actions of support and motivation. Virtually all conflict will occur with alliances and coalitions, some involving the United States and some involving its adversaries. When actors create regional or global alliances, it can add to their collective capability and broaden the scale of operations and actions.

As the world moves away from the traditional long-term, fixed alliances of the past, regional and global relationships are much more fluid and unpredictable. The choice of a state to be nonaligned does not mean that it will not become involved in a conflict or crisis. It simply means that the state does not make a commitment to another state, alliance, or cause before a situation arises. This lack of precommitment makes it difficult to predict how actors and forces may align when a situation does arise. Alliances can form or change rapidly, even during the course of an operation or campaign.

Economics

The economic variable establishes the boundaries between the “haves” and the “have-nots.” This gap of economic differences among nation-states and other ac- tors can cause conflict. Economic superiority, rather than military superiority, may be the key to power or dominance within a region. However, economic posi- tion often represents a nation or non-state actor’s ability to buy military technology or to conduct prolonged operations. Economics help define the relationship between a nation or non-state actor and other actors at the regional or global level. These regional or global economic relationships could result in military or political assistance.

Sociological Demographics

The demographics variable includes the cultural, religious, and ethnic makeup of a given region, nation, or non-state actor. Extreme devotion to a particular cause or significant hatred of a particular group may provide an enemy with an unshakable will and a willingness to die for the cause. U.S. forces may also find that large segments of the population around them are sympathetic to the same cause as the enemy force. The needs of the local population can create heavy demands on U.S. military units, particularly their supply and medical systems. Refugees and internally displaced persons may increase the complexity of the environment. The enemy may use civilians as shields or obstacles or as cover for hostile intelligence services.

Information

Media and other information means can make combat operations transparent to the world, visible to all who have access to data. Various actors seek to use per- ception management to control and manipulate how the public sees things. They will exploit U.S. mistakes and failures and use propaganda to sway the local population to support their cause. Media coverage can impact on U.S. political decision making, international opinion, or the sensitivities of coalition members.

Even without sophisticated sensors and information systems, actors native to the area or region often have greater situational awareness than U.S. forces. Various actors are able to access commercial systems (such as satellite communications and imagery) for the larger picture. For a more detailed view, they can use hu- man networks operating over normal telephone lines or with cellular telephones.

Physical Environment

The main elements in the physical environment are terrain and weather. Poten- tial enemies clearly understand that less complex and open environments favor a U.S. force with its long-range, precision-guided weapons and sophisticated re- connaissance capability. So they will try to avoid the types of operations and environments for which such U.S. forces are optimized. They will try to operate in urban areas and other complex terrain and in weather conditions that may adversely affect U.S. military operations and mitigate technological advantages.

Technology

The technology that nations or non-state actors can bring to the OE includes what they can develop and produce, as well as what they could import. Access to technological advances available on the global market is slowly eating away at the technological advantage the United States has enjoyed in the past.

It is likely that some high-end forces in a particular region of the world could field a few systems that are more advanced than those of the U.S. force deployed there. Easy access to new technology allows potential adversaries to achieve equality or even overmatch U.S. systems in selected niche areas. Many countries are trying to acquire relatively low-cost, high-payoff, new technologies. In addi- tion, upgrades and hybridization allow older systems to compete with more mod- ern capabilities, thus neutralizing the technical advantage of many modern forces. In urban areas or other complex terrain, less advanced systems may still find effective uses. Various actors may find adaptive and innovative ways of us- ing systems for other than their originally intended applications.

External Organizations

When the U.S. Army goes into a failed state or into areas torn by conflict, it is likely to find international humanitarian relief organizations at work there. These external organizations continue to grow in influence and power, as well as in willingness to become involved in crisis situations that were previously purely mili- tary operations. These external organizations can have both stated and hidden in- terests and objectives that can either assist or hinder U.S. mission accomplishment. The presence of transnational corporations operating in a country or region can also place added pressure on U.S. forces to avoid collateral damage to civilian life and property. U.S. forces may have to divert troops and resources from their assigned missions to conduct rescues or provide security for various external organizations.

Prior to the outbreak of hostilities in a given region (or at least prior to U.S. military intervention there), during such hostilities, or after the conclusion of hostili- ties in a particular area, members of external organizations and other civilian noncombatants from outside the region may be endangered. Diplomatic person- nel, other government employees, or private citizens from the United States or other countries might be present in one or more countries within the region. The private citizens might be associated with an external organization (media, humanitarian relief organization, or transnational corporation) or might be there on private business or as tourists. If their lives are endangered by war, civil unrest, or natural disaster, such U.S. citizens and their dependents, as well as selected host-nation citizens and third-country nationals, could be eligible for evacuation in noncombatant evacuation operations conducted by U.S. forces.

National Will

The variable of national will reflects how much each country’s people and government are behind what the military or paramilitary forces are doing. This can influence the objectives of a conflict, its duration, and the conditions for ending it.

A country will try to attack its opponent’s national will and still preserve its own. Clearly, most foreign countries view U.S. national will as a point of vulnerability. Thus, a potential adversary may perceive the collective will of his people as a comparative advantage against the United States.

History has proven that battlefield victory does not always go to the best-trained, best-equipped, and most technologically advanced force. Victory often goes to the side that most wants to win, needs to win, and is willing to sacrifice to do so.

Time

In most cases, potential opponents of the United States view time as being in their advantage. When U.S. forces have to deploy into the area over long time and distance, the opponent can use this time to adjust the nature of the conflict to something for which the U.S. forces are not prepared.

First, the opponent will try to control the entry of U.S. forces into the area. If access control fails, the enemy still has the opportunity to oppose lightly equipped early-entry units and try to prevent full deployment of the rest of the force. The opponent will try to speed up the tempo, to rapidly defeat its local or regional enemy or to defeat U.S. early-entry forces before the United States can deploy overwhelming military power. If that fails, the opponent will try to prolong the conflict and to outlast the U.S. will to continue.

Military Capabilities

Military capabilities of a nation-state or non-state actor are measured in relative terms, in comparison to the capabilities of other actors against which they might be applied. Most of the military forces in the world continue to operate in conventional ways, which remain sufficient against other local and regional actors.

However, once the United States becomes involved, these same military forces may have to use adaptive or asymmetric approaches. Various nations and other foreign entities around the world study the United States and its military forces. They generally view the United States as a major power—the world’s only superpower—with an overall advantage in technology and warfighting capabil- ity. Despite these strengths, other actors see some weaknesses that they may be able to exploit. They can use these perceptions as a guide to optimizing the effec- tiveness of their own forces and to find ways to negate current U.S. advantages.

Military capabilities may be the most critical and the most complex variable that affects military operations. However, the military variable does not exist in isola- tion from the other variables that help determine the overall OE. It interacts with the other variables, and all the other variables can affect military capabilities. Potential enemies can use any or all of these factors against the Army as it tries to accomplish its missions in various parts of the world or in various training environments.

Real World

In the real world, the COE is the entire set of conditions, circumstances, and influ- ences that U.S. Armed Forces can expect to face when conducting military opera- tions to further the national interests of the United States, its friends, and allies. The COE is “contemporary” in the sense that it does not represent conditions that existed only in the past or that might exist only in the remote future, but rather those conditions that exist today and in the clearly foreseeable, near future. This COE consists not only of the military and/or paramilitary capabilities of potential real-world adversaries, but also of the manifestations of the ten other variables that help define any OE.

Training

In training environments, the COE is the OE created to approximate the de- mands of the real-world COE and to set the conditions for desired training out- comes. This involves the appropriate combination of an OPFOR (with military and/or paramilitary capabilities representing a composite of a number of potential adversaries) and other OE variables in a realistic, feasible, and plausible manner. The purpose of the COE in training simulations is to produce the necessary training outcomes.2

Even in the COE for training, it is possible to speak of an overall COE that ad- dresses the qualities of virtually any OE in which the units or individuals being trained might be called upon to operate. In this sense, there are the same “con- stants” as in the real-world COE.

Interaction and Linkage of Variables

The variables of the COE do not exist in isolation from one another. The linkages of the variables cause the complex and often simultaneous dilemmas that a military force might face. In order to provide realistic training, training scenarios must try to simulate this synergistic effect to the maximum degree that is feasible.

The COE is not just about the OPFOR. The COE variables and their interaction provide the robust environment and context for OPFOR operations. The com- plexity of the specific OE in training can be adjusted to keep it appropriate for the required training objectives and the training state of various U.S. Army units.

Adaptive and Changing

The nature of the COE is adaptive and constantly changing. As the United States and its military forces interact with the COE in a real-world sense, the OE changes. As the Army applies the lessons learned from training in a COE setting, the OPFOR and potential real-world adversaries will also learn and adapt.

The development of the COE for training started with research to develop an un- derstanding of the real-world COE and trends that affect military operations. Then, taking into consideration the desired training outcomes and leader development goals, the authors of the FM 7-100 series proceeded to document an OPFOR doctrine and structure that reflect the real-world COE, and the Army began integrating this OPFOR and other COE variables into training scenarios. Meanwhile, the authors of the FM 7-100 series are continuing to research the real-world COE and to mature the OPFOR and the COE in training in order to provide a richer, appropriately challenging training environment and keep the OPFOR and the COE truly “contemporary.”

Enemy, Threat, and OPFOR

Before going further into the COE, the contemporary OPFOR, and the intended uses of this manual, it may be useful to define some key terms and the distinc- tions among them. It is important to distinguish among the terms enemy, threat, and OPFOR and to use them correctly.

Enemy

From the U.S. perspective, an enemy is an individual, group of individuals (organized or not organized), paramilitary or military force, national entity, or na- tional alliance that is in opposition to the United States, its allies, or multinational partners. In other words, the enemy is whoever is actually opposing the United States in a particular conflict. Thus, this term is synonymous with adversary or opponent.

Threat

A potential adversary is sometimes designated as a threat. In this sense, the Army defines threat as “any specific foreign nation or organization with intentions and military capabilities that suggest it could become an adversary or challenge the national security interests of the United States or its allies.” Once hostilities actually begin, the threat becomes the enemy.

Opposing Force

An Opposing Force (OPFOR) is a training tool that should allow the U.S. Army to train against a challenging and plausible sparring partner that represents the wide range of possible opponents the Army could face in actual conflict. It en- ables training of all arms of the Army and prepares the Army for potential combat operations.

During the road to war leading up to events in a training scenario, the OPFOR may play the role of a “threat” (potential enemy) that is on the verge of becoming an enemy. However, the actual training event usually deals with a state of hos- tilities. Thus, once hostilities begin in the training event, the OPFOR acts as the “enemy” of the U.S. force in the training environment.

During the Cold War period, the Army employed OPFORs based on specific real- world threats. However, the Army needs a different type of OPFOR to meet its training requirements for the COE.

Cold War OPFOR

When the Army established its OPFOR program in 1976 with Army Regulation 350-2, it could hardly have envisioned today’s computerized constructive and virtual simulations, or even the evolving requirements of live simulations. It de- fined an OPFOR simply as “an organized force created by and from U.S. Army units to portray a unit of a potential adversary armed force.” Thus, all OPFORs were originally threat-based, in the sense that they replicated the forces, capabilities, and doctrine of a particular country officially recognized as a threat or potential adversary. In the midst of the Cold War, the 1976 regulation identified only one potential adversary against which to train: the Soviet Union; by 1978, a revision of the regulation added North Korea as a second threat for replication by an OPFOR. Over time, the Army developed other OPFORs to replicate other threats emerging in places ranging from Latin America and Southwest Asia.

In its time, the threat-based OPFOR served the Army very well, particularly for units targeted against specific threats. The benefits of this training were borne out, for example, in Operation Desert Storm. Techniques and doctrine, including deep at- tack and the intelligence preparation of the battlefield, developed to cope with specific threats and honed against the OPFOR, enabled the Army to achieve decisive results on the battlefield. However, the OE is dynamic, and the pace of that dynamism has increased with the end of the Cold War and the rapid advancement of information technology.

Contemporary OPFOR

Training U.S. forces for the COE re- quires a different kind of OPFOR from that of the past. The contemporary OPFOR must be less predictable and not based on the armed forces of a par- ticular country. In today’s world, the U.S. Army must be prepared to go into any OE and perform its full range of missions. It must be ready to do so in the face of a wide variety of possible threats and at the same time be prepared to deal with third-party actors that may have other interests. Not all threats are purely military in nature. Therefore, the U.S. Army now defines an OPFOR as “a plausible, flexible military and/or paramilitary force representing a composite of varying capabilities of actual worldwide forces, used in lieu of a specific threat force, for training and developing U.S. forces.”

Thus, in some training environments, a military force alone may be the OPFOR. In other cases, military forces may have paramilitary forces acting in loose affilia- tion with them, or acting separately from them within the same training environ- ment. These relationships depend on the scenario, which is driven by training re- quirements.

Various agencies and experts have different lists of real-world threats the United States might have to face. If the U.S. Army were to pick any one of these threats as the threat against which to train, that threat would almost certainly not be the one it would actually fight. What is needed is a composite that is representative of the full range and variety of possible threats and OEs. It must have a bit of everything--it could be virtually anybody, anywhere. Therefore, this manual defines this representative composite in a way that is flexible enough to fit the most demanding U.S. Army training requirements and provides a framework for training that creates the leaders, soldiers, and unit skills necessary for success on the next battlefield.

Contemporary Threats and Other Actors

There are many types of actors or participants in today’s complex world envi- ronment. Some of the actors are countries (also called nation-states) and some are not. Nation-states are still dominant actors. However, some power is shifting to nontraditional actors and transnational concerns. There are many potential challenges to traditional concepts like balance of power, sovereignty, national in- terest, and roles of nation-state and non-state actors.

Of course, not all actors are threats. To be a threat, a nation or organization must have both the capabilities and the intention to challenge the United States. The capabilities in question are not necessarily purely military, but encompass all the elements of power available to the nation or organization.

Nation-State Actors

Nation-states fall into four basic categories according to their roles in the inter- national community. The categories are core states, transition states, rogue states, and failed or failing states.

The category of core states includes more than half of the nearly 200 countries in the world today. These are basically democratic (although to varying degrees) and share common values and interests. Within this larger group, there is an “inner core” of major powers. These are the advanced countries, including the United States, that generally dominate world politics. Most conflict with global consequences will involve the core states in some fashion or another.

Transition states are other larger, industrial-based countries¾mostly emerging regional powers¾that are striving to become major powers. High-end transition states are moving from an industrial-based society to an information-based soci- ety. Low-end transition states are seeking to move from an agricultural-based so- ciety to an industrial base. As states try to make this transition, there are cycles of political stability and instability, and the outcome of the transition is uncer- tain. Some transition states may successfully join the ranks of core states and even become major powers within that context; others may become competitors.

Rogue states are those that are hostile to their neighbors or to core states’ inter- ests. These countries can sponsor international terrorism or even confront U.S. military forces operating in the region. Failed or failing states are fragmented in such a way that a rule of law is absent; their instability is a threat to their neigh- bors and the core states.

Countries can move from one category to another, as conditions change. Some- times countries join together in multinational alliances and coalitions. Together, they have more strength and can become a power to be reckoned with.

Non-State Actors

Non-state actors are those that do not represent the forces of a particular nation-state. Such non-state elements include rogue actors as well as third- party actors.

Like rogue states, rogue actors are hostile to other actors; however, they may be present in one country or extend across several countries. Examples include insurgents, guerrillas, mercenaries, and transnational or subnational political movements. Particular sources of danger are terrorists and drug-trafficking or criminal organizations, since they may have the best technology, equipment, and weapons available, simply because they have the money to buy them. These non- state rogue actors may use terror tactics and militarily unconventional methods to achieve their goals.

Third-party actors may not be hostile to other actors. However, their presence, activities, and interests can affect the ability of military forces to accomplish their mission when operating in a foreign country. These third-party actors can be refugees, internally displaced persons, and other civilians on the battlefield, including international humanitarian relief agencies, transnational corporations, and the news media. These individuals and groups bring multiple sources of mo- tivation, ideology, interests, beliefs, or political affiliations into consideration. They may be sources of civil unrest. Their presence may require military forces to consider the potential impacts of traffic congestion, demonstrations, sabotage, and information manipulation.

Real-World and Training Considerations

When U.S. forces become involved in a particular country or region, they must take into account the presence and influence of these various types of threats and other actors. In a training environment, an OPFOR can represent a composite of those nation-state or non-state actors that constitute military and/or paramilitary forces that could present a threat to the United States, its friends, or its allies. Other, non-state actors that fall in the category of nonmilitary forces or elements are not part of the OPFOR, but could be part of the COE used in the training environment.

Contemporary OPFOR

This manual introduces the baseline operational doctrine of a flexible, thinking, adaptive, contemporary OPFOR that applies its doctrine with considerable initiative. (See the definition of contemporary OPFOR above.) It is applicable to the entire training community, including the OPFORs at all of the combat training centers (CTCs), the TRADOC schools, and units in the field. It provides  an OPFOR that believes that, through adaptive use of all available forces and capabilities, it can create opportunities that, properly leveraged, can allow it to fight and win, even against a technologically superior opponent such as the United States.

Baseline

As a baseline for developing specific OPFORs for specific training environments, this manual describes an OPFOR that is representative of the forces of con- temporary nation-states. This composite of the characteristics of real-world military and paramilitary forces provides a framework for the realistic and relevant portrayal of capabilities and actions that U.S. armed forces might face in the COE.

The State

For this composite of real-world threats, the manual refers to the country in question as “the State.” It describes this artificial country in terms of the eleven critical variables of the COE. As the baseline for the contemporary OPFOR that is representative of real-world forces, the State is not a peer competitor of the United States. However, it is a dominant power in its region of the world and is capable of challenging U.S. interests there. The general characteristics of the State could fit a number of different types of potential adversaries in a number of different scenarios.

Like most countries in the world, the State does not design its forces just to fight the United States or its allies. It designs them principally to deal with regional threats and to take advantage of regional opportunities. Therefore, the State’s national security strategy (including its doctrine, force design, and investment strategy) focuses primarily on maintaining and expanding its position as a regional power. It develops its military forces in a way that ensures conventional power superiority over any of its regional neighbors. These forces, together with the State’s other instruments of power, make it a dominant force in its region.

At the same time, the State is aware that aggressive pursuit of its regional goals might lead to intervention by a major power, such as the United States, from out- side the region. To the extent possible, therefore, it invests in technologies and capabilities that have utility against both regional and extraregional opponents. The basic force structure of the OPFOR is the same for either type of threat. The State must go to war¾or continue the war after extraregional intervention--with whatever it had going into the war.

When an extraregional power intervenes with sufficient force to overmatch the State’s, the State has to adapt its patterns of operation. It realizes that the forces and technology that allow it to dominate its neighbors may not be a match for the modern, high-technology forces of a wealthy extraregional power like the United States--at least not in a head-to-head conventional confrontation. However, it can use those means in creative and adaptive ways. To the maximum extent possible, the State plans and trains for adaptive operations and how it will make the transition to them. It is the combination of the State’s capabilities and its adaptive strategy, operations, and tactics that make it believe it can take on such an extraregional force and win.

Broadened Context

At the strategic level, the State’s ability to challenge U.S. interests includes not only the military and paramilitary forces of the State, but also the State’s dip- lomatic-political, informational, and economic instruments of power. Rarely would any country engage the United States or a U.S.-led coalition with purely military means. It is also possible that the State could be part of an alliance or coalition, in which case the OPFOR could include allied forces. These nation-state forces may also operate in conjunction with non-state actors such as insurgents, terrorists, and drug or criminal organizations.

The FM 7-100 series, as a whole, covers not only the military and paramilitary forces of the State, but also other, non-state paramilitary and nonmilitary organizations present in the State’s region of the world. An extraregional power becoming involved in that region may have to deal with any or all of these types of military, paramilitary, and nonmilitary elements. It might encounter these elements individually or, more likely, in combination with other such elements. Whether these elements operate in concert or independently, they are an important part of the COE.

Trainers need to consider the total OE and all instruments of power at the disposal of the State and the OPFOR--not just the military element, but also diplomatic-political, informational, and economic means. For a nation-state, these are instruments of national power. For non-state actors whose forces are paramilitary in nature, the other three instruments of power are generally present to one degree or another. Together, these instruments represent the power that actors can bring to bear against the United States.

Terminology

Since OPFOR baseline doctrine is a composite of how various forces worldwide might operate, it uses some terminology that is in common with that of other countries, including the United States. Whenever possible, OPFOR doctrine uses established U.S. military terms¾with the same meaning as defined in FM 1-02 (formerly FM 101-5-1) and/or JP 1-02. However, the FM 7-100 series also in- cludes some concepts for things the OPFOR does differently from how the U.S. military does them. Even if various real-world foreign countries might use the same concept, or something very close to it, different countries might give it dif- ferent names. In those cases, the OPFOR manuals either use a term commonly accepted by one or more other countries or create a new, “composite” term that makes sense and is clearly understandable. In any case where an operational or tactical term is not further specifically defined in the FM 7-100 series, it is used in the same sense as in the U.S. definition.

Flexibility

As a training tool, the OPFOR must be a challenging, uncooperative sparring partner, capable of stressing any or all battlefield operating systems of the U.S. force. However, it also must be tailored to meet training requirements.

In the OPFOR baseline presented in this manual, the FM authors often say that the State or the OPFOR “may” be able to do something or “might” or “could” do something. They often use the progressive forms of verbs to say that the State has a “growing” economy or “is developing” a capability or “is continually modernizing.”

The State participates in the global market, which can allow it to acquire things it cannot produce domestically. Such descriptions give scenario writers consider- able flexibility in determining what the State or the OPFOR actually has at a given point in time or a given place on the battlefield¾in a particular scenario.

The composite example of this baseline may meet the OPFOR requirements for many U.S. Army training environments. For cases that require an OPFOR based on a type of nation-state with characteristics different from those of the State de- scribed in this manual, this baseline provides a framework from which trainers can develop an OPFOR appropriate for their particular training requirements.

The OPFOR must be flexible enough to fit various training requirements. It must be scalable and tunable. Depending on the training requirement, the OPFOR may be a large, medium, or small force. Its technology may be state-of-the-art, relatively modern, obsolescent, obsolete, or an uneven combination of those cate- gories. Its ability to sustain operations may be limited or robust.

Thinking

This manual describes how the OPFOR thinks, especially how it thinks about fighting its regional neighbors and/or the United States. This thinking deter- mines basic OPFOR operations--as well as strategy and tactics, which are the subjects of other manuals in this series. It drives OPFOR organizational structures and equipment acquisition or adaptation. It also determines how the nation-state OPFOR that represents the armed forces of the State would interact with other, non-state actors that may be present in the COE.

Just because the U.S. force knows something about how the OPFOR has fought in the past does not mean that the OPFOR will always continue to fight that way. A thinking OPFOR will learn from its own successes and failures, as well as those of its potential enemies. It will adapt its thinking, its makeup, and its way of fighting to accommodate these lessons learned. It will continuously look for innovative ways to deal with the United States and its armed forces.

Adaptability

Like all military forces, the OPFOR has a basic, conventional design for dealing with forces with capabilities equal to or inferior to its own. Prior to a U.S. force becoming involved, therefore, the OPFOR can use the application or threat of application of that conventional design to dominate or influence its regional neighbors. The OPFOR plans these operations well in advance and tries to execute them as rapidly as possible, in order to preclude regional alliances or outside intervention.

The OPFOR has developed its doctrine, force structure, and capabilities with an eye toward employing them against both regional and extraregional opponents, if necessary. It has thought about and trained for how to adapt once an extraregional force becomes engaged. It has included this adaptability in its doctrine in the form of general principles, based on its perceptions of the United States and other threats to its goals and aspirations. It will seek to avoid types of operations and environments for which U.S. forces are optimized. During the course of con- flict, it will make further adaptations, based on experience and opportunity.

When a U.S. force or a U.S.-led coalition first begins to deploy into theater, the OPFOR will seek to disrupt the deployment and thus create opportunity. In such cases, the conventional design the OPFOR used in regionally-focused operations may still provide the framework for military operations against an advanced ex- traregional force. The OPFOR will not shy away from the use of military means against such an opponent, so long as the risk is commensurate with potential gains. As a U.S. or coalition force builds up power in the region, the OPFOR must rely on adaptive applications of its basic design in order to mitigate its disadvan- tages and exploit its advantages compared to this new opponent.

In general, the contemporary OPFOR will be less predictable than OPFORs in the past. It will be difficult to template as it adapts and attempts to create opportunity. Its patterns of operation will change as it achieves success or experiences failure. OPFOR doctrine might not change, but its way of operating will.

Initiative

Like U.S. Army doctrine, OPFOR doctrine must allow sufficient freedom for bold, creative initiative in any situation. OPFOR doctrine is descriptive, but not prescrip- tive; authoritative, but not authoritarian; definitive, but not dogmatic. The OPFOR that U.S. units encounter in various training venues will not apply this doctrine blindly or unthinkingly, but will use its experience and assessments to interpolate from this baseline in light of specific situations. Thus, U.S. units can no longer say that the OPFOR has to do certain things and cannot do anything that is not ex- pressly prescribed in established OPFOR doctrine. Doctrine guides OPFOR actions in support of the State’s objectives; OPFOR leaders apply it with judgment and initiative.

Keeping the COE and the OPFOR Contemporary

The COE is extremely fluid, with rapidly changing regional and global relation- ships. New actors--both nations and non-state actors--are constantly appearing and disappearing from the scene. The OPFOR operational doctrine provided in this manual should meet most of the U.S. Army’s training needs for the foresee- able future. During the period covered by the COE, almost anyone who fights the United States would probably have to use the same kinds of adaptive action as outlined in this doctrine. As the geopolitical situation, forces, or capabilities change over time, OPFOR doctrine and its applications will evolve along with them, to continue to provide the Army a “contemporary” OPFOR. Thus, the OPFOR will remain capable of presenting a challenge that is appropriate to meet evolving training requirements at any given point in time.