{"id":11132,"date":"2015-02-08T15:14:12","date_gmt":"2015-02-08T15:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=11132"},"modified":"2015-02-08T15:16:17","modified_gmt":"2015-02-08T15:16:17","slug":"british-army-activates-chindits-brigade-as-facebook-warriors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=11132","title":{"rendered":"British Army Activates Chindits Brigade As Facebook Warriors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Army revives Chindits as \u2018Facebook warriors\u2019 for smart battle<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Sam Jones, Defence and Security Editor
\nFinancial Times<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\"Undated<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The British Army will revive one of the most contentious special forces units of the second world war, the Chindits, as a new generation of \u201cFacebook\u201d warriors who will wage complex and covert information and subversion campaigns.<\/p>\n

As many as 1,500 troops will make up the reincarnated 77th Brigade, which is due to come into active service in April, the army said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like their predecessors, they will wear an image of the mythical Burmese\u00a0Chinthe<\/em>, a lion-like guardian of Buddhist temples, on their cap badges.<\/p>\n

The original Chindits were a guerrilla unit led by the swashbuckling British commander Major General Orde Wingate, one of the pioneers of modern unconventional warfare. They operated deep behind Japanese lines in Burma between 1942 and 1945 and their missions were often of questionable success.<\/p>\n

The revived unit will have a significantly altered focus. Though they will undertake special forces-type operations, the modern Chindits will mainly aim to achieve their objectives without violence, using a range of activities to make adversaries do what they want them to do \u2014 a technique known as reflexive control.<\/p>\n

Among their weapons will be social media campaigns on Twitter and Facebook, spreading disinformation or exposing truths in war zones, \u201cfalse flag\u201d incidents \u2014 which are designed to fool people into thinking they were carried out by someone else \u2014 and intelligence gathering. They will also support other army units in their day-to-day activities, according to senior figures in the military.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe brigade consists of more than just traditional capabilities. It is an organisation that sits at the heart of trying to operate smarter,\u201d said Sir Nicholas Carter, chief of the general staff.<\/p>\n

The brigade is designed to help Britain\u2019s troops \u201cfight in an information age\u201d, a senior army officer added.<\/p>\n

Soldiers for the Chindits will be drawn from the formation currently known as the Security Assistance Group. It is hoped that more than a third of the unit will be made up of reserves. The Chindits will be based in Berkshire.<\/p>\n

The crisis in Ukraine, in particular, has highlighted the need for new approaches to warfare. The undercover activities of\u00a0Russia\u2019s \u201clittle green men\u201d<\/a>\u00a0in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, as well as the Kremlin\u2019s extensive cyber and information warfare campaign in the country, have prompted worry throughout Nato\u2019s military commands over how to combat such tactics.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0brigade consists of more than just traditional capabilities. It is an organisation that sits at the heart of trying to operate\u00a0smarter<\/q>– Sir Nicholas Carter, chief of the general staff<\/div>\n

Strategists have come to the conclusion that the wars of the future will not necessarily be declared but will occur on a sliding scale of aggression and violence.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0growing importance of so-called \u201chybrid\u201d warfare<\/a>\u00a0has dominated the discussions of national security officials in recent months.<\/p>\n

In a speech in December<\/a>, the UK\u2019s most senior military officer, chief of the defence staff Sir Nicholas Houghton, warned that \u201cwe are increasingly in a state of permanent international competition\u201d. The armed forces were in the process of taking steps to \u201cescape the binary mindset of peace or war; operations or training\u201d, he added.<\/p>\n

The formation of the 77th Brigade \u201crecognises that the actions of others in a modern battlefield can be affected in ways that are not necessarily violent and it draws heavily on important lessons from our commitments to operations in Afghanistan among others\u201d, the army said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will draw together a host of existing and developing capabilities essential to meet the challenges of modern conflict and warfare.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wingate\u2019s critics see Burma missions as costly distraction<\/strong><\/p>\n

The army chose to revive the Chindits as warriors for the information age because of the unorthodox creative thinking that lay behind the original unit\u2019s formation and which was the hallmark of many of its senior officers, including Brigadier Michael Calvert,\u00a0pictured top, left, in Burma in 1944<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Though pioneering in its time, the original 77th brigade was also divisive. Many viewed its missions as costly distractions with little genuine impact. The Chindits suffered huge casualties on almost all of their deep-penetration jungle operations, losing as many as a third of their soldiers to disease, wounds and exhaustion.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Army revives Chindits as \u2018Facebook warriors\u2019 for smart battle Sam Jones, Defence and Security Editor Financial Times The British Army will revive one of the most contentious special forces units of the second world war, the Chindits, as a new … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}