Page 156 - RSDG Year of 2023

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by incredibly interesting and talented people who are at the top of their game. It also makes it the most ‘google’, ‘blue sky thinking’ place that you can work in the Army, which can be both refreshing (and occasionally extremely irritating) for those used to a more conventional mindset. The second thing that strikes you is how busy we are. The Brigade has run white-hot since its inception, and just seems to get busier. Last year, from a company of circa 50 individuals, I deployed teams operationally to 26 different countries, almost always working in the most interesting locations, with the most interesting formations possible within UK Defence, at the forefront of current affairs. As a not-too-unusual case study, I had a 2Lt arrive from phase 2 training, and during a two year posting to 77X, deploy on two back-to-back 6 month operational tours, deploy to JFHQ in Cyprus to support the evacuation from Sudan (more on that later) and left the Brigade with arguably the highest concentration of operational experience possible, just as he promoted to Captain.
The burgeoning coming-of age of the Brigade has seen it shed the preserve of internet-based activity, and expand
to cover a wealth of adversary facing information-related tasks. Although in recent years the term has been sensa- tionalised by paranoid vegans, in essence it’s PsyOps: Psychological Operations. This can be anything from, yes, internet activity and media, but in reality encompasses far more, such as dropping leaflets from drones, projecting messages via radio, or even straight up talking to locals to communicate the commander’s message to the desired audience, achieving goals via soft power to complement conventional manoeuvre.
I need to stop selling myself as ‘cheap’, but part of the alure to politicians and commanders alike is the ability to amplify activity through information operations at very little cost. It’s all very well conducting defence activity, but it’s worthless if nobody knows about it. One relevant example involved putting our teams in Poland on the Belarus border. Here, a Squadron of Engineers was working tirelessly during the migrant crisis, yet this was a deployment that would have gone totally unnoticed had it not had the exposure we provided. The result was that a small team, costing almost nothing, had a dispropor- tionate impact, and accordingly demand for information operations is through the roof.
My own experience at the coal face of delivering Tactical PsyOps was on Op POLARBEAR. Perhaps the worst-named operation in history, POLARBEAR was the evacuation of British citizens from the piping heat of Sudan after fighting erupted between the Army and Paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in April 2023. Having been held at readiness, from flash to bang we arrived at Wadi Sedina airfield (just North of Omdurman) within 48 hours of notification to support the FCDO and interna- tional extraction efforts. The situation was a complex one. Although a far-cry from Op PITTING in Afghanistan,