I'm fine with "influence artillery rounds." But don't get overly focused on non-kinetics. Jihadis persuaded to be fine people can revert. Dead jihadis remain good jihadis.
Special Forces civil affairs PsyOps operations could use this:
To stay ahead of rapidly moving threats in the information space, 1st Special Forces Command is building an Information Warfare Center that will specialize in “influence artillery rounds.”
Critical to Special Forces’ role is deploying to remote locations while still being able to effectively message portions of a population.
Again, this is useful. Jihadis may be committed but most aren't that fanatical. And other enemies, neutrals, and even friends might need such information ops to help keep our forces secure and promote the campaign objective.
The artillery round framing fits with my thoughts on potential tactical use in effects support for troops in combat:
[Fire support]t could be a plane or space system out of sight, an attack helicopter, a ship or submarine offshore, a distant ground force missile or artillery asset, or even an 81mm mortar back at the company level.
If cyber weapons can suppress the target or add to the fires mission success--perhaps by negating point defenses against fires missions or information operations highlighting a path of retreat open to the enemy before the rounds hit to get them to retreat, for example--it is automatically plugged in to the mission.
Indeed, if the target is close to civilians, perhaps the call for fire support triggers automatic telephone warnings to civilian numbers near the target if there is time before the rounds need to hit.
The Special Forces effort is more of an area weapon, it seems. And perhaps very useful if it isn't as amateurish and laughable as Russia's tiny influence operations in the 2016 election (aside from the multiplier effect made by the Resistance, of course).
But my basic view is that "WebOps" shouldn't let us forget that for the most dedicated enemies, "LeadOps" are still key. Sometimes JDAMs are the weapon of choice:
We'd be better off explaining to Islamists that we know that they do not represent most Moslems and that their right to be angry stops the moment it crosses the line into physical harm to Americans. And at that point we'll remind them why God gave us JDAMs and special forces.
Oh, and controlling "selfie emitting" (my term) to avoid telling enemies where you have been, where you are, and where you are going will be a project.
It's a complicated battlefield out there.
