What are Civil Military Operations?

  We have discovered over the course of many years that the attitudes of the civilian population has a direct bearing on the effectiveness of our military forces during warfare and the Defense Department has taken prudent steps over the years to account for this.

The civilian populace can have a negative effect on operations or they can have a positive effect on the morale and welfare of our troops.

News is often filtered so as to effect the morale of the audience who hears it  for the good of the reporting force. Many times people will react to positive or negative propaganda in a way that helps or hinders the military operation.

A good example of the effective use of propaganda was during the US War on Terror in Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

The Taliban was able to successfully plant stories about casualties caused by NATO bombing which I quite frankly don't believe. I am not naive and I do believe that innocent men women and children were sometimes killed by errant bombs, but I am certain that this did not happen to the extent that it was portrayed.

Furthermore they were able to squelch the news of their shenanigans at the same time. Few people realized that the Taliban were forcing people and even children to act as human shields and suicide bombers. They would also force children to either step on or walk near IED's so that they could blow them up to see how well the IED's worked 

The result was international pressure on NATO which forced them to scale back their bombing campaign which gave the Taliban an advantage. Military Ring Express