text: Chapter 5
  TERRAIN AND WEATHER
  • Leaders often seek to conduct operations during limited visibility or early morning hours in
  order to surprise the targets.
  TROOPS AND SUPPORT AVAILABLE
  • Tactical units are often task-organized with additional teams or units (Chapter 3). Host Nation
  security forces are essential for every offensive operation.
  TIME AVAILABLE
  • Leaders allocate sufficient time to conduct the operation; in COIN, this should include time
  to conduct SE and tactical questioning.
  CIVIL CONSIDERATIONS
  • The level of inconvenience to the local populace should discourage insurgents and insurgent
  sympathizers from remaining in the locale and encourage the local population to provide
  information on the insurgents. The level of inconvenience should not be so great as to turn the
  local population towards active or passive support of the insurgency.
  • Actions on the objective must include how to deal with nonhostile persons, bystanders, family
  members, and detainees.
  Section II—CIVIL SECURITY AND CONTROL
  Establishing civil security promotes a safe environment. Establishing civil control involves regulates selected
  behavior and activities of individuals and groups. It reduces risk to individuals and groups and provides
  security from both external and internal threats (FM 3-07). Together, actions along these LOEs in COIN often
  take the form of unilateral and combined offensive operations against insurgent leadership, guerrillas,
  underground, and auxiliary. These offensive actions help establish public order and safety. In COIN, offensive
  operations are more successful when supported by effective targeting.
  SEARCH AND ATTACK
  5-17. This technique is used for conducting a movement to contact that shares many of the
  characteristics of an area security mission (FM 3-90). A search and attack is a specialized technique
  of conducting a movement to contact in an environment of noncontiguous AOs. In COIN, a search
  and attack uses multiple coordinated small-units (team, squad, or platoon) that conduct decentralized
  movement to find and attack the enemy. A commander normally employs this form of a movement
  to contact when the enemy is operating in small, dispersed elements. Often searches and attacks are used
  to support the establish civil security subtask of enforce cessation of hostilities, peace agreement, and other
  arrangements.
  5-18. Search and attack operations are used in both urban and rural terrain. They are followed by
  operations supporting the other LOE such as restoring damaged infrastructure or conducting information
  engagements in a neighborhood. This tactic disrupts insurgent activities, while trying to solve some of the
  root causes of the insurgency. The search and attack is typically used during the clear phase of a
  clear-hold-build operation. It may also be used in a strike operation.
  5-19. To develop a specific search and attack concept, the commander must understand the OE by using
  the operational variables, the mission variables, and mission analysis. The troop-leading procedures (TLP)
  and military decision-making process (MDMP) applied to the COIN OE serve as the planning foundation
  for commanders and leaders.
  CONSIDERATIONS DURING COUNTERINSURGENCIES
  5-20. Specific considerations using elements of the mission variables to a search and attack
  in COIN are—