text: Support Area Operations
  necessary to facilitate the positioning, employment, and protection of resources required to sustain, enable,
  and control forces. Area security operations are often emphasized in noncontiguous AOs to compensate for
  the lack of protection integrity that large or distant, unoccupied areas often create. Forces conducting area
  security operations can saturate an area or position on key terrain to provide protection through early warning,
  reconnaissance, or surveillance and guard against unexpected enemy attack with an active response. Ground
  LOC located in noncontiguous areas present unique challenges based on the location, distance between
  supporting base camps and base clusters, and the security environment. Figure 3-2 provides an example of a
  noncontiguous corps AO with established support areas.
  Legend:
  DSA division support area
  Figure 3-2. Corps noncontiguous AO
  SUPPORT AREA OPERATIONS
  3-7. Support area operations are conducted by the MEB and tenants to prevent or minimize interference
  with command and control and SPO and to provide unimpeded movement of friendly forces; protection;
  operations to find, fix, and destroy enemy forces or defeat threats; and area damage control. The support area
  may provide secondary command and control nodes. Support area operations, as discussed in this chapter,
  do not include the mission SPO conducted by tenants within the support area. See appendix D for additional
  information on support area tenant units and their capabilities.
  3-8. Support area operations are often conducted as economy-of-force operations. Within a division or
  corps support area, the MEB conducts support area operations (area security, terrain management, movement
  control, mobility support, clearance of fires, airspace management, TCFs for security, mobility and
  countermobility support, rear command post support).
  Note. A theater sustainment command, expeditionary sustainment command, or sustainment
  brigade headquarters should not be assigned support area responsibility because these
  headquarters lack the capability to execute the AO responsibilities and would require significant
  augmentation of personnel and mission command systems.