The people supposedly in charge of our national security celebrated the attacks on the Houthis with memes
I will get around to writing about Jeffrey Goldberg’s bombshell article in the Atlantic about how he was inadvertently included in a top-secret Trump administration text group discussing the planning for the recent U.S. strike on the Houthi terrorists in Yemen, but first I would like to describe for you how similar communications were conducted during the Iraq war.
A TOC is a Tactical Operations Center. Every unit engaged in combat from a division through a brigade down to a battalion and a company has its own TOC where plans are made for everything from defending the unit to movement of troops to engaging the enemy in combat.
Everything that happens in a TOC is secret. When I was embedded with an infantry company in a small base camp in downtown Mosul, every night there would be a convoy sent from the company to the brigade base camp to pick up the hot meal for the day. In the TOC, soldiers would be assigned to the convoy; a route from the company base camp to the brigade dining facility would be picked, with plans made for an alternate route if something unexpected came up. The time of departure for the convoy would be chosen. All of this was necessary because even something as simple as a convoy to pick up dinner was a combat operation. Previous convoys had come under fire from Iraqi insurgents, and it was known that insurgents had laid IEDs along likely routes from the company to the brigade base camp. Soldiers had been wounded in attacks on convoys to pick up dinner in that company and others, so planning for the convoy every afternoon was a serious matter.
There was similar security and secrecy for TOCs at battalion and brigade and division levels, where larger movements of troops and combat operations to attack the enemy were planned. Everything was secret at every level. The maps were secret. The radio frequencies that would be used were secret. The plans themselves were, of course, secret. Transmission of a plan from one level of command to another was secret and carried out by a secure network using radios and satellite and microwave transmission. Everything transmitted on the network was encrypted, and no one other than commanders or people cleared with the highest level of secrecy was allowed near the secure laptops or transmission equipment.
That is how seriously an American combat military unit took the security around the transmission of something as simple as plans to go pick up a hot meal for supper.
The important word in the acronym “TOC” is operations. It’s why all the care was taken to keep things secret. You don’t want anyone to know what you’re planning, because if your plans are found out, the enemy can make his own plans to counter yours.
In Washington DC, at the top of the government, a TOC is the Situation Room at The White House, or the Tank at the Pentagon, or a SCIF at the CIA or the State Department, Or even built into the homes of the Cabinet officials in charge of national security.
