The Army recently released a new version of FM 6-0, Commander and Staff Organization and Operations (May 2022) which provides commanders and their staffs with tactics and procedures for organizing and operating their command and control (C2) system.
Check it out at:
armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN35404-FM_6-0-000-WEB-1
Interesting that they formally associate opsec and ATO with S3 instead of S2.
That has been the case for some time. If you look up the proponent for Army OPSEC (AR 530-1) and Antiterrorism (AR 525-13), it is the G-3/5/7 in both cases. Why? Because both the ATO and the OPSEC officer need to gather information on foreign AND domestic (i.e. criminal) threats to the organization. Intelligence Oversight (IO) (AR 381-10) puts significant limitations on collection of US Persons Information by the S2 staff. Great way to put these additional duties back in the S3 section… “Sir, no foreign nexus, no S2.”
All that being said, the S2 can support both the Antiterrorism and OPSEC program (within the parameters provided by IO), but they should not be the lead for the programs.
Good answer. Makes sense to me.
Thanks for the info. I wish I could pawn off opsec and AT to my S3 hahaha. I havn’t been in a single unit where S2 got to use the intelligence oversight reasoning. I actually tried to do it to pawn off emergency management since I would technically collect unit personnel info, but my unit decided to make it easy and get rid of the EM recall roster. Does storing passports count? Thats something that kept coming up in different units, but I kept pushing aside because I didn’t want to deal with that hassle. A few units back I used to be a solo all in one S2, persec infosec, indsec, physec, ato, em, opsec, foreign disclosure, IO, and records manager. Left that job after a year because they wouldnt even give me an ncoic.