Trust, Transparency and Mission Command
People often ask why I continue to revisit a counter-drug operation along the Texas border that occurred more than 30 years ago. The question is understandable. What I witnessed fail in the Big Bend was not the radio system; the radios performed exactly as the laws of physics dictated. What failed was mission command, with the radios serving as its instrument. I have observed the same pattern across successive generations of personnel and increasingly sophisticated equipment too frequently to dismiss it as coincidence.
The specifics of operations GATORADE and UNITY are dated; the lessons they reveal are not.
Unit and Ground
G Company, 143rd Infantry (Airborne), a long-range surveillance company (LRSC), was deployed to the Big Bend as part of the earliest joint counter-drug operations integrating Army surveillance with U.S. Border Patrol. Smuggling organizations exploited remote terrain to move people and product through regions that could not be persistently observed by Border Patrol. The LRSC was tasked with closing this surveillance gap by deploying small, dispersed teams deep into the operational area. These teams monitored known routes for extended periods, reporting observed activity to enable interdiction forces to respond effectively.
The Big Bend’s vast distances and rugged terrain leave no margin for error. Very high frequency (VHF) and ultra-high frequency (UHF) communications cannot maintain continuous connectivity in such an environment, nor were they intended to. LRS teams were designed to operate under these conditions and thus had no organic satellite communications capability.
At the beginning of the mission, one system in our inventory was reliably used for such scenarios: high-frequency radio, in the near-vertical incidence skywave (NVIS) configuration prescribed for the terrain.
NVIS is a high-frequency (HF) radio configuration that directs signals upward, allowing them to reflect from the ionosphere and return within a coverage area that overcomes terrain masking by ridgelines. For environments such as the Big Bend, NVIS has been the established communications solution since the Vietnam era.
In the months preceding Operation Desert Storm, the III Corps G6 provided an NVIS antenna for field testing in support of Operation Alliance. I conducted the testing, and the system performed as described in FM 24-18 under the same terrain conditions later encountered during Operation UNITY. This was not a theoretical capability but a validated primary communications method, tested in the operational environment by the unit responsible for employing it.
GATORADE and the Wrong Lesson
Operation GATORADE preceded Operation UNITY and exposed deficiencies that should have been resolved during mission preparation. These included ineffective interagency coordination, ambiguous command relationships and inconsistent performance of HF radio networks when used by operators whose proficiency had declined through limited recent use.
HF communications require operator proficiency. Propagation shifts with the time of day, season and solar cycle. Additionally, antennas must be properly configured, oriented and grounded. These are not technical limitations but training requirements, well within the capabilities of properly trained signal soldiers.
Rather than producing a corrective training plan, GATORADE fostered the perception that HF itself was the problem. Leaders who observed inconsistent HF performance sought to plan around the capability instead of addressing the training deficiencies that caused it. That misdiagnosis became one of the assumptions inherited by UNITY.
The COMSEC Picture We Brought With Us
The COMSEC (communications security) discipline we brought to the border mission reflected Cold War assumptions. U.S. forces trained on the premise that Soviet signal intelligence monitored military communications even during drill periods, and we trained accordingly. What came out of Moscow after the Soviet collapse later confirmed it. Consequently, communications were never treated as a convenience but as a mission-critical capability requiring deliberate planning, disciplined execution and continual rehearsal. Although the adversary on the border differed from the Cold War threat, the LRSC retained these communications practices because the underlying operational principles remained unchanged.
UNITY: One Plan on Paper, Another in the Field
Operation UNITY was a distributed surveillance mission that paired Texas Army National Guard soldiers with U.S. Border Patrol elements across the same operational area previously covered during Operation GATORADE. I served as the signal officer during this operation.
Planning shifted toward satellite communications early. A civilian program manager supporting the Texas Army National Guard’s emerging counter-drug mission advised planners that satellite terminals would be available at mission start. The individual was a retired veteran who had substantial operational credibility and expertise. Consequently, his guidance carried significant weight within the unit.
The issue was not misconduct or poor judgment by an individual but reliance on credible guidance from a respected professional that proved incorrect in the field. Furthermore, the chain of command failed to recognize the resulting divergence between planning assumptions and operational reality.
Leaders seeking an alternative to HF accepted the expectation that satellite communications would be available. Although the written communications plan designated HF as the primary beyond-line-of-sight system, consistent with doctrine and the equipment on hand, planning gradually shifted to the assumption that satellite communications would be available instead.
At the beginning of the mission, no satellite systems had been provided. Not one terminal. The capability on which planning had increasingly relied was simply unavailable.
I was aware of this as the assigned signal officer. My guidance was unequivocal: NVIS-configured HF remained the primary communications system for this terrain and mission. Having personally conducted the field testing, I directed the force to execute the approved plan.
That guidance was not enforced, and I was not informed that it had been disregarded.
The communications platoon sergeant, acting on guidance from a civilian program manager and the assumption that satellite capability would be available, directed that HF would not be used and that the HF radios be rendered nonfunctional prior to execution. This direction bypassed the established chain of command, excluded the signal officer of record and was neither staffed nor presented to the commander as a plan modification. It was not incorporated into any written revision; it was just implemented.
The resulting communications posture was never formally approved by anyone in authority. The primary system had been deliberately disabled, while the intended replacement capability was not available.
What Happened When the Teams Went In
Satellite terminals did not arrive as scheduled. The HF capability required by the operating environment as the fallback had already been disabled.
Consequently, teams deployed to observation sites without a reliable means of reporting collected information.
The consequences were immediate. Reporting was delayed, coordination between units degraded and commanders lost track of visibility into team locations, status and observations. Force-wide situational awareness was compromised.
Satellite equipment arrived later and was presented as the solution. However, it could not restore the command-and-control structure that had already failed. Communications capability introduced after a critical failure cannot retroactively correct the operational consequences.
No team was lost, but that outcome reflected favorable circumstances and terrain rather than effective planning. The operational capability the LRSC was designed to provide—sustained, cued interdiction based on team reporting—was not achieved because the architecture supporting that mission had been dismantled before operations began.
Why the Directive Worked
Several factors allowed the unauthorized directive to persist.
The program office controlled funding, equipment access and daily administrative tasking for the counter-drug effort, providing it significant influence within the unit. A noncommissioned officer receiving direct guidance from that office had no realistic way to refuse without immediate professional risk. The platoon sergeant responded as many personnel in that position would have under similar circumstances.
The problem was not the sergeant’s compliance but the program design itself. Lawful operational authority was vested in one organization, while effective day-to-day influence resided in another. The decision was made in the gap between those authorities.
A validated HF and NVIS capability was set aside in favor of an assumed satellite capability that had not been tested in the operational environment. The result was a fundamental disconnect: the operational commander, the signal officer and the deployed teams did not share a common understanding of available communications capabilities at H-hour. Three different assumptions shaped a single operation.
What It Means Now
The conditions that produced these failures are not limited to the late 1980s and early 1990s. They recur whenever civilian program authority, contractor support and uniformed operational authority must be aligned under pressure. The same challenges persist today along the border, where task forces again integrate uniformed forces with federal law enforcement and rely on program offices to deliver critical communication capabilities.
None of the solutions are complex. They are the same measures every experienced signal officer understands, yet busy staff continue to overlook or underprioritize them.
The PACE plan should be developed against fielded capability, not projected capability. If a program office requests that a not-yet-fielded system be designated as the primary communication method, require formal acknowledgment of that assumption. Documentation is inexpensive; operational discipline is not.
The alternate and contingency communications methods should be trained to achieve the same standard as the primary system. A PACE plan is only effective if operators can employ every tier when required; otherwise, it is merely a plan on paper.
All deviations from the designated plan should be routed through the signal officer of record. The commander should be briefed in writing before execution, and the associated risk should be explicitly identified. A change that is not staffed through the proper process is not a change—it is an unauthorized departure from the plan.
The operations order should mention that nonuniformed personnel may provide advice but do not possess tasking authority. This boundary should be established with the program office during the initial planning conference to prevent misunderstandings later. This is not a criticism of program offices; it is a governance measure that protects all parties.
None of these recommendations represent new doctrine. They are existing principles applied consistently and without exception.
Closing
Early joint operations are intended to provide lessons for the force. GATORADE and UNITY demonstrated that the mission command failure and the communications failure were not separate events; the communications failure followed from the mission command failure. A known and tested communication capability was designated as primary, then disregarded in execution and deliberately rendered unusable outside the chain of command. Command and control cannot endure that sequence, and it will fail again if the same conditions are allowed to develop.
The radios have changed, but the pattern has not. That is why this lesson belongs in print: so that the next signal officer entering a joint command post and hearing, “satellite will be there,” recognizes the warning signs early enough to prevent a repeat.
Kevin T. Countie is a retired U.S. Army colonel who served as the signal officer for Operation UNITY with G Company, 143rd Infantry (Airborne), a long-range surveillance company. He has additional experience with long-range reconnaissance patrol and long-range surveillance units, counter-drug and border operations planning and Border Patrol Tactical Unit support. He later served as deputy chief of staff in the U.S. House of Representatives. He writes on communications planning, mission command and joint operations.
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