Method - Mexico AOOs, Zona Militares and smaller units

[tlongers]

TW:

This is a Mexico specific discussion, but has broader implications for most countries where AOO=command and control.

Per law since at least 9 June 1951 Zona Militares command any unit that is within its territorial jurisdiction (area of operations), except those that are subject to a “mando especial” (special command):

Artículos 6o y 9o [SEGUNDA PARTE De las Zonas Militares] de la Reglamento General de Regiones y Zonas Militares, 9 June 1951, derogado por el Reglamento General de Mandos Territoriales, Guarniciones Militares y Servicio Militar de Plaza, 22 April 2013. http://www.sedena.gob.mx/pdf/reglamentos/rgltmo_reg_zon_mils.pdf Internet Archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20101220233006/http://www.sedena.gob.mx/pdf/reglamentos/rgltmo_reg_zon_mils.pdf ; Artículos 65 y 68 de la Reglamento General de Mandos Territoriales, Guarniciones Militares y Servicio Militar de Plaza, 22 April 2013. http://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/regla/n373.pdf Internet Archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20160420090245/http://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/regla/n373.pdf

The question for us is, how should we handle the parent/child relationship when a Batallon de Infanteria or another unit smaller than a Zona Militar has an AOO that falls under two (or more) Zona Militares? Options:

1. Assume the Batallon has multiple parents
2. Make no parent assumption, regardless of AOO - parent relationships are only determined via source
3. Case-by-case - Assume multiple/overlapping parents if AOO appears to be part of "special" or "temporary" assignment away from the Batallon's "home" Site. This is made more difficult if there is no or limited data on the Site.

Another question - if there are no sources for parent relationship - should we assume parent based on overlapping AOOs, or based on a Batallon's Site being in an AOO for a Zona Militar? My instinct here is to say yes, we should assume.

@tlongers - one municipio Ziracuaretiro (5606676) we have assigned to the 21 Zona Militar from 10 Feb. 2004 to 21 Nov. 2016 based on the SEDENA maps. We also have two sources that put the municipio as part of 21 ZM.

Interestingly that same municipio falls under the AOO of the 62 Batallón de Infantería, at least for an operation in 23 Jan. 2009. That same operation was reported as being carried out under the auspices of the 43 Zona Militar, making the municipio also part of the 43 ZM's AOO, and the parent of the 62 Batallon.

Even more interestingly that Batallon was (and is) based in Irapuato, Guanajuato which would place it inside of the 16 Zona Militar's AOO.

So:

1. Sources have Ziracuretiro as being part of at least 2 ZMs
2. Based on the SEDENA source I would not split the parentage of the 62 Batallon
3. Based on the 62 Batallon having a Site inside of an AOO of another ZM it means we should take a case-by-case approach to assigning parentage
4. Parentage doesn't seem to strictly follow the AOOs of units - contrary to what the law would make us think
5. HOWEVER - I do think in absence of any parent information we should attach batallones to the ZM which has an AOO that cover their Site, or a matching AOO. Our source for this determination would be the law itself with low confidence. The date of this parent relationship would be based on the date of the Site and/or AOO which sparked the connection.

TL:

Good example - this shows the limits of assigning Command by geography, rather than the details of deployment.

Some questions/thoughts:

• This is the difference between describing what we see from the sources in front of us, and understanding how decisions (about deployment, command and so on) are made in reality.
• What are our chances of finding information about the use of "mando especial", which may or may not be a commonplace mechanism used by the Army to frame deployments and clarify chains of command?
• Do we have other precedents or examples of where parentage of a Batallon appears to have shifted ZM as a result of subordinate units being deployed within the terrain of another ZM?
• Do we need a create some kind of "dynamic cluster" to represent operations that are somewhere in between daily run of the mill "militarying" and an Operation Pulo Shield type op? Because operations like the 23 January 2009 on in Ziracuaretiro are probably common.
• For the Ziracuaretiro operation, we don't whether troops/materiel/assets from 21 ZM were also tasked to 62 Bat's command.

On the technical side, the visualisation does not appear to have a way of showing contemporaneous allocation of a administrative area to more and a single organisation. It would be possible to temporarily assign an administration area to an organisation for a specific duration, before reverting it back to "normal" (e.g. its Zona).

TW:

What are our chances of finding information about the use of "mando especial", which may or may not be a commonplace mechanism used by the Army to frame deployments and clarify chains of command?

Good question - it's not clear what "mando especial" really means as there are special forces units (for which the chain of command needs to be clarified). I haven't seen this referenced in any sources yet so it may be difficult simply because of disconnect between official legal language and the language used in sources.

Do we have other precedents or examples of where parentage of a Batallon appears to have shifted ZM as a result of subordinate units being deployed within the terrain of another ZM?

I'll have to dig a bit on this - there are some units that have changed parents multiple times, largely because they have been moved to different Sites (I believe).

Do we need a create some kind of "dynamic cluster" to represent operations that are somewhere in between daily run of the mill "militarying" and an Operation Pulo Shield type op? Because operations like the 23 January 2009 on in Ziracuaretiro are probably common.

Hmmm - not sure - I see the operation in Ziracuaretiro as part of normal "militarying" as it were. I'm trying to think of an example of what you're describing, I guess the best example I can think of is when we know some soldiers from a unit are deployed in a time-bound manner to another place - as described here (link). How I've dealt with this is to add a Site and/or AOO related to the Site or Area of special deployment with a start date and N for "assume to current date?". I think this captures the information well - and is a fairly good example of special deployments like this - we know a portion of a unit moves, the chain of command for those specially deployed forces doesn't appear to be part of any Op Pulo Shield type organization, and there is an implied end date (though we may not know it).

On the technical side, the visualisation does not appear to have a way of showing contemporaneous allocation of a administrative area to more and a single organisation. It would be possible to temporarily assign an administration area to an organisation for a specific duration, before reverting it back to "normal" (e.g. its Zona).

Yes that's something that will need to be fixed one way or another (depends on NGO feedback how we implement). I've been chewing on the idea of having a map that's the OSM base and "blank" - the user would search for a point/area on the map and then the SFM's data would kick in - searching for Ziracuaretiro would bring up all the units that have operated there (or perhaps within a certain time range as selected by the user).

TL:

The main action here is:

• Add into the Handbook some text about the Ziracuaretiro operation, using it as as an example of how to apply the model in cases of complicated parentage.

There are no actions here with respect to the initial incorporation of sfm_structure_geo_final into the Mexico dataset This is because the information relating to the Ziracuaretiro operation is added as an additional, distinct row.