Major Chris Smith, an Australian Army officer, deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom from May to December 2006 as the operations officer of the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment (RAR), a light infantry battalion. In the months prior to deployment, the RAR went through a well-balanced Iraq-specific training regimen. The unit attempted to give its soldiers weekends off during the training cycle because the units were from all over Australia and the commander did not want to turn a six-month deployment into a 12-month deployment. The RAR eventually deployed to Camp Smitty, a joint British-Australian outpost in Al-Muthanna Province. After two months, they disbanded the camp and moved to Tallil. At Tallil, the first mission of the RAR was to secure the reconstruction efforts of a Japanese engineer brigade until the Japanese decided to withdraw. Subsequently, Muthanna was identified as the first province that was going to transition to Iraq control. In only a few months, the RAR had to coordinate its transition from Muthanna with the provincial governor and implement the associated information operations (IO) campaign. After removing its forces from Muthanna, the RAR's role primarily became mentoring the Iraqi Army and providing assistance to the police. Towards the end of the RAR's six-month tour, the unit assumed control of Dhi Qar Province from the Italians who withdrew from Iraq in the same period, just after they had handed control of Dhi Qar to the provincial governor. Smith describes his role as the operations officer during this time in considerable detail. He mentions that he assigned a responsible officer to each line of operation as a method for delegating the complex tasks involved in counterinsurgency. He also says that at the battalion level, they discovered that maneuver was only about 10 percent of the problem because most of the actual maneuver was conducted by platoon-size Iraqi elements. His primary responsibility was "to allocate the right assets to companies to give to platoon commanders so they could actually go out and deliver the effect or get the information and bring it back." His biggest problem was integrating the efforts of the individuals managing the lines of operation in order to avoid "stovepiping." He also faced the challenge of getting junior leaders to "understand what they were doing and how it actually linked into a much broader effect, or the implications of it." He mentions that national caveats inhibited the performance of the multinational force as well. When asked to compare the US and Australian armies, Smith expressed admiration for the national will of the US but thought that US Army company commanders in the rank of captain were too junior for their responsibilities. He felt that the company commanders in the rank of major brought more maturity and particularly helped his army's soldiers to understand that tactical tasks have strategic implications and that the US has a dangerous "shoot first and ask questions later" mentality. In contrast, he felt that Australian soldiers would have been disciplined and ridiculed in similar circumstances for not thinking through the problem, recognizing all methods that are available, and applying the most appropriate tool.

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