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Force protection (FP) is the concept of protecting military personnel, family members, civilians, facilities, equipment and operations from threats or hazards in order to preserve operational effectiveness and contribute to mission success. It is used as a doctrine by members of

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...

. The concept of force protection was initially created after the Beirut barrack bombings in

Lebanon Lebanon, officially the Republic of Lebanon, is a country in the Levant region of West Asia. Situated at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian Peninsula, it is bordered by Syria to the north and east, Israel to the south ...

in 1983. With its

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

focus toward potential adversaries employing large conventional military forces at the time (e.g., the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, etc.), the U.S. military had become complacent and predictable with regard to asymmetric attacks by state and non-state actors employing terrorist and guerrilla methodologies . As a result, during what were ostensibly peacekeeping operations by a U.S. Marine Corps landing force ashore in Lebanon in 1983, two explosives-laden civilian trucks were able to breach the perimeter of the Marines' containment area and detonate the car bombs adjacent to the Marines' billeting areas. Force protection was subsequently implemented throughout the Defense Department (and later adopted by the Coast Guard) to ensure that such a scenario never happened to U.S. forces again. Force protection itself is characterized by changing protective tactics to avoid becoming predictable.

References

Force protection tactics {{mil-stub

See also

References