The Command Support Group (CSG) grew out of 3 Commando Brigade's Headquarters and Signals Squadron, although it’s role extends back further to Royal Marines units tasked with signals, reconnaissance and intelligence operations during the Second World War. It achieved major unit status in 2000, and is now a multifunctional "information regiment" of some 450 personnel. On operations CSG deploys as the Information eXploitation (IX) Gp; designed to achieve information superiority within assigned battlespace by all available means, and contribute to component and joint information activity, in order to enable 3 Cdo Bde operations.
In order to achieve this, the CSG fuses and links Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) to provide broad understanding of an operational environment and the enemy. This is combined with Information Operations, including Electronic Warfare and Psychological Operations to achieve effect on the minds of target audiences. In addition, the Unit maintains it’s traditional enabling role; providing communications, IT and Life Support to the Brigade HQ.
Winning the information battle and achieving information superiority requires the prosecution of five key effects with greater tempo and accuracy than the adversary:
(1) Obtain information (FIND).
(2) Derive intelligence from it (EXPLOIT and UNDERSTAND).
(3) Use information to change or reinforce behaviour (INFLUENCE).
(4) Life support, protection of CIS and IT (ENABLE).
The IX Gp ensures that the Brigade Commander has superior situational awareness, allowing him to make quicker, more accurate decisions and to target his adversary's key capabilities. Much of its capability lies in its three organic squadrons, but it also tasks and coordinates non-organic assets, such as aerial reconnaissance platforms, to achieve its effect. In order to carry out its role in sustaining and protecting Brigade Headquarters, it has forces transferred to it from other parts of the Brigade. This process of tasking, fusing and coordinating a number of diverse capabilities to achieve a single aim is central to the way it does its business and is carried out in the IX Gp Headquarters, which is composed of a number of functional cells dealing with specialist capabilities, directed by a central Command Cell.
The Unit has developed through successive operational trial and validation. Operations in Iraq and repeatedly in Afghanistan have driven this evolution. It has become a model which Joint and Army Headquarters have successfully emulated. The evolution, of course, continues.
