ROE’s Different in Every Operation

Rules of engagement under the United Nations and, you know, I I don't want to sit here as an expert on rules of engagement. Every operation has a different rule of engagement or different rules of engagement and they can be more liberal or more conservative depending on the operation. Largely speaking or loosely speaking, the United Nations operations tend to be much more restrictive in their rules of engagement than, for example, Afghanistan or even Somalia for example, because it wasn’t a United Nations operation per se. There is a difference between United Nations operations and United Nations sanctioned operation. So the rules of engagement certainly on the first deployment were very, very, very restrictive. Very restrictive and very complicated. In fact, so complicated that even for us more senior guys it was kind of scratch your head to make sure that you understood them clear enough that you didn’t get yourself in hot water. We went so far as to plasticize little cards and have the soldiers tape it to the butt of their rifles so that they would know the rules of engagement and wouldn’t get themselves in trouble. And it caused a lot of angst because they were so ambiguous that you didn’t know, and we were really worried about that as leadership because the last thing you want is a solider to second guess whether he should shoot or not. At the end of the day keeping warring factions apart is your mission but the ultimate mission as far as I am concerned is getting your soldiers home safe and sound having completed their job and if they are in doubt about when they can engage and not engage and they take the split second extra because they are confused and that gets them killed, then there is something wrong. It is a soldier’s job to put himself or herself in harm’s way but not to put themselves in harm’s way unnecessarily or because of ambiguous instructions.

Mr. Bradley expresses his personal experiences with rules of engagement during deployments.

Daniel Bradley

Mr. Daniel Bradley was born June 24, 1958 in Ottawa, Ontario. At 18 years of age, walking by a recruiting centre, Mr. Bradley made an impulsive decision to join the military having a desire for the infantry. Mr. Bradley became a member of the Royal Canadian Regiment holding rank as an infanteer and obtained training at CFB Cornwallis in Trenton, Ontario. After training, Mr. Bradley spent a bit of time In Canada service but in 1978 experienced his first operational deployment to Cyrpus. In 1992 Mr. Bradley was given another opportunity to deploy to Somalia and joined a contingency from the RCR and became part of the Airborne Regiment where he held rank of Chief Warrant Officer. As his military career continued Mr. Bradley was part of an operational to Croatia in 1994, Bosnia in 1997 and more recently 2002/03 travelled to Afghanistan on two different operations, one being Roto O as Company Sergeant Major. Mr. Bradley retired in 2011 with 35 years of military sevice.