Humanities & Social Sciences 4 (2016 9) 722-732 ~ ~ ~ УДК 355.433 Complex Military Operations in the 21st Century: Challenges for Field Combat Personnel Eugene Obiora Eugenea b and Chukwuma C.C. Osakweb a * University Sains Malaysia Penang, Malaysia Centre for Leadership and Complex Military Operations Nigerian Defence Academy Kaduna, Nigeria Received 13.12.2015, received in revised form 13.01.2016, accepted 11.03.2016 Complex military operations, are those military campaigns including, but not limited to, those military operations by conventional defence and security forces in alliance with paramilitaries and civil groups against non-conventional armed groups (insurgents and terrorists who do not recognise and observe legally-institutionalised municipal and international laws), have taken centre stage in current strategic discourse. <...> This is because insurgency and terrorism pose the greatest challenge to most sovereign state entities who, in most cases, respond without properly appreciating and addressing the numerous challenges, potential and real, which face national armed forces combat personnel in their physical theatres of anti-insurgency/anti-terrorism operations or battle space as the case maybe. <...> This paper posits that it is not possible to adequately contain the nefarious activities of insurgents and terrorists without adequately identifying and addressing the unique challenges which face combat personnel in those theatres or spaces of operation. <...> It goes on to conclude that unless this prevailing situation is reversed, prospects for effective counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism initiatives will likely remain bleak. <...> Keywords: Complex military operations (CMOs), fi eld combat personnel, counter intelligence (COIN) and human intelligence (HUMINT). <...> All rights reserved * Corresponding author E-mail address: obiakune@gmail.com, lecturec@yahoo.com # 722 # Eugene Obiora Eugene and Chukwuma C.C. Osakwe. <...> Complex Military Operations in the 21st Century… Introduction In environments the prevailing complex military 21st of the century, modern sovereign entities face hostile violent extremism, global/regional/national in scope, ruthless in character and purpose and insidious in method to the extent that a vital element in keeping the peace is the ability to appreciate and address the unique challenges that face conventional combat armed forces personnel in their complex non-conventional theatres of operation. <...> Complex military operations <...>