TERRORISM FIGHTING READINESS- RELATED TO «CLASSIC » PSYCHOLOGICAL COMBAT READINESS IN THE CROATIAN ARMED FORCES

Terrorists attack escalation over the past several years, their catastrophic consequences as well as the announcement of “the war against terrorism ” set the attention to the role of military in terrorism fighting affairs. There is no doubt that in the situations of the kind, as in any other fields of activities, the viewpoints of soldiers significantly affect their pre-crisis preparation as well as their performance in a crisis situation. For the first time, in Croatian Armed Forces (CAF) in November 2001 together with the regular psychological combat readiness survey, terrorism attitude research was conducted. Direct occasion for this were terrorist attacks on USA in September 11, 2001 and the establishment of “antiterrorist alliance”. Sample of 888 subjects was submitted to the research in 2001, and the same research was repeated in November 2002 on 671 examinees, and then in December 2003 on 645 persons. Psychological combat readiness was examined by standard questionnaire PBS (8 subscales and 45 questions) while the research related to terrorism through 10 items. Comparison of items factor structure related to terrorism which were reached through 3 researches show that they are grouped into 3 relatively steady factors: information availability (informed soldiers), fighting readiness estimation and prediction of terrorism fighting success. Common factor-analysis of PBS questionnaire and items related to terrorism shows that there is no overlapping, which means that PBS questionnaire gives the usual 7- factors structure and terrorism items gives 3 above mentioned factors. Therefore we may come to the next conclusion: among (Croatian) soldiers terrorism fighting readiness is an independent construct and a special type of readiness when compared to ”classic ” combat readiness