The Unseen War

by Lambeth, Benjamin S.

  CENTCOM’s initial campaign plan envisaged only a single front advancing into southern Iraq from Kuwait. Concerned over that plan’s possible insufficiency to meet prospective worst-case challenges that might arise once the campaign was under way, General Franks sought to explore the possibility of a second front that would concurrently move into northern Iraq from Turkey. (During Operation Desert Storm, Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base had provided an important springboard for strike operations into Iraq.) He summoned the commanders and principal planners from CENTAF and from the land and maritime components to CENTCOM’s headquarters in Florida for a high-level meeting on May 8–10, with the goal of synchronizing emerging ideas in that and a number of other areas. During that three-day meeting, Franks directed his component commanders to begin developing plans for a second-front option into northern Iraq from Turkey. He had little confidence that Turkey would go along with such an option, but he wanted the essential preparations undertaken anyway for an initial U.S. footprint in Turkey of 25,000 to 30,000 personnel.

  The assembled participants also addressed the land component’s emerging ground scheme of maneuver and the likely support it would require from the air component, as well as various other notional courses of action. CENTAF’s planners henceforth remained intimately involved in all subsequent land- and SOF-component planning sessions throughout the joint force buildup. That close involvement led to the development of deep trust relationships across component and service lines that would pay off handsomely once major combat began.

  In a synopsis of all CENTCOM deliberations to date on May 10, 2002, Franks reviewed with Rumsfeld what the latter called the “known unknowns.” The two also addressed a variety of “unknown unknowns,” one of which was the possibility that Hussein might somehow force the hand of the Bush administration before the latter was ready to be committed. At that still-early stage in the preparations, the only response options available to CENTCOM would involve coalition forces already deployed in support of Operations Northern Watch and Southern Watch. Those forces included a carrier air wing with 70 aircraft and an additional 120 land-based aircraft, which together could enable what CENTCOM called the Blue Plan with 4 to 6 hours’ notice. A more robust White Plan could be executed with about 450 aircraft that could be moved to the region within 7 days of an Iraqi provocation. Finally, a Red Plan involving 750 to 800 aircraft—half the number that had been deployed for Desert Storm—could be readied within about 2 additional weeks to conduct a gradually escalating series of attacks while allied ground forces were deployed to the region for an eventual combined air-land offensive.66

  General Moseley’s chief strategist later recalled that

  the Blue, White, and Red plans were not developed as separate plans. Rather, they were all part and parcel of a single concept of operations. As the air component began to execute Operation Southern Focus [described in detail below] and to become more provocative in its reactive strike activities, CENTCOM asked the CAOC’s combat plans division to develop a list of possible Iraqi actions and the recommended response to each by coalition aircraft conducting missions in Southern Watch. The Blue list was a roster of response actions that could be handled by in-place Southern Watch forces with a fairly typical Southern Focus strike. A second set of more aggressive possible Iraqi actions was represented in the White category. Such possible actions would be met by a more robust response that would require enough aircraft to execute the sort of response options that had been reflected in Operation Desert Fox. The last category was the Red list of possible Iraqi actions. These actions would require even more aircraft and would lead to the commencement of OPLAN 1003V. Of course, we also realized that any Iraqi actions that triggered a Blue or White response could escalate into a Red response, requiring coalition air power to contain the Iraqis until the required ground forces could be deployed.67

  CENTAF staffers, assisted by planners from CENTCOM’s maritime component and from U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) headquartered at Ramstein, developed for each option a strategy that included a three-day MAAP, daily air operations directives (AODs), and an ensuing joint integrated and prioritized target list (JIPTL, pronounced “ji-pittle”) for each day. The MAAPs for each day in each of the three graduated options were detailed all the way down to individual target types, assigned weapons, scheduled times on target, and weapon aim-point placement.68

  The following day, Franks traveled to Camp David for a lengthy planning session with President Bush and his senior advisers. CENTCOM’s commander proposed five notional invasion fronts: a western front dominated by SOF and air operations devoted to Scud hunting, a southern front consisting of the main axis of attack from Kuwait, an information operations front, a vertical attack on Baghdad by CENTCOM’s air component, and a northern front through Turkey if the Turkish government would permit it (see map 1.2).69

  On June 3, 2002, Franks outlined the modified Running Start plan to Secretary Rumsfeld. This concept, which envisaged starting combat operations before all allied forces were in position, entailed using the Blue, White, or Red air employment options as might be needed to maintain pressure on Iraqi troops while allied ground forces were flowing into the theater. Rumsfeld was intrigued by this concept and directed Franks to refine it further. Franks also presented what he called his “inside-out” notion for dealing with the possible scenario of having to confront a “Fortress Baghdad” at the end of the campaign. Its core idea was for CENTCOM to disable Iraq’s command and control system and then to attack Republican Guard forces deployed nearest the capital first, to prevent them from concentrating in the center of Baghdad and hunkering down for a prolonged urban fight that would risk turning the city into a “Mesopotamian Stalingrad.”70 Attacks would then work from the center of the city outward to prevent any Republican Guard or Iraqi regular army troops from entering. (In connection with the inside-out approach, Franks noted that Republican Guard formations positioned within and around Baghdad would be vulnerable to precision air attacks.) Franks subsequently reconvened his component commanders at Ramstein on June 27–28 and directed them to shift their planning emphasis from Generated Start to Running Start.

  Source: American Soldier

  The initial seeds of 1003V envisaged a multipronged air-land attack into southern Iraq from Kuwait and into northern Iraq from Turkey, with heavy covert SOF involvement to pave the way before the formal start of the war. CENTCOM’s initial proposal called for about 250,000 ground troops, including 3 armored divisions. Under relentless prodding from Secretary Rumsfeld, however, that number was whittled down to 2 Army divisions and 1 Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF). The refined plan also placed greater reliance on precision bombing and close air-land coordination with both SOF and conventional ground forces.71 The plan underwent more than two dozen revisions before it was finally accepted in turn by Secretary Rumsfeld and President Bush.72 As attested by these progressively refined options, it was becoming clear that Franks was edging not toward a Desert Storm II–type force, but instead, in Woodward’s words, “toward a lighter, quicker plan that was more complex, with lots of moving pieces.”73

  CENTAF’s main effort in support of this process in July 2002 entailed integrating key personnel from the Royal Air Force (RAF) into the emerging air options planning effort, thus embedding the RAF professionals who would soon serve with the British air contingent in the CAOC intimately into CENTAF’s planning staff at Shaw AFB. These allied staffers soon became completely enmeshed in the concurrent development of the joint air operations plan, the MAAP for the first three days of the campaign, and the JIPTL, as well as in associated planning for munitions requirements and for the bed-down of forces throughout CENTCOM’s area of responsibility. The initial RAF cadre also joined actively in the further refinement of the target list. This early cooperative work led to the development of deep and enduring trust relationships that paid off well when these same personnel later assumed key positions in the CAOC during the final fine-tuning and execution of OPLAN 1003V (
see Chapter 4). Staffers from the Air Force Doctrine Center at Maxwell AFB, Alabama, also took part in a concurrent effort by CENTAF planners to consider the emerging air operations plan from a doctrinal perspective, particularly with respect to cross-command relationships and possible jurisdictional issues that might arise between CENTCOM and EUCOM for any forces that would operate out of Turkey.

  On August 5, 2002, Franks and Renuart briefed President Bush and the National Security Council on Generated Start, Running Start, and a new concept called Hybrid Start that combined key elements of the first two. Generated Start still envisaged a 90-45-90 timeline. Running Start was a variation on Generated Start that envisaged a 45-90-90 timeline, with a forward flow of allied ground forces and no-notice aerial bombardment commencing simultaneously, followed by 90 days of “decisive combat operations” and 90 days more for complete regime takedown. Hybrid Start embraced four successive phases. Phase I envisaged 5 days to establish an air bridge to the region, including the mobilization of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) if need be, followed by 11 additional days to move allied forces forward. Phase II would entail 16 days of offensive air and SOF operations. Phase III envisaged 125 days of joint and combined major combat operations aimed at bringing down Hussein’s regime. Phase IV would entail postwar stability operations of an open-ended and unknowable duration.74

  On August 6, 2002, Franks directed his component commanders to replace their focus on the Running Start concept with an emphasis on the faster Hybrid Start. Phase I of the latter plan entailed “preparation.” Phase II was called “shaping the battlespace.” Phase III was “decisive operations.” Phase IV was “posthostility operations.” Franks later recalled that he envisaged Phase IV as possibly lasting “years, not months,” and thought it “might well prove to be more challenging than major combat operations,” although those pronouncements came well after the postcampaign insurgency had already entered full swing.75

  As General Franks continued to busy himself with these high-level coordination activities, General Moseley and his staff hosted a major warfighter conference at Nellis AFB, Nevada, during the week of August 5–9, 2002, that included representatives from CENTCOM, its subordinate components, the four services, and the United Kingdom. One agenda item entailed further refining CENTAF’s anticipated munitions requirements for the looming campaign within the context of CENTCOM’s recently evolved Hybrid concept of operations. Although the provision of munitions to joint warfighting commands is a service responsibility, CENTAF’s planners worked closely with their counterpart service representatives to ensure that General Moseley would have the full spectrum of needed weaponry from all services. Toward that end they organized a separate gathering of concerned parties aimed at brokering an interservice “munitions trade” to ensure that the munitions required to meet the air component’s needs would be on hand when the time came.76 Also during this conference, General Moseley’s counter-Scud working group, led by a team of experts from Air Combat Command headquarters at Langley AFB, Virginia, got down to work in earnest.77 A senior CAOC staffer later recalled of this crucial meeting that “key concepts of operations were either developed or refined, and relationships between and among the involved staffs were further strengthened.”78

  CENTCOM planners identified December through February as the ideal time window within which to initiate the campaign’s formal combat operations. Iraqi ground force training was least intensive during that period and was conducted at the individual unit level rather than in larger and more cohesive formations. The period from December through March was also deemed to offer the best weather window because high winds and sandstorms typically commenced in March and April, with summer heat following soon afterward. Franks assumed that his troops would be fighting in hot and uncomfortable sealed garments to protect themselves against chemical and biological weapons. Because fighting in summer temperatures that could reach as high as 130° Fahrenheit was to be avoided at all costs, ground operations had to start no later than April 1.

  On August 14, 2002, the president’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, chaired a principals’ meeting to discuss a new draft national security presidential directive titled “Iraq: Goals, Objectives and Strategy.” This document stipulated that the overarching aim of the United States was to free Iraq from Ba’athist rule in order to eliminate its WMD and end threats by Iraq to its neighbors, utilizing all instruments of national power and with a coalition if possible, but alone if necessary. It stressed the need for any invasion plan to demonstrate that the American goal was to liberate rather than conquer Iraq and decreed that the underlying strategy must show that the United States “is prepared to play a sustaining role in the reconstruction of a post-Hussein Iraq.”79

  That same day, Franks and Renuart again met with Rumsfeld, this time to discuss targeting. Concern over the need to avoid collateral damage at every reasonable cost led to the development of more than 4,000 target folders before the war started. CENTCOM also issued collateral-damage mitigation charts to all air operations planners detailing how specific weapons types should be employed against different kinds of targets to minimize unintended damage to adjacent structures such as homes and religious sites.80 That concern, the British national contingent commander, Air Marshal Brian Burridge, later recalled, “informed everything we did . . . from kinetic targeting through to the way in which we dealt with urban areas.”81 Out of those roughly 4,000 possible targets CENTCOM planners had identified 130 as entailing a high collateral-damage risk, defined as the likelihood that an attack would kill 30 or more Iraqi civilians. That number was expected to diminish after the application of collateral-damage mitigation measures by CENTCOM. Franks indicated that the proper servicing of 4,000 targets could require as many as 12,000 to 13,000 separate munitions for individual target aim points, because it could take from 4 to 12 munitions to achieve desired effects against some targets.82

  The land component’s overall scheme of maneuver envisaged a two-pronged ground assault, with the Army’s V Corps pressing northwesterly from Kuwait through the Karbala gap and directly on to Baghdad, and the Marine Corps’ First Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF) also attacking northwesterly from Kuwait into the Mesopotamian plain that lay between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and ultimately joining up with the Army contingent as both simultaneously neared Baghdad. The plan was for both the Army and Marine Corps combat elements to bypass any cities that lay directly in the path of their advance to Baghdad, neutralizing with air power and long-range indirect surface fire any Iraqi forces that might be capable of ranging the highways before those forces were engaged head-on.

  At that point in the planning, Secretary Rumsfeld concluded that the time had come for him to enlist the support of the JCS. He convened a meeting of the service chiefs at which the president, but not General Franks, was present. The Air Force chief of staff, Gen. John Jumper, indicated that in his judgment, CENTCOM’s emerging air plan was supportable and Iraq’s IADS could be overcome, but he expressed concern over the possibility that Iraq could jam the signals from the space-based GPS constellation of twenty-eight satellites in semisynchronous orbit on which allied navigation and satellite-aided joint direct attack munition (JDAM, pronounced “jay-dam”) weapon guidance depended. He warned that the Air Force’s air mobility assets would be stretched thin but could nonetheless handle any likely tasking by CENTCOM. Both he and the chief of naval operations, Adm. Vern Clark, questioned whether the participating services would have sufficient stocks of precision munitions. Admiral Clark further voiced concern that continuing operations in Afghanistan would mean two concurrent wars, which could impose an unusually demanding stress on aircraft carrier availability. But he too concluded that all tasks that CENTCOM might levy on the Navy’s carrier force could be accommodated.83

  In September 2002 CENTAF planners visited each prospective air operating facility in CENTCOM’s area of responsibility to present a detailed air operations plan and to elicit reactions from the win
g commanders at each base with respect to the plan’s supportability from their particular unit’s perspective. Planners from the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) also were embedded with the CENTAF staff at Shaw AFB for the first time. In addition, on September 19, another “huddle” between General Franks and General Moseley and their respective staffs was convened to consider proper materiel flow to ensure that the required force would be in place and ready for combat on A-day, the first day of full-fledged offensive air operations.

  General Moseley hosted a “quick frag” convocation at Shaw AFB during the week of October 7–11 that included key planners from the CAOC’s strategy and combat plans divisions. The meeting also included representatives from CENTCOM’s maritime component and aviators from the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing who would take part in the campaign. A major aim of that gathering was to update the airspace plan and SPINs, develop workable identification friend or foe (IFF) arrangements and procedures, refine the air defense plan for CENTCOM’s area of responsibility, and begin fine-tuning the database that would be used to manage the daily air tasking process. A subsequent exercise of a similar nature organized by CENTAF at Shaw on October 15–25 included participation by representatives from USAFE, the maritime components of both CENTCOM and EUCOM, Project Checkmate on the Air Staff, the RAF, and the RAAF. Subject-matter experts on the conventional air-launched cruise missile carried by the B-52 were also there, as well as experts on the B-2 and F-117 stealth attack aircraft. From these two sets of discussions emerged refined AODs, JIPTLs, and MAAPs for the first three days of planned combat operations.84

  By early November 2002 the essential elements of the final war plan were in place. A Washington Post account reported that “the broad outlines are now agreed upon within the administration,” adding that several known aspects of the plan were being withheld from publication at the request of senior civilian and military officials in the Department of Defense. Those aspects included “the timing of certain military actions, the trigger points for other moves, some of the tactics being contemplated, and the units that would execute some of the tactics.”85 There were further reports that Kuwait had quietly sealed off a third of its territory for the use of American troops already deployed along the Iraqi border, that an effort was under way for U.S. aircraft to drop propaganda leaflets over Iraq urging Iraqi soldiers not to fight and to defect once the campaign began, that attacks against Iraqi IADS targets had been stepped up, and that CIA paramilitary units had already been inserted into northern Iraq to work with Kurdish resistance elements.86 (Thanks to the successful prior efforts of Operation Provide Comfort and Operation Northern Watch to keep Iraqi forces from attacking the Kurds from the air, the Kurds had managed to establish an autonomous political sanctuary in northern Iraq.) Franks was cautiously optimistic about the likely cost of the impending invasion in friendly lives, telling some on the CENTCOM staff that he anticipated fewer than one thousand coalition casualties, and probably only several hundred.87