The Unseen War

by Lambeth, Benjamin S.

  The weather continued to be horrible that night, and to top it off, it started to rain mud. No kidding, mud. . . . When the ASOC was looking for an area weather update, rather than a normal weather code for certain patterns, I had to say, “it’s raining mud, over.” There is no existing weather code for that, and I told them I was not kidding. . . . Any TACP, now or retired, will read this and think the possibility of doing CAS, given the circumstances we were in, would say it was close to impossible. Well, that night we did just that. . . . I would receive timely reports via JSTARS on military vehicles moving into our zones, so I was more than happy to be there and to help plan this mission. . . . I also had a lot of [intelligence] on enemy forces coming south into our northern and eastern flanks. They were coming at us from all directions, it seemed. . . . Without the courageous efforts of Staff Sergeant Shropshire, [Senior Airman Jonathan] Hardee, and myself using CAS in that area that night, I have no doubt in my mind that American lives would have been lost. . . .

  It was [now] around midnight, and it was still raining mud. I had been tasked with Pinup flight, a B-1 bomber fully loaded with 28 2,000-lb GPS-guided bombs. I had permission to attack the enemy T-72s that were pushing down the highway. . . . I mapped out several coordinates along the highway to create a stick length for a string of bombs that was three kilometers in length. . . . I tasked Pinup to release half of their bomb load on the stick length prescribed. . . . I cleared them hot and heard the radio call back—“Advance 51, this is Pinup, one minute to impact.” . . . JSTARS confirmed that [enemy forces] had pooled in a low area just south of the city. . . . I retargeted [the B-1] and they made two more bomb runs, eight released, then the final six. By now, the ASOC let us have free rein of the [radio] net, thanks to them.199

  The next mission took Keehan’s unit through the Karbala Gap and northward to secure the western flanks.

  I received two F-14s with four LGBs aboard, and I targeted two more T-72s hiding in the canal zone just seven kilometers from us. We devised a great plan using artillery, CAS, and tanks to engage the enemy. A picture-perfect combined-arms battle. . . . The lead tanks stopped two kilometers short of the enemy positions. . . . I had Kiki flight of A-10s with their standard load of eight 500-lb bombs and full guns. They released their loads on the target area, and as soon as they were off and Winchester [out of bombs and ammunition], I had another flight of RAF [Tornado] GR4s with four GBU-16s. We bombed the same area, as they were hiding in the palm groves, well-camouflaged. I could not get accurate BDA [battle damage assessment], as the entire area was dust and smoke. . . . I was still controlling F/A-18s. They dropped another 18 500-lb bombs as we retreated back out of artillery range. . . . Once back in the safe zone, I continued to call in CAS throughout the night, requesting aircraft with FLIR [forward-looking infrared sensors] to pick out the target by the heat source. I had another flight of F/A-18s that picked out ten tanks on the south side of the canal, warm and running. They dropped LGBs on them, shack [bull’s-eye] again. I continued to work as many as four flights [four-plane formations of aircraft] in my airspace, each of us talking and confirming new targets and old ones. Cappy flight of two more F/A-18s acquired two more tanks and destroyed them as well. On their heels, I had two more RAF Tornados that also destroyed an additional two tanks trying to hide under bridge passes.

  The results of this last action were twenty-five confirmed enemy tank kills, ten confirmed technical vehicles, some six hundred to one thousand enemy troops killed, numerous artillery pieces taken out, and an “unknown amount of enemy vehicles vaporized.”200

  The Army subsequently awarded Keehan and Shropshire the Silver Star for their exceptional gallantry under fire, making them two of the seven Air Force JTACs who earned that high accolade for similar acts of heroism during the course of campaign.201 Sergeant Keehan’s citation noted that his unit encountered heavy resistance in the defended city of As Samawah. While riding in a soft-skinned vehicle, he began receiving heavy fire and promptly called in CAS as artillery shells began exploding two hundred meters all around his position. Keehan directed air support against enemy positions along the riverbank and roads, which destroyed those forces with bombing and strafing runs, often within six hundred meters of friendly positions. Days later, his unit again faced a waiting enemy. After seizing the bridge at Sbu Sakhayr, the unit drove through a gauntlet of small-arms fire.

  “In what was to be the decisive battle of the war,” the citation continued, “enemy . . . forces surrounded his unit in the midst of the sandstorm.” As the only available communications link for his unit, and “surrounded at night and blinded by sand and raining mud, [Keehan] orchestrated an almost impossible air support mission [against] approaching enemy armored formations.” As his unit continued along on the main axis into Baghdad and was again met by heavy fire, “Sergeant Keehan continued to call in CAS under heavy direct and indirect fire from T-72 tanks and artillery. The CAS attacks destroyed the enemy forces without the loss of a single American life.”202 The citation for Shropshire, who also coordinated CAS operations during those battles, outlined a similar story of exceptional bravery:

  While securing a key Euphrates River bridge crossing, his unit was surrounded by enemy . . . forces and began receiving heavy small arms and RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] fire. Under a hail of gunfire in the midst of the sandstorm, he coordinated CAS while continually switching from his radio handset to his rifle, killing three enemy soldiers at close range. After receiving E-8 JSTARS cueing, and with complete disregard for his own safety, he left the APC [armored personnel carrier] during the sandstorm to confirm enemy armor locations and then directed a strike by 10 JDAMS that destroyed 10 T-72 tanks and the dismounted enemy forces who were about to overrun his unit’s position. He hastily repaired his bullet-ridden satellite antenna and quickly coordinated another air strike, destroying additional approaching enemy armor.203

  Although General Mattis was plainly unhappy about having to halt the advance of his 1st Marine Division, General McKiernan had ordered the pause so that the land component could consolidate its gains and secure its lines of communication.204 “If nothing else,” a former Marine Corps fighter pilot observed,

  the pause was a great opportunity to methodically shape the battlefield rather than trying to keep up with the lightning-quick pace the ground forces had set in their race to Baghdad. . . . Coalition aircraft kept up around-the-clock attacks all throughout the pause and until the fall of Baghdad. Saddam’s divisions were smote from above—almost literally out of existence. In the process, they demonstrated the breakthrough capability of an air component that was now able to destroy the military effectiveness of an enemy ground force in conditions that rendered that force not only incapable of maneuver but even of defending itself. There were no massive armor-on-armor battles or earthshaking artillery exchanges because none of the Iraqi armies survived [the constant pounding from the air].205

  Military-affairs commentator Max Boot noted that this constant pounding “took place out of sight of the international news media, and so the devastating effectiveness of these strikes did not become clear until later.”206

  When the shamal abated and the allied ground advance resumed, the rate of allied air attacks increased commensurately to meet the renewed need for kill-box interdiction and CAS.207 More than half of the attacks (480 out of 800 on one day) were directed against Republican Guard units.208 By this time Iraqi ground force commanders had concluded, erroneously, that the only time they could successfully move and survive was at night. One commentator observed that “this made for good, clean hunting for the coalition aircrews. It was good hunting because it was the time the enemy chose to leave his hiding places. It was clean hunting because there was very little civilian traffic late at night.”209

  Capt. Russ Penniman, a Navy fighter pilot who was serving as co-director of the CAOC’s combat plans division, observed that the video images televised back in the United States that presumed to portray the bombing of Baghdad gave no
hint of the actual scope and magnitude of the ongoing attacks: “You have no idea of the vastness of that attack. Looking out of the window of a hotel [in which network video crews were positioned] is like looking through a soda straw.”210 Prior to the ground advance into Baghdad, these allied air strikes had crushed two of the six Republican Guard divisions and severely damaged two others, thereby clearing the way for the advance. Republican Guard lines were being shredded from the air, and the enemy was completely unable to hit back with any significant strength. Secretary Rumsfeld said: “They’re being attacked from the air, they’re pressured from the ground, and in good time they won’t be there.”211

  Other Air Applications

  On March 26 a fifteen-plane formation of Air Force C-17 intertheater airlifters departed Aviano Air Base, Italy, on a mission to air-drop elements of the Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade into Bashur airfield north of Tikrit, the final move toward completing the opening of CENTCOM’s northern front in Iraq. The unopposed combat airdrop of 954 paratroopers and their equipment was the largest since the combat drop into Panama in 1989 during the hunt for dictator Manuel Noriega. It also was the first-ever combat airdrop of paratroopers by a C-17. The first five aircraft unloaded heavy equipment, and the remaining ten dropped paratroopers. The most authoritative reconstruction of U.S. Army operations in the campaign described this evolution: “The C-17s entered Iraqi airspace at 30,000 feet but descended to 1,000 feet for the actual jump. To reduce exposure to Iraqi air defenses, the aircraft literally dove down, with the paratroopers momentarily experiencing negative g-forces. . . . Colonel William Mayville, commanding the 173rd, followed the heavy drop as the first paratrooper out the door at 2010. 953 soldiers followed in 58 seconds.”212 Over the next four nights, C-17s delivered the full brigade into Bashur, landing in no-light conditions. In all, the operation entailed more than 60 C-17 sorties that carried more than 2,000 troops, 3,000 short tons of cargo, and more than 400 vehicles.213

  Allied air strikes intensified toward the end of March, broadening their focus to include telephone exchanges, television and radio transmitters, and government media offices.214 Baghdad television was continuing to pump out a stream of propaganda portraying the Ba’ath regime as holding firmly against the allied offensive, thereby encouraging Iraqi fighters by suggesting that the regime’s command and control network was still intact and functioning—and, more to the point, that defending Iraqi forces were not doomed to defeat. President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld, and General Franks began leaning hard on CENTCOM’s planners to come up with an effective way of terminating the broadcasts.

  Up to that point in the campaign, high-level concerns about the need to avoid collateral damage and an associated desire to preserve Iraqi infrastructure for postwar reconstruction had allowed Iraqi television to remain on the air. The head of targeting intelligence on the Joint Staff recalled:

  The main factor restraining us was the collateral damage issue—most of these places were downtown and not surrounded by walled compounds like the other regime targets were. After the first few strikes, they stayed on the air, and frustration was growing. This guy [Iraq’s minister of information, Mohammed Said Al-Sahhaf, dubbed “Comical Ali” by some in the Western media] was still talking, and all the low-collateral-damage targets had been hit. What we needed to do, in a network-attack situation like this, was to attack all the nodes simultaneously instead of piecemeal. . . . There were three options—direct attack on the stations, taking out the power, and attacks on their transmission capabilities—the broadcasting antennae.215

  The antennae were chosen as the most attractive targets, and MQ-1 Predator UAVs armed with Hellfire missiles eliminated the antennae on the roof of the Ministry of Information without causing other damage. TLAMs armed with submunitions were used to scrape aerials and satellite dishes off the roofs of other buildings, and one Predator used a Hellfire to disable the transmission dish of the Arabic-language Al Jazeera network in Baghdad to prevent the station from transmitting propaganda that worked to the regime’s advantage. That particular strike kept the offending station off the air for only about six hours, however, because Al Jazeera had redundant broadcast systems.216

  Viewed in hindsight, the failed decapitation attempt against Hussein and his two sons on March 19 initially appeared actually to stiffen the regime’s resolve because the men were able to transmit an uninterrupted flow of propaganda through television and radio outlets that had been placed on CENTCOM’s no-strike list. Only when administration leaders finally agreed to have the offending transmission facilities taken off the air did the coalition’s effort to capture Iraqi “hearts and minds” begin to show signs of promise—aided in considerable part by a two-pronged psychological operations stratagem involving propaganda leaflets and the direct piping of counter-regime radio broadcasts into Iraq. This psychological-warfare effort entailed the dropping of more than 40 million leaflets containing 81 separate messages both before and during the major combat phase of Iraqi Freedom. In addition, EC-130 Commando Solo aircraft transmitted more than 300 hours of radio and television messages to Iraq’s leadership, fielded forces, and rank and file. 217

  As the battle for Baghdad drew closer, the Republican Guard positioned their tanks under cover and in traditional revetments around the city. Coalition strike aircraft, including heavy bombers, struck the tanks with consistently lethal effect. Moving vehicles were engaged by LGBs or strafed by A-10s with 30-mm cannon fire. An F-15E weapons systems officer (WSO) explained how to bomb moving targets with LGBs:

  Hitting a moving target with a 500-lb GBU-12 was not dissimilar in theory to clay-pigeon shooting with a shotgun. The WSO would gauge the relative motion and direction of the vehicle and then point his laser a set distance ahead of it. By generating this lead, the bomb would be released with enough energy to strike the target as it continued to travel. With the bomb in flight, the laser would be fired some eight to ten seconds before impact and the weapon would guide onto the laser spot. If the WSO had been too generous with the lead, he could massage the laser spot back toward the vehicle, causing the LGB to sharpen its trajectory. Conversely, the bomb could be dragged further by adding lead to the vehicle. With the TIMPACT [time to impact] counter in the jet counting down, the WSO could gradually bring the laser spot onto the vehicle itself. With any luck, the bomb would score a direct hit.218

  CENTAF’s strike aircraft also attacked enemy tanks, artillery batteries, AAA emplacements, and Republican Guard barracks that were arrayed around the outskirts of Baghdad.219 The intent was to bomb those units into submission before they could be pulled back into the city, with the specific goal of drawing down their combat capability by at least 50 percent.220 At the height of this nonstop air offensive, some 150 allied aircraft were continuously in orbits over Iraq, waiting to conduct on-call attacks against targeted Republican Guard units. The complete intimidation of Iraq’s air defenses countrywide had by that time emboldened General Moseley to operate his JSTARS aircraft deep within enemy airspace in a continuous search for both fixed and mobile Republican Guard vehicles with their SAR and GMTI radars.221 It was a remarkably complex force employment choreography.

  The Bush administration continued to place heavy emphasis on avoiding collateral damage, so planners at CENTCOM accordingly turned to the latest computer models and software in pursuit of measures to minimize it. Allied aircrews, intelligence analysts, lawyers, and public affairs officers were pulled into collateral damage mitigation teams to respond to specific incidents and false allegations. Every preplanned target underwent a rigorous review, which included assessment of the likely blast propagation for a given munition and matching of the bomb’s size, fusing, and angle of impact, and the time of day of the attack—all with a view toward minimizing noncombatant casualties. A senior official observed, however, that “ultimately, if it’s a high enough value target, you accept a higher risk of casualties.”222

  Every effort was made as well to avoid the destruction of infrastructure th
at would be essential to postwar reconstruction. For example, CENTAF’s air operations planners sought to negate the capability and effectiveness of Iraq’s IADS without destroying the electrical power–generation sources that sustained it. “There are other ways of taking down the integrated air defenses rather than just pulling the plug on the electricity,” the maritime component commander, Vice Admiral Keating, noted. “You can disable the radars by striking them. You can take down the facility itself by putting a bomb in the roof. Or you can disable the means of communicating the information drawn by the radars and observers to higher headquarters.”223 Iraq’s communications system was a particularly difficult target because it consisted of extensive backup networks connected by mobile dishes and deeply buried fiber-optic lines.224 The Iraqi military computer net was so commingled with the civilian computer network that attacking it likewise presented a risk of collateral damage.225