Integrated air-land operations suffered from at least one significant command and control shortfall. Allied aircrews and ground commanders alike felt the absence of the EC-130E airborne battlefield command and control center (ABCCC, pronounced “A-B-triple-C”) from CENTAF’s roster of fielded assets. During its heyday, the ABCCC was an Air Force asset dedicated to meeting the communications needs of ground commanders and providing them needed confidence in the air service’s ability to deliver timely CAS. In this respect, as one expert observer has pointed out, the ABCCC “was more than a flying radio relay platform or long-loiter forward air controller; it was a forward command element engaging in maneuver warfare.”112
President George W. Bush flanked by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz at the Pentagon on March 25, 2003, as he announces a $74.7 billion supplemental budget request to pay the campaign costs for Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Department of Defense photo by R. D. Ward
CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy Franks (second from left) holds a video teleconference with the president, joined by his air commander, Lt. Gen. Michael Moseley; the British air commander, Air Vice-Marshal Glenn Torpy (far right); and the Australian air commander, Group Captain Geoff Brown (far left), March 19, 2003.
Courtesy of Air Marshal Geoff Brown, RAAF
Main operations floor of the backup CAOC at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, with multiple large-screen displays and more than one hundred high-speed T-1 Internet lines.
U.S. Air Force photo by TSgt. Demetrius Lester
The aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, March 20, 2003, having just arrived in its assigned operating area in the eastern Mediterranean.
U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate Airman Todd M. Flint
F/A-18F Super Hornet pilots and weapons systems officers of Strike Fighter Squadron 2 in Constellation in the North Arabian Gulf are briefed on mission details and threats they can expect to encounter during their periods of vulnerability inside enemy airspace. Shown prominently at the map’s center is the Super MEZ.
U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 2nd Class Felix Garza Jr.
The deputy commander of Carrier Air Wing 3 in Harry S. Truman (second from left), an F/A-18 pilot, receives inputs from air wing F-14 pilots (right) and a member of SEAL Team 8 (far left) as he prepares on March 19 to lead a strike package from the eastern Mediterranean into the heart of Iraq during the air campaign’s opening attacks.
U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 1st Class Michael W. Pendergrass
An array of 2,000-pound general-purpose bombs fitted with satellite-aided GBU-31 JDAM kits and other air-delivered munitions lie on the hangar bay floor of Abraham Lincoln awaiting transfer to the flight deck for loading on board strike fighters assigned to Carrier Air Wing 14. An F/A-18C and F-14 in the background are also being readied for early flight operations.
U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate Airman Jason Frost
An F-14D assigned to Fighter Squadron 213 of Carrier Air Wing 8 in position on one of Theodore Roosevelt’s four steam-driven catapults, with its engines at full power and its crew of two ready for action on March 21. The catapult will accelerate the Tomcat from a standing start to a speed of 140 knots in just two seconds.
U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 2nd Class James K. McNeil
A B-2 stealth bomber, returning to its forward operating base on Diego Garcia after a night mission into the Super MEZ, moves forward from a stabilized precontact position to take on JP-8 fuel from a KC-135 tanker over the Indian Ocean.
U.S. Air Force photo by SSgt. Cherie A. Thurlby
Capt. Mark Fox, the commanding officer of Carrier Air Wing 2 in Constellation and an F/A-18 pilot, briefs a CNN reporter on key mission details after leading the campaign’s first carrier-based strikes into Iraq on the night of March 21.
U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 3rd Class Prince A. Hughes III
Ground maintenance technicians prepare two pallets of GBU-31s for loading into the three weapons bays of a B-1 being readied for a combat mission into Iraq.
U.S. Air Force photo
Ground technicians lift an AIM-9M infrared-guided air-to-air missile from its rack before mounting it on an underwing pylon of the F-16CJ in the background.
U.S. Air Force photo by MSgt. Terry L. Blevins
A sea-based AV-8B Harrier, still carrying two unexpended LGBs, approaches its hover for landing on Bonhomme Richard as another Harrier holds short for takeoff.
U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 3rd Class Chris Reynolds
Armed and ready F-16CJs assigned to the USAF’s 379th Air Expeditionary Wing hunker down at their forward operating base near Iraq as the shamal rages around them.
U.S. Air Force photo by MSgt. Terry L. Blevins
A C-17 departs its forward base in Romania as part of a sustained air bridge to CENTCOM’s AOR.
U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Lakisha Croley
An F/A-18C assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron 105 in Harry S. Truman stands poised for launch at full power on the carrier’s right bow catapult. The Hornet shown here is configured with wingtip-mounted AIM-9M Sidewinders and fuselage-mounted AIM-120 AMRAAMs for a defensive counterair sweep.
U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 1st Class Michael W. Pendergrass
Paratroopers of the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade get a final safety inspection of their parachutes at Aviano Air Base, Italy, before boarding a C-17 for an unopposed night combat jump into the Bashur airfield near Tikrit on March 26.
U.S. Air Force photo by TSgt. Stephen Faulisi
An F-15C, having just refueled, turns away from the tanker and prepares to resume its offensive sweep aimed at keeping Iraqi aircraft on the ground.
U.S. Air Force photo by MSgt. Mark Bucher
The E-8C JSTARS, with multimode side-looking radar, was the only allied airborne platform capable of maintaining real-time surveillance of both stationary and moving enemy vehicles over a corps-sized area of the battlefield.
U.S Air Force photo
A Pave Hawk takes on fuel in flight from a tanker-configured C-130 before entering hostile airspace on a combat search-and-rescue mission on April 6.
U.S. Air Force photo by SSgt. Shane A. Cuomo
An A-10, armed with two AGM-65 Maverick missiles and four unguided 500-pound bombs in addition to its GAU-8 30-mm antitank gun, undergoes final checks in the arming area before taking off.
U.S. Air Force photo by SSgt. Shane A. Cuomo
A stealthy F-117 holds at the precontact position behind a KC-135 tanker, with two F-15Es at the inboard wing positions, two F-16CJs at the middle wing positions, and an RAF Tornado GR4 on the far right and an RAAF F/A-18 on the far left.
U.S. Air Force photo by MSgt. Ron Przysucha
Capt. Jeremy Quatacker, an F-16CG pilot assigned to the 524th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, looks over the inescapable forms that require final checks before launching on any mission.
U.S. Air Force photo by MSgt. Stefan Alford
One of the twelve F-117 stealth attack aircraft used in the campaign at Langley AFB, Virginia, its pilot is greeted by the commander of the 1st Fighter Wing there before the craft departs on the last leg of its return to Holloman AFB, New Mexico.
U.S. Air Force photo by SSgt. Travis Aston
Ground crew members refuel a U-2 surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft following its return from an eight-hour mission over Iraq that took it to an altitude of more than 70,000 feet.
U.S. Air Force photo by SSgt. Matthew Hannen
A member of CENTAF’s Combined Weapons Effectiveness Assessment Team examines the results of a 5,000-pound bomb dropped on the dome of one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces.
U.S. Air Force photo by MSgt. Carla Kippes
The aircraft had finally been retired from the Air Force inventory in 2002 after three decades of continuous service going as far back as Vietnam, however, and other elements of the Air Force’s
TACS, notably the E-3 AWACS and E-8 JSTARS, were obliged to fill the gap. Both aircraft periodically assumed many of the ABCCC’s former functions as CAS requests would be funneled to one or another, whose crew in turn would direct airborne fighters or bombers to JTACs on the ground in need of help. The Navy’s E-2C Hawkeye surveillance aircraft was sometimes used in a similar way.
The E-3, E-8, and E-2C have other main missions, however, and are not really configured for the ABCCC role. The new tasking placed an added burden on already overworked aircrews, who often were unable to cope with the high volume of voice communications traffic.113 Moreover, employing aircraft fielded to fulfill higher-end missions as mere communications relay platforms was arguably to misuse a low-density/high-demand asset that was already overburdened in its primary role. General Moseley’s successor as CENTCOM’s air component commander, Lt. Gen. Walter Buchanan III, spoke directly to this concern three years after the end of major combat in Iraqi Freedom when he commented that “we have people in Iraq who are very comfortable using the JSTARS as a radio relay platform. That is a very inefficient way to use [this] tremendously capable system . . . that I would much rather use monitoring the border and the open desert regions for which its radar is ideally suited.”114 Although the JSTARS either possesses or can be given all the tools needed to serve in a de facto ABCCC (and, in effect, airborne ASOC-extension) capacity, an informed account noted the “inherent conflict between command and control missions, ISR missions, and the ABCCC mission aboard one aircraft. . . . ISR missions require the E-8 radar to look at a specific area on the ground and to maintain digital and voice link with the units that need the intelligence. ABCCC missions [in contrast] require mission crew augmentation and detailed knowledge of ground operations.”115
An experienced U.S. Army consumer of the E-8’s ABCCC support function suggested that properly prioritizing the mission responsibilities for each given sortie and having the mission commander ensure that the entire crew understands these priorities might defuse that conflict. All the same, this writer concluded, because the E-8 (and, by the same token, the E-2 and E-3), unlike the single-mission EC-130 ABCCC, was acquired and fielded to serve many masters, “conflicts in priority do arise during a flight.”116 Such conflicts will persist, moreover, so long as the capability shortfall that was created by the retirement of the EC-130 is not rectified. ASOC staffers at V Corps headquarters often found themselves out of communications range of strike aircraft operating over the Baghdad area, an issue General Leaf frankly described as “worth looking into.”117
After the major combat phase of Iraqi Freedom ended, and Operation Southern Watch along with it, the Department of Defense announced its intention to vacate the CAOC at Prince Sultan Air Base and switch over to its recently completed alternate CAOC (which had cost $40 million to build from scratch) at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. The Air Force now regards its Falconer Block 10X air operations center as a full-fledged weapon system on a par with combat aircraft. So oriented, the Air Force now maintains a requirements board for AOC standardization, just as it does for aircraft, and is working toward a standardized program for AOC staff training as well. Gen. Ron Keys, the former Air Force deputy chief of staff for air and space operations and later commander of Air Combat Command, remarked on this increasingly mature capability that a nation’s military air assets without an AOC would amount to little more than an expensive flying club.118
To conclude on this theme, among the main factors that accounted for the CAOC’s overwhelmingly successful performance was the uniformly high caliber of staffers at all levels assigned to the various divisions and cells. Between 5 and 10 percent of the CAOC staff were graduates of the elite USAF Weapons School, Navy Fighter Weapons School (Topgun), and Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron One (MAWTS 1) who served in key leadership positions throughout the CAOC. In addition, as noted earlier, the Navy provided a substantial number of reservists with years of prior CAOC experience. Others on the CAOC staff had also gained previous seasoning by performing CAOC duties during Operations Northern Watch, Southern Watch, and Enduring Freedom. In all, about 90 percent of all targeting personnel assigned to the CAOC for Iraqi Freedom had been hand-picked by the air component’s leadership before the start of the campaign. Most had convened at Shaw AFB in October 2002 to take part in the weeklong MAAP workshop described earlier that exercised and ultimately validated the targeting process. In addition, CENTAF had begun to work closely with both CENTCOM and the national intelligence agencies during the final months before G-day and A-day to conduct an aim-point-level review of every target on the joint target list.
Exercises conducted by team members from the strategy division and the target development, GAT, and MAAP cells before the campaign’s start were also central to ensuring the success of the targeting process throughout the three weeks of major combat. Critical to this team-building process was bringing together all of CENTAF’s operations and intelligence personnel, other CENTCOM headquarters and component players, and key coalition representatives during the October 2002 MAAP exercise. Without that prior training, such assets as TLAM, CALCM, stealth aircraft, and the RAF’s Storm Shadow missile would not have been used to their greatest effectiveness. In this case as well, personal relationships were cemented that allowed all players to function more efficiently once the war was on and geographic separation did not permit face-to-face interaction.
The main players at CENTCOM headquarters, in the CAOC, and in the other warfighting components all understood CENTAF’s targeting process. CENTAF analysts later reported that “training was the key to successful time-sensitive target execution” and that “situation awareness on the CAOC operations floor was never greater than that resident in the time-sensitive targeting cell during Operation Iraqi Freedom.” To be sure, the CAOC’s intelligence analysts and time-sensitive targeting cell staffers were sometimes overwhelmed with targets. Yet the process was highly efficient and successful. Part of that success stemmed from a realization that the most effective use of Global Hawk and comparable capabilities required placing support to a specific mission above requirements to support a specific component. Iraqi Freedom confirmed that synchronizing ISR to support a specific combat operation can succeed only when there is close coordination between the CAOC’s and CENTCOM’s operations and intelligence principals. As CENTAF planners later stressed, “it is a joint responsibility.”119
Yet another major factor behind the CAOC’s pivotal role in the planning and conduct of the air offensive was the unique composition of its strategy division. Its director during the final lead-up to the campaign later recalled that “never before had a strategy division of this magnitude been assembled. We had nearly 60 personnel in all, including 15 graduates of the Air Force’s School of Advanced Air and Space Studies and the Army’s counterpart School for Advanced Military Studies, as well as uniformly well-qualified targeteers and operational assessment experts.”120 This assemblage of uncommonly qualified airmen was responsible for developing the overarching air strategy for the campaign as well as needed branch points and sequels as the campaign plan evolved. Its experts also developed the daily AOD that transmitted General Moseley’s commander’s intent and priorities for ATO execution to both CAOC and wing-level personnel. In addition, they provided the needed apportionment of forces to specific campaign objectives, thus ensuring that the right weight of effort was applied toward achieving General Moseley’s declared priorities. The large number of time-sensitive and emerging targets that routinely popped up within each ATO cycle produced ever-present temptations for those on the CAOC operations floor to hijack the ATO, in effect, and thereby lose sight of the larger desired effects and weight of effort. After about day 2 of major air operations in support of OPLAN 1003V, the daily AOD was amended to include priority assets that could not be re-roled or would have to be replaced with other, lower-priority assets. That amendment allowed the CAOC’s operations floor to pull certain assets as needed to handle emerging high-value targe
ts without compromising the overall synergy of the ATO.121 All the same, as an experienced practitioner of modern air warfare made a point to insist, “the CAOC did not win the air war. On the contrary, it was the airmen in the jets and on the ground—with great leadership—who made it happen.”122
Inputs from Assets on Orbit
Space-based assets represented an indispensable part of the ISR equation in Iraqi Freedom. CENTCOM exploited inputs from space in a fully integrated way in pursuing its campaign objectives. The constellation of infrared-sensing DSP satellites in geosynchronous orbit provided prompt indication of every Iraqi missile launch throughout the campaign, with the singular exception of the low-flying Seersucker cruise missile (which has a low infrared signature) that struck a shopping mall in Kuwait. It also offered CENTCOM’s commanders timely battlespace characterization by providing near-real-time information on infrared events occurring in the war zone. In all, the DSP system detected 26 missile launches, 186 high-explosive events, and 1,493 static infrared events.123
The GPS array of 28 satellites distributed in semisynchronous orbit around the Earth provided constant on-call navigational support to allied ground forces, with each 9-person Army squad equipped with a GPS receiver, as compared with only 1 per company of 180 personnel during Operation Desert Storm.124 The GPS system further provided enhanced around-the-clock target coordinates for the more than 5,600 JDAMs and TLAMs that relied on GPS signals for their accuracy. More than 1,500 GPS uploads allowed allied forces to enhance the accuracy of their GPS-aided weapons to less than 4 meters spherical error probable, the three-dimensional measurement of circular error probable.125
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