The Unseen War

by Lambeth, Benjamin S.

  The MILSTAR satellite system, with its medium-rate data transmission capability, was pivotal in allowing Navy ships to send updated steering information to TLAMs en route to their targets. It also enabled the rapid movement of SOF combatants who had access to MILSTAR communications. Weather satellites were crucial in detecting and geolocating oil fires and in tracking the movement of the three-day sandstorm. American satellite assets also helped to take the “search” out of combat search and rescue. In the case of the F-14 that went down in Iraq as a result of a mechanical failure, space-based sensors geolocated the impact area and provided refined coordinates for those who rescued the two crewmembers, with space officers in the CAOC working to get the pilot and radar intercept officer safely recovered within a couple of hours.126

  Commercial space imaging also played a significant role in providing enhanced situation awareness for campaign participants at all levels. Such imagery was a particular boon for Iraqi Freedom because it is not classified and could thus be shared with all coalition partners.127 To cite but one example of the quality of information it offers to today’s combined force commanders, Space Imaging had recently acquired a license approved by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to build and launch a satellite imaging system with a resolution of 0.4 meter.128 Finally, communications satellites linked everything together, with the CAOC tasking the various Air Force space organizations that controlled the on-orbit assets. The military space community provided space surveillance, command and control of GPS and communications satellites, satellite communications network control, ballistic missile launch detection and warning, satellite tasking for ISR, space control, and other essential combat support functions.

  General Moseley intended to use this diverse menu of space support options to provide precise navigation and timing capabilities to all of CENTCOM’s warfighting components, as well as to enable accurate weapons employment, provide immediate missile launch warning and secure and dependable communications, and characterize real-time battlespace.129 Accordingly, Air Force space planners and operators embedded space support teams both in the primary CAOC at Prince Sultan Air Base and in the backup CAOC that was being established at Al Udeid. The members of the primary space team, led and staffed by graduates of the USAF Weapons School, were the most experienced and combat-ready space professionals who had ever populated an air component’s battle staff during wartime. The space contingent consisted of a space operations cell on the CAOC operations floor as well as space strategy and plans personnel. These experts were assigned throughout the CAOC’s many operating entities, serving in the strategy and combat operations divisions as well as in the MAAP, GAT, and special technical operations cells.

  The day before Iraqi Freedom was set to kick off, General Franks, for the first time ever in a U.S. joint operation, ceded control of the space coordination authority (SCA) to his air component commander, General Moseley, for the duration of the campaign. This move, intended to extract the greatest possible leverage from the nation’s space assets, initially generated considerable pushback from some quarters. Many in the other services felt that Franks, as the overall joint force commander, should retain that responsibility in the best interest of all of the warfighting components. Although unprecedented in practice, however, the delegation was fully consistent with agreed joint doctrine, which stipulates that the combatant commander can either exercise space coordination authority or delegate it to a component commander. The measure increased tremendously the speed, lethality, and efficiency of the coalition’s air operations that were soon to follow.130

  Under this new arrangement, career space planners and operators were embedded in each CAOC division to provide not only GPS support but also assured theater missile attack warning, space-based infrared battlespace characterization, offensive and defensive counterspace measures, and real-time information on combat survivor location. General Moseley also gained the ability to integrate space activities for all components, uniformed services, and intelligence agencies associated with the impending campaign. As the in-theater space coordination authority, he was charged with integrating Department of Defense space activities for all of the uniformed services. Pursuant to that tasking, he implemented processes and procedures aimed at ensuring the coordination of both Air Force and national space capabilities throughout the theater.

  To minimize potential interservice seams with respect to the efficiency of space systems exploitation, General Moseley established an Air Force director of space forces in the CAOC, with an Army deputy, to ensure the closest possible linkage of space assets to ground as well as air operations. Col. Larry James, the senior space authority in the CAOC reporting to General Moseley, recalled with respect to this arrangement: “This was not without a lot of blood and sweat. There were quite a few folks who thought that authority should be retained at the CENTCOM level. . . . We [in the air component] believed that the Air Force had the preponderance of space forces, had the ability to command and control those forces, and therefore General Moseley should have the authority to coordinate space efforts throughout the theater.”131 James added that once the Air Force succeeds in producing CAOC directors and air component commanders who are fully “space smart,” the need for this delegated position in future conflicts may go away; until then, however, it should be preserved and institutionalized in the interest of efficiency in the operational exploitation of space assets.132

  Among other benefits, the vesting of SCA powers in General Moseley “allowed the air component to synchronize the ATO with a space tasking order (STO). The ATO told the space operators in the CAOC when the critical times were for GPS accuracy, and the STO specified how to tweak the constellation to achieve greater accuracy. For critical periods, the 28-satellite GPS constellation was configured to reduce the normal 3.08-meter accuracy to 2.2 meters.”133

  The Role of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

  A wide variety of UAVs supported CENTCOM’s operations during the Iraqi Freedom campaign. More than a hundred UAVs of ten different types took part in the offensive, from the high-flying RQ-4 Global Hawk all the way down to the Marine Corps’ Dragon Eye battlefield surveillance minidrone carried on an individual Marine’s backpack. This array of unmanned platforms helped to create a fully fused intelligence picture.134

  The primary UAV workhorse in Iraqi Freedom was the Air Force’s Predator. Seven RQ-1 reconnaissance variants and nine MQ-1 armed versions participated in the campaign, operating first out of nearby host-nation locations and later directly from the captured Iraqi H-2 and H-3 airfields.135 These sixteen platforms represented roughly a third of the Air Force’s entire inventory of Predators. The CAOC relied especially heavily on the RQ-1 version to seek out, identify, and geolocate mobile Iraqi SAMs. In this mission application, one Predator detected a Roland SAM launcher north of Baghdad early in the campaign and laser-designated it for an A-10 pilot, who then destroyed the launcher with an LGB. That particular Predator was piloted from its squadron’s home base at Creech AFB, Nevada, more than seven thousand miles away, the result of an Air Force decision in May 2002 to approve “remote split operations” whereby half of the Predators in the war zone could be operated from the United States. Also for the first time in a combat setting, four Predators, some flown remotely from Creech, were concurrently committed to a single joint operation. As during Operation Enduring Freedom, live-streaming Predator video imagery was directly linked to AC-130 gunships on numerous occasions to enable real-time targeting of their highly accurate onboard cannons. Armed MQ-1 Predators also fired AGM-114 Hellfire missiles at selected Iraqi targets. In an early instance of this application, an MQ-1 on March 22 located and destroyed an Iraqi ZSU-23/4 mobile radar-directed AAA gun near Al Amarah.136

  The single RQ-4 Global Hawk that was committed to the campaign played a central role in enabling precision air attacks against Republican Guard forces by transmitting real-time imagery of enemy tanks and artillery emplacements to the CAOC, which relayed their geogr
aphic coordinates to fighters and bombers orbiting overhead. It also tracked enemy ground forces, even throughout the three-day shamal, with its synthetic aperture radar from an altitude of 60,000 feet or higher as adverse weather conditions grounded all other allied reconnaissance aircraft.137 In one novel application, Global Hawk was used to pass real-time targeting information to a fighter cockpit, albeit indirectly through a ground control station. In that instance, the UAV used its synthetic aperture radar to cue its electro-optical and infrared sensors onto an Iraqi missile launcher that was partially hidden under a bridge. It then overlaid the target location on the resultant imagery and cross-referenced it with additional target information from its electronic surveillance system. The combined information was relayed via satellite uplink to a ground station in Kuwait for analysis and compression before being passed on to a Navy F/A-18 pilot, who used the information to destroy the partially obscured Iraqi missile system without damaging the bridge. The total reported length of time from initial sensor detection until the target’s destruction was roughly twenty minutes, with most of that time taken up by man-in-the-loop target analysis.138

  The Global Hawk ultimately flew 357 hours over the course of 60 missions in support of roughly half of all the time-sensitive target attacks conducted throughout the three-week campaign, in the process producing imagery that led to the destruction of some 300 Iraqi tanks, 50 SAM batteries, 300 SAM canisters, 70 SAM transporters, and 15 SAM launchers. During all that time it was remotely controlled from Beale AFB, California.139 A later assessment credited the RQ-4 with shortening the time required for CENTCOM to defeat the Republican Guard by at least several days.140 It typically took less than an hour from the time Global Hawk identified a target to the moment when munitions were released against it.141 The UAV experience in Iraqi Freedom revealed that America’s force posture remains more weapons-rich than sensor-rich. In addition, the coordination of information flowing from UAVs to tactical-level users was sometimes inadequate, with little or no provision made for integrated direct data receipt.

  JSTARS as a Force Multiplier

  The Air Force’s E-8 JSTARS aircraft took part in Iraqi Freedom for the first time as a mature operating system. Two E-8A JSTARS aircraft that were still in initial development had been deployed to participate in Operation Desert Storm, and an improved E-8C developmental variant was committed to Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001 very late in the game. In the case of Iraqi Freedom, however, no fewer than nine of the fifteen JSTARS in Air Combat Command’s E-8C inventory flew in the campaign from two locations. At times, two or more E-8s were concurrently airborne and operating, and one JSTARS mission lasted twenty-three hours with multiple in-flight refuelings. One E-8 crew remained on station for three hours providing ISR and command and control support to Marine Corps units moving into Tikrit after having lost one of the aircraft’s four engines, an incident that normally would warrant a mandatory mission abort.142

  The GMTI radar carried by the E-8 was one of the principal technology innovations that gave allied forces ISR dominance throughout the campaign. In Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, the E-8 arrived too late to the fight and in insufficient numbers to provide persistent target-area coverage; by the time it was on-scene and at the disposal of the CAOC, most of the vehicular movement that had been the mainstay of Taliban and Al Qaeda operations during the earlier weeks of major fighting had either subsided or ceased altogether. In the case of Iraqi Freedom, however, the deployment of nine JSTARS aircraft to the war zone allowed for target-area coverage by three E-8 orbits, one of which was continuously manned. That capability satisfied the GMTI coverage requirement for a substantial portion of CENTCOM’s area of major interest.

  The JSTARS contingent also arrived in-theater early enough to collect baseline information on Iraqi ground force dispositions before the onset of major combat operations. That early arrival further helped to ensure that allied commanders and their staffs would be sufficiently familiar with the capabilities and limitations of JSTARS to use the aircraft intelligently once the campaign got under way. From that point on, the primary mission of the E-8 was to support allied air and ground forces by providing near-real-time information on both enemy and friendly ground movements. (JSTARS sensors cannot distinguish between civilian and military vehicles, but they can discriminate between tracked and wheeled vehicles. They also can track an entire convoy as well as a single vehicle, although the aircraft’s crew cannot determine whether its contacts are friendly or hostile until they cross-cue their own radar imagery with other battlespace information.)

  Learning how to use the E-8 as a real-time ISR asset was said to have been a significant challenge for JSTARS operators. The commander of the system’s parent unit, Air Combat Command’s 116th Air Control Wing based at Robins AFB, Georgia, later remarked that the aircraft’s limited use during Operation Enduring Freedom, when it had performed for the first time exclusively in a dedicated ISR role, had provided valuable lessons. “The bulk of the learning curve was not in the employment of the system per se, but in more efficiently integrating JSTARS into the ISR and [time-sensitive targeting] process.” The campaign provided the first occasion when JSTARS crews had large friendly force concentrations to monitor and track at the same time they were looking for large enemy troop formations. The wing commander admitted that although the goal for JSTARS was to go “from imagery to iron” as quickly as possible, the aircraft’s persistent lack of a positive target identification capability “presented problems at times.”143 He added that divorcing JSTARS operators from their Cold War mindset of gathering information and taking days to analyze it and reorienting their thinking toward going after immediately actionable intelligence in support of attacking emerging targets was a continuing challenge.

  Nevertheless, thanks largely to the contributions of JSTARS, Iraqi ground troops on the move were regularly detected by GMTI radar and subsequently attacked by allied fixed-wing aircraft, artillery, or attack helicopters whenever they moved. Enemy ground forces that dispersed or remained hunkered down instead were either bypassed by advancing allied ground units or destroyed by allied air attacks. JSTARS crews also coordinated various joint force activities through voice and data-link contacts with more than thirty ground control stations throughout the region. In particular, a new level of synergy was achieved in command and control and ISR through the interaction and mutual support of what one JSTARS operator called the “iron triad” of the E-8, the RC-135 Rivet Joint, and E-3 AWACS airborne control platforms.144 Through its ability to cue both other ISR platforms and sensors and armed strike aircraft directly, JSTARS enhanced the efficiency of the entire ISR constellation and greatly facilitated true joint and combined operations by providing a common operating picture to all combatants, while helping to minimize fratricide and inadvertent attacks on innocent Iraqi bystanders.

  Timely GMTI information proved to be an especially important enabler of rapid allied ground force maneuver by allowing ground commanders to advance confidently without concern for their flanks and supply lines, even though both were unsecured. Ground commanders could thus accept an element of risk and conduct high-speed operations with smaller and faster forces that relied on superior situation awareness to outflank, outmaneuver, and outsmart the enemy and to stay ahead of his ability to absorb and process information at all times. For example, during its final sprint toward Baghdad, the Army’s 3rd ID had no protective forces on either side for hundreds of miles. At one point during that advance the Republican Guard’s Medina Division nearly had the U.S. division’s cavalry squadron surrounded as the latter was proceeding northward through the sandstorm. Thanks to the high-confidence ISR provided by JSTARS, the Iraqi maneuver was detected and the Medina Division’s combat effectiveness was reduced to an estimated 20 percent by ensuing precision standoff attacks of all sorts, mostly by allied fixed-wing air power.145

  An Air Force JTAC who had supported the 3rd Squadron of the 7th Cavalry (3-7 Cav) graphically described how JSTARS h
ad provided nearly instantaneous actionable target information at the lowest tactical level:

  JSTARS saved our ass a couple of times! At one point we had a troop of the Cav with a [JTAC] holding an intersection near An Najaf. It was during the horrible sandstorm, and you couldn’t see 50 yards in daylight, let alone anything at night. The [Iraqis] kept trying to drive fuel trucks into the intersection trying to blow up the Bradleys [armored fighting vehicles]. JSTARS was able to pick the vehicles up, relay that to the [JTAC] we had at the intersection, and he was able to call in JDAMs on all the roads and vehicles leading to their position. Middle of the night in a blinding sandstorm and we still nailed them with CAS.146

  Similar JSTARS-aided air attacks destroyed dozens of Iraqi vehicles and killed hundreds of troops even at the height of the blinding shamal.

  The commander of the 101st Airborne Division, Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, later reported that such JSTARS cueing had enabled his Apache crews to destroy “very significant targets on a number of occasions.” (Among the new JSTARS capabilities successfully employed during the campaign was a direct data link with Army AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopters. In one notable application of this capability, E-8 crews were able to cue both Apaches and Air Force F-15Es onto enemy vehicular targets directly; all other allied strike aircraft received such cueing indirectly via the CAOC.) General Jumper similarly described the performance of JSTARS during the three-day sandstorm as “a major turning point,” adding: “The Iraqis, who thought we couldn’t see them any better than they could see us, boldly struck out on roads to try to reinforce [their units], especially the Medina Division.” Having thus unwittingly exposed themselves, they “essentially got torn apart and, as a result, walked away from their equipment.”147