The Unseen War

by Lambeth, Benjamin S.

  The CENTCOM assessment reconstructed the incident as follows:

  The Bravo Company commander, collocated with the FAC, directed the FAC to engage the targets north of the canal. The A-10s spotted a burning vehicle (thought to be an enemy vehicle, but turned out to be a damaged Charlie Company vehicle) north of the bridge and reported it to the FAC, who could see the smoke and verified that it was in the target area. . . . The FAC was not able to see the A-10s or a specific target. Therefore, he confirmed the target location with the A-10s and attempted to verify the location of the lead element with the Bravo Company commander. . . . Based on the information he possessed concerning the [unit’s] scheme of maneuver [and] believing that only enemy forces were ahead, [the Bravo Company commander] cleared the target for fire. No additional authorization was sought. The FAC informed the A-10s that there were no friendly forces north of the bridge and they were cleared to engage.27

  In his cover memorandum forwarding the assessment, CENTCOM’s commander at the time, Gen. John Abizaid, recommended “a reexamination of joint doctrine as it relates to Type III CAS control.” He also recommended that the Marine Corps consider “appropriate administrative or disciplinary action against the Bravo Company FAC” who called in the A-10s.28 With respect to the latter recommendation, a press account that appeared several weeks after the incident reported that the A-10 pilots had been repeatedly cleared to engage what were thought to be paramilitary Fedayeen Saddam fighters by a “disoriented” Marine Corps ground FAC who was located behind the Marine company’s position.29 Essentially bearing out that early report, a Marine Corps publication issued in September 2009 confirmed that CENTCOM’s incident investigation “logically concluded that the cause of the incident was the [FAC’s] violation of a standing order not to use Type III [the least stringent form of CAS] without approval from higher headquarters. If he had contacted the battalion commander, he would have known that friendly forces were north of the Saddam Canal. Even if he failed to make contact with the battalion commander but still adhered to the standing order, the incident would not have occurred.”30 (The incident, it bears noting, erupted after a group of Iraqi troops had begun firing on the Marines after having first pretended to surrender.)31

  On March 27 an A-10 mistakenly strafed another group of Marines, a regimental combat team that had become caught up in a firefight and had requested immediate fire support. The A-10 pilot was given an incorrect grid zone designator that had the Marine combat team right in the middle of it. Thus improperly cued, the A-10 pilot misidentified the friendly unit as hostile and was cleared to engage it with his 30-mm cannon. This time, remarkably, no one was hurt.32

  A week after the fratricidal Tornado GR4 downing, an A-10 attacked two British Army Scimitar armored reconnaissance vehicles, killing one British soldier. In another fratricide incident involving British forces, an A-10 on March 28, 2003, mistook reconnaissance elements from D Squadron of the British Army’s Household Cavalry for Iraqi forces and in two consecutive engagements with them left one British trooper dead and three wounded.33 In a similar incident, an American SOF team aiding Kurdish forces called in two fighters to attack an Iraqi tank that was firing at them from a mile away. Instead, one of the fighters mistakenly dropped a bomb on the Kurdish convoy, killing eighteen Kurds and injuring three American soldiers.

  Finally, three U.S. Army soldiers were killed and six were wounded near Baghdad International Airport on April 2 when an F-15E inadvertently struck their position in a quick-reaction attack against what its crew thought was an active Iraqi SAM site. The 3rd ID’s after-action assessment assigned responsibility to an uncoordinated and improper attempt by the CAOC to engage targets inside the FSCL: “Much to their credit, [V] Corps was able to stop a total of 14 of these attempts. However, an F-15E under CFACC control was successful in one attempt. The F-15E misidentified an MLRS [multiple-launch rocket system] as a [SAM] launcher approximately 15 miles from his position. The pilot found 14 vehicles in that area and asked permission from [AWACS] to engage those targets. . . . The end state was fratricide—3 killed in action, 6 wounded in action, and 3 vehicles destroyed. This is unacceptable.”34

  The Army report cited combat identification errors; fatal navigation errors; a loss of fire control; errors in reporting, battle tracking, and clearance to fire; ineffective maneuver control; and either weapons errors or failures in troop discipline as the primary causes of the fratricide incidents. The report concluded that the likelihood of future air-to-ground fratricide incidents could best be reduced through such means as standardized tactical air controller training and equipment across all U.S. forces. The use of standardized geographic designation systems, cross-checking battlespace information, and ensuring that all friendly aircraft remain within assigned boundaries through proper preparation and detailed intelligence was also crucial. Proper maintenance of situation awareness and understanding at the lowest level along with the marking and positive identification of targets, both day and night, was also essential. As for ways of minimizing the likelihood of surface-to-air incidents, the report emphasized proper IFF procedures, the development and standardization of battlefield identification systems, and positive identification of targets.35

  In his assessment of the Tornado episode and other instances of fratricide over the three-week course of the campaign, Air Marshal Torpy conceded that occasional fratricide in warfare is simply “one of the facts of life. It is our job to make sure that those tragic incidents are reduced to the absolute minimum.”36 Although the GR4’s downing temporarily strained the trust relationship between the British and American contingents, General Franks later echoed the ultimate British sentiment on the matter when he commented: “When there are friendly fire incidents across coalition boundaries, it brings allies closer together.”37 After the incident, the British contingent made appropriate adjustments to the rules of engagement and the manner in which the U.S. Army’s Patriot was employed.

  The Failed Apache Deep-Attack Attempt

  Although air-land integration within CENTCOM had significantly improved prior to Iraqi Freedom, the long-standing discontinuity between Air Force and Army cultures with respect to how best to draw down and neutralize an enemy’s ground forces nonetheless resurfaced during the campaign’s initial days. Air Force proponents in the CAOC argued in favor of using fixed-wing air power to degrade enemy force capability to the greatest extent possible before allied ground units moved to direct contact, while their Army counterparts insisted that early close ground force engagement with the enemy was the ideal mode of operations. Such thinking clearly underlay the Army’s abortive attempt to conduct an independent deep attack against a concentration of Republican Guard forces by a formation of AH-64 Apaches without prior preparation of the battlespace by fixed-wing air power.

  In a move that appears to have been completely uncoordinated with CENTCOM’s air component, the V Corps commander, Lieutenant General Wallace, approved a staff request to launch a deep attack mission that would send AH-64 Apache attack helicopters from the 11th Attack Helicopter Regiment (AHR) to engage three brigades and the organic artillery of the Republican Guard’s Medina Division deployed northeast of Karbala and south of Baghdad. The Apache community had been itching to get a piece of the action from the campaign’s very start. A postcampaign review of Army operations noted that “some pilots had compared this attack to the 101st Aviation Brigade’s legendary deep attack operation in Operation Desert Storm; they too were going to be heroes. Their frustration continued to build, adding to the 11th [AHR’s] collective desire to get into the fight.”38

  The attack was plagued by a host of miscalculations from the very outset of mission planning. First, because the corridor near An Najaf through which the Apache crews would penetrate to their assigned targets was lightly populated, planners elected to forgo the normal precursor suppressive fire, principally by artillery. Second, the regiment lacked adequate situation awareness of the target area because the shamal had grounded the UAVs
that would have provided the Apache crews with refined target coordinates. Because of spotty and incomplete intelligence reporting on the disposition of Iraqi forces in the area where the attack was to be concentrated, the regiment’s pilots lacked specific grid locations for their targets and had only rough approximations, within a kilometer or so, of Iraqi company positions. Essentially, they would have to grope about in a calculated way to find the enemy forces.39

  In addition, the speed of the 3rd ID’s northward advance during the preceding two days made it necessary to move the Apache attack up twenty-four hours. Although nine potential ingress routes had been initially considered and proposed by the 11th AHR, only three southern routes were ultimately approved by V Corps due to concern at headquarters that use of the western approach options would encroach on airspace that had been allocated to the 101st Airborne Division. To make matters worse, friendly convoys bearing fuel and ammunition had been delayed by traffic jams, and inadequate fuel supplies at the planned point of departure necessitated dropping one of the three squadrons of Apaches from the attack plan. (Sixty AH-64s had been flown into a staging area at Objective Rams to marshal for the planned attack.)40

  The lack of close coordination with the air component resulted in several problems. First, no prior dedicated fixed-wing defense suppression was requested or provided. On top of that, allied aircraft overhead in CAS stacks and supporting friendly artillery units were not notified of a two-hour delay in the planned launch of the attack, and thirty-one ATACMS missiles were fired on a preplanned schedule into the intended target area before the Apaches had even left their marshalling area at Objective Rams, a miscue that warned the enemy of an impending attack. By the time the Apaches reached the target area, allied fixed-wing strike aircraft that had been holding in CAS stacks overhead had departed as a result of low fuel states, leaving the Apache crews without available CAS in case it should be needed.41

  In the end, at 0115 local time on March 24, only thirty of the initial planned contingent of sixty Apaches got safely airborne, one of the AH-64s having crashed during takeoff after its crew became disoriented by swirling dust. Once aloft and in their prebriefed ingress formation, the thirty Apaches proceeded along the fifty-mile route to the designated target area, flying one hundred feet above the ground and maintaining a nose-to-tail separation of fifteen rotor lengths. Few of the Apaches ever got close enough for their crews to engage the enemy. As their final attack run was under way, the power grid in the An Najaf area went black for a few seconds, most likely as a signal to Iraqi gunners that the Apaches were en route to their objective. When the lead element of the Apache formation neared the target area, the defending Iraqi forces opened fire. Aware that the Apaches would have to ascend to two hundred feet to clear the power lines, Iraqi gunners aimed their streams of fire above the power lines, and the helicopters flew into a fusillade of enemy fire. One Apache was downed and its two-man crew captured.42

  Enemy gunfire damaged all but one of the Apaches. On average, each sustained sixteen to twenty bullet holes. Sixteen helicopters suffered damage to main rotor blades, six to tail blades, six to engines, and five to engine driveshafts. During their hasty withdrawal from the target area, two of the Apaches barely avoided a midair collision. For their efforts, the 11th AHR successfully attacked a dozen Iraqi vehicles. A month would go by before the regiment was fully ready for combat again. The land component staff subsequently came to believe that the Apaches’ assembly areas in the Iraqi desert had been under surveillance. General Wallace also subsequently told reporters that an Iraqi major general in An Najaf had used a cellular telephone to warn the Iraqi defenders that a wave of AH-64s was heading toward their position near Karbala.43 Wallace freely granted that the attempted operation “did not meet the objectives that [he] had set for that attack” and concluded that “deep operations with Apaches, unless there’s a very, very, very clear need to do it, are probably not a good idea.”44

  In the immediate wake of the failed attack, the 101st Airborne Division’s attack aviation units shifted their mission focus from nighttime deep attack operations to armed reconnaissance, and the planning for a second Apache foray against Karbala on March 28 clearly incorporated lessons learned from the many mistakes made during the lead-up to the first.45 For a time, a later report noted, V Corps leadership “debated whether to attempt the mission at all,” but eventually they gave the green light.46 Precursor defense suppression attacks and on-call CAS from allied fixed-wing air power were better coordinated for this attack, and the Apache crews now had their flanks protected by F/A-18s and other fixed-wing aircraft. This time, the 101st Aviation Brigade “relied heavily on its air liaison officer, who in turn requested an airborne forward air controller . . . on the mission to ensure [that] CAS would be coordinated directly between fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft.”47 Also, the raid was preceded by four minutes of preparatory artillery fire to pin down any Iraqi gunners who might have been lying in wait for the attackers, and the Apache crews expressly avoided any built-up areas from which concealed man-portable infrared SAMs and small arms fire might emanate.

  Moreover, the Apaches were led this time by Kiowa Warrior scout helicopters that were sent in to validate targets first. The Apaches destroyed seven Iraqi AAA positions, three artillery positions, five radars, and twenty-five vehicles, with no Apache losses, but this second performance still left much to be desired in terms of the ultimate payoff achieved for the effort and risk that went into it. After that, V Corps abandoned any further pursuit of deep attack air operations, and its use of Apaches was generally limited to providing organic armed reconnaissance and close-in CAS for Army ground units.

  As for the good-news part of this story, the unsuccessful deep attack attempt on March 24 was the only major Army setback during the entire three-week campaign. And it resulted in significantly improved air-ground coordination. After that failed effort, the Army’s vice chief of staff, Gen. John Keane, pointedly asked: “Does our doctrine still make sense?” General Keane admitted that the Apache formation “ran into an organization that was much more spread out” than had been expected. As a result, he said, “we are taking a look at aviation doctrine and how to use Apaches at long distances.” Subsequently, the land component routinely requested Air Force A-10s to suppress enemy ground fire before planned Apache operations. “In other words,” said General Keane, “we had air power with them as well.”48 General Wallace later reported that once this arrangement was in place, “the U.S. Air Force had a heyday against those repositioning Iraqi forces.”49

  The Army’s postcampaign assessment candidly admitted that the Apache experience “will affect how the Army trains and equips units for years to come.”50 The assessment noted that the incident “placed in question the efficacy and utility of attack helicopters in Army doctrine” and attributed its shortcomings to the centrality of “the human ego in war” and “the indomitable warrior spirit to get into the fight.”51 In a remarkably unflinching display of frank institutional introspection, the assessment concluded that “the Army will need to consider under what conditions flying attack helicopters deep will produce the kind of benefits that warrant the potential risk.”52

  Most Air Force airmen would readily agree with this judgment. Without question, the flawed and ultimately abortive deep-attack attempt by the 11th AHR showed yet again the limited ability of even the best attack helicopters to cover extended areas of terrain and to conduct precision attacks in heavily defended airspace when compared with far more versatile fixed-wing fighter aircraft. At more than $30 million a copy in today’s dollars, an Army AH-64 costs roughly the same as an Air Force F-16, yet it lacks the F-16’s range, persistence, striking power, and survivability. Mindful of that comparative performance limitation, former Air Force chief of staff Gen. Merrill McPeak suggested in a postcampaign comment that the Army should limit its use of the Apache to CAS or, “if it must go deep, hand it over [to the air component] for joint tasking.”53

  Inefficie
ncies in Controlling Joint Battlespace by V Corps

  Doctrinally imposed limitations on the joint delivery of fire support, especially with respect to the placement and use of the FSCL, were a continuing bone of contention between the air and land components that many airmen felt needlessly inhibited the most effective application of joint fires in support of V Corps. David Johnson called differences regarding the management of battlespace “the single greatest issue between the Army and the Air Force” and put “Army deep attack concepts and the placement of the FSCL . . . at the heart of the matter.”54 Michael Knights expressed the same line of thought in his apt observation that “battlespace is a jealously hoarded commodity in modern warfare.”55

  The FSCL was the primary fire support mechanism for dividing CENTCOM’s battlespace between the land and air components. Any enemy terrain on the far side of the FSCL was essentially a free-fire zone for the air component because there could be no possibility of friendly troops coming into contact with enemy ground forces in that portion of the battlespace. All kill boxes on that side of the FSCL were open to attacks from the air. The terrain on the near side of the FSCL was the land component’s battlespace. Kill boxes that lay within that terrain were closed to attack from the air unless the land component commander expressly opened them for a finite window of time to permit air attacks under the control of properly trained and certified FAC-As or ground-based JTACs who were tasked by the ASOC supporting V Corps.

  During the initial allied ground advance into Iraq, General McKiernan, with General Franks’ concurrence, extended the FSCL to eighty-four miles ahead of the line of advancing coalition ground forces. (The one exception was the transitory opening of kill boxes by V Corps during the “operational pause” prompted by the three-day shamal.) The extended FSCL put an additional strain on the tankers supporting CENTAF’s strike fighters because the latter had to fly farther north in order to provide effective interdiction and CAS. General McKiernan similarly moved the FSCL forward dozens of miles in front of coalition forces to facilitate the Apache assault planned for March 24. That decision, observed General Leaf, “cost us [the air component] . . . a full night of fixed-target strikes inside the FSCL. We—the entire coalition team—had not hit our stride in achieving the command and control required to operate in volume effectively inside the fire support coordination line.”56