The failure of British ground commanders to recognize that CAS aircrews sometimes had go through the appropriate approval channels to clear specific target requests was another point of contention. In general, the MoD’s after-action report found that in the area of air-land integration, “operational and tactical doctrine does not yet fully reflect the demands of high-tempo, time-sensitive or network-enabled operations.”107 It further noted that a “lack of experience in requesting, coordinating, and delivering CAS missions . . . was apparent.”108 This was all the more disconcerting given the prevalence of CAS delivery needs in Iraqi Freedom. The report noted that as many as a third of all KI/CAS missions had to be aborted because of problems in the air-land interface (more specifically because V Corps and I MEF were not able to provide tasking for aircraft conducting KI/CAS missions before those aircraft reached bingo fuel state and had to return home).109
In explaining why this had occurred, the MoD report observed that Operation Desert Storm had featured an extended and highly focused allied air campaign against fielded Iraqi forces followed by a very brief land offensive in which integrated air-land operations were seldom needed. Operation Enduring Freedom had entailed a closer integration between air and land forces, but the second Persian Gulf War, Air Marshal Torpy observed, was the first military operation in many years “where we have seen such close linkage between the air and land components. . . . We have forgotten some of the things that we were quite good at during the Cold War. . . . We have probably neglected the exercising of those over the years.”110 Now that CAS is an integral part of high-tempo warfare for producing immediate strategic effects, Air Chief Marshal Burridge concluded, “the relationship between air and land is now much, much more important.”111 The MoD report spotlighted identified shortcomings in joint RAF–British Army training for CAS and suggested reassessing the number of JTACs and FAC-As maintained in service as well as the adequacy of the equipment provided for FAC-As, such as targeting pods with their inherent limits on range and resolution. It also called for using these assets more frequently in the joint training arena.
The many problems with U.S. air-land integration explored in the preceding two sections were expressly recognized in a postwar undertaking in the United Kingdom called Project Coningham-Keyes, a joint initiative between the British Army’s Land Command and RAF Strike Command to identify and address current capability shortfalls, with special emphasis on tactical-level execution. That initiative led to high-level joint doctrine for CAS being improved in an October 2003 document called Joint Air Operations. Coningham-Keyes focused on training for JTACs and TACPs, with a view toward realigning exercises between the two commands to improve training opportunities. It also examined staff organizations within the land and air component headquarters and considered their interactions. The inquiry determined that there were too few people dealing with the air-land interface and identified an insufficiency of ALOs in ground units. Shortfalls identified by Coningham-Keyes were expected to lead to a virtual doubling of the numbers of certified JTACs and TACPs available to British Army units.112
Delays in Battle Damage Assessment
The flaws in CENTCOM’s means for conducting and delivering timely, effects-based battle damage assessment (BDA) had been identified as far back as Desert Storm. In an effort to help meet this important progress-tracking need, General Moseley set up an operational assessment team within the CAOC’s strategy division to provide a running account of the effects that both kinetic and nonkinetic air operations were having on the Iraqi leadership and armed forces. This assessment process entailed a continuing effort, and its results were folded into a readjustment of targets as needed for the next ATO cycle. In connection with this systematic strategy-to-tasks planning process, the assessment team developed measures of effectiveness for the overall air effort. The CAOC’s assessment division likewise contributed to the effort.
Sources of information that went into this process included initial radioed assessments of mission performance by combat aircrews during their return to base, followed by more formal written reports that were then forwarded to the CAOC. Such reporting provided the best immediate insights regarding the results of missions flown against other than preplanned targets, such as on-call CAS attacks. ISR inputs from aircraft targeting pods, cockpit weapons system video, UAV imagery, and satellites went into the reports as well. Obvious indicators of strike effectiveness would be visible signs of destruction due to a successful weapon impact. Second-order indicators might include a sudden absence of electronic emissions or vehicle traffic. Most measures of effectiveness went well beyond simply assessing physical bomb damage.
This process worked reasonably well for fairly slow-paced target attacks such as those conducted throughout Operations Southern Watch and Enduring Freedom. General Moseley’s chief strategist, Lieutenant Colonel Hathaway, frankly conceded, however, that in the frenetic atmosphere of Iraqi Freedom, with two thousand sorties a day or more, “there was no way to keep pace with execution.”113 Fortunately, he noted, the initial phases of the air war went essentially as planned, with few significant last-minute adjustments required. But it soon became apparent to Colonel Hathaway and others at CENTCOM that the overall picture of combat achievements “would be neither timely nor complete.”114 CENTCOM’s production of BDA was simply unable to keep pace with the speed of air and land operations, a deficiency that in turn undermined munitions effectiveness assessment (MEA) and target reattack recommendations. During CENTAF’s lessons learned conference at Nellis AFB in July 2003, General Moseley underscored his own concern regarding this deficiency when he declared emphatically: “Two wars without [a real assessment process] are enough. . . . I never received adequate, timely feedback. I basically had to wait for CENTCOM to produce the official BDA to have any idea of what happened.”115 One account observed that “official BDA” was simply “not timely enough to adjust the ongoing operations. When Moseley told Hathaway to close the loop, Hathaway [and others] . . . worked . . . to figure out what targets had been attacked, based on the mission reports. Then they made some assumptions based on the type of weapons used—precision munitions were given a high probability of hitting the target. It was a ‘Band-Aid’ on a broken process, but it was the best they could do.”116 As David Johnson described it, “effects-based operations in [Operation Iraqi Freedom] remained more art than science.”117
Operational-level assessment of combat performance likewise suffered because it depends on reliable BDA and MEA to provide a foundation for further effects-based assessment of strike operations. Because of the rapid advance of allied ground units toward Baghdad after the line of departure was crossed, the CAOC necessarily focused the bulk of its collection efforts on finding targets and delegated BDA collection to the bottom of the priorities list. A CENTAF staffer later commented in this respect, “Probably the biggest lesson not learned [after the three-week campaign] entailed data collection during mission execution.”118 I MEF’s commanding general likewise complained that “target tracking and assessment was extremely difficult. . . . There was no reliable and responsive process or means to determine whether air interdiction (AI) targets on the PTL [priority target list] were serviced and successfully attacked during and after ATO execution. The impact was that targeting personnel/LNOs [liaison officers] could not consistently and reliably provide the necessary feedback to MSC [major subordinate command] commanders that their AI target nominations were being serviced or not.”119
A major undesirable result of its flawed BDA process was that all of CENTCOM’s warfighting components, not just the air component, often found themselves short of badly needed real-time situation awareness. To cite one case in point, Colonel Hathaway recalled that
during the sandstorms on or about the ninth day of execution, the [land component commander], General McKiernan, called General Moseley with concern that the CAOC was hoarding ISR and BDA. General Moseley assured General McKiernan that he [General Moseley] was just as much i
n the dark with respect to BDA. This lack of timely assessment limited the ability of the [land component] to determine the strength and movement of Iraqi ground forces. That uncertainty forced McKiernan to change his strategy to “maneuver to contact.” This was a much less efficient form of offensive maneuver, but it was [nonetheless] necessary due to the unknowns.120
Indeed, CENTCOM’s BDA process has long been widely regarded, at least among participating airmen at all levels, as unsatisfactory to the point of being useless. Colonel Hathaway observed on this point that the scale and rapidity of the air war “emphasized the weaknesses in the assessment chain, weaknesses that might have resulted in significant fog and friction had the plan not been so well thought out or the enemy more competent.”121 Lack of adequate manning and communications confined the BDA team in the CAOC to collecting and conveying in-flight reports, mission reports, and the fully executed ATO to CENTCOM’s forward headquarters so that staffers there could then conduct more detailed assessments of all assigned targets that had been attacked. A CENTAF planner later noted, “Both BDA and combat assessment failed to meet expectations due to the dynamic nature of the ground war, numerous ATO changes, problems with CENTCOM’s federated processes, the lack of realistic training and exercise of the BDA cycle, and the initial lack of a centralized tracking tool in the combat operations division.”122
A big part of the BDA problem in that respect was—and remains—the persistence of reliance on destruction- and attrition-based rather than effects-based feedback. Regarding this important issue area, an Air Combat Command after-action briefing on the campaign flatly concluded: “We perform force application better than we can assess its effects.”123 The satellite-aided JDAMs were so accurate and reliable that MAAP planners in the CAOC were generally content to conclude that a designated aim point had been adequately “serviced” if a valid JDAM release had been assessed.124 In their considered view, poststrike target imagery was essential only for particularly high-priority and high-value targets. This perspective inclined planners to conclude that a major change was warranted in the way BDA was conducted, at least with respect to targets attacked by JDAMs. Because any JDAM that had been released within proper parameters could be instantly deemed adequate for most targets, “the lightning speed with which the air component can destroy volumes of aim points demand[ed] a move away from the archaic, analog system that requires an electro-optical picture showing damage in order to categorize a target as dead.”125 More to the point, they concluded that senior leaders should cease insisting on visual assessments of attacked targets and instead settle for accurate reporting of the combat effects achieved by aerial strikes. On numerous occasions during the period of major combat, targets located and identified by overhead imagery, particularly IADS-related targets, were repeatedly renominated for inclusion on the ATO, even though those targets had already been struck on multiple occasions and no electronic emissions had since been detected from their radars. In light of that experience, there seems every reason for CENTCOM’s leaders in future engagements to settle for effects-based BDA rather than continuing to rely on “mere observations of physical damage and bean-counting.”126
BDA throughout the major combat phase of Iraqi Freedom typically lagged behind strike operations by as much as several days, and CENTCOM staffers made little effort to assess combat effects as a high-priority concern.127 The senior CAOC director during the campaign later characterized CENTCOM’s BDA process throughout the three weeks of major combat as “broken.” He cited as just one of many examples the last-minute re-roling of a B-2 that occurred when CAOC operators determined from overhead sensors that a critical target against which the aircraft had been tasked had already been destroyed.128
In a conclusion that clearly emerged from the CAOC’s experience with BDA throughout the three-week air war, Colonel Hathaway suggested that planners in future contingencies will need to formalize the assumptions they use in assessing weapons-delivery effectiveness so that the entire warfighting command understands the premises on which BDA can be provided on short notice. Further, high-value targets “must get a higher priority within the ISR collection deck,” he said, “because not all targets are created equal.”129
A widely cited early draft of JFCOM’s after-action study reported that “collecting, analyzing, and assessing information became the bottleneck in the decision-making cycle. Once information was available and commanders made their assessments, coalition forces took rapid advantage, striking with lethality and effect.” However, the study added, “when the speed of execution exceeded the capability to analyze and assess how those actions were changing the Iraqi system, operations reverted from an effects focus to an attrition focus. . . . Thus, while espousing an [effects-based operations] philosophy, ultimately the coalition moved toward an attrition-based assessment approach. . . . On the whole, coalition forces reverted to counting specific numbers of targets destroyed to determine combat progress rather than evaluating the effects created on the enemy.” The study noted that the coalition “did not have a sufficiently sophisticated and mature approach to rapidly assess the enemy from a system-of-systems perspective. Better cultural understanding and ‘red teaming’ are needed to break the trap of ‘mirror-imaging’ that can miss important indicators.” The study further observed that CENTCOM lacked an adequate approach to assessing nonkinetic effects and a methodology for providing “the subtle synthesis of direct and nondirect indicators needed to evaluate effectiveness.”130
To offer an illustration of how this problem played out in practice, CENTCOM’s senior commanders were frequently concerned that allied ground forces might encounter stronger than expected enemy forces or be forced to fight from unanticipated positions. General Leaf noted that the problem was not simply BDA per se, but rather “really understanding . . . [whether] we’ve achieved the [desired] effects.”131 With allied ground forces having already advanced two hundred miles into Iraq within the first five days of the campaign, there was bound to be a time lag in determining what combat effects had already been achieved by allied air attacks. The challenge in that situation was not really getting “damage” assessment so much as a timely and accurate assessment of achieved effects. In previous conflicts, said General Leaf, “there was a fairly stodgy pace to conducting assessment—go bomb a target and then collect information on what has been bombed, and then do some analysis and decide what the effects were.”132 This slow and impacted assessment process adversely affected virtually all of CENTCOM’s warfighting components.
While allied interdiction and CAS sorties were shredding Republican Guard units for four straight days and nights, for example, the land component’s headquarters continued to portray the assessed strength of those units as high as 85 percent because empirical evidence to the contrary was lacking. Some commanders actually slowed their rate of advance commensurately until they could be certain what they were up against. General Leaf recalled that the targeting cycle would typically begin with meetings of the coalition’s daily effects board to focus the targeting process on desired results rather than on such instrumentalities as aircraft and munitions. General McKiernan’s list of target-servicing nominations and priorities was then passed along to General Moseley, whose battle staff would build a single target list and seek optimum ways of meeting those priorities by achieving desired combat effects, ultimately culminating in a daily ATO. In the view of many in both the air and land components, the assessment process in support of this effort could have been speeded up significantly had strike assessors had access even to rough, unanalyzed imagery.
CENTCOM also experienced difficulty in promptly determining the collateral damage consequences of land component operations. A briefing by Air Combat Command on the air war clearly pointed out that “in air operations, we have developed, by necessity, a series of tools and operational procedures to accurately assess and mitigate collateral damage. No such tools exist for surface-centric operations, especially small-unit organic fires.”133
Nearly 1,500 cluster bombs had been dropped on Iraq throughout the three-week offensive, and only 26 of them had been targeted within 1,500 feet of civilian neighborhoods. Those munitions reportedly caused only one known Iraqi civilian casualty. The Air Force had learned its lesson well in Afghanistan, where 1,228 cluster munitions had reportedly killed as many as 127 Afghan civilians. Allied ground forces, however, lacking familiarity with the collateral-damage mitigation tools and procedures that are routinely employed by Western air arms, reportedly expended cluster munitions (in artillery shells and ATACMS warheads) with less discipline during the major combat phase of Iraqi Freedom.134
One long-term solution for the BDA deficiency described above would be for the services to develop and field weapons data links that are capable of providing auto-BDA by, for example, putting a red “X” over a just-attacked target symbol on a CAOC situation display to help reduce the need for unnecessary reattacks. Strike assessors must also develop and apply a new effects-based combat assessment methodology.135
Problems in Meeting Tanker Requirements
General Moseley later described tanker support as “the single-point failure factor” in the air portion of CENTCOM’s joint and combined operations plan. He added that a failure by the air component to marshal and sustain a tanker flow sufficient to meet the in-flight refueling needs of the plan’s daily ATO could easily have been a “showstopper.”136 As it was, the shortage of tankers created serious complications in both the planning and execution of the campaign. The challenge was further exacerbated by the need to distribute the fewer than 200 available U.S. Air Force and RAF tankers over 15 bases, in contrast to the Desert Storm precedent, when 350 tankers had operated out of only 5 regional bases. Three bases in Saudi Arabia—King Khalid Military City, Jeddah, and Dhahran—had the needed ramp space and fuel throughput to support tanker operations, but the Saudi government disallowed their use for supporting strike missions. Operating locations as far away as Moron Air Base in Spain, Akrotiri on Cyprus, Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, and Cairo West were used instead.
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