The Unseen War

by Lambeth, Benjamin S.

  The tanker problem was further aggravated by Turkey’s refusal to allow the coalition to use its bases, as well as—for a time—its denial of overflight permission. Turkish bases had constituted some 25 percent of the bases that CENTCOM had earmarked as forward operating locations for its 149 KC-135s, 33 KC-10s, 4 RAF Tristars, and 8 RAF VC-10s. Their unavailability required operating tankers for the first time from bases in Crete and Bulgaria. Because of these and related complications, CENTCOM had 51 fewer KC-135s available for tanker support than it had for Desert Storm.137 Moreover, in order for the carrier-based fighters operating from the eastern Mediterranean to participate in the initial attack waves, the expeditionary air wing in Egypt and tankers based in Bulgaria had to provide fuel to other tankers that had no alternative but to fly around Israel and over Saudi Arabia to support allied strike aircraft flying into northern Iraq.138 The last-minute loss of basing rights in Turkey and the limited tanker basing in Saudi Arabia created aerial force employment distances and sortie durations throughout Iraqi Freedom that, in many cases, matched those routinely flown into land-locked Afghanistan throughout Enduring Freedom.

  Only the three bases in Kuwait that had been made available to allied strike aircraft were close enough to Iraq’s southern border to allow strikers to reach deep into Iraq without refueling. Strike aircraft from all other bases within reasonable range of Baghdad required in-flight refueling during both ingress and egress. With hundreds of allied strike aircraft airborne at any given moment, queues of fighters behind tankers sometimes became so long that pilots had to abort their missions because they lacked sufficient fuel to hold for a preplanned tanker rendezvous. A related concern entailed positioning tankers far enough forward and timing scheduled tanker connections in a way best guaranteed to prevent strike aircraft from having to queue up in the first place and become inviting targets for enemy air defenses. Yet another complicating factor was the number of aircraft that were executing sustained holding and combat operations over Baghdad. During Operation Desert Storm, fuel-consuming CAS and SEAD loitering operations over Baghdad and other parts of Iraq in which ground combat operations were under way were uncommon.139

  The war’s initial days brought recurrent complaints about missed tanker connections from Gulf-based Navy strike pilots who could not get to the fight without refueling after the battle lines had moved more than two hundred miles north of Kuwait. Tanker apportionment planners in the CAOC countered that the complainers failed to appreciate the complexities involved. A canceled tanker rendezvous, for example, did not necessarily mean that the assigned tanker had not been on station. With the allied ground advance moving northward toward Baghdad with such dispatch, target sets sometimes shifted so rapidly that airborne strike sorties were deleted from the ATO after the aircraft were airborne because they were no longer needed to service targets, not because a needed tanker was not available. Vice Admiral Keating confirmed that during the war’s first days, various tanker management challenges resulted in some carrier-based aircraft not prosecuting their targets and others having to divert into one of the Kuwaiti bases to top off before returning to their ships.140 As the campaign progressed, tanker management became less of a problem. Capt. David Rogers, Admiral Nichols’ special assistant, observed at the time, “If you ask somebody whether the tanking situation is better or worse than when we kicked things off, you would get a resounding change in opinion from what they would have told you earlier. Basically, we’re getting fuel closer to the target.”141

  Inadequate fuel lines at tanker bed-down sites that necessitated trucking in jet fuel from the outside added to the tanker-related problems. This dependence on local fuel trucks increased tanker turnaround times and reduced tanker availability for strike operations into northern Iraq from the two carriers in the eastern Mediterranean. Captain Rogers called the situation “a more complex shell game than in Desert Storm.”142 Further, the ground offensive’s rapid northward advance—before the CAOC had time to establish the desired margin of air superiority over the battlefield—soon outranged some of CENTAF’s fighters. The difficulty was further compounded when General McKiernan moved the FSCL well forward of his own forces, leaving some allied aircraft assigned to provide on-call CAS with only minutes of available loiter time. More than a few had to recover with unexpended ordnance because the ASOC could not assign targets to them quickly enough. To compensate for this, the CAOC pushed some tanker tracks forward and also assigned shorter-range aircraft like the AV-8B and A-10 to support operations solely in the southernmost portions of the battlespace.

  The problem was ameliorated when coalition ground units took Tallil Air Base and A-10s began flying CAS missions directly out of that forward location.143 Col. James Dobbins, the commander of the 392nd Air Expeditionary Group that moved into Tallil, explained that the A-10s now had “more time over target [because they] . . . did not have to fly as far to get to the fight.” In addition to enabling forward-based A-10 operations, Tallil also supported some airlift and CSAR missions. Although lacking such other critical needs as power grids, communications facilities, and water distribution systems, the base offered an adequate fuel capability for supporting initial U.S. flight operations so that A-10s could land, refuel, upload fresh ordnance, and get promptly back in the air.144

  With more in-flight refueling occurring closer to the war zone as the campaign progressed, the distribution and placement of tanker orbits necessarily became more complicated. In view of the continuing enemy IADS threat, it was not feasible for the CAOC to maintain predictable tanker tracks each day with large stacks of aircraft waiting to take on fuel. That required more airborne tanker stations and often occasioned greater difficulty for strike aircrews in finding and rendezvousing with their assigned tanker. Furthermore, a tanker pilot might be more likely to break off a refueling if he felt that his aircraft was in imminent danger of being fired on. Unlike the coalition’s strike aircraft, the tankers were not equipped with radar warning receivers or chaff and flares to provide threat situation awareness and active countermeasures against radar- and infrared-guided SAMs.

  After CENTAF’s defense suppression operations had reduced the assessed threat potential of Iraq’s IADS to a sufficiently low level of risk, General Moseley moved tanker orbits and command and control and manned ISR aircraft, such as the E-3 AWACS, E-8 JSTARS, RC-135 Rivet Joint, and U-2, forward into Iraqi airspace in support of the advancing land forces. Indeed, OPLAN 1003V had always presumed that tanker tracks would be moved into Iraq just as soon as the assessed threat environment would permit it, because there was no other way for CENTAF to support a major allied land offensive in the vicinity of Baghdad. That long-standing plan, however, had presumed that G-day would begin three days after A-day. The FLOT had moved so far north from the line of departure in Kuwait after just the first day of combat operations that Navy and Marine Corps strike fighters operating from carriers in the North Arabian Gulf could no longer reach the fight on the ground without refueling in flight at least once.

  As soon as CAOC planners opened the first tanker tracks inside Iraqi airspace, the Navy began using its S-3Bs and F/A-18E/F Super Hornets to provide organic tanking for some carrier-based sorties that were tasked to support the land component. These were the first of many measures the CAOC undertook to overcome the ever-widening distances to allied ground units advancing toward Baghdad. The assessed urgency of moving tankers into defended Iraqi airspace as soon as possible left little time to address possible IADS threats, and tanker planners were understandably reluctant at first to conduct in-flight refueling over southern Iraq, particularly at the lower altitudes that the A-10s required.145 Yet another attempted palliative to address the tanker and fuel shortage entailed tasking A-10s to support I MEF in southeastern Iraq while Marine Corps strike fighters from Al Jaber and carrier air wings in the North Arabian Gulf operated farther north to support the parallel advance by V Corps. In this arrangement, General Moseley, in effect, traded a squadron of air component–control
led A-10s to I MEF to meet General Conway’s CAS needs in return for a squadron of Marine Corps F/A-18Cs that the CAOC could use in meeting its deep-attack requirements farther north.

  The two carriers that had been on station in the North Arabian Gulf for the longest time, Abraham Lincoln and Constellation, were selected to receive the greatest possible Air Force tanking support. The air wing embarked in the last carrier to arrive on station, Kitty Hawk, was given a predominantly CAS role in support of V Corps and I MEF in southern Iraq and was tasked to fulfill that role autonomously, which burdened the carrier’s organic tanking capability to its limit. For the first time since Operation Desert Storm, strike aircraft in CVW-5 embarked in Kitty Hawk were allowed to return to the carrier with minimum fuel, and carrier cyclic and flex-deck operations ran at a maximum.146 Marshaling these capabilities for an anticipated five-day surge option, CVW-5 proved itself able both to meet its CAS tasking and to provide strike packages for attacks against fixed targets in Baghdad. The S-3B tankers of CVW-5 were crucial in making that flexible employment possible.

  The other two carrier air wings followed similar plans to enhance their capabilities. It turned out that S-3Bs in the Gulf-based air wings were sufficient in number and capability to permit the release of some Air Force tankers allocated to Abraham Lincoln and Constellation to support other strike sorties emerging from the Gulf region, including from Kitty Hawk, as well as Air Force heavy bombers arriving from Diego Garcia and elsewhere. This concept had been tested and validated during the final days of Operation Southern Watch, during which frontside and backside organic tanking (that is, in-flight refueling of fighters both on the outbound leg to their assigned target area and near or over the carrier shortly before their recovery) allowed F/A-18s to fly one-and-a-half-hour cycles with little difficulty, with S-3Bs launching and recovering immediately before and after the refueling evolutions. It also allowed an increase in on-station time for carrier-based strike fighters conducting CAS missions in southern Iraq around Basra and Nasiriya, and it showed that a five-day surge capability could be sustained on an open-ended basis throughout the days to come. By one informed account, the concept worked “flawlessly” throughout the three-week campaign.147 In the end, the five participating carrier air wings transferred about half a million pounds of fuel a day from organic S-3Bs and Super Hornets in addition to the five million pounds a day they received from U.S. Air Force and RAF tankers.

  Coalition pilots recalled that some of their most harrowing moments during the three-week air war resulted from their inability to find a tanker at the end of a mission when their fuel supply was critically low. Said one pilot: “We’d call for our tanker, ask AWACS where he was, and be told, ‘he’s gone home already.’”148 At first, tanker tracks inside Iraqi airspace were too few to provide adequate support to the land component’s KI/CAS needs, so alternative measures had to be undertaken. Defensive counterair operations were reduced by half; Air Force A-10s began launching combat sorties out of Tallil airfield; and F-15Es that had initially been operating out of Al Udeid in Qatar began generating combat sorties out of Al Jaber Air Base in Kuwait, which was closer to the Iraqi border. These measures allowed aircraft assigned to KI/CAS missions longer times on station without the need for in-flight refueling.149

  There were several days during the march toward Baghdad when in-flight refueling requests from airborne strike aircraft conducting CAS operations went unmet due to conflicting interpretations of General Moseley’s guidance regarding tanker track placement inside still-defended Iraqi airspace and risk mitigation. In particular, the period between day 4 and the regime collapse on April 9 saw some fuel requests for A-10 and other coalition CAS aircraft, as well as for A-10 support to the SOF component’s Task Force 20 in Iraq’s western desert, going unsatisfied. Dealing decisively with this issue required General Moseley’s personal adjudication. CAOC planners later explained that “increased tanker risk acceptance by air refueling track placement into Iraq’s southern plain was necessary to support ground operations, but the doctrinally inspired organizational structure caused resolution of such conflicts to occur at the [air component commander] level. Resolution couldn’t always occur in a timely manner because of the multiple layers of leadership that existed between the MAAP chief and [General Moseley].”150

  Planners in all components had tended to assume going into Iraqi Freedom that Southwest Asia’s enormous fuel reserves would make fuel shortages nonexistent. Yet as CAOC operators later pointed out, “walls of [defensive counterair], robust global power, numerous land component target nominations, and 24-hour command and control and ISR coverage all constituted examples of legitimate needs that also happen to be very expensive in terms of fuel. . . . [P]lanners must not assume all the gas will be there to fulfill their wish lists. Tankers mustn’t be an afterthought in wartime planning—they should be the first thought.”151

  Obstacles in Coalition Information Sharing

  A final source of frustration in the day-to-day conduct of the major combat phase of Iraqi Freedom had to do with the sharing of sensitive information among the American and allied contingents. Although openness and candor between the allies were far better in this war than in any preceding instance because of the few coalition partners that were involved and their exceptional closeness, there was nonetheless difficulty at times with what one RAF officer described as “translating the trust engendered at the highest levels into sensible information sharing at lower levels.”152 The British and Australian contingents had full access to the American STU III secure telephone system and also could receive the product of TBMCS indirectly by means of read-only compact discs. Beyond that, however, the allies had more than a few problems getting timely access to U.S.-controlled information.

  In particular, many of CENTCOM’s most important command and control processes were based on SIPRNet (secure Internet protocol router network), a U.S. eyes-only system that could not be directly accessed by foreign nationals.153 Accordingly, allied personnel in the CAOC were not allowed to work directly with such crucial SIPR-based U.S.-only planning mechanisms as TBMCS. As an attempted work-around solution, CENTCOM provided the allied contingents with the wherewithal to create a mirror image of SIPRNet called Xnet, which allowed them to use a separate TBMCS system that was not SIPR-based and accordingly was not linked to TBMCS. That makeshift arrangement allowed coalition planners to build their mission plans in a separate TBMCS “shell” that ATO production staffers would then merge into the overall ATO. Yet the MAAP cell’s principal means for building mission sets used a MAAP toolkit rather than TBMCS. Because the MAAP toolkit was also SIPR-based, coalition staff were not allowed access to it either. Moreover, although the air component’s daily SPINs were, of clear necessity, approved for release to the coalition partners and were routinely laden with specific coalition-partner information and guidance, the allies’ lack of direct access to both TBMCS and SIPRNet forced CAOC staffers to burn a compact disc every day and hand-deliver it to RAF and RAAF mission planners, which created an additional source of self-inflicted friction.

  In other ways as well, the coalition representatives’ American counterparts were obliged to pick up the slack created by the stringent security measures, leading to heavier workloads and longer timelines for assembling attack packages. For example, before options planning for OPLAN 1003V began in earnest, standard U.S. intelligence management procedures dictated classifying most of the targeting information generated by CENTCOM and by the broader U.S. national intelligence community at the Secret/NOFORN level. Once actual combat operations neared, however, both CENTCOM and the broader intelligence community found themselves faced with the massive task of sanitizing large amounts of NOFORN targeting information so as to render it releasable to CENTCOM’s coalition partners. The arrangement for sharing vital planning data that resulted was described by an RAF officer as “slow and cumbersome rather than responsive and agile.”154

  The CAOC staffers who produced CENTAF’s after-action
review of the campaign experience described the allies’ lack of access to key mission-planning systems as “the single greatest frustration for what was otherwise an outstanding relationship” among the coalition partners. One key planner recalled pointedly that “the impact of this issue was felt throughout the CAOC.”155 Senior RAF officers who took part in Iraqi Freedom at both command and execution levels were likewise all but unanimous in spotlighting the NOFORN caveat that blocked ready allied access to SIPRNet, Intellink, and other U.S.-only information systems as a persistent and systemic impediment to fuller interoperability with U.S. forces.156 They further singled out this problem as one that senior leaders in all three countries needed urgently to address in order to find a mutually agreeable “better way” that might allow less-fettered dialogue between special partners in the midst of high-intensity coalition warfare.157

  Air Chief Marshal Burridge later remarked that the challenge presented by the access issue had not been prohibitively imposing in the case of Iraqi Freedom because the coalition partners of major note were solely the United Kingdom and Australia, both of which were close allies of the United States accustomed for years to operating “inside a known agreement for sharing intelligence.” Because the process was manual rather than automatic, however, it required the American participants to find time in the midst of continuous high-tempo combat to decide on and carry out the transfer of information to the allied contingents as it was needed. This inherent impediment to smoother planning and execution was generally overcome through exceptionally close interpersonal and trust relations among the three contingents, but not without recurrent friction and inefficiency. Burridge further pointed out that the efficacy of such a system would be limited, perhaps even to the breaking point, in future contingency responses by a larger coalition that included partners “with whom we would not normally consider sharing high-grade intelligence.”158 Many CENTAF staffers recognized the necessity for both CENTCOM and the broader American national intelligence community to adopt a fundamentally different mindset aimed at facilitating allied combat options planning for future contingencies. Simply adding a caveat indicating “releasable to Great Britain, Australia, and Canada” would obviate the last-minute scrambling to sanitize targeting information that plagued Iraqi Freedom.