Close-Air Support from Afar

by Michael Puttré
Jun. 1, 2003

On April 2, arguably the most significant action occurred in the Iraq War (Operation Iraqi Freedom) from the standpoint of visualizing the future of the air-land battle. US Marines, one of the forward prongs of a Coalition expeditionary force and facing a counter-attacking column of Iraqi heavy armor, called in air support from a B-52 loitering above 30,000 ft. Forward air controllers, possibly including Air Force enlisted tactical air controllers (ETACS), provided the aircrews high above with GPS coordinates of the desired impact points. The aircrews, in turn, downloaded targeting data to the payload of CBU-105 Wind-Corrected Munitions Dispensers (WCMDs) (the Sensor-Fuzed Weapon tactical munitions dispenser with a guidance tail kit), each carrying ten BLU-108 anti-armor submunitions. The WCMDs, upon release, glided toward their targets by means of an inertial-navigation unit and actuated tail fins. At the programmed point, each WCMD ejected its payload of BLU-108s. Using laser altimeters, the parachute-stabilized BLU-108s released four laser- and infrared-aimed "skeets" apiece, turning the zone below into a killing field for Iraqi fighting vehicles and their crews.

The underlying concept of a lighter expeditionary force, potentially overmatched in terms of throw weight but possessing superior situational awareness and communications, calling in precision firepower from supporting air units is the very soul of the Transformed military. "Transformation is in the eye of the beholder," said Colonel Robert Killebrew, US Army (ret.), developer and deputy director of the Army After Next program, which was one of the precursors to the Pentagon's Force Transformation effort. "When the Army After Next started, we were able to cast anew the battlefield. We had these tremendous developments under way at the time, from the increased use of precision weaponry to quantum increases in the ability to communicate and see the battlefield. And we said, 'Okay, let's pretend that we can do away with bureaucratic divisions between firepower and maneuver. All firepower and all maneuver. What would it be like?' And we developed some concepts that we are now beginning to see come to fruition: a seamless way to integrate all firepower and what became known as effects-based planning. We don't care what thing blows up that hilltop. We just want it blown up by the fastest, most expeditious means."

Effects-based rather than time-based planning was a concept that observers of the Iraq War struggled with. Questions about whether the campaign was on, behind, or ahead of schedule were more or less patiently deflected by Central Command and Pentagon briefers. The Coalition, they explained, was driven by effects, not time. When certain effects had been achieved, new actions would be undertaken. There was no timetable. The days of sending men over the top because the stopwatch clicked to zero are over. Still, notions of schedules and timetables and stopwatches are still very much in the minds of the public, and even perhaps of many in uniform.

The same might be said for those supporters, critics, and other interested parties who follow the Transformation saga. It is very easy to get caught up in whether this program or that one is "transformational" or "legacy." But if, as COL Killebrew said, Transformation is in the eye of the beholder, then we have seen a transformed military in action.

Parsing the engagement where the B-52s provided close-air support to the Marines, what we have are a number of legacy systems being employed in ways their original designers never dreamed of to achieve effects that can easily be described as transformational. A picture of the B-52 is in the dictionary under "legacy." The Marines, as with their US Army comrades (and the British, Australian, and Polish forces), are equipped with weapons that were designed during the Cold War, that legacy world order. Even the BLU-108, which saw its combat debut in that action, has its origins in Air Force's Wide-Area Anti-Armor Munitions (WAM) program of the early 1980s, when US planners were woried about stopping massed Soviet tanks and armored personnel carriers from pouring through the Fulda Gap. The J-STARS aircraft that provided ground radar coverage of the battlefield was born of the DARPA/Army "Assault-Breaker" program of the same era (as was the Army Tactical Missile System [ATACMS], which saw use in both Iraq wars).

The specific results of the engagement remain classified, as do many of the capabilities of the Textron BLU-108 in terms of its kill rate and performance versus specific vehicle types. Nevertheless, according to Robert Buckley, senior vice president at Textron Systems (Wilmington, MA), the Marines on the ground were well pleased with the results. What is interesting is that the weapon was employed in a way that was vastly different than its original requirements specified. "One of the problems we had with preparing BLU-108 for the modern battlefield was that it was geared toward a deployment altitude of 200 feet and below from a tactical aircraft going Mach 0.9," said Buckley, who was the original program manager for the full-scale development of the Sensor-Fuzed Weapon. Planners anticipated the need to deliver the weapons with fast strike aircraft penetrating hostile airspace. "Nobody was thinking about deploying these things from 30-40,000 feet because that's a whole different way of fighting and a different operating environment."

In fact, the concept of effects-driven warfare extends neatly to requirements-driven weapons systems. Captain Robert Wirt, program manager for conventional strike weapons for the US Navy's Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) (NAS Patuxent River, MD), said that the lessons from previous wars informed how legacy weapons would be used in new ways in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that the lessons from the Iraq War were flooding in. "Requirements are always evolving," CAPT Wirt said. "And the Navy is working particularly hard to avoid stovepiping ourselves around products, and instead is looking at mission capabilities. The first thing we do when we identify a hole in a mission capability is look at what we have in inventory and see if we can adjust the CONOPS [concept of operations] of that particular system to match or fill the gap in that mission capability. On paper, we never know. Did we ever think that we'd be fighting a war where we'd be dropping air support off a B-52? No way."

CAPT Wirt credits the junior officers on the sharp end of the problem with driving many of the innovations that are demonstrated successfully in action. The "smart kids" out there come up with new ideas as they gain an understanding of the weapons systems and learn what the support forces are capable of, and they merge the two. "We truly look to our analysis of alternatives in looking at gaps in mission capabilities," CAPT Wirt said. "Step one is always asking 'Do we have the legacy systems on board right now that could have either modifications to them to fill that gap or have their CONOPS deployment criteria modified to fill that gap?' Only when we turn those rocks over and find out that we can't do that do we truly start pursuing new systems."

COL Killebrew is also of the opinion that younger officers are essential to the success of the military's effort to transform itself. "We clearly need a way to visualize a more radical future and to pull Army research and development into that more radical future," he said. "The Army After Next program was one of the few that I know of that let lower-ranking people begin to affect the course of the Army." Most of the people who helped with the study were majors and lieutenant colonels, along with a handful of civilian GS-14s and -15s. "We have enormously talented youngsters out there, many of whom are now combat veterans several times over. They are more familiar with newer technologies than many of the oldtimers are; they see possibilities that we don't see; and I think that all the services need to invest far more in tapping the creative energies of their mid-grade officers."

Information into the Breach

From a technology standpoint, the US has taken precision-guided munitions, particularly the J-weapons -- JDAM, JSOW, and JASSM, to a new level of accuracy that opens up the mission capability of strike weapons to close-air support (see "Hammers of the Gods"). Perhaps even more revolutionary, precision guidance has made it possible to employ area-effect weapons, such as the BLU-108 and BLU-97 combined-effects bomblets, in the close-support role. Close-air support, by definition, usually means that you've got forces that are in close contact with each other. Therefore, accuracy is paramount to avoid any Blue-on-Blue situations. Prior to the advent of precision-guided weapons, close-air support always demanded that pilots see the "whites of their eyes" before dropping on the enemy. Besides limiting the envelope in which close-air-support missions could be flown, low-altitude attacks presented a high level of hazard to aircrews from short-range air defenses, as well as proximity to the ground (see "Dangerous Liaisons"). This no longer need be the case.

"The reason that we are starting to bring precision-guided weapons into the close-air-support role is that systems have evolved that are being used by the ground forces that make the kind of information available to the ground forces and subsequently through transmission to the aircrews that allow these precision-guided weapons to be used in close-air support," CAPT Wirt said. "Those systems, the target designators that provide coordinates that are accurate enough to be useful to the precision-guided munitions, are now proliferating throughout the ground forces."

According to COL Killebrew, one of the things that people have a hard time envisioning about the future battlefield is that there will be a global information grid and that warfighters should be able to plug into information whenever they need it. "There remain barriers between the uniformed services to achieving this sort of transparency," he said. "One of these is the insistence by the Air Force that only Air Force forward air controllers can call in Air Force fires. The Air Force is making a sincere effort to correct that, but their efforts remain inside the Air Force. They are training more ETACS, and they put those people out in the field a lot. But the ultimate solution is going to be when a sergeant of ground forces in any service can speak to the pilot or direct aerially delivered fires without having to go through service connections. The Air Force is correct in that we have not yet reached that level of sophistication in the ground forces, and we need to do that. The ultimate solution that I think will be followed in the Army After Next is a simplified system that allows someone that needs fires on the ground to pick up the phone and dial in the coordinates."

Beyond doctrine and training issues, there is the nuts-and-bolts issue of building the enabling infrastructure that will give ground forces the ability to request support fires themselves. Dennis Birch, marketing programs coordinator for the Objective Force Warrior technical program office at the Natick Soldier Center (Natick, MA), said improving situational awareness of the individual soldier, as well as his ability to communicate that awareness to other forces that can exploit the situation, is a primary goal.

Situational awareness is the capability that allows a warfighter to see first and understand first so that his team can act first and finish decisively. This capability needs to be available to every soldier on the battlefield to make strategic and tactical decisions. Information that leads to good situational understanding can be provided from many sources. Beyond intelligence data and sensor data, the soldier can provide information from the point of engagement. Soldiers can disseminate information to squad members and provide valuable, timely data, giving dispersed team members what is called a "common relevant operating picture" to complete their mission. Aggregated data from individual soldiers provides commanders with information that can be used in conjunction with other data sources to plan the appropriate course of action on a dynamic battlefield. Conceptually, this is rather similar to the "single integrated air picture" enabled by the US Navy's Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) (see "Victory at CEC").

Moreover, as more soldiers become able to request strike missions, systems will have to be developed to support the coordination of multiple requests. The systems will have to deconflict incoming requests, select the appropriate strike power and weapons system for engagement, and provide timely updates regarding the status of strike mission. Additionally, there is an issue with information security, authorization of requests, and authentications of originators of requests that needs to be addressed. Not all soldiers can be authorized to send strike requests at this time, nor can a system act on any requests that come through. Command-and-control systems will need to manage these types of fire-support needs.

"There are two things that we're focusing on to make this happen," Birch said. "One is the radio communications themselves, and the other is seeing that the individual soldier's electronics ensemble will enable him to participate in an ad-hoc digital network."

The programs that are helping the soldiers to take advantage of these systems are the Land Warrior program, along with the science and technology feeder program, Objective Force Warrior. The Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) programs (Cluster 1 and Small Form Factor) (see "A Band for All Reasons"), the Future Combat System (FCS) program, and the Warfighter Information Network - Terrestrial (WIN-T) program are all designed to enhance fighting ability and coordination through situational awareness and information warfare. Additionally, the Networked Fires program, sensor programs, and intelligent-munitions programs will be tied into the JTRS Small Form Factor Radio program and be a part of the network. As the soldier interface to the FCS network, the JTRS Small Form Factor Program will use the Soldier Radio Waveform (SRW) and ad-hoc mobile networking. The FCS JTRS Cluster 1 multi-channel vehicular radio will communicate with the soldier via the SRW and will also be a node on the FCS backbone network via the Wideband Networking Waveform. Information from the soldier is transitioned from the soldier network to the backbone network via the FCS JTRS Cluster 1 radio.

Birch points out that the technical hurdles are not at all trivial, particularly for dismounted land forces. "Take antennas," he said. "If you are communicating over a range of 225 to 2,500 MHz, you'll probably need more than one antenna. And you don't want one sticking 50 feet up in the air while the poor guy is struggling to crawl under barbed wire."

Plan to Be Wrong

A disquieting observation from the Iraq War was the relative frequency with which enemy forces were able to fire on US and British forces, even if mostly to little effect. The footage of the raid on April 8 by an armored column from the US 3rd Infantry Division through the outskirts of Baghdad was startling in how closely many of the cars and technicals used by Iraqi irregulars were able to approach the US vehicles. In one memorable televised sequence, a white sedan rolled through the column and bumped to a stop against the guardrail on the other side of the road, albeit shot to pieces. Nevertheless, if the Iraqis had been better equipped with Kornet anti-tank missiles (which reportedly did claim several kills during the war), such a raid might have ended in disaster, or perhaps it never would have taken place. And there were other tragedies during the war involving individual armored vehicles hit by RPGs and small arms to deadly effect.

While the reports of "heavy" and "fierce" resistance in the mainstream press are hard to justify against the speed of the US advance northwards toward Baghdad, certainly it was not possible to completely disable defenders before they could challenge the attackers with direct fire. In some cases, this was because the Iraqis used civilian lives and infrastructure as cover, and the Coalition exercised unprecedented restraint. In other cases, the Iraqis were able to stage classic ambushes. The March 24 helicopter attack by US Apaches and Longbow Apaches of the 11th Aviation Regiment on the Iraqi Medina Division was repulsed with loss by an ambush of concealed anti-aircraft guns. According to a report in the Washington Times of May 8, LTG William Wallace, the commander of Army V Corps in Iraq, told reporters that an Iraqi general cell-phoned his unit telling them that the US helicopters were inbound (shades of Black Hawk Down).

In any war, it is simply not going to be possible to prevent close combat. In the US style of war, commanders don't shun close combat, but neither do they seek it out. With a future emphasis on medium to lighter forces, close combat will be significantly less attractive, particularly in a world where tens of thousands of main battle tanks will remain in the inventories of potential adversaries, who are also likely to be festooned with sophisticated anti-armor weapons. As the 20-ton Stryker wheeled fighting vehicle advances to the fore, the 70-ton M1A Abrams tank is currently slated to pass the baton to the as-yet undetermined FCS. While the nature of the FCS vehicle has not been finalized, it is likely to be more akin to the Stryker than the Abrams. Information networks and situational awareness are expected to do more to protect the FCS on the battlefield than armor, while making it a more lethal weapon besides.

Nevertheless, the move to lighter formations will place a much heavier emphasis on support fires than even what we've seen today. "The reason for this is the need to engage heavy armor at longer distances," one industry source said. "When heavy Red and light Blue come into contact, it's pretty clear that FCS is going to lose."

According to COL Killebrew, the nature of the ground forces in terms of their physical characteristics started out as being independent of the Army After Next concepts. Fairly quickly, it became obvious that the ground force had to have certain characteristics. It had to be able to move across the ground very rapidly. And it had to have a fairly good dismounted capability. "We hypothesized that the nature of war was going to change and that it was going to become far more decentralized," he said. "And to meet that, we had to have forces that could move very fast and, at the same time, could deal with problems of populations and guerrillas. In my view, we moved too fast away from the study of war itself. The Army had some real requirements to start putting force structure together, and I understand that and appreciate it, but I thought that we could have profitably spent another few years working on the nature of warfare before we started working on force structures."

It is possible that the experience of the Iraq War will cause the Pentagon to rethink what it wants the FCS to be capable of. Evidence from two wars has shown the M1A to be a pretty good tank, and the Iraq War in particular underlined the usefulness of heavy armor in an urban warfare situation. One definite lesson of the Iraq War has been that innovations in the requirements and CONOPS of legacy systems can produce transformational results on the battlefield. Therefore, it might not matter so much if a particular new system turns out not to be perfectly suited for the battlefield environment that exists at the time it reaches the units. Experience shows that US forces are quite adept at taking a system intended for one purpose and making it shine in another. Transformation of thinking and doctrine are more important than transformation of materiel.

If the problem is one of projecting support fires, then a different way of looking at air power is called for. Once air dominance is established, it is possible to have what amounts to constantly orbiting artillery platforms that are all weather and that are always over the battlefield. Systems and procedures can be put in place that would enable supporting aircraft to respond directly to calls for fire from the battlefield, maybe in an automated way. "A good test case might be to take a retiring C-141, outfit the bed of it with vertical launch tubes, and try the concept," COL Killebrew said. "If you orbit high enough, say at 30,000 feet or so, you are out of range of most air-defense systems, and the response time is the time it takes the missile or bomb to go from 30,000 feet to the ground. For sustained firepower - firepower that can be quickly aligned with different parts of the theater - that kind of airborne artillery would be hard to beat."