Ghosts in the Machine: The Human Link in Precision Strike ‘Kill Chain’

By HUNTER C. KEETER
Associate Editor

While the term “precision strike” conjures high technology — GPS satellites and laser target designators guiding smart weapons straight through the eye of a needle — there is an often-overlooked human aspect.

As military leaders look at the kinds of effects they want to achieve in battle and post-conflict, the definition of precision strike is broadening. Skilled human operators on the ground, linked by information technology to command-and-control networks, are emerging as important enablers for precision strike capability.

On the morning of March 24, 2003, 35 U.S. Army AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopters of the 1st Battalion, 227th Aviation, 1st Cavalry Division attacked T-72 tanks of the Iraqi Republican Guard Medina Division between Karbala and al Hilah, 60 miles south of Baghdad. The AH-64Ds used powerful targeting systems to direct 30mm automatic cannon fire and millimeter-wave radar-guided Hellfire missiles to kill three Iraqi tanks. The Iraqis answered with a fusillade from low-tech small arms and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, battering 31 of the Longbows back from the line of engagement. One helicopter crashed and the Iraqis captured its crew.

At the same time, in western Iraq, a minimally equipped, 12-man U.S. Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha team destroyed 14 Iraqi tanks by calling in air strikes against them.

“The big advantage for using Special Forces is the fact that control of the weapons is almost covert,” a U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) official told Sea Power. “The enemy really does not have any idea where the bombs are coming from or how they have been targeted.”

In fairness, the incident near Karbala perhaps was over-interpreted by the press as an invalidation of using $25 million rotary wing platforms for close air support (CAS). Attack helicopters there and elsewhere have proved their toughness and value. Post-conflict, the Apache and the U.S. Marine Corps’ AH-1W Super Cobra have been in high demand in Iraq as armed intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms.

What the Alpha team in western Iraq showed, though, was that big-budget platforms (an AH-64D, including its weapon system, costs almost $25 million) aren’t the only links in the “kill chain” of precision strike. Human operators on the ground can use information technology — such as satellite telephones and programmable waveform radios — to access a virtual network that includes command-and-control centers, the ISR community and weapon systems platforms such as aircraft, ships and land-based artillery units. The result of this linkage is that the human operator — whether he is Special Forces, Army or Air Force joint forward air controller, or in a Marine air and naval gunfire liaison company — himself becomes a precision strike asset.

The Department of Defense now is re-evaluating approaches to precision strike, broadening the definition to emphasize effects over specific platforms or weapon systems, and human operators increasingly are the arbiters of those effects. A senior Navy official described it as “changing from an attrition warfare concept to a concept enabled by pervasive knowledge, created by sensors, married with persistent precision strike capability. That changes fundamentally the way of warfare.”

Placing the Bull’s-Eye

Information is the key to the success or failure of precision strike operations, according to Rear Adm. Timothy L. Heely, the Naval Air Systems Command’s program executive officer for strike weapons and unmanned aviation.

“We can hit anything, any target we aim at. The challenge is to make sure it is the right target. … That is the critical problem,” Heely told Sea Power. “That is why we have people on the ground, someone who knows where and how to place the bull’s-eye.”

Information helps precision-guided munitions find and kill their targets, but it also saves lives by building a more complete picture of friendly and enemy forces.

Recalling the days of grease pencils and acetate — when maps showed icons for allied forces drawn in blue and opposing forces drawn in red — the concept is called “blue-force” tracking, or “combat identification.”

As Sun Tzu wrote 2,500 years ago in the Art of War, One who knows the enemy and knows himself will not be in danger in a hundred battles. One who does not know the enemy but knows himself will sometimes win, sometimes lose. One who does not know the enemy and does not know himself will be in danger in every battle.

For all of the ways technology contributes to the collection and dissemination of information, it has limits when it comes to blue-force tracking, according to Lt. Col. Brian McKinney, a project officer with the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory at Quantico, Va.

“Today, I can only tell if a target is a good guy; I cannot tell whether that target is a noncombatant or an enemy,” he said. “Our situational awareness on the battlefield is better now than it ever has been before and as our communications systems improve, our blue-force situational awareness also will improve. We are, however, a long way off from knowing where every soldier is or how he is doing on the battlefield.”

As Operation Iraqi Freedom showed, one reason combat identification is important to precision strike is that battles increasingly are rapid, non-linear and chaotic. With blue forces operating among red, the risk of fratricide increases. A few high-profile incidents in Iraq, involving U.S. Air Force A-10 attack planes hitting blue-force units, underscored the enduring challenge.

As weapon systems have become more lethal, the demand for high-quality data with which to feed targeting computers has increased. As a matter of doctrine as well as being a practical necessity, human operators remain within the engagement “loop,” helping to get the most out of a precision-guided munition’s capability.

An official with Army V Corps, in Heidelberg, Germany, explained that precision-guided munitions are rated with a target location error (TLE), describing the space within which an impact is most likely to occur. Some of those TLEs are 1 meter in diameter; others may be measured at 200 meters.

In Afghanistan, during Operation Anaconda in 2002, coalition strike planes dropped Joint Direct-Attack Munitions (JDAMs) — conventional 2,000-pound bombs equipped with a Global Positioning Systems guidance tail kit — accurately to the grids on which they had been programmed. The problem was, the few available maps of Afghanistan — some 50 years old — did not provide accurate elevation information.

Once again, the human element came into play. Joint forward air controllers on the ground worked with strike plane pilots to configure each set of aim point coordinates manually, often making best guesses about altitudes. Even minor errors led weapons well off their desired points of impact.

Fast-forward to 2003, as coalition forces pushed the last “dead-enders” of Iraqi resistance into Baghdad and Tikrit. Bringing precision firepower to bear in the densely packed Iraqi urban centers presented a major challenge to coalition command and control and necessitated the presence of human operators to guide the “end game” of a strike mission.

“Quite understandably, a pilot is not going to drop a 2,000-pound JDAM with a 200-meter TLE and hope he gets it right,” the V Corps official told Sea Power.

Precision Engagement Lessons Learned

Lessons learned from complicated operational environments already are helping to change the military’s approaches to precision engagement. The lines between formerly separate mission sets, such as deep strike and CAS, are blurring according to some observers.

“The guy on the ground does not care who provides the firepower; all he cares about is that the target gets destroyed,” McKinney said.

During the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91 the term “time-critical strike” was used in reference to precision attacks against SCUD missile transporter-erector-launcher units hidden in the Iraqi desert.

“But it depends on your perspective,” McKinney said. “To a soldier or Marine in a fighting hole who sees a tank coming at him, that is a time-critical target. The systems and tools we develop to attack those targets have got to have simple processes that can be useful to the man on the ground, under fire. These systems have got to be tied into joint CAS capabilities, and they have got to interface with other systems and assets on the network that govern joint fires for deep strike as well.”

Operational experience also underlies a major change afoot in the way air forces plan and execute their missions. Commanders may soon abandon standard operating procedures such as the air tasking order (ATO) in favor of more dynamic approaches.

Air power traditionally is coordinated through the ATO process. The ATO prioritizes and matches strike sorties against pre-planned targets. That process works well to confront a linear, open battle where fixed targets are known and the movements of enemy forces somewhat predictable.

“The ATO is today the best tool we have, but it is changing,” the V Corps official said. “During Operation Iraqi Freedom, after a week or so, there were no more pre-planned targets. All the Iraqi regular and Republican Guard divisions weren’t there anymore. These guys were like the cockroaches, scattering when you flip on the lights. When they did re-emerge they were not large, fielded forces but militia groups and paramilitaries, of maybe 50 to 100 in strength. The Air Force came up on the net one day and said, ‘Where are all the targets?’”

A new technique emerged, with air forces overlaying “CAS boxes” atop the zones of action on the ground. Two-ship formations of strike planes, such as F-16s and F/A-18s launched and flew stepped-altitude holding patterns above the CAS boxes.

As targets would emerge, forces on the ground called for fire and one of the loitering strike aircraft descended into range of the forward air controller, who directed its attack. The next aircraft in formation filled in the vacant altitude step and the process would repeat.

“This plan was developed on the fly because the conventional ATO process was not applicable,” the V Corps official said. “If no one has fixed targets, the ATO becomes a flying schedule. So the Air Force came up with this work-around and it was good. Now they are looking at that and seeing how it could be codified for the next operation.”

The Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Air Force both declined Sea Power interview requests. Others, however, offered insight into how joint-service requirements for precision strike are evolving in response to lessons learned from recent operations.

As the accuracy of precision-guided munitions has been fine-tuned, and the information network supporting the weapon systems has become more reliable and pervasive, the joint service community is exploring ways to exploit this advantage the U.S. military has over less sophisticated adversaries.

“One of our strong points in Special Forces is we are always looking for solutions, for ways to do things better,” the SOCOM official said. “Imagine that you are an Iraqi commander in his headquarters getting ready for an operation, and suddenly your building blows up. How did that happen? One round came in and destroyed the target with little collateral damage. That has got to give you pause. The guy whose building was not blown up now is fully aware of what total devastation is. He’s thinking, ‘Maybe I don’t want to mess with the coalition.’”

Keith Sanders, the Navy’s deputy program executive officer for strike weapons and unmanned aviation, noted the joint-service community also is working on the challenge of decision-making in a high-speed and technology-saturated environment.

With the speed of action increasing dramatically, limited only by technology’s ability to get enough information to where it needs to go, the community is re-evaluating its approaches to command and control, the systems and the rules of engagement, Sanders said.

“We are trying to shrink the kill chain between the point of detection, to the assignment of a weapon, to the selection of an aim point, and finally getting the ordnance to the target.”