Urban Operations Challenge Shows Limits of U.S., Allied ISR Capability

By HUNTER C. KEETER
Associate Editor

The violence at al Fallujah, Iraq, which in April drew the 1st Marine Division into a deadly street fight, highlighted weaknesses in the U.S. and coalition forces’ intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities for supporting urban operations. Sources in Congress, the DoD and industry have provided Sea Power with insight into how the most powerful militaries in the world continue to struggle with the kind of urban operations that will typify 21st century warfare.

Al Fallujah in 2004 is not Hue City, Vietnam, January-March 1968; nor is it Stalingrad, January 1943. But what has changed since October 1993, when U.S. Army Rangers and Delta Force, U.S. Air Force combat search and rescue, and U.S. Navy SEALs took more than 50 percent casualties in battle with an untrained and shabbily equipped mob at Mogadishu, Somalia?

Despite enormous advantages in ISR capability — enabled by unmanned air vehicles (UAVs), spy satellites and the electro-optical, infrared or radar sensors these platforms carry — experts say the military still lacks proficiency in what former U.S. Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Charles C. Krulak called the “three-block war,” a metaphor for three types of operations —humanitarian assistance, peacekeeping and combat — that may occur almost simultaneously within the same urban setting.

The problem is that much of this technology is not aligned to provide complete visualization, shared from operational down to tactical levels, of the complex urban environment — including the locations of friendly and hostile factions, the status of the urban infrastructure, the political and economic situation, organizations such as aid agencies working alongside locals and the arriving military force, and the city’s or town’s cultural context.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, DoD-wide command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) investment has risen to more than $3 billion in fiscal year 2004, a $1.5 billion boost over the previous year. That money has bought overhead sensing capability, in the form of UAVs such as the Air Force’s Global Hawk, the CIA’s Predator, and space-based sensor and communications systems. Other elements of that investment profile, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation satellite constellation, help to guide weapons precisely onto targets.

Overhead sensors and precision munitions provide excellent coverage of open battlefields, to track and strike many targets in the air, on land and at sea. Powerful data processing tools, such as the Navy’s cooperative engagement capability and the area air defense commander, are able to build detailed images of all events in radii hundreds of miles from a command center.

Rear Adm. Kenneth D. Slaght, commander of San Diego-based Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR), recently told Sea Power: “This nation’s great technological advantage is in creating sensors … but what is really transformational is the ability to link those sensors to the warfighters.”

But according to operational experiences in places like al Fallujah, high-tech tools have yet to answer the challenges of operating in cities and towns. In training troops, DoD continues to emphasize the skills of combat against a monolithic, Soviet-style opponent over teaching the skills of urban operations, according to Kenneth Judy, a senior operations analyst on the Air Force staff. Urban combat skills are learned long after basic training by a select few who attend specialized schools and are not generally taught to campaign-ready units in any of the military services.

Since the end of strategic operations in Iraq during the spring of 2003, about 800 coalition personnel have died, and another 3,400 have been wounded, according to an April 14 report posted by the Global Security.Org intelligence resource

Success in Krulak’s three-block war begins with C4ISR, according to intelligence experts. As much as did Sun Tzu more than 2,300 years ago in The Art of War, the ISR community appreciates “knowledge of enemy and of self” as a critical component for shaping the outcome of a conflict, and combat is only part of the equation.

Only recently has there evolved a holistic approach to C4ISR, one that leverages the kind of “information dominance” created by sophisticated technology to shape all types of operations.

“The problem with the urban area is that it is really far more complex than what we are used to dealing with,” said Duane Schattle, deputy director of the U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) joint urban operations office and leader of a recent experiment called Joint Urban Warrior. JFCOM is responsible for developing and vetting concepts of operation across all the services.

“In Iraq we are not only dealing with the complex terrain of structures and streets, but we are also dealing with … the most complex challenge of all, the human beings that are there in that environment. It is a thinking-man’s game and we have got to provide tools [to win] in the future,” he said.

U.S. Second Fleet commander Vice Adm. Gary Roughead told Sea Power an important goal for the development of C4ISR capability is to visualize complex operations more simply so a commander is better able to make swift, informed decisions.

“Napoleon could see his battlefield and today a commander can still do that, but it is [today] so far beyond the dimensions of what Napoleon saw,” Roughead said.

The complexities of the urban environment are apparent in Iraq, where an adversary may hide and fight among non-combatants and valuable infrastructure — including schools and hospitals — where it becomes far more difficult for the U.S. to detect and target him. Even with precision-guided air weapons, mistakes are inevitable, and, with a 2,000-pound JDAM capable of flattening a city block, the costs of error may render GPS useless.

There are some promising new C4ISR capabilities that could help lay out urban operating areas at the dimensions of Napoleon’s battlefields. Among these are computer programs for producing three-dimensional maps of cityscapes. Digital mapping software has been available, but the military now is linking this software with classified and open-source databases. In the near future, maps could be updated while en route to a mission. The occupants of a targeted building could be displayed on the map, an individual could be identified and tracked and the status of the building’s defenses could be monitored graphically, as these are degraded or destroyed by air strikes, all in near-real time.

The military also is interested in more persistent sensing capability. The urban environment limits line-of-sight and therefore the usefulness of overhead sensor platforms. So the DoD and national laboratories are investing in miniaturization, biomechanics and nanotechnology, looking for breakthroughs in robotics that could augment UAVs and spy satellites.

One effort is to develop “perching sensors,” for example, insect-like robots that fly into an area to collect information and transmit this back to a receiving station. The receiving station could be a UAV or a manned intelligence aircraft. If a nano-robot swarm’s information was combined with the data provided by other overhead sensors, a more complete picture of the urban environment would emerge, according to Hugh Blanchard, a retired Army intelligence officer currently employed as an analyst for Northrop Grumman.

According to Slaght, the roles of UAVs and other overhead sensors have likewise only begun to be appreciated. The military may find uses for UAVs not only as sensor and weapon platforms in their own right, but as communications and data relays among other sensor and weapon platforms, extending the reach of more conventional assets.

Perhaps a more pressing technological need for troops patrolling the world’s mean streets is through-wall sensing capability: devices that might radiate in spectra capable of detecting the occupants of a building before troops take the risks of entering.

According to intelligence analysts with the House Armed Services Committee, the C4ISR challenge is not only about technologies, but to “change the concept of operations and institutional mindset to take maximum advantage of new capabilities.”

Technology may provide data, but human analysts are required to process that data into useful knowledge. According to Christopher Jackson, deputy director of intelligence services for the JFCOM, a key advancement in the analytical arena will come when the military develops a “total visualization” of all the C4ISR assets and tools available at the operational level.

As the demand for C4ISR capability increases, industry has seen a boom in the market for advanced technology products. According to some analysts, the commercial sector — leading high-tech development for the consumer market — is positioned to build the defense C4ISR market base, in contrast to waiting for military or law enforcement solicitations.

Tim Wickham, an analyst with DFI International, told Sea Power that growth in the C4ISR technology market is difficult to track because “all boats are rising” with the high tide of aggressive defense spending.

Peter Skibitski, a Wachovia securities analyst, told Sea Power the military and industry had been making “linear progress” improving C4ISR capabilities before Sept. 11, 2001.

Now three years and two lesson-rich wars later, the lion’s share of defense C4ISR investment remains in technology — longer-range, cheaper sensors exploiting more broadly the electromagnetic spectrum; and detecting nuclear, biological, chemical and radiological threats.

What continues to lag behind, according to Schattle and others, is investment in the human side of the equation: both human intelligence agents and analysts, as well as in developing new approaches to doctrine and training that better prepare military forces for the kinds of operations they are most likely to face in future conflicts.