by rebecca grant - air force magazine · 2019. 10. 23. · new bomber tactics bombers suffered less...

By Rebecca Grant

The US suddenly had to fight halfway around the world,in primitive conditions and without preparation.

HE nation’s air component passed a major test in Afghanistan. With arelatively small but steady flow of sorties, aerospace forces struckemerging targets fast enough to enable the Northern Alliance to unseatnumerically superior Taliban forces. “The very simple purpose was tobuild and maintain pressure inside Afghanistan with the objective of

the destruction of the al Qaeda terrorist network and the government of theTaliban,” Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, Commander in Chief of CentralCommand, later testified.

To do that, Operation Enduring Freedom employed aerospace power inways very different from canonical phased operations. US military plannersrecognized that from the start. USAF Gen. Richard B. Myers, the Chairmanof the Joint Chiefs of Staff, drew a contrast with the 1991 Gulf War. “We triedto set conditions with the air war, and then we had a ground component thatwent in and finished the job,” Myers said of Desert Storm. “You shouldn’t

The War NobodyExpected

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AIR FORCE Magazine / April 2002 34AIR FORCE Magazine / April 200234

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A B-1B bomber takes off for a strike mission over Afghanistan for OperationEnduring Freedom.

AIR FORCE Magazine / April 200236

think of this in those terms.” Testi-fying to Congress in February, Franksdescribed the campaign as “lines ofoperation conducted simultaneously,rather than sequentially.”

Those “lines of operation” ulti-mately included everything fromsupplying fodder for horses to deliv-ering precision strikes from the air.To orchestrate this asymmetric cam-paign, commanders tapped aerospacepower in all its forms. Humanitarianaid started on Night 1 as C-17s air-dropped relief supplies. Air Forcebombers and Navy fighters strippedthe country of its modest air de-fenses and opened the door for air-craft to range across the battlespaceand find and kill targets. Dominancein the air soon translated into domi-nance on the ground, as specialforces worked with Northern Alli-ance troops to pinpoint and destroyTaliban areas of resistance.

New Operational StyleIt was a new operational style, one

that was revealed in Desert Stormand Allied Force in 1999 but broughtto a higher level in the skies overAfghanistan.

The strategy of using aerospacepower to degrade Taliban militaryeffectiveness required that the aircomponent step up to a new level ofperformance in handling time-criti-cal targets and employing precisionweapons. Planners working in theCombined Air Operations Centerblended long-range bombers, land-

based fighters, and carrier-based air-craft into a force capable of over-coming the access hurdle while han-dling emerging targets on demandand 24 hours a day.

The first success came with thesmooth functioning of the joint aircomponent itself. The concept of theJoint Force Air Component Com-mander passed its first major com-bat test in Desert Storm in 1991.Centralized control worked: The 43-day air campaign brought about avictory for integrated planning andexecution of the campaign. Tenyears later, it was an altogetherdifferent air component availableto the commanders of EnduringFreedom.

Tighter organization of the CAOCwas one big change. The CAOC in-tegrated mobility, space, and infor-mation operations along with strikeoperations into the actual master at-tack planning cell. The JFACC—thefirst was Lt. Gen. Charles F. Wald,who was succeeded by Lt. Gen. T.Michael Moseley—had mechanismsfor plans, operations, and intelligencereporting directly to him, withoutstovepipes. In Enduring Freedom,said one officer at the CAOC, “youhad a coherent and cooperative groupof planners from all the services,working together with a common goaland perspective,” because they wereall operating together inside the jointand combined air operations center.The officer added, “It just jelled interms of personalities.”

The ability to concentrate both dataand the command authority at aCAOC had grown dramatically inthe 1990s, a result of US experi-ences in two air wars in the Balkans.The CAOC for Operation EnduringFreedom was wired with as many as100 T-1 lines, carrying floods ofdata into and out of the facility. Thatmeant complete connectivity withall strike platforms, be they carriersin the Arabian Sea or bombers atDiego Garcia. “We’ve come a longway from 10 years ago, when we hadto fly ATO [Air Tasking Order] outto the aircraft carriers,” USAF Chiefof Staff Gen. John P. Jumper told theWashington Post in a joint interviewwith Adm. Vern Clark, Chief of Na-val Operations.

The data flow delivered a hugenew advantage in ground situationawareness. In Desert Storm, theJFACC had a complete air picturebut only a limited real-time view ofground operations. For Afghanistan,high volumes of human intelligencewere combined with the take frommultiple intelligence, surveillance,and reconnaissance sensors to de-liver unprecedented situation aware-ness. Predator video feeds, GlobalHawk surveillance information, anddirect input from US Special Opera-tions Forces on the ground improvedthe CAOC’s ability to track the im-mediate tactical requirements of theliaison officers operating with theNorthern Alliance forces.

Exploitation PhaseThe key was to exploit this infor-

mation, and the air component, forthe first time, had the ordnance andplatforms to respond immediately toemerging targets. Joint Direct At-tack Munitions—first used by the B-2in Operation Allied Force—couldnow be dropped by Navy and AirForce fighters and all three types ofbombers, making 24-hour precisionavailable in all types of weather.Combining JDAMs with a long-loi-ter capability was unprecedented. Assoon as targets were identified, air-craft could be called to strike them.

Situation awareness at the CAOCdid not always cover the entirebattlespace at all times. However,the improved links between sensorsand shooters outclassed anything seenbefore in modern warfare, translat-ing aerospace power’s asymmetricadvantages into gains on the ground.

USAF munitions specialists work on a JDAM on a B-52. The venerable bombersurprised everyone by taking on a close air support role in addition to tradi-tional bombing.

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AIR FORCE Magazine / April 2002 37

The changes came not a momenttoo soon. When American strikesbegan Oct. 7, Defense SecretaryDonald Rumsfeld acknowledged thathe saw “not a lot of high-value tar-gets.” Coercion by bombing was notan option. Many did not believe thatan air campaign would work at all,and some analysts were extreme intheir pessimism. For example, Mac-kubin T. Owens of the Naval WarCollege speculated that it would take40,000 ground troops to wrest con-trol of Afghanistan from the Taliban.Indeed, the success of OperationEnduring Freedom depended on theability to find and kill emerging tar-gets that would enable the NorthernAlliance to move and take territory.

The war began with strikes onpreplanned targets. These were de-signed to take down the Afghan airdefenses. Then US war planners

to an assigned engagement zone.Once on station, the fighters mightorbit, waiting on the most recentinformation synthesized from a va-riety of sources to be passed on tothe strike aircraft

Navy pilots had to traverse morethan 500 miles, strike a target, andthen recover within the intricate deckcycle time of the carrier’s opera-tions. This created a major challenge.The Navy’s aircraft carriers workedunder a different operational con-cept in the Afghan air war. Previ-ously, exercises focused on a singlecarrier generating combat power—areflection of the Cold War emphasison each carrier being able to survive

and operate alone. In Operation En-during Freedom, the Navy used fivecarriers (including USS Kitty Hawkwith its stripped-down air wing) tokeep up the coverage required by theCINC. Navy fighters delivered ord-nance around the clock during thecampaign.

New Bomber TacticsBombers suffered less from range

limitations and soon took up a majorshare of the job. However, bomberplanners, too, found that new tacticswere in order. Eighteen B-52s andB-1Bs deployed forward to DiegoGarcia in the Indian Ocean. Typi-cally, the CAOC could count on foursorties per day from the B-1B groupand five from the B-52 group.

For the first time in combat, thesebombers followed the lead of the B-2in Operation Allied Force and linkedinto the net of updated information totake new target coordinates in realtime. Bombers generally did not havetheir entire load of weapons desig-nated for fixed targets. Instead, bombercrews headed for their first preplannedtargets and then were on call any timeduring the sortie to be redirected toother targets. Jumper called the use ofthe B-52 against emerging targets in aclose air support role transformational.Those sorties, he said, would previ-ously only have been flown by attackaircraft such as the A-10. Who wouldhave thought it possible? Jumper askedat a February symposium.

Strikes on preplanned targets and

shifted to a combination of pre-planned and flexible strikes on vari-ous targets. Within days, as many as90 percent of the sorties were strik-ing emerging targets. “After the firstweek, the pilots didn’t know whattargets they’d be striking when theylaunched,” said Vice Adm. John B.Nathman, commander, Naval AirForce.

The CAOC needed 24-hour cov-erage of the battlespace to handleemerging targets, but long distancesposed a problem.

For the fighters—consisting largelyof Navy and Marine F/A-18s operat-ing from aircraft carriers—a stan-dard mission was to take off and fly

F-15Es, here and below, were part of the mix of coalition aircraft droppingprecision guided munitions on demand to strike emerging targets around theclock in Afghanistan.

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flexed targets and reliance on fight-ers and bombers became common-place in Enduring Freedom. In earlyDecember, the DOD spokesman,Rear Adm. John D. Stufflebeem,described a typical day: “Air strikesin 10 planned target areas, generallyaround the Jalalabad and Kandaharareas,” carried out by a typical forcemix of “about 110 strike aircraft,including about 90 tactical aircraftlaunched from sea-based platforms,12 to 14 land-based tactical aircraft,and between eight and 10 long-rangebombers.”

To bring this striking power tobear, planners scheduled aircraft tobe available 24 hours a day for op-erations within the engagementzones, although distance and con-strained resources put some limita-tions on the coverage.

From the CAOC, the staff couldchange the flow of aircraft into anengagement zone in the time it tookto transmit a call to the aircraft. Af-ghanistan was divided up into fixedengagement zones to control strikeson emerging targets such as Talibantroop concentrations, vehicles, andstrong points. CAOC planners couldalso lay special zones over lines ofcommunication, for example, andactivate them at different times. Spe-cial forces personnel on the groundidentified aim points and then double-checked the target coordinates.

As it turned out, time-sensitivetargets were the key to the opera-tion, and their prominence changed

the nature of the air war in severalways.

First, the need to strike such tar-gets put a premium on battlespacecoverage rather than relative per-centage of missions flown or ord-nance dropped. Pundits in and out ofuniform quickly took sides, somelauding USAF bombers for dropping70 percent of the ordnance duringonly 10 percent of the sorties, somepraising the Navy’s fighters for fly-ing half the sorties and averagingtwo or more DMPIs (DesignatedMean Points of Impact) per sortie.

Yet the comparisons were artifi-cial. From the CAOC’s point of view,the high number of emerging targetsmeant that the real value of strikeaircraft was in having them constantlyavailable to blow up resistance pointson the ground. All of the forces con-tended with long, fatiguing sorties,be they 10-hour missions followedby a dawn carrier recovery, the 15-hour bomber missions from DiegoGarcia, the record-setting 15-hourF-15E sorties, or 44-hour B-2 sorties.

Harmonic ConvergenceAs one CAOC officer put it, “We

were all working together as an aircomponent, not individual services,so it didn’t matter whether the plat-form you were working with was anF/A-18 off a boat or a B-1 or B-52 oran F-15E.”

The emphasis on time-sensitivetargets also affected execution of theair war—sometimes in negative ways.

Doctrine for air warfare all hangs onthe tenet of centralized control anddecentralized execution. The battlefor centralized control was won withreliance on the JFACC concept, butEnduring Freedom witnessed a newclash over the continuing need fordecentralized execution.

The CAOC itself handled the bulkof the sorties from a supermodernfacility established at a secure site inthe region. However, other commandcenters existed, and they used theirpictures of the battlespace to controlportions of the air war. The CIAcontrolled Predator Unmanned AerialVehicles armed with Hellfire mis-siles. Franks kept his headquartersat MacDill AFB, Fla., near Tampa,and took a direct hand in some tar-geting decisions.

Adding to the problem, the physi-cal arrangements split the JFACCfrom the CINC more than in recentair campaigns. Franks told Wash-ington Post reporter Thomas E. Ricksthat he was comfortable with keep-ing his command in Tampa “becauseof technology assists, which provide24/7 situational awareness,” and thatthis enabled CENTCOM staff “toprovide intent and guidance withoutdoing the tactical work of subordi-nate commanders.”

In Congressional testimony, Frankscited as reasons for staying in Floridathe time and difficulty of moving aunified headquarters. “I think whatwe want is the ability to either beremote or offset or to be present intheater,” Franks said, stressing againthat, in this case, the mission was“best served” by using the technolo-gies in hand and remaining in Tampa.

However, the perspective fromTampa sometimes differed from thatof the CAOC, eight time zones away.For example, although Franks de-scribed Enduring Freedom as “farand away the greatest application ofprecision munitions in the history ofour country,” the different perspec-tives on how to reduce collateraldamage ended up having a directtactical impact on the execution ofthe air war.

Horner’s ViewRetired Air Force Gen. Charles A.

Horner, who commanded the air cam-paign in the Gulf War, talked to theWashington Post about the matter.He said simply: “I would have beenforward.”

Early destruction of the Taliban’s air defenses and aircraft gave the coalitionimmediate air dominance. Here, the remains of Soviet–built airplanes rest neara runway at Kandahar airport.

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Target approval constraints havebecome a bigger and bigger part ofthe air war over the last decade, butonly recently has command approvalthreatened to become an obstacle intime-critical targeting. For example,commanders in Desert Storm usedreal-time communications with air-borne aircraft almost exclusively tosurge sorties or redirect strikes tomore urgent targets, as during theKhafji engagement. Hundreds ofsorties were sent to attack Iraqiforces, but all were under forwardair controller control or followed killbox rules of engagement once theyreached the battle zone.

During Operation Allied Force,fighters on missions frequently calledthe one-star CAOC shift directorsfor approval to strike mobile targetssuch as Serb vehicles. Some of theseemerging targets were struck in timeand some got away, but the controlof the air war remained largely in thehands of CAOC staff. One B-2 as-signed to strike a preplanned targetgot a call en route and was told not tostrike that target for political rea-sons. Yet, for the most part, as withDesert Storm, execution remaineddecentralized to the appropriate tac-tical level.

In Operation Enduring Freedom,the improved picture of ground op-erations made it possible for con-cerns about collateral damage andpolitical guidance to intrude into theexecution of the air war, not just theplanning process. The rapid ability to

handle emerging targets hit a bottle-neck when CENTCOM’s strategicperspectives clashed with the CAOC’stactical execution authority. Accord-ing to an article in the WashingtonPost, CENTCOM on several occa-sions overrode the CAOC’s calls forstrikes on newly identified targets.

As one officer told the Post, “It’skind of ridiculous when you get alive feed [of a target] from a Preda-tor and the intel guys say, ‘We needindependent verification.’”

A similar notorious incident ofhesitation was reported in late Octo-ber by Seymour M. Hersh in TheNew Yorker. According to Hersh,the CIA was controlling a Predator

with Hellfires when the UAV spot-ted a car and truck convoy believedto be transporting Mullah MohammadOmar, leader of the Taliban and thesecond most-wanted man after Osamabin Laden himself. The Predatoroperators watched the convoy haltand Omar and his guards enter abuilding. But the CIA needed ap-proval from CENTCOM to fire mis-siles.

Hersh reported that CENTCOMlegal advisors balked and told theCIA to “bounce it [a missile] off thefront door.” In the end, the Predatorfired at the parked cars. Soon, Omar’sconvoy left. F/A-18s carrying weap-ons heavier than the Hellfire struck

the building itself but the opportu-nity to nail Omar had passed. Hershwrote that “the failure to attack” leftRumsfeld “kicking a lot of glass andbreaking doors.”

Problem of Reach ForwardEven rudimentary details of these

cases showed how the ability to putordnance on target in minutes couldbe squandered if execution authoritybecame an obstacle. The CAOC’s net-worked communications and reach-back intelligence environment accel-erated air war execution, but it alsoleft enough time for doubts to creepin. The desire for visibility elevatedthe tactical picture to a much higherlevel. Now, those who had the tacticalpicture had operational and even stra-tegic responsibilities—a change fromthe days when the tactical picture waslimited only to those actually engaged

Predators, such as this one, fed streaming video to aircraft to provide target-ing information. In other areas USAF combat controllers, like the one above onhorseback, called in strike coordinates from the ground.

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Rebecca Grant is president of IRIS Independent Research in Washington,D.C., and has worked for RAND, the Secretary of the Air Force, and the Chiefof Staff of the Air Force. Grant is a fellow of the Eaker Institute for AerospaceConcepts, the public policy and research arm of the Air Force Association’sAerospace Education Foundation. Her most recent article, “Flying Tiger,Hidden Dragon,” appeared in the March 2002 issue.

in the operation and decentralizingexecution authority was the only prac-tical option.

The controversy over reachbackgenerated heat because striking thetime-sensitive ground force targetswas the heart of the campaign. Yetfor all the difficulties, it was air-power’s ability to kill emerging tar-gets that created the payoff on theground.

It did not happen all at once. Dur-ing October, it took time to get sup-plies to the Northern Alliance andbuild working relations with US li-aisons on the ground. “You had aFirst World air force and a FourthWorld army, and it took a while toconnect the two,” Secretary of StateColin Powell later explained in aWashington Post interview.

By November, the pieces were inplace for rapid success. The abilityof the CAOC to keep bombs on tar-get raised the confidence of theNorthern Alliance forces in theirairpower ally. “Every day, the tar-geting and effectiveness has im-proved, and that has clearly playeda critical role in killing Taliban andal Qaeda troops,” Rumsfeld saidNov. 13.

On-call aerospace power linked tothe immediate needs of ground forcesprovided a winning combination. Anear-perfect example of decentral-ized execution at its best came withthe now-famous event in which aB-52 put ordnance on target withinminutes of the request. Northern

Alliance forces on horseback cameacross a Taliban military outpost withartillery, barracks, and a commandpost. The outpost was not engagedwith ground forces at the time, butthe Northern Alliance identified itas a stronghold. The commander re-quested an air strike on the targetwithin the next few days. However,the target lay in a location with en-gagement zones already established.A B-52 dropped its ordnance within19 minutes of the request.

With precise firepower availablecontinuously, air strikes broke theTaliban resistance. The NorthernAlliance began to roll up territory indefiance of conventional wisdom thatattacking forces needed three to fivetimes the strength in numbers to de-feat their opponents. Mazar-e Sharif,Taloqan, Herat, Jalalabad, and Kabulfell in quick succession. By Nov. 27,US Marines were on the ground atKandahar air base. When their heli-copter gunships spotted Taliban ve-hicles nearby, a pair of Navy F-14sattacked the convoy.

The quick results depended onground forces to exploit the open-ings. “Imagine the air campaign with-out the Northern Alliance groundforces,” said one American officer.

“The Taliban troops could just havedispersed to avoid air attack.” TheArmy vice chief of staff, Gen. JohnM. Keane, said in an interview withJane’s Defense Weekly, “Those popu-lation centers toppled as the result ofa combined arms team: US airpowerand a combination of special forcesand Afghan troops.”

Disproving the CriticsIn the first phase of Enduring Free-

dom, the joint air forces pulled offwhat critics had long said could notbe done: They fought and won asustained campaign with limited ac-cess to the region.

“In modern combat, there is noth-ing quite so leveraging as air domi-nance,” summed up retired Air ForceGen. Richard E. Hawley, the formercommander of Air Combat Com-mand. Enduring Freedom also of-fered a taste of the difficulties of thewider war on terrorism. In late No-vember, Franks mentioned that teamswere systematically “visiting” morethan 40 sites suspected of housingweapons of mass destruction.

Rumsfeld cautioned, “It would bea mistake for one to look at Afghani-stan and think about it as a modelthat will be replicated.” Afghanistanhad “some distinctive things aboutit—hundreds and hundreds of tun-nels and caves, for example,” headded. The war on terrorism involvesaction beyond the air campaign.Rumsfeld described some of thebroader strategy: “We’ve put a lot ofpressure on the bank accounts, a lotof law enforcement action wherepeople have been arrested and inter-rogated, a lot of intelligence has beenpulled together, a lot of people havebeen killed. And some have beencaptured. It’s all for the good. It’smade their lives very difficult. Butwhen or how or in what way it willall sort through, I don’t know.”

Yet one point is certain. On Sept.11, 2001, Afghanistan was an op-pressed state and a safe harbor fora lethal terrorist network. After thefirst phase of Enduring Freedom,as Franks said, “The harbor isgone.” ■

Mobility aircraft kept the operation moving. Airlifters, like this C-17, deliveredmillions of humanitarian aid packages for Afghans and relief supplies forcoalition troops. Tankers refueled both strike aircraft and airlifters.

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think of this in those terms.” Testi-fying to Congress in February, Franksdescribed the campaign as “lines ofoperation conducted simultaneously,rather than sequentially.”

Those “lines of operation” ulti-mately included everything fromsupplying fodder for horses to deliv-ering precision strikes from the air.To orchestrate this asymmetric cam-paign, commanders tapped aerospacepower in all its forms. Humanitarianaid started on Night 1 as C-17s air-dropped relief supplies. Air Forcebombers and Navy fighters strippedthe country of its modest air de-fenses and opened the door for air-craft to range across the battlespaceand find and kill targets. Dominancein the air soon translated into domi-nance on the ground, as specialforces worked with Northern Alli-ance troops to pinpoint and destroyTaliban areas of resistance.

New Operational StyleIt was a new operational style, one

that was revealed in Desert Stormand Allied Force in 1999 but broughtto a higher level in the skies overAfghanistan.

The strategy of using aerospacepower to degrade Taliban militaryeffectiveness required that the aircomponent step up to a new level ofperformance in handling time-criti-cal targets and employing precisionweapons. Planners working in theCombined Air Operations Centerblended long-range bombers, land-

based fighters, and carrier-based air-craft into a force capable of over-coming the access hurdle while han-dling emerging targets on demandand 24 hours a day.

The first success came with thesmooth functioning of the joint aircomponent itself. The concept of theJoint Force Air Component Com-mander passed its first major com-bat test in Desert Storm in 1991.Centralized control worked: The 43-day air campaign brought about avictory for integrated planning andexecution of the campaign. Tenyears later, it was an altogetherdifferent air component availableto the commanders of EnduringFreedom.

Tighter organization of the CAOCwas one big change. The CAOC in-tegrated mobility, space, and infor-mation operations along with strikeoperations into the actual master at-tack planning cell. The JFACC—thefirst was Lt. Gen. Charles F. Wald,who was succeeded by Lt. Gen. T.Michael Moseley—had mechanismsfor plans, operations, and intelligencereporting directly to him, withoutstovepipes. In Enduring Freedom,said one officer at the CAOC, “youhad a coherent and cooperative groupof planners from all the services,working together with a common goaland perspective,” because they wereall operating together inside the jointand combined air operations center.The officer added, “It just jelled interms of personalities.”

The ability to concentrate both dataand the command authority at aCAOC had grown dramatically inthe 1990s, a result of US experi-ences in two air wars in the Balkans.The CAOC for Operation EnduringFreedom was wired with as many as100 T-1 lines, carrying floods ofdata into and out of the facility. Thatmeant complete connectivity withall strike platforms, be they carriersin the Arabian Sea or bombers atDiego Garcia. “We’ve come a longway from 10 years ago, when we hadto fly ATO [Air Tasking Order] outto the aircraft carriers,” USAF Chiefof Staff Gen. John P. Jumper told theWashington Post in a joint interviewwith Adm. Vern Clark, Chief of Na-val Operations.

The data flow delivered a hugenew advantage in ground situationawareness. In Desert Storm, theJFACC had a complete air picturebut only a limited real-time view ofground operations. For Afghanistan,high volumes of human intelligencewere combined with the take frommultiple intelligence, surveillance,and reconnaissance sensors to de-liver unprecedented situation aware-ness. Predator video feeds, GlobalHawk surveillance information, anddirect input from US Special Opera-tions Forces on the ground improvedthe CAOC’s ability to track the im-mediate tactical requirements of theliaison officers operating with theNorthern Alliance forces.

Exploitation PhaseThe key was to exploit this infor-

mation, and the air component, forthe first time, had the ordnance andplatforms to respond immediately toemerging targets. Joint Direct At-tack Munitions—first used by the B-2in Operation Allied Force—couldnow be dropped by Navy and AirForce fighters and all three types ofbombers, making 24-hour precisionavailable in all types of weather.Combining JDAMs with a long-loi-ter capability was unprecedented. Assoon as targets were identified, air-craft could be called to strike them.

Situation awareness at the CAOCdid not always cover the entirebattlespace at all times. However,the improved links between sensorsand shooters outclassed anything seenbefore in modern warfare, translat-ing aerospace power’s asymmetricadvantages into gains on the ground.

USAF munitions specialists work on a JDAM on a B-52. The venerable bombersurprised everyone by taking on a close air support role in addition to tradi-tional bombing.

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The changes came not a momenttoo soon. When American strikesbegan Oct. 7, Defense SecretaryDonald Rumsfeld acknowledged thathe saw “not a lot of high-value tar-gets.” Coercion by bombing was notan option. Many did not believe thatan air campaign would work at all,and some analysts were extreme intheir pessimism. For example, Mac-kubin T. Owens of the Naval WarCollege speculated that it would take40,000 ground troops to wrest con-trol of Afghanistan from the Taliban.Indeed, the success of OperationEnduring Freedom depended on theability to find and kill emerging tar-gets that would enable the NorthernAlliance to move and take territory.

The war began with strikes onpreplanned targets. These were de-signed to take down the Afghan airdefenses. Then US war planners

to an assigned engagement zone.Once on station, the fighters mightorbit, waiting on the most recentinformation synthesized from a va-riety of sources to be passed on tothe strike aircraft

Navy pilots had to traverse morethan 500 miles, strike a target, andthen recover within the intricate deckcycle time of the carrier’s opera-tions. This created a major challenge.The Navy’s aircraft carriers workedunder a different operational con-cept in the Afghan air war. Previ-ously, exercises focused on a singlecarrier generating combat power—areflection of the Cold War emphasison each carrier being able to survive

and operate alone. In Operation En-during Freedom, the Navy used fivecarriers (including USS Kitty Hawkwith its stripped-down air wing) tokeep up the coverage required by theCINC. Navy fighters delivered ord-nance around the clock during thecampaign.

New Bomber TacticsBombers suffered less from range

limitations and soon took up a majorshare of the job. However, bomberplanners, too, found that new tacticswere in order. Eighteen B-52s andB-1Bs deployed forward to DiegoGarcia in the Indian Ocean. Typi-cally, the CAOC could count on foursorties per day from the B-1B groupand five from the B-52 group.

For the first time in combat, thesebombers followed the lead of the B-2in Operation Allied Force and linkedinto the net of updated information totake new target coordinates in realtime. Bombers generally did not havetheir entire load of weapons desig-nated for fixed targets. Instead, bombercrews headed for their first preplannedtargets and then were on call any timeduring the sortie to be redirected toother targets. Jumper called the use ofthe B-52 against emerging targets in aclose air support role transformational.Those sorties, he said, would previ-ously only have been flown by attackaircraft such as the A-10. Who wouldhave thought it possible? Jumper askedat a February symposium.

Strikes on preplanned targets and

shifted to a combination of pre-planned and flexible strikes on vari-ous targets. Within days, as many as90 percent of the sorties were strik-ing emerging targets. “After the firstweek, the pilots didn’t know whattargets they’d be striking when theylaunched,” said Vice Adm. John B.Nathman, commander, Naval AirForce.

The CAOC needed 24-hour cov-erage of the battlespace to handleemerging targets, but long distancesposed a problem.

For the fighters—consisting largelyof Navy and Marine F/A-18s operat-ing from aircraft carriers—a stan-dard mission was to take off and fly

F-15Es, here and below, were part of the mix of coalition aircraft droppingprecision guided munitions on demand to strike emerging targets around theclock in Afghanistan.

US

AF

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flexed targets and reliance on fight-ers and bombers became common-place in Enduring Freedom. In earlyDecember, the DOD spokesman,Rear Adm. John D. Stufflebeem,described a typical day: “Air strikesin 10 planned target areas, generallyaround the Jalalabad and Kandaharareas,” carried out by a typical forcemix of “about 110 strike aircraft,including about 90 tactical aircraftlaunched from sea-based platforms,12 to 14 land-based tactical aircraft,and between eight and 10 long-rangebombers.”

To bring this striking power tobear, planners scheduled aircraft tobe available 24 hours a day for op-erations within the engagementzones, although distance and con-strained resources put some limita-tions on the coverage.

From the CAOC, the staff couldchange the flow of aircraft into anengagement zone in the time it tookto transmit a call to the aircraft. Af-ghanistan was divided up into fixedengagement zones to control strikeson emerging targets such as Talibantroop concentrations, vehicles, andstrong points. CAOC planners couldalso lay special zones over lines ofcommunication, for example, andactivate them at different times. Spe-cial forces personnel on the groundidentified aim points and then double-checked the target coordinates.

As it turned out, time-sensitivetargets were the key to the opera-tion, and their prominence changed

the nature of the air war in severalways.

First, the need to strike such tar-gets put a premium on battlespacecoverage rather than relative per-centage of missions flown or ord-nance dropped. Pundits in and out ofuniform quickly took sides, somelauding USAF bombers for dropping70 percent of the ordnance duringonly 10 percent of the sorties, somepraising the Navy’s fighters for fly-ing half the sorties and averagingtwo or more DMPIs (DesignatedMean Points of Impact) per sortie.

Yet the comparisons were artifi-cial. From the CAOC’s point of view,the high number of emerging targetsmeant that the real value of strikeaircraft was in having them constantlyavailable to blow up resistance pointson the ground. All of the forces con-tended with long, fatiguing sorties,be they 10-hour missions followedby a dawn carrier recovery, the 15-hour bomber missions from DiegoGarcia, the record-setting 15-hourF-15E sorties, or 44-hour B-2 sorties.

Harmonic ConvergenceAs one CAOC officer put it, “We

were all working together as an aircomponent, not individual services,so it didn’t matter whether the plat-form you were working with was anF/A-18 off a boat or a B-1 or B-52 oran F-15E.”

The emphasis on time-sensitivetargets also affected execution of theair war—sometimes in negative ways.

Doctrine for air warfare all hangs onthe tenet of centralized control anddecentralized execution. The battlefor centralized control was won withreliance on the JFACC concept, butEnduring Freedom witnessed a newclash over the continuing need fordecentralized execution.

The CAOC itself handled the bulkof the sorties from a supermodernfacility established at a secure site inthe region. However, other commandcenters existed, and they used theirpictures of the battlespace to controlportions of the air war. The CIAcontrolled Predator Unmanned AerialVehicles armed with Hellfire mis-siles. Franks kept his headquartersat MacDill AFB, Fla., near Tampa,and took a direct hand in some tar-geting decisions.

Adding to the problem, the physi-cal arrangements split the JFACCfrom the CINC more than in recentair campaigns. Franks told Wash-ington Post reporter Thomas E. Ricksthat he was comfortable with keep-ing his command in Tampa “becauseof technology assists, which provide24/7 situational awareness,” and thatthis enabled CENTCOM staff “toprovide intent and guidance withoutdoing the tactical work of subordi-nate commanders.”

In Congressional testimony, Frankscited as reasons for staying in Floridathe time and difficulty of moving aunified headquarters. “I think whatwe want is the ability to either beremote or offset or to be present intheater,” Franks said, stressing againthat, in this case, the mission was“best served” by using the technolo-gies in hand and remaining in Tampa.

However, the perspective fromTampa sometimes differed from thatof the CAOC, eight time zones away.For example, although Franks de-scribed Enduring Freedom as “farand away the greatest application ofprecision munitions in the history ofour country,” the different perspec-tives on how to reduce collateraldamage ended up having a directtactical impact on the execution ofthe air war.

Horner’s ViewRetired Air Force Gen. Charles A.

Horner, who commanded the air cam-paign in the Gulf War, talked to theWashington Post about the matter.He said simply: “I would have beenforward.”

Early destruction of the Taliban’s air defenses and aircraft gave the coalitionimmediate air dominance. Here, the remains of Soviet–built airplanes rest neara runway at Kandahar airport.

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Target approval constraints havebecome a bigger and bigger part ofthe air war over the last decade, butonly recently has command approvalthreatened to become an obstacle intime-critical targeting. For example,commanders in Desert Storm usedreal-time communications with air-borne aircraft almost exclusively tosurge sorties or redirect strikes tomore urgent targets, as during theKhafji engagement. Hundreds ofsorties were sent to attack Iraqiforces, but all were under forwardair controller control or followed killbox rules of engagement once theyreached the battle zone.

During Operation Allied Force,fighters on missions frequently calledthe one-star CAOC shift directorsfor approval to strike mobile targetssuch as Serb vehicles. Some of theseemerging targets were struck in timeand some got away, but the controlof the air war remained largely in thehands of CAOC staff. One B-2 as-signed to strike a preplanned targetgot a call en route and was told not tostrike that target for political rea-sons. Yet, for the most part, as withDesert Storm, execution remaineddecentralized to the appropriate tac-tical level.

In Operation Enduring Freedom,the improved picture of ground op-erations made it possible for con-cerns about collateral damage andpolitical guidance to intrude into theexecution of the air war, not just theplanning process. The rapid ability to

handle emerging targets hit a bottle-neck when CENTCOM’s strategicperspectives clashed with the CAOC’stactical execution authority. Accord-ing to an article in the WashingtonPost, CENTCOM on several occa-sions overrode the CAOC’s calls forstrikes on newly identified targets.

As one officer told the Post, “It’skind of ridiculous when you get alive feed [of a target] from a Preda-tor and the intel guys say, ‘We needindependent verification.’”

A similar notorious incident ofhesitation was reported in late Octo-ber by Seymour M. Hersh in TheNew Yorker. According to Hersh,the CIA was controlling a Predator

with Hellfires when the UAV spot-ted a car and truck convoy believedto be transporting Mullah MohammadOmar, leader of the Taliban and thesecond most-wanted man after Osamabin Laden himself. The Predatoroperators watched the convoy haltand Omar and his guards enter abuilding. But the CIA needed ap-proval from CENTCOM to fire mis-siles.

Hersh reported that CENTCOMlegal advisors balked and told theCIA to “bounce it [a missile] off thefront door.” In the end, the Predatorfired at the parked cars. Soon, Omar’sconvoy left. F/A-18s carrying weap-ons heavier than the Hellfire struck

the building itself but the opportu-nity to nail Omar had passed. Hershwrote that “the failure to attack” leftRumsfeld “kicking a lot of glass andbreaking doors.”

Problem of Reach ForwardEven rudimentary details of these

cases showed how the ability to putordnance on target in minutes couldbe squandered if execution authoritybecame an obstacle. The CAOC’s net-worked communications and reach-back intelligence environment accel-erated air war execution, but it alsoleft enough time for doubts to creepin. The desire for visibility elevatedthe tactical picture to a much higherlevel. Now, those who had the tacticalpicture had operational and even stra-tegic responsibilities—a change fromthe days when the tactical picture waslimited only to those actually engaged

Predators, such as this one, fed streaming video to aircraft to provide target-ing information. In other areas USAF combat controllers, like the one above onhorseback, called in strike coordinates from the ground.

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Rebecca Grant is president of IRIS Independent Research in Washington,D.C., and has worked for RAND, the Secretary of the Air Force, and the Chiefof Staff of the Air Force. Grant is a fellow of the Eaker Institute for AerospaceConcepts, the public policy and research arm of the Air Force Association’sAerospace Education Foundation. Her most recent article, “Flying Tiger,Hidden Dragon,” appeared in the March 2002 issue.

in the operation and decentralizingexecution authority was the only prac-tical option.

The controversy over reachbackgenerated heat because striking thetime-sensitive ground force targetswas the heart of the campaign. Yetfor all the difficulties, it was air-power’s ability to kill emerging tar-gets that created the payoff on theground.

It did not happen all at once. Dur-ing October, it took time to get sup-plies to the Northern Alliance andbuild working relations with US li-aisons on the ground. “You had aFirst World air force and a FourthWorld army, and it took a while toconnect the two,” Secretary of StateColin Powell later explained in aWashington Post interview.

By November, the pieces were inplace for rapid success. The abilityof the CAOC to keep bombs on tar-get raised the confidence of theNorthern Alliance forces in theirairpower ally. “Every day, the tar-geting and effectiveness has im-proved, and that has clearly playeda critical role in killing Taliban andal Qaeda troops,” Rumsfeld saidNov. 13.

On-call aerospace power linked tothe immediate needs of ground forcesprovided a winning combination. Anear-perfect example of decentral-ized execution at its best came withthe now-famous event in which aB-52 put ordnance on target withinminutes of the request. Northern

Alliance forces on horseback cameacross a Taliban military outpost withartillery, barracks, and a commandpost. The outpost was not engagedwith ground forces at the time, butthe Northern Alliance identified itas a stronghold. The commander re-quested an air strike on the targetwithin the next few days. However,the target lay in a location with en-gagement zones already established.A B-52 dropped its ordnance within19 minutes of the request.

With precise firepower availablecontinuously, air strikes broke theTaliban resistance. The NorthernAlliance began to roll up territory indefiance of conventional wisdom thatattacking forces needed three to fivetimes the strength in numbers to de-feat their opponents. Mazar-e Sharif,Taloqan, Herat, Jalalabad, and Kabulfell in quick succession. By Nov. 27,US Marines were on the ground atKandahar air base. When their heli-copter gunships spotted Taliban ve-hicles nearby, a pair of Navy F-14sattacked the convoy.

The quick results depended onground forces to exploit the open-ings. “Imagine the air campaign with-out the Northern Alliance groundforces,” said one American officer.

“The Taliban troops could just havedispersed to avoid air attack.” TheArmy vice chief of staff, Gen. JohnM. Keane, said in an interview withJane’s Defense Weekly, “Those popu-lation centers toppled as the result ofa combined arms team: US airpowerand a combination of special forcesand Afghan troops.”

Disproving the CriticsIn the first phase of Enduring Free-

dom, the joint air forces pulled offwhat critics had long said could notbe done: They fought and won asustained campaign with limited ac-cess to the region.

“In modern combat, there is noth-ing quite so leveraging as air domi-nance,” summed up retired Air ForceGen. Richard E. Hawley, the formercommander of Air Combat Com-mand. Enduring Freedom also of-fered a taste of the difficulties of thewider war on terrorism. In late No-vember, Franks mentioned that teamswere systematically “visiting” morethan 40 sites suspected of housingweapons of mass destruction.

Rumsfeld cautioned, “It would bea mistake for one to look at Afghani-stan and think about it as a modelthat will be replicated.” Afghanistanhad “some distinctive things aboutit—hundreds and hundreds of tun-nels and caves, for example,” headded. The war on terrorism involvesaction beyond the air campaign.Rumsfeld described some of thebroader strategy: “We’ve put a lot ofpressure on the bank accounts, a lotof law enforcement action wherepeople have been arrested and inter-rogated, a lot of intelligence has beenpulled together, a lot of people havebeen killed. And some have beencaptured. It’s all for the good. It’smade their lives very difficult. Butwhen or how or in what way it willall sort through, I don’t know.”

Yet one point is certain. On Sept.11, 2001, Afghanistan was an op-pressed state and a safe harbor fora lethal terrorist network. After thefirst phase of Enduring Freedom,as Franks said, “The harbor isgone.” ■

Mobility aircraft kept the operation moving. Airlifters, like this C-17, deliveredmillions of humanitarian aid packages for Afghans and relief supplies forcoalition troops. Tankers refueled both strike aircraft and airlifters.

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by rebecca grant - air force magazine · 2019. 10. 23. · new bomber tactics bombers suffered less...

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