Unmanned: Drones, Data, and the Illusion of Perfect Warfare
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20. Ben Lambeth, certainly one of the premier contemporary air historians today, wrote a very official and sanctioned history of the Afghanistan air war under air force sponsorship. Conducting what he called the longest fighter combat mission in history—15.8 hours—an air force F-15E Strike Eagle (not a navy F-18 Hornet) killed Mohammed Atef, he says, hitting the targeted house in Kabul with a laser-guided bomb. A hero, finally, were it only so. See Ben Lambeth, Air Power Against Terror: America’s Conduct of Operation Enduring Freedom (Rand Corporation, 2005), p. 137.
21. Predator: The Secret Origins of the Drone Revolution, pp. 276–290.
22. Eyes on the Horizon, p. 199.
23. Bergen, Manhunt, pp. 38, 287.
24. When in the 2003 Iraq war the United States unambiguously bombed Al Jazeera in Baghdad, again on the justification of it being a command and control target, the story of November 13 grew ever more complex than just a bomb directed at a single al Qaeda digit.
25. See Air Power Against Terror: America’s Conduct of Operation Enduring Freedom, p. 137.
CHAPTER NINE The Machine Builds
1. DOD Transcript, Press Briefing, Statement of Secretary Rumsfeld on Anti-Terrorism Strike; Rumsfeld and Myers Briefing on Enduring Freedom, October 7, 2001.
2. DOD Transcript, Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with CBS Evening News, October 9, 2001.
3. US Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) PowerPoint Briefing, USAFE and Strategy, Lieutenant Colonel Marc “Homer” Jamison, Chief, Strategy Division, n.d. (2004) (obtained by the author); Lieutenant Colonel Mark A. Cooter, USAF, Airborne Armed Full Motion Video: The Nexus of Ops/Intel Integration in the Joint/Coalition Environment, Joint Forces Staff College, Joint Advanced Warfighting School, 25 May 2007, p. 15.
4. Richard Whittle, Predator’s Big Safari, Mitchell Papers 7, August 2011, p. 25; Randy Roughton, Rise of the Drones—UAVs After 9/11: 9/11 and war on terror sparked an explosion in unmanned aerial vehicle technology, Airman Magazine, 3 October 2011; http://science.dodlive.mil/2011/10/03/rise-of-the-drones-uavs-after-911/ (accessed May 2, 2013).
5. Robert Wall, “Space Reformers Juggle War, Acquisition Demands,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, April 8, 2002, p. 80.
6. USMC, Task Force 58 Operations in Afghanistan [lessons learned narrative], n.d. (2005); obtained by the author.
7. Air Power Against Terror: America’s Conduct of Operation Enduring Freedom, pp. 253–254.
8. Air Power Against Terror: America’s Conduct of Operation Enduring Freedom, pp. 253–254.
9. First In, p. 155.
10. First In, pp. 161–162.
11. “During our many discussions, the President, the senior military officers, and the civilian officials involved determined that the first wave of attacks should avoid all urban areas to minimize collateral damage.” See Eyes on the Horizon, p. 180.
12. American Soldier, p. 301.
13. By His Own Rules, p. 302; Manhunt, p. 151.
14. Central Command, Operation Enduring Freedom Update, 16 October 2001.
15. Richard Whittle, Predator’s Big Safari, Mitchell Papers 7, August 2011, pp. 25–26.
16. Rebecca Grant, “The Rover,” Air Force Magazine, August 2013.
17. First In, p. 169; By His Own Rules, p. 302.
18. U.S. Special Operations Command, History: 1987–2007, p. 90; U.S. Special Operations Command, History 6th Edition, p. 93; A Different Kind of War: The United States Army in Operation ENDURING FREEDOM (OEF), October 2001–September 2005, pp. 95–96; Dr. Rebecca Grant, The Afghan Air War, September 2002, pp. 17–18; DOD, Two Soldiers Killed; Special Forces Assault Taliban Sites; www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct2001/n10202001_200110201.html; DOD, DOD Officials Won’t Confirm U.S. Ground Troops in Afghanistan; www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct2001/n10192001_200110193.html; Rebecca Grant, “The War Nobody Expected,” Air Force Magazine, April 2002; www.afa.org/magazine/April2002/0402airwar.asp.
19. Lieutenant Colonel Eric E. Theisen, Ground-Aided Precision Strike Heavy Bomber Activity in Operation Enduring Freedom, Maxwell Paper No. 31, July 2003, p. 1.
20. Despite their value, not all of the special operations teams had JTACs. “While some SOF teams had a JTAC from the beginning others did not bring a JTAC with them until the military recognized that results were not meeting expectations and ordered their integration. Operationally, the joint special operations task force (JSOTF) headquarters did not have a mechanism for integrating joint fires with all of the different SOF teams and the various task force headquarters spread throughout Afghanistan”; Major Brook J. Leonard, USAF; “How the West Was Won: The Essence of Network-Centric Operations (NCO),” School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, Air University, Maxwell AFB, Alabama; June 2006, p. 32.
21. The United States Army in Afghanistan: Operation Enduring Freedom, pp. 11–12.
22. By His Own Rules, p. 305.
23. On October 30, Bill Kristol wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post in which he said that too many self-imposed constraints in Afghanistan had produced “a flawed plan.” On October 31, R. W. Apple wrote a front-page article in the New York Times asking whether Afghanistan would become another “military quagmire” like Vietnam.
24. Air Power Against Terror: America’s Conduct of Operation Enduring Freedom, p. 125.
25. First In, pp. 311–312, 325.
26. Department of the Air Force, Operation Enduring Look, Chapter 16, Implications for Transformation (U), UNCLASSIFIED WORKING PAPER, FINAL COORD 22 January 2003.
27. Bill Yenne, Attack of the Drones, p. 88.
28. Dr. Daniel L. Haulman, Air Force History Research Agency, U.S. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Combat, 1991–2003, June 9, 2003.
29. Rebecca Grant, “Eyes Wide Open: The lone Global Hawk flying above Iraq was one busy, busy bird,” Air Force Magazine, November 2003.
30. Matt J. Martin with Charles W. Sasser, Predator, p. 21. See also The Way of the Knife, pp. 100–101.
31. Kevin Peraino, “Low-Key Leader: Lt. Gen. David McKiernan is the soft-spoken soldier with the hard job of commanding U.S. ground forces in Iraq,” Newsweek (Web exclusive), March 19, 2003.
32. Megabits per second (Mbps) refers to the transfer speed and is commonly used in networking technologies to represent the speed at which a transfer takes place. Everything—satellite communications, phone-line networks, wireless communications, and data networks like the Internet—transfers information based upon the number of bits per second the data travels. An old 56k modem transferred data at 56 kilobits per second (Kbps). A typical home Ethernet network supports data rates up to 10 Mbps, while Fast Ethernet provides 100 Mbps. To get a sense of the military differences, for those who can’t remember the old days when the last of the manned, triple-tailed, bug-eyed OV-1 Mohawk spy planes ceased monitoring the Korean DMZ in the early 1990s, sending one picture back to the United States via satellite communications took about 30 seconds.
Ron Graham and Alexander Koh, Digital Aerial Survey: Theory and Practice (Whittles Publishing, 1st edition, 2002), p. 184; John Sotham, “The Last of the Mohawks: Grumman’s triple-tail, bug-eyed, heat-seeking camera platform,” Air & Space magazine (Smithsonian), March 1997.
Kodak created the first digital camera prototype in 1975 and was the first to introduce a commercial professional-level digital SLR camera, the DCS 100, in 1992.
See Operation Enduring Look, QUICK LOOK REPORT, Air Force Space Command, Satellite Communications Support, January 2003; Defense Science Board Study on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Uninhabited Combat Aerial Vehicles, February 2004, p. 24.
In Desert Storm, coalition military forces numbered 542,000, and they had 99 megabits per second of bandwidth available.
33. Operation Enduring Look, QUICK LOOK REPORT, Air Force Space Command, Satellite Communications Support, January 2003.
34. In addition to Predator, two army Hunter drones flew from Macedonia, and each one required an additional 6 Mbps of bandwidth.
35. Lieutenant Colonel Kurt A. Klausner, USAF; Command and Control
of Air and Space Forces Requires Significant Attention to Bandwidth, Air & Space Power Journal, Winter 2002.
36. Major Kathy B. Davis, USAF; Operation Allied Force: Reachback and Information Processes; Air Command and Staff College; AU/ACSC/031/2002-04; Maxwell AFB, Alabama, March 2002, p. 5.
37. Patrick Rayermann, “Exploiting Commercial SATCOM: A Better Way,” Parameters (Army War College), Winter 2003–2004, pp. 54–66.
38. Of the 700 Mbps in bandwidth capacity provided to the initial Afghanistan operations, almost 400 Mbps came from commercial satellites; Operation Enduring Look, QUICK LOOK REPORT, Air Force Space Command, Satellite Communications Support, January 2003.
39. Operation Enduring Look, QUICK LOOK REPORT, Air Force Space Command, Satellite Communications Support, January 2003.
40. Operation Enduring Look, Chapter 16, Implications for Transformation (U), UNCLASSIFIED WORKING PAPER, FINAL COORD 22 January 2003, p. 16-3.
41. Eyes on the Horizon, pp. 214–215.
42. Larry J. Dodgen, Space: Inextricably Linked to Warfighting, Military Review, January/February 2006; Defense Science Board Study on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Uninhabited Combat Aerial Vehicles, February 2004, p. 24.
43. Quoted in Lieutenant Colonel Kurt A. Klausner, USAF; Command and Control of Air and Space Forces Requires Significant Attention to Bandwidth, Air & Space Power Journal, Winter 2002.
44. When Predator itself switched to remote split operations in 2002, moving the mission control element back to the United States, the global communications network demanded even more. See Major Houston R. Cantwell, USAF; Beyond Butterflies: Predator and the Evolution of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle in Air Force Culture; School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, Air University, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, June 2007, pp. 27–28.
45. Defense Science Board Study on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Uninhabited Combat Aerial Vehicles, February 2004, p. 23.
46. Operation Enduring Look, QUICK LOOK REPORT, Air Force Space Command, Satellite Communications Support, January 2003; John M. Donnelly, “Panel Probes Military’s Fight for Radio Waves,” Defense Week, no. 17 (22 April 2002), p. 3.
CHAPTER TEN The Split
1. The system was called Special Operations Tactical Video System (SOTVS).
2. Richard Whittle, Predator’s Big Safari, Mitchell Papers 7, August 2011, pp. 27–28; Evaluation of U.S. Air Force Preacquisition Technology Development, National Academies Press, 2011, p. 67; Rebecca Grant, “The Rover,” Air Force Magazine, August 2013; USAF PowerPoint briefing, Remotely Operated Video Enhanced Receiver Capabilities Brief, A2Q ISR Innovations, Lieutenant Colonel Chuck Menza, n.d. (2012); Air Force PowerPoint Briefing, ISR Innovations and UAV Task Force Directorate, NDIA Conference, November 4, 2008.
3. Air Force F-111F aircraft carried and used the Pave Tack (AN/AVQ-26) to deliver LGBs. Pave Tack included a laser and FLIR, plus a videotape recorder for poststrike BDA. The Navy A-6E had the Target Recognition and Attack Multisensor (TRAM) (AN/AAS-33) system built in under the nose, providing a FLIR, laser, and video recorder. RAF Buccaneers carried the Pave Spike (AN/AVQ-23E), which allowed the aircraft to “buddy lase” for other aircraft firing LGBs.
4. Air Force Fact Sheet, August 2007; www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=111.
5. LANTIRN also includes a missile boresight correlator for automatic lock-on of imaging infrared Maverick missiles (AGM-65D).
Single-role Navy F-14 Tomcats were also modified to carry LANTIRN, and a software update enabled the aircraft to acquire mensurated target coordinates accurate enough for delivery of GPS-guided JDAMs.
The initial LANTIRN targeting version pod has a unit cost of $3.2 million; the air force inventory eventually built up to some 300 pods. The navy procured about 75. Though a significant amount of money has been spent on LANTIRN and other pods, including constant upgrades, the cost per platform, and the increasing elimination of a second weapon systems officer, afforded additional savings and marshaling of resources.
6. Jake Melampy, The Modern Hog Guide: The A-10 Warthog Exposed (Trenton, Ohio: Reid Air Publications, 2007), p. 110.
7. NITE stands for Navigation IR Targeting Equipment. The Nite Hawk (AAS-38) is being phased out and replaced with new ATFLR (ASQ-228) pods.
8. F-16 Fighting Falcon Units of Operation Iraqi Freedom, p. 13; F-15C/E Eagle Units of Operation Iraqi Freedom, pp. 21, 26–27; F-15E Strike Eagle Units in Combat: 1990–2005, pp. 38–39; U.S. Navy Hornet Units of Operation Iraqi Freedom: Part One, pp. 12–13.
9. Dedicated reconnaissance pods introduced during this period included:
• The Tactical Airborne Reconnaissance Pod System (TARPS) pod, which was successfully utilized by the navy in Desert Storm. Digital TARPS capability was first used in 1996. The initial TARPS and interim capabilities were replaced by the TARPS CD in 2000, adding a digital imagery capability with higher resolution and full datalinks, allowing digital imagery able to be transmitted in real time to the Battle Group Commander.
• The F/A-18D also introduced the Advanced Tactical Airborne Reconnaissance System (ATARS), which provides multiple sensor capabilities, including electrooptical, infrared, and synthetic aperture radar, selectable by the aircrew in flight.
Air National Guard F-16s initially flew with the MMSA (Multi-Mission Sensor & Avionics) pod, another dedicated reconnaissance system, introduced in April 1995; this was replaced by the more capable Theater Airborne Reconnaissance System (TARS) (AN/ASD-11).
10. “To ask someone to do something outside of what they have planned to do requires a different mind-set. For a Block 52 [F-16] guy to be told, ‘I want you to fly to this destination and “take a picture” of this…’ would seem to most fighter pilots a total waste of time. They didn’t think it was an effective use of their capabilities, and at that point in time the value of this mission was misunderstood.” See F-16 Fighting Falcon Units of Operation Iraqi Freedom, p. 13.
11. American Forces Press Service, “Nontraditional Fighter Missions Provide Eyes in the Sky,” 24 March 2006; www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=15070.
12. Michael W. Isherwood, Roadmap for Robotics, Air Force Magazine, December 2009.
13. The first AF DGS weapon system node (DGS-1) was activated in July 1994; DGS-2 at Beale AFB, California, was activated in July 1995; DGS-3 in South Korea was activated in November 1996; DGS-NV in October 2001; DGS-4 in Ramstein, Germany, was activated in February 2003; DGS-5 in October 2004; DGS-KS in July 2006; and DGS-AL and DGS-AR in November 2006.
14. In 1995, DGS-2 forward deployed from California in support of Balkan operations, this time, though, with a line of sight ground relay station called MOBSTR, for MOBile STRetch. With the relay station, the DGS site could establish communications with a data-linked drone or airplane hundreds of miles away. Delivery of a second MOBSTR package meant that the preponderance of the workers could leave Saudi Arabia. See Adam J. Hebert, “Operation Reachback,” Air Force Magazine, April 2004; www.airforcemag.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2004/April%202004/0404reach.aspx (accessed October 14, 2013).
15. In October 2002, DGS network expansion continued with Site 8, DGS-3 at Osan AB, Korea. The Warrior Alpha site was added in January 2003.
16. In November 2002, the MASINT Initial Operating Capability (IOC) was achieved in AF DCGS. IOC criteria was the demonstrated capability within AF DCGS to exploit tactical imagery generated by the U-2 Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar System (ASARS) and produce MASINT products.
17. A sense of the ad hoc nature is seen in Evaluation of U.S. Air Force Preacquisition Technology Development, National Academies Press, 2011, p. 67: “Big Safari program director was briefed on a concept that would provide ground troops the capability to receive video feeds from Predator unmanned aircraft in flight. By October, the Remotely Operated Video Enhanced Receiver (ROVER) working group was formed, including members of the U.S. Special Operations Command, the army’s Special Forces Command, and other government agencies. In order to meet full system specifications, Special Operations Tactica
l Video System (SOTVS) transmitters and receivers would have had to be installed on the Predator aircraft. Instead, the Big Safari team traded the fully integrated solution for an 80 percent capability. The team decided that decoupling a receiver from an aircraft would be the quickest way to deploy the system. The modified system with proven Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 7 maturity quickly established a one-way link from Predator aircraft to ground units. In fact, this decision enabled Big Safari to deliver a successful prototype of the ROVER system to the C Company, 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) within just 2 weeks.”
18. See Major Royce Frengle, USAF; “Beyond Afghanistan: Effective Combined Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Operations,” A Research Report Submitted to the Faculty in Partial Fulfillment of the Graduation Requirements, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, April 2010, pp. 11–13; USAF PowerPoint briefing, Remotely Operated Video Enhanced Receiver Capabilities Brief, A2Q ISR Innovations, Lieutenant Colonel Chuck Menza, n.d. (2012).
19. These included the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Germany, Norway, New Zealand, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
20. Marine Corps PowerPoint Briefing, VMU Overview, Gunnery Sergeant Charles “Cookie” Cook, n.d. (August 2011).
21. “VORTEX is a multiband capable radio and supports AES/NSA Type 1 encryption. VORTEX Phase I is a USSOCOM PoR managed by Aeronautical Systems Center (ASC), Medium-Altitude Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ASC/WII) and includes encrypted C and S Band (AES/NSA Type 1), is multiwaveform (e.g., CDL, ROVER 466ER, VORTEX Native Waveform), dual channel, 5-band (C, L, S, Ku, and UHF), and transmit only. The first retrofits for MQ-1 started in the third quarter of FY12 with additional retrofits for MQ-9 occurring in the third quarter of FY13. VORTEX Phase II is an ASC/WII PoR and includes an integrated software solution for the MQ-1 that will enable frequency and crypto control from the GCS.