The Unseen War
Page 19
Nonkinetic Operations
As the air attacks continued, CENTCOM employed propaganda leaflets, radio broadcasts, and loudspeakers in an effort to induce enemy troops to surrender, spreading the message that were they to refuse, the Al Nida Division would suffer the same fate as did the Baghdad Division.257 Major Roberson, a CAOC planner who helped orchestrate the air component’s contribution to CENTCOM’s psychological warfare effort, recalled one circumstance in which a leaflet mission appeared to have been particularly effective. The land component’s planners wanted to neutralize the Iraqi 34th Armor Brigade on one flank of V Corps’ advance and accordingly targeted it for leaflet deliveries. “Two consecutive days of leaflets told them, ‘Hey! Your time’s coming. Capitulate and lay down your arms, because if you don’t, then we’re going to attack you.’ Since we had that capability and [also] air superiority, that’s what happened. After the [initial bombing] attack, we came back and dropped more leaflets that said, ‘We told you we’d do it. So, any of you guys who are left, go home!’”258 The targeted Iraqi armor brigade never showed up on the battlefield.259
CENTAF distributed more than 40 million leaflets between October 2002 and the end of the three-week campaign. They included warnings against employing WMD, conducting air operations, backing the Ba’ath Party, destroying oil fields, and mining Iraqi waterways. They also provided frequencies for coalition radio broadcasts urging civilian noninterference with allied operations and, toward the campaign’s end, providing instructions on how Iraqi military units should surrender or desert. Radio broadcasts from EC-130E/J Commando Solo aircraft and radio network intrusions conducted by EA-6B Prowlers and EC-130H Compass Call aircraft transmitted similar instructions.260
The Compass Call aircraft were called on to play an especially important part in helping allied SOF teams gain control of important parts of the Iraqi infrastructure during the opening days of Iraqi Freedom, including a number of Iraqi airfields and a group of key oil installations on the Al Faw Peninsula. It was thought at the time—incorrectly, as it turned out—that Iraqi troops stationed at the oil rigs were awaiting orders to detonate explosives at some of the installations and that the ability of the EC-130H to block orders from Iraqi commanders had been instrumental in preventing that calamity. The aircraft likewise supported the SOF seizures of the important H-2 and H-3 airfields in Iraq’s western desert, and EC-130s were on station during two successful prisoner-of-war rescue operations. Indeed, SOF commanders commonly regarded the EC-130 as a “go/no-go” asset.261
Although much effort went into preparing for and implementing psychological warfare operations, however, there is no substantial evidence attesting to their overall impact on the course and outcome of the three-week campaign, even though there were indeed isolated cases that suggested the achievement of a clear desired battlefield effect.262
Key Air Component Achievements
As allied ground forces advanced northward toward Baghdad, a recurrent media refrain suggested that CENTCOM was using air strikes to “soften up” the Iraqi ground troops positioned in and around the city, after which the land component would send in “raiding parties of armored units, special forces, and light infantry to finish off their targets.”263 To that suggestion, General Moseley was finally moved to comment tersely: “Our sensors show that the preponderance of the Republican Guard divisions that were outside of Baghdad are now dead. We’ve laid on these people. I find it interesting when folks say we’re ‘softening them up.’ We’re not softening them up. We’re killing them.”264 An Australian analyst writing as the major combat phase of Iraqi Freedom was nearing its end noted that “the coalition air fleet has, to date, accounted for most of the heavy damage to the Iraqi land force. Often the ground force only mops up remnants left after sustained battlefield air strikes.” This writer went on to portray the plains of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers south of Baghdad as “an enormous kill zone for an ongoing aerial turkey shoot unseen since 1991.”265
Throughout the three-week campaign, the majority of the air component’s strike assets were expressly apportioned to support the land component, with CAS being the single most numerous mission type flown by all combat aircraft, including B-52s.266 One account aptly summarized the impact of the air offensive on Iraq’s ground forces: “The much-vaunted Republican Guard did not put up any coordinated resistance along the Karbala–Al Kut line after a week of pounding from the air. Most of the Republican Guard units in frontline areas had been debilitated by desertions, and when the 3rd Infantry and 1st Marine Divisions advanced, they found many positions abandoned, along with hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles. When the 3rd ID arrived in the vicinity of Baghdad’s main airport, it met only sporadic counterattacks from Special Republican Guard units.”267
Air assets operated by the SOF component also played a significant, and at times heroic, role in facilitating SOF operations throughout the three-week campaign. An especially notable instance of valorous air support unfolded shortly after midnight on April 2 during a covert raid by American SOF units on the Thar Thar Palace near Baghdad, a known residence of Hussein and his two sons. The raid yielded no regime leaders, but it netted a trove of documents of considerable intelligence value.268 Three Air Force Special Operations Command MC-130E Combat Talon pilots who took part in that raid, Lt. Col. Kenneth Ray, Maj. Bruce Taylor, and Maj. James Winsmann, were subsequently awarded the Silver Star for their actions during the operation. Their aircraft had been tasked to provide low-altitude in-flight refueling during both ingress and egress for a formation of SOF helicopters that were infiltrating a Navy SEAL team, Army Special Forces troopers, and a CIA unit into the palace. As the MC-130s neared their assigned target area with their lights out and with their pilots wearing NVGs, they and their accompanying ten-ship package of helicopters triggered a hail of heavy enemy surface-to-air fire. Iraqi SAMs engaged them three times during their initial ingress refueling evolution. The MC-130 pilots executed prompt and aggressive defensive countermaneuvers, taking their aircraft down to less than 100 feet above ground level in one instance while dispensing defensive countermeasures against enemy surface-to-air fire. They successfully negated the enemy threat, with one MC-130 avoiding a missile hit by less than 50 feet. The aircraft then pressed to a second aerial refueling point that still lay within the enemy’s surface-to-air threat envelope. The MC-130s conducted 6 in-flight refuelings and transferred more than 30,000 pounds of fuel to 10 fuel-critical helicopters deep inside enemy-controlled territory at night and in blowing dust, accomplishing their mission with no losses.269
Air support for the 1st Marine Division was provided by the F/A-18 Hornets, AV-8B Harriers, and AH-1W Cobra attack helicopters of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing (MAW) in conformance with the well-honed Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF, pronounced “mag-taf”) concept of operations. General Moseley gave the wing considerable latitude to underwrite the immediate and often rapidly changing needs of the engaged Marine ground commander. A subsequent report explained this informal contract:
As [Gen. Charles] Horner had done in Desert Storm, Moseley conceded that they would use their aircraft primarily to shape the battlefield in their area. In fall of 2002, he had prepared for this by convening a conference with top Marine generals to work out the [command and control] of Marine air power. Without any formal written agreements, the generals worked out an arrangement that allowed the Marine air commander to tell the air component how many sorties [I MEF] needed. The planners in the CAOC then allocated these sorties, arranged all the support for them, and sent that information back out in the ATO. To make this plan work, Moseley insisted the Marines provide some of their best officers to serve as liaison officers, one of whom became the CAS planner for the entire theater. It was another example of working out relationships prior to the conflict to make the electronic collaboration run more smoothly during the conflict.270
The official Marine Corps after-action assessment of I MEF’s contribution to the campaign noted that “th
e agreement among the generals was to ‘nest’ Marine command and control under [the] CFACC [combined force air component commander, pronounced “see-fack”]. There would be a Marine ATO within the CFACC ATO; the primary mission for Marine air would be to support the MEF scheme of maneuver; excess sorties would be made available to the CFACC—and there would be provisions for the reverse to occur as well.”271 The 3rd MAW’s commander, Maj. Gen. James F. “Tamer” Amos, “found General Moseley to be a commander who readily understood the utility of the MAW as a part of the MAGTF while asserting his own rights to the airspace over the battlefield.”272 In the ensuing scheme of Marine air employment, the Cobras were typically used to suppress and draw down the Iraqi troops that were most directly arrayed against advancing Marine formations while the Hornets and Harriers worked farther north of the line of friendly advance in preemptive kill-box interdiction of enemy ground force movements.
Three variants of CAS performed in joint and combined combat are recognized. The most permissive of these is Type III CAS. Once a pilot is sure of the enemy’s position and the positions of all nearby friendly forces, he can be cleared by a JTAC to engage a validated target with no further approval needed. Type II CAS occurs when either visual acquisition of the attacking aircraft by a JTAC on the ground or visual acquisition of the target by the attacking pilot before weapon release is not possible. Type I CAS, the most exacting, requires the JTAC or FAC-A to visually acquire and positively identify both the attacking aircraft and the target being attacked. JTACs may use either Type I or Type II CAS with the approval of the fire support coordination center. Type III CAS is used only when there is a low to nonexistent danger of fratricide, in which case the appropriate ground commander can authorize unrestricted weapon release.273
To facilitate the closest possible integration of Marine Corps air and ground assets, the 3rd MAW assigned selected pilots not only to the company level to serve as JTACs, but also to each battalion of the 1st Marine Division as an extra support measure to ensure that the unit’s CAS needs would be properly met.274 By the time the Marines rolled into Numaniyah, well into their northward convergence on Baghdad, what had been expected to be a hard-fought showdown with a brigade from the Republican Guard’s Baghdad Division had yielded only sporadic small arms fire that was quickly and effectively suppressed. By all indications, the previous week of aerial and artillery bombardment had driven the enemy unit’s personnel from their positions.275 Once the Marines finally contacted the remaining remnants of the Baghdad Division, allied intelligence estimated that the division retained only 6,000 of its 11,000 troops and less than 25 percent of its artillery. Many enemy troops simply deserted their positions.276
Similarly, when the Army’s 3rd ID came into contact with the remnants of the Republican Guard forces on the outskirts of Baghdad, only about a dozen enemy tanks came out to fight. They were quickly destroyed in one of the few direct tank-on-tank engagements of the entire war.277 CENTCOM estimated that even before they had been engaged frontally by allied ground forces, the Republican Guard units fielded around Baghdad had already lost more than 1,000 of Iraq’s total inventory of 2,500 tanks to air attacks.278 Of the more than 8,000 munitions that had been dropped since March 19, as many as 3,000 were expended in the last 3 days of March, mostly against Republican Guard units south of Baghdad.279 The Medina Division received particularly intense strikes, as a result of which it and the Baghdad Division were estimated to have been drawn down by 50 percent before allied ground forces moved to contact. The Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar Divisions that were trying to reinforce those two had also been pummeled and were lacking leadership at higher levels.280 “After a week of sustained aerial bombardment of the opposing Medina and Baghdad Divisions,” one analyst wrote, “the [coalition’s] ‘Panzers’ rolled through the remnants with little resistance.”281
The exact amount of Iraqi ground force equipment destroyed by these air strikes may never be known, but the strikes handily achieved CENTCOM’s desired effect of preventing the Republican Guard divisions from mounting a cohesive defense of Baghdad. When allied ground units finally moved within range of enemy ground forces on D+12, they encountered only what one observer called “small determined pockets of Iraqi regime loyalists.”282 By April 2 the Medina Division was officially deemed by CENTCOM to be “combat-ineffective.”283
General Jumper’s precampaign concern that the Iraqis might try to jam the GPS signals on which allied JDAMs and navigational systems depended proved unfounded, although American ground troops raiding a targeted residence in Al Qaim discovered a stash of Russian-made GPS jammers with an address label on the shipping container showing that it had been delivered to the Iraqi embassy in Moscow in January 2003.284 Allied forces experienced ineffectual enemy attempts at GPS jamming, but no jamming of communications. Ironically, allied strike aircraft destroyed enemy GPS jammers with GPS-aided JDAMs.285 That fact bore out a comment made by General Leaf two months before the war started when he was still the director of operational requirements on the Air Staff: “If a potential adversary . . . is betting their future on GPS jamming, it’s going to be a serious miscalculation. I’m very confident of our ability to operate effectively in that environment.”286 His prediction was validated during the first week of the air war when the Joint Staff’s vice director for operations, Major General McChrystal, declared: “We have been aware for some time of the possibility of GPS jammers being fielded, and what we’ve found is through testing and through actual practice now, that they are not having a negative effect on the air campaign at this point.”287 In fact, GPS jammers had essentially no effect on the air component’s munitions delivery operations. Under Secretary of the Air Force Peter Teets acknowledged, however, that GPS was indeed susceptible to jamming attempts and noted that the Air Force was taking appropriate steps “to make it much more jam-resistant on the satellite side, on the control-element side, and on the user-equipment side.”288
In effect, the nonstop precision aerial bombardment from the night of March 21 onward so resoundingly paved the way for allied ground forces that the entrance of the latter into Baghdad was a virtual fait accompli. The allied air contribution to the major combat phase of Iraqi Freedom reconfirmed a lesson from Afghanistan that air power can effectively substitute for artillery if fully exploited toward that end. After just a week of allied bombing, Iraq’s ground troops were so disorganized and disoriented that they were unable or unwilling to fall back to a secondary line of defense; instead, they simply walked away. Much of the impact of the bombing was psychological rather than physical; the destruction of a mere ten or so enemy vehicles, for example, might have the secondary effect of convincing several hundred Iraqi troops to give up the fight and go home. Those troops who remained in place were so heavily outmatched that they were put to rout even before they could see their approaching American opponents.
In the end, thanks in substantial part to the enabling contributions of CENTCOM’s air component, advancing allied ground forces covered a distance through defended enemy territory equal to that from the Mexican border to San Francisco within less than three weeks.289 Moreover, the worst-case fear of an Iraqi military retreat en masse into Baghdad and the urban fighting and widespread collateral damage to civilian structures that inevitably would have accompanied it were never realized. Using its previously developed urban CAS plan in which most buildings inside Baghdad had their own individual designation, the CAOC succeeded in precisely directing those munitions that were delivered into the city in a way that minimized unintended damage to civilian infrastructure.290 A last-ditch Iraqi attempt to torch oil trenches in the Baghdad area with the goal of obscuring prospective targets with heavy smoke did little but foul the air for the civilian population and create video images for attempted propaganda exploitation. The SAR sensors of the E-8 JSTARS could image targets right through the smoke, and satellite-aided munitions could guide themselves completely unhindered to their assigned aim points. An analyst remarked with respect
to this vain Iraqi attempt that while the obscuration “might impair some optical reconnaissance tools, it was largely irrelevant in slowing the bombardment.”291
To a considerable degree, directives handed down by Saddam Hussein were responsible for the thorough drubbing Iraqi ground forces sustained in the allied combined-arms offensive. The Republican Guard had been fielded primarily in a peacetime watchdog role to block any attempted mutiny by regular Iraqi army units and to ensure that the latters’ commanders stayed in line. Yet, Hussein did not allow his Republican Guard units to deploy in strength in central Baghdad. Instead, he chose to defend the city by positioning the Hammurabi Division to the southwest, the Al Nida Division to the southeast, and the Nebuchadnezzar Division spread out in positions to the north and southwest.292
In fact, the integrity of Iraq’s command and control network failed so badly under the weight of the allied air offensive that at one point an Iraqi two-star general drove directly into an American military checkpoint, unaware that allied forces were even in his vicinity.293 As late as April 5, when U.S. troops were knocking on Baghdad’s front door and the regime was just four days from collapse, an Iraqi colonel who had been taken into custody that morning said that his commanders had told him that American forces were still a hundred miles away.294 In the immediate aftermath of the war, CENTCOM remained unsure how many Iraqi armored vehicles had been destroyed, but the number was clearly in the high hundreds, if not more. General McPeak remarked that the asymmetric application of precision long-range air power against an enemy whose only strength lay in short-range ground power left the Republican Guard with only two options: they could “either hunker down outside Baghdad and die slowly or maneuver and die quickly.”295