The Unseen War

by Lambeth, Benjamin S.

  A Marine Corps Approach That Arguably Worked Better

  In marked contrast to the issues that divided the CAOC and ASOC with respect to battlespace management in V Corps’ area of operations, General Moseley so trusted the MAGTF approach to air-land combat, and the Marines who were implementing it, that he delegated authority to I MEF to control the airspace above its immediate area of operations. As a result, I MEF created its own direct support ATO for execution by the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, and the Marine tactical air operations center and tactical air control center (TAOC and TACC respectively) opened and closed kill boxes for deep interdiction operations. For close interdiction inside the FSCL, the Marine direct air support center (DASC) provided terminal attack control.

  Key to the greater efficiency of I MEF’s unique arrangement for integrating CAS assets into the land battle was its willingness to open kill boxes inside the FSCL when its battle staff were confident that no friendly forces were present, something V Corps would generally not do. Opening kill boxes inside the FSCL allowed coalition aircraft to attack Iraqi forces without detailed coordination with the DASC and the resulting bottleneck that tended to create. The principal differences between the practices of the DASC and the ASOC supporting V Corps were that the ASOC was aligned at the corps level, was responsible for integrating air power for a multidivision fight, and accepted decentralized execution of allocated air assets, whereas the DASC was aligned at the division level, was responsible for integrating all organic Marine Corps firepower, and envisaged centralized combined arms execution in support of the MEF commander.

  The DASC, assigned the radio call sign Blacklist, was configured much like the TACC but on a smaller scale. It coordinated with the fire support coordination center that was organic to the 1st Marine Division. Its operations staff, the “Dascateers,” also handled emerging target requests that came in from outside normal Marine Corps channels. When Marine air operations ranged more deeply into Iraq beyond the normal radio range of the ground-based DASC, it was augmented by an airborne DASC (the DASC-A), with the assigned call sign Sky Chief, on board a Marine Corps KC-130 to provide better communications connectivity across the entire span of the battlespace.84

  By almost all accounts, the DASC supporting I MEF was able to integrate more fires into the Marines’ battlespace for CAS and interdiction than was the ASOC assigned to V Corps. Particularly during the initial days of combined air-land operations, the ASOC was able to integrate an average of six combat sorties into the fight per hour, whereas the DASC was able to integrate twice that amount of air support in a smaller area in the same amount of time. An informed Air Force airman later noted that the well-trained DASC controllers’ ability to make effective use of excess air component strike sorties in their zone “got to the point where Air Force KI/CAS pilots all wanted to go to the Marine sector where they knew they’d have a better chance of putting bombs on a meaningful target.”85 (Eventually, as joint air-ground operations hit their stride, the ASOC too became able to integrate CAS sorties more efficiently in closer keeping with I MEF’s well-honed approach. Once that occurred, General Leaf noted, FSCL placement became less an issue as the air and land components succeeded in improving the coordination of their operations within kill boxes.)86

  Even so, I MEF’s fire support coordination measures in combination with its command and control arrangement generally allowed CENTAF aircraft supplying on-call CAS to provide more responsive fire support than did V Corps, whose less permissive arrangement created inefficiencies. In V Corps’ area of operations, the ASOC was frequently overburdened by the land component’s requirement for terminal attack control between the forward line of friendly troops and the FSCL for any open kill boxes. As a result, the ASOC was forced to turn away sorties that could have been effectively used to shape the battlefield. I MEF avoided this problem by dividing the area between the forward line of friendly troops and the FSCL with a battlefield coordination line (BCL) and by using two agencies—the DASC for terminal attack control between the forward line of friendly troops and the TAOC for tactical control between the BCL and FSCL.

  As the campaign unfolded, short-range aircraft such as the Marine Corps’ AV-8B Harriers and AH-1W Cobra attack helicopters and the Air Force’s A-10s were generally used in the CAS role, while the longer-range Marine Corps F/A-18s supported I MEF kill-box interdiction requirements and the air component’s deeper–strike mission needs. As the FSCL moved ever closer to Baghdad, the Marine Corps used a combination of forward basing, organic refueling, and nonorganic refueling from Air Force and RAF tankers to support Marine air operations.87 With respect to the efficiency of this arrangement, Air Chief Marshal Burridge testified before the British Parliament: “The U.S. Marine Corps are configured as relatively light forces, and they do not have indigenous deep fires, that is, a lot of artillery. They have very little artillery. Their equivalent of artillery is the Marine Air Wing F/A-18s. They live together very intimately, and their ability to do close air support, both the ground forces’ ability to control it and the air’s ability to integrate with it, is very impressive, very impressive indeed.”88

  A RAND assessment of persistent air-ground integration issues aptly attested to the contrast in operational styles between the two services in noting that “the Army and Marine Corps commanders largely fought independent campaigns [in Iraqi Freedom], with air power employed as each of these components deemed appropriate.”89 A well-informed survey of command issues ranging from Operation Desert Storm to the major combat phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom summed up the stylistic contrast as follows:

  The Army handled all missions short of the FSCL as CAS and required them to be controlled by the ASOC or a TACP designated by the ASOC. The Marines, on the other hand, chose to create another line . . . [the BCL] . . . which was closer to the ground troops than the FSCL. The Marine DASC opened up kill boxes further out than this BCL—so as a result, air support going into the Marines’ sector had a greater chance of being sent to an open kill box than that going to the Army sector. To the aircrew, the difference in flexibility was so stark that pilots regularly requested to be sent to work with the DASC rather than with the ASOC. . . . The difference [was] in the degree of coupling the two services saw in these operations. To the Marines, beyond the BCL, the efforts of the ground and air forces were not tightly coupled and did not need to be closely managed. . . . To the Army, the efforts of the ground and air forces were tightly coupled all the way out to the FSCL. . . . Aircrews were more closely managed, so [V Corps commander General] Wallace had more visibility into the targeting, but the aircrews related it took longer to perform a mission in the Army’s sector than in the Marines’ sector.90

  The 3rd ID’s after-action assessment of the campaign took note of the superior efficiency offered by the Marine Corps’ BCL in managing fixed-wing air assets in air-land warfare and expressly acknowledged that it “facilitates the expeditious attack of surface targets of opportunity between [the BCL and the FSCL].” Calling the BCL “clearly the most permissive measure, but also one that requires a thorough understanding of our doctrine and its use,” the assessment concluded that “this measure would give Corps the battlespace they desire for air assets at their disposal” and recommended outright that “U.S. Army doctrine must be changed to incorporate the BCL as [a fire support coordination measure].”91

  When the land component’s northward movement all but ground to a halt during the three-day shamal and General McKiernan pulled in the FSCL to just beyond the Euphrates River, the Marine Corps’ approach to managing air and ground fire support in common battlespace seemed validated. The shortened FSCL opened up numerous previously forbidden kill boxes for the air component to work. A true air-ground joint concept of operations emerged at that point, producing, as Michael Knights commented, “something akin to the arrangement that had been in place in the MEF sector throughout the war. The MAGTF concept underpinned the difference, allowing U.S. Marines (and their subordinate British divisi
on) to fight as a true air-land partnership rather than as a ground and air component trying to get out of each other’s way.”92

  The Continuing Need for Closer Joint Force Integration

  Among the cross-service problem areas spotlighted by the Iraqi Freedom experience were the acknowledged deficiencies in the Air Force’s approach to organizing and manning its ASOCs. The Air Force staffs its ASOCs with officers from assorted operational flying backgrounds and with enlisted personnel from similarly diverse service career fields rather than assigning personnel specifically trained for ASOC operations. This means that there are very few expert Air Force ASOC operators, a situation that naturally perpetuates a general absence of ASOC proficiency and continuity. Further, the service had until recently given its ASOCs less than top billing in its rank ordering of attention and priorities. A senior staffer in the ASOC attached to V Corps during the campaign recalled with brutal frankness in this regard: “The CAOC is a significant piece of the CFACC’s planning, command, and control capability, but it is not the entire structure. The CFACC’s [ASOC] and subordinate [TACPs] are another significant piece” of that capability. “Unfortunately, prior to [Operation Iraqi Freedom], these [latter] organizations did not enjoy the same USAF focus and resources . . . [and] the USAF had no published [concept] for ASOC operations and [for the ASOC’s] subordinate TACPs assigned to the supported land maneuver forces.” To make matters worse from a training perspective, until the very start of the campaign, “the ASOC in the 4th ASOG had never exercised with the CAOC. . . . The first time the [V Corps] ASOC actually controlled a strike against a target in the ground commander’s [area of operations and] the first time the CAS cell at the CAOC had ever directly worked with ASOC operations was the first day of combat operations.” Identified shortfalls in the ASOC at that time “included radio limitations, a lack of a target coordinate generation system, and a lack of interconnectivity with Army targeting systems.”93

  In marked contrast, the Marine Corps has long followed a substantially different approach in its MAGTF organization, which, from top to bottom, is a well-trained and appropriately manned command and control system for closely integrated air-land combat operations. Each MAGTF, wherever it may be deployed worldwide, brings together a TAOC, a DASC, a DASC-A, and a DASC-forward into a coherent arrangement for conducting air-to-ground mission sets in support of a ground combat element commander. Furthermore, MAGTFs are routinely exercised in realistic peacetime training evolutions, and their capabilities and limitations are well determined and understood before the time arrives for them to have to visit fire and steel on enemy targets. CENTAF planners concluded after the major combat phase of Iraqi Freedom that the Marine Corps’ approach to command and control in counterland operations would be well worth considering for future contingencies that might entail an ASOC as a subsidiary component of the CAOC.94

  For their part, Army assessors eventually came to realize the opportunity cost of their traditional practice in situations in which the land component lacked the needed situational awareness and weapons reach to conduct deep attacks inside the FSCL with its own organic assets. The 3rd ID’s after-action report freely admitted that “the U.S. Army must redefine the battlespace based on our ability to influence it.”95 The report went on to note that

  the FSCL was 100 kilometers beyond the range of standard munitions from our M109A6s and M270s. This created a dead space between the area that the Army could influence and the area shaped by the [air component]. The placement of the FSCL was so far in front of the forward edge of the battle area that neither divisional nor corps assets could effectively manage the battlespace. . . . The argument seems to be that [the air component] would not adequately address V Corps targeting requirements; 3 ID (M) [3rd Infantry Division, Mechanized] violently disagrees. [The CAOC is] manned and equipped to effectively manage this battlespace forward of the FSCL; V Corps is not and has demonstrated their inability to manage said battlespace. 3 ID (M) believes that [the air component] is better prepared to engage targets to effectively shape the battlefield versus V Corps’ use of CAS.96

  To be sure, cross-service misunderstandings of important service-related specifics did occur. For example, General Franks once asked General Moseley for eight Global Hawks—more than the Air Force had in its entire RQ-4 inventory. Misuse of terminology also sometimes led to misunderstandings between elements of different components in resource allocation, options planning, and execution. And there were at least three reported instances in which U.S. ground units failed to coordinate with the CAOC with respect to long-range ATACMS missiles that were fired into CAOC-controlled airspace. Fortunately, no fratricide incidents resulted from these three communications failures, all of which were attributed to V Corps.97 An Air Force airman who had commanded an A-10 squadron that was mainly employed in support of SOF operations in Iraqi Freedom summed up the situation: “The air-ground coordination was . . . far from perfect and in many cases didn’t exist. Just like Desert Storm, we made it work to support the guys on the ground.”98

  Despite recurrent problems, however, the mutually supporting application of air and land power in common battlespace in Iraqi Freedom represented a major breakthrough in the conduct of joint warfare. General Leaf observed that the campaign experience represented the first time that the American armed forces had conducted a large-scale combat operation with the air and land components working side by side “as equals.” The air and land component commanders “achieved conceptual interoperability. . . . This was not [only] communications and software. We really had concepts linked. The real key was the collaborative planning at a senior level.” Leaf added: “We used methodology [that was] most appropriate. Sometimes ground preponderance, other times the air, other times in the middle. . . . My staff worked to ensure [that] timing and methodology worked together. For example, airmen usually use latitude and longitude to mark the FSCL, and ground commanders use geographical features. At times when the advance was rapid, airmen used latitude and longitude. At other times, it was necessary to use geographical features. Sometimes a combination was used to set the FSCL. The level of collaboration gave us flexibility, we did it collaboratively.”99 In resounding testimony to the ultimate success of the arrangement, General Wallace declared proudly after the campaign was over that he did not lose a single soldier to an enemy weapon that could have been struck by coalition air power.100 Throughout the three weeks of major combat in Iraqi Freedom, on-call CAS was overhead and available whenever the land component needed it.

  The postcampaign recollections of the participating land and air combatants differ substantially, however, regarding the efficacy of the ASOC arrangement that had been put in place with V Corps in the wake of the near-disaster during Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan. General Wallace later said that he “never heard any of my commanders complain about the availability, responsiveness, or effectiveness of CAS—it was unprecedented.”101 General Moseley, however, in his capacity as the air component commander, described the ASOC arrangement as one of several areas of joint operations that had “worked less well” in meeting General Franks’ theater campaign needs and one that definitely warranted a closer “joint look.”102

  General Jumper expressed similar sentiments when he said: “There is a whole lot more we can do better.” He added that the services needed to keep talking to one another with respect to better air-ground integration to avoid continued misunderstandings in future conflicts. To cite one telling example, throughout the three weeks of major combat, the land component frequently wanted the air component’s CAS providers to fly low, still not realizing that more effective CAS delivery can be provided from as high as 39,000 feet. “Close air support to many can [still] only be defined as airplanes 50 feet above the ground that are releasing something like napalm and creating a lot of heat and a lot of smoke and a lot of noise,” General Jumper said. “What you really want,” General Jumper argued, “is those bad guys dead.”103

  While both services recog
nize the need for more realistic joint peacetime training, however, the Air Force and Army have yet to develop and implement approaches to it that would prepare both tactical forces and their operational staffs truly adequately for major counterland warfare. In particular, the tactical-level air-ground exercises that are typically conducted at the Army’s National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, and in the Air Force’s associated Air Warrior program conducted out of Nellis AFB, Nevada, have characteristically suffered because the respective training and evaluation objectives of the two services have been so widely inconsistent. The Army—naturally enough—wants to initiate its tactical training engagements at Fort Irwin with a close fight immediately at hand so that its company-grade officers can learn how to understand and conduct high-intensity tank-on-tank warfare. For its part, the Air Force has unsuccessfully sought to start such exercises instead with the ground troops not in close contact with the enemy to demonstrate the full potential of air power in air-land warfare.104 An early draft of JFCOM’s postcampaign “lessons learned” assessment was right on target when it insisted that in order to “duplicate the CENTCOM experience” in future major combat operations along the lines of the second Persian Gulf War, “a system that replicates joint operational-level warfare is required.”105

  Finally, in consonance with their U.S. Air Force compatriots, the RAF participants in Iraqi Freedom also found the integration of CAS with land component operations frequently inefficient, especially in the case of integration with British ground units, because of inadequate prior joint training between the RAF and the British Army over the preceding ten years.106 The RAF’s CAS effort was further hampered at times by the inability of airborne aircrews to secure sufficiently refined coordinates for attacking mobile targets. Because ground forces typically plot positions on maps rather than by using GPS, the targeting information provided by those forces often became rapidly outdated, creating a resultant need for aircrews to visually identify mobile targets before attacking them.