[url]ttp://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/24/international/24WEAP.html[/url]

Use of Pinpoint Air Power Comes of Age in New War

December 24, 2001

Use of Pinpoint Air Power Comes of Age in New War
By ERIC SCHMITT and JAMES DAO

WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 — At a pivotal moment in the siege of Kunduz late last
month, a Northern Alliance commander urgently requested American
airstrikes against several hundred Taliban soldiers and tanks massing on a
ridge more than a mile from the city. He pleaded that the attack be
launched within 24 hours.
A Special Operations ground spotter immediately radioed an American
command center in Saudi Arabia, which ordered a nearby B-52 to rain 16
cluster bombs on the enemy forces. Flying at 30,000 feet, the bomber never
saw its prey. But the spotter used a laser pointer to guide the bombs,
which carried new devices that kept them on course through buffeting
winds, enabling them to spew antiarmor bomblets with deadly precision.
The Taliban force was hit not in 24 hours, but in 19 minutes.
"That really was another turning point," said a senior Air Force official
deeply involved in the air campaign in Afghanistan. "All these things gave
confidence to the Northern Alliance, and it really was a shock to the
Taliban."
The swiftness and accuracy of that attack illustrated a new kind of
American air power, where high-technology precision weapons, guided by
aircraft and ground commandos, enabled a ragtag opposition to rout the
Taliban army. Just as World War II opened the atomic age and the 1991
Persian Gulf war introduced stealth technology to combat, Afghanistan will
be remembered as the smart-bomb war.
New guidance systems have been strapped onto older weapons, like the
cluster bombs dropped near Kunduz, making them devastatingly accurate.
Pilotless Predator drones for the first time fired Hellfire antitank
missiles and fed live battlefield video to nearby AC-130 gunships, which
even now are prowling the Pakistan border for fleeing Al Qaeda fighters.
Satellites, electronic-eavesdropping planes and human ground spotters
worked together more reliably than ever, enabling distant commanders to
direct warplanes to targets with stunning speed and accuracy.
One result was a relentlessly accurate bombardment conducted day and
night, under clear and cloudy skies alike, that led to the collapse of
Taliban and Al Qaeda forces, air power experts say. Taliban and Al Qaeda
prisoners have confirmed that the precise bombing from planes they often
could not hear or see broke the will of battle-hardened troops. And when
precision was no longer needed, the Air Force dropped three 15,000-pound
Daisy Cutter bombs, largely for the terrifying psychological impact they
have as they explode just above ground, wiping out everything for hundreds
of yards.
The relatively small number of civilian casualties made possible by the
pinpoint bombing helped the United States maintain the support of friendly
Islamic nations. And the air campaign's deadly effectiveness helped
embolden opposition commanders.

"This is a new pattern of warfare that is focused and directed against
individuals we're trying to defeat," said Richard P. Hallion, the
historian of the United States Air Force and an authority on air power.
"There's not that image of uncaring, rampant destruction."
The implications of this kind of air campaign loom large not only for the
next phase of the war on terrorism, but also for Defense Secretary Donald
H. Rumsfeld's vision of overhauling the armed forces to respond more
quickly to emerging threats. Only the United States can marshal this kind
of air power and wield it anywhere in the world.
It was Mr. Rumsfeld and top military aides, along with Gen. Tommy R.
Franks, the commander of allied forces in Afghanistan, and Lt. Gen.
Charles F. Wald, the former air commander, who largely developed the war
plan and managed it from the Pentagon, the headquarters of the United
States Central Command in Tampa, Fla., and a brand-new air operations
center at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
The ability to bomb targets with precision could be a potent weapon
against terrorist safe houses and command centers hidden among schools,
hospitals and homes in crowded urban areas, Pentagon planners said.
Indeed, satellite images from Afghanistan show bomb craters circling
mosques and homes - showing the Pentagon's confidence about striking near
civilians.
"We didn't just drop bombs," said Capt. Dave Mercer, commander of the
Enterprise-based Carrier Air Wing 8, which dropped the first bombs of the
war. "We always had a precise aim point."
Precision bombing could in the future also enable carrier-based fighters
or long-range bombers operating from the United States to strike terrorist
training camps in far- flung regions where American bases and troops are
not wanted. And it could do those things without endangering, or even
moving, large numbers of American forces.
"The enemy's sanctuary is being decreased more and more all the time," a
senior Air Force official said.
Still, administration officials warn against assuming the exact formula
used to such great effect in Afghanistan would work against other
potential foes, especially Iraq. The Taliban military is a shadow of the
Iraqi army, they said. Baghdad's air defenses, while battered and
jury-rigged, would still pose a threat to lumbering B-52's and AC-130's.
And there is no organized Iraqi opposition army comparable to the Northern
Alliance.
"They're two different countries with two different regimes, two different
military capabilities," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said last week.
"They are so significantly different that you can't take the Afghan model
and immediately apply it to Iraq."
More broadly, air power experts said, the Afghan campaign underscores that
air power, to be effective, still requires ground forces to either flush
an enemy into the open or force the opposition to congregate in a mass,
where it can be attacked more easily. And without spotters on the ground,
American bombs damaged residential areas, especially early in the war,
killing and wounding an unknown number of civilians.

Late last week, in an incident that showed the importance of intelligence
from the ground, local Afghan officials and villagers asserted that
American planes had mistakenly attacked a convoy carrying tribal leaders
to inaugural ceremonies in Kabul. A spokesman for the Central Command
today repeated the military's contention that a convoy carrying Al Qaeda
or Taliban forces fired first at American warplanes.
"Air and ground forces work like hammer and anvil to put the enemy in a
pincer," said Robert A. Pape, a political science professor at the
University of Chicago who has written extensively on air power. "But
there's a danger in thinking that it's all hammer and no anvil, that air
power alone with maybe only a few Special Forces, is the key. You need the
ground element."
Also, the current stock of bombs still cannot destroy the deepest, most
sophisticated caves and bunkers - a problem that would haunt operations in
places like Iraq or North Korea, which have many underground command
centers.
The Pentagon acknowledged the limits of its current "bunker-busting" bombs
when it announced plans last week to ship to Afghanistan a new kind of
laser-guided "fuel- air" bomb, which creates an enormous blast capable of
sucking oxygen out of caves by detonating a billowing cloud of fuel.
Still, the advances in American air power since the Persian Gulf war, and
even since Kosovo, have been dramatic. Less than 10 percent of the bombs
dropped in the gulf war were precision-guided. In Afghanistan, nearly 60
percent of the 14,000 missiles, bombs and other ordnance were steered to
their targets by lasers or satellites.

Precision Bombing
New Guidance for Old Bombs
Few weapons systems better show the evolution of precision-guided weapons
than the Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM.
The idea for the JDAM was born during the gulf war, where the most
advanced precision munitions of the day, laser-guided bombs, could be
thrown off target by clouds or dust storms that deflect the laser beams.
The Pentagon ordered the creation of a new, all-day, all-weather pinpoint
munition that could be guided by a satellite-based Global Positioning
System. It also insisted that the new system be created out of old
fashioned gravity bombs to save money.
The result was the JDAM: a $20,000 kit that, when attached to the tail of
a free-fall bomb, typically a 2,000-pounder, can maneuver it to a target
by adjusting its fins to correct its course, using constant position
updates from orbiting satellites. Even if the G.P.S. fails or is jammed,
the kit has an inertial navigation system - a kind of electronic gyroscope
- that can be programmed with target coordinates from the launching
aircraft.
Testing has shown that with the G.P.S.- guided system, the JDAM usually
falls within 13 yards of its target; with just an internal navigation
system, it typically lands within 30 yards, still inside the bomb's blast
zone. But the JDAM remains less accurate than laser-guided weapons and is
not as effective against moving targets.

The JDAM's first combat use was in the 1999 Kosovo campaign, where its
utility was limited because only the B-2 stealth bomber was outfitted to
drop it. But today most fighters and bombers can drop JDAM's. As a result,
it has been the weapon of choice in Afghanistan, where more than 4,200
have been dropped, about one-third of all the munitions used in the war.
According to the Air Force, fewer than five have gone astray, all because
of human error. The best-known mistake, where a 2,000-pound bomb killed
three American Special Forces soldiers near Kandahar earlier this month,
occurred when the ground spotter gave his own coordinates to the
bombardier aboard a B-52, officials said.
The Navy launched so many JDAM's early in the conflict that it had to ask
the Air Force to replenish its supply. And since Sept. 11, Boeing has
twice been ordered to increase production.

Spotting the Enemy
Keeping Sharp Eyes Above the Battlefield
The evolution in bomb technology has paralleled improvements in the
airborne surveillance sensors used to spot and track targets. Those
sensors have operated unmolested in American-controlled Afghan skies,
allowing slow-moving planes to cast a 24- hour reconnaissance blanket
across the country.
Since Kosovo, the Pentagon has learned how to link its aircraft together,
allowing Predator drones, RC-135 Rivet Joint and U-2 reconnaissance
planes, and E-8C Joint Stars ground-radar planes to share information,
guide each other to uncovered areas, focus on specific targets and watch
the battlefield around the clock.
The greatest leap has been in surveillance drones, the Pentagon says. The
remotely controlled Predator, which in recent years had seen limited use
in the Balkans and Iraq, carries radar that can see through cloud cover
and infrared lenses that work in low light. Its video camera can transmit
live images to the command center in Saudi Arabia or directly to the
cockpit of an AC-130 gunship. Soon, it will be able to do the same for
other aircraft, the Pentagon says.
Most important, Pentagon officials said, the Predator can stay aloft for
nearly 24 hours, allowing it to fly from bases in Pakistan or Uzbekistan,
hang over Afghan target areas for about 14 hours and then return to base.
But the Predator has problems. It is slow- moving and operates at
relatively low altitudes, making it easy prey for antiaircraft fire. At
least two Predators have crashed in Iraq this year, presumably shot down,
officials said. They are also extremely vulnerable to icing, and it is not
clear whether they can operate in the brutal Afghan winter.
The Global Hawk, an experimental unmanned spy plane, is intended to
address some of those problems: it can fly above 60,000 feet, well above
anti-aircraft fire, and its longer range and greater speed enable it to
watch a much broader swath of country.
But the Global Hawk also has its limitations. Video cameras are not
effective at high altitudes, so the Global Hawk produces only still
images, albeit very high resolution images, Air Force officials said. Its
digital images also cannot be downloaded directly to other aircraft yet,
so they must first be analyzed by commanders far from the battlefield.
That has reduced the aircraft's utility in providing intelligence on
moving or changing targets.

For all the advances in unmanned technology, however, the air campaign was
most effective when human ground spotters were present, senior Pentagon
officials said.
Since biplanes first dropped crude bombs in World War I, the military has
been using ground spotters to direct pilots to targets. But recent
technological improvements - smaller G.P.S. units, better lasers,
hand-held range finders that calculate coordinates, and radios that allow
soldiers to talk or send maps and close-up photographs to pilots - have
made the spotters far more effective.
Moreover, the Pentagon has greatly expanded and standardized training for
spotters, known as forward air controllers, so they can work with pilots
from other services. In Afghanistan, Air Force air controllers traveling
on horseback with Army Special Forces and Northern Alliance troops called
in strikes from Navy pilots flying off aircraft carriers hundreds of miles
away.
"The more people we get on the ground, the better the targeting
information is," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
In Saudi Arabia, American commanders could watch all these moving parts on
a big screen, directing aircraft like pieces on a chess board. And in the
air, pilots were constantly receiving new intelligence on targets,
enabling them to redraw plans in midflight and strike fleeing soldiers,
tanks, truck convoys and other targets.
"We could change targets at any point," Captain Mercer said. "That used to
be something we did by exception. In Afghanistan, we did it all the time."

The Warplanes
High Technology for Big Bombers
The most stark example of the new flexibility was the B-52. First built in
the 1950's to drop nuclear bombs on the Soviet Union, the huge jet became
best known for carpeting North Vietnam with inaccurate free-fall bombs.
Now B-52's carry precision munitions, and their mission has drastically
changed, as the cluster-bomb strikes on Kunduz illustrated.
Flying 15-hour roundtrip missions from the British island of Diego Garcia
in the Indian Ocean, aging B-52 and B-1 bombers refitted with advanced
electronics and communications gear could loiter over the battlefield
waiting for Special Operations forces on the ground to call in strikes.
Some missions had pre-planned targets, ranging from troops to tanks to
command posts. Other times, the bomber crews received fresh intelligence
en route, requiring them to throw out their original attack plan and start
over from scratch.
"We'd pick a spot we thought safe, and wait for a tasking," a female B-1
pilot, who spoke on condition she be identified by her call sign, Hogg,
said in a telephone interview from Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., after
returning home recently.
Just as the JDAM enhanced the precision of gravity bombs, a similar device
called the Wind Corrected Munitions Dispenser has improved the accuracy of
cluster bombs.
Until now, munitions containing cluster bombs could be easily blown off
course when dropped at high altitudes, increasing the risk of spewing
bomblets on civilians.

Each munitions dispenser costs $8,900, and when fitted to the cluster
munition's tail, it keeps the bomb on course through high winds until it
is ready to disgorge its bomblets. The refitted cluster bombs usually hit
within 30 yards of their targets, analysts say.
The B-52's improved weaponry and enhanced data links have allowed
commanders greater flexibility in deploying the bomber.
"The B-52's take off, and they don't know what their targets are going to
be until they arrive," said Gen. John P. Jumper, the Air Force chief of
staff. "We are inventing these tactics more or less in the course of
battle so we get this job done."

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company

Interesting read, [b]warlord[/b] — thanks for posting!

That's the first time I'd seen a printed admission that the deaths of three American Special Forces soldiers near Kandahar were caused by calling in the wrong coordinates. From what I've heard, normal procedure is to call in both the desired strike coordinates AND the position of the caller. On the face of it, that sounds like a recipe for disaster, but I'm sure there are safeguards in place to avoid reversing the 2 coordinates (as was what apparently happened in this case).