Document created: 6 December 01
Published Aerospace Power Journal - Winter  2001

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Airpower versus a Fielded Army

A Construct for Air Operations in the
Twenty-First Century

SINCE OPERATION DESERT Storm, Air Force strategic planners have been enamored with Col John Warden’s five concentric rings and the underlying assumption that enemy military forces are of limited importance compared to enemy leadership. However, Warden’s attractive paradigm reduces airpower’s flexibility when a de-emphasis on attacking military forces serves to atrophy the Air Force’s ability to strike ground forces. The joint force air component commander (JFACC) is tasked with attacking centers of gravity identified by the objectives of the National Command Authorities (NCA) and the joint force commander. Recent shifts in policy and strategy have favored airpower as the military instrument of choice to attack not only traditional strategic targets but also fielded forces, independent of friendly ground operations. As air operations in both Bosnia and Kosovo illustrate, political leaders are seeking to coerce opponents by ordering direct attacks on fielded forces, conducted primarily—if not solely—by airpower.

Although people still debate over whether such attacks represent the most effective use of airpower, events over the last decade have made this strategy a reality. During that time, America’s leaders have directed the Air Force to attack an enemy’s fielded forces, so our ser-vice should prepare itself to do so again when the next call comes. Valuable lessons from the experience in Operation Allied Force point to a new, systemic, operational, and tactical framework for more efficiently conducting air operations against fielded forces.

Operation Allied Force: Attacking
the Serbian Third Army

For anyone who believed that one could attack fielded forces only on a flat, open desert, Allied Force demonstrated otherwise. During that operation, a combination of context, policy, and overall military strategy compelled airmen to apply airpower in direct attack of a fielded army. The much-publicized caveat that the Serbian army would face no threat from North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ground forces further complicated the situation.¹

Planning for possible air operations against Serbia began in earnest in May 1998. By July, Gen Wesley Clark, supreme allied commander Europe, was focusing NATO’s military actions around a phased air operation.² However, during negotiations at Rambouillet, France, General Clark ordered the Air Force’s combined force air component commander, Lt Gen Michael Short, to increase the scope of planned attacks from punitive strikes against fixed targets to attacks on the Serbian Third Army deployed in Kosovo (fig. 1), even though General Short was not convinced that direct attacks constituted the best use of airpower.³ However, NATO drove the planning, and its stated military objectives included two that dealt directly with the Serbian fielded forces: deterring further Serbian action against the Kosovar Albanians and reducing the ability of the Serbian military to continue offensive operations against them.⁴

This was no easy task! Concealed within the verdant, cloud-covered valley of Kosovo roamed 40,000 soldiers of the Serbian Third Army equipped with hundreds of tanks, armored personnel carriers (APC), and artillery pieces—interspersed with over a million Kosovar Albanians. In addition, a wall of mobile, radar-guided surface-to-air missiles; man-portable missiles; and antiaircraft pieces, as well as a squadron of MiG-21 fighters, protected Third Army from NATO air forces.⁵

In developing plans to use against the Serbian Third Army, US air planners relied on suppression of enemy air defenses and electronic jamming assets to confuse and degrade the Serbs’ integrated air defense system. But after strike aircraft could safely enter Kosovo, two tactical problems remained: how to locate and identify the targets and how to successfully attack them while limiting collateral damage. A-10 and F-16CG (Block 40) forward air controllers airborne (FACA) trained in visual reconnaissance and air-strike control would identify targets and limit collateral damage.⁶ FACAs would search out targets identified either from intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) assets during premission planning or real time from joint surveillance, target attack radar system (JSTARS) aircraft. After the targets were identified, the FACAs would control strikes, using available NATO aircraft.

Air attacks against targets in Serbia and Kosovo were conducted under strict rules of engagement (ROE), part of which included an above-ground-level altitude restriction of 15,000 feet (later lowered to 10,000 feet for FACAs) to protect NATO aircraft from hostile ground fire.⁷ As Allied Force progressed, the ROE underwent continual adjustment to restrict the types of targets for attack. By early June, FACAs had to receive permission from the combined air operations center (CAOC) for any targets attacked.

NATO’s first air missions against Serbian fielded forces occurred on 30 March.⁸ FACAs circled overhead, searching for Serbian Third Army units that kept their military vehicles off the roads as hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanian refugees streamed out of Kosovo. Problems quickly surfaced for FACAs facing a static enemy. Intelligence support and imagery provided to aircrews proved insufficient to accomplish the mission. Tactical imagery of the Serbian Third Army was inadequate, both in quantity and timeliness of dissemination. Poor weather over Kosovo during late March and early April prevented reconnaissance assets from producing imagery, and the products received were outdated. Even with good weather, requests for tactical imagery had to compete at the NCA level for priority. Aircrews often received timely photographs of refugees hiding in the hills but no accompanying imagery of the Serbian armor that had driven them there.⁹ In-theater tactical-reconnaissance assets were available; however, dissemination of the information proved inadequate.

Serbian soldiers sitting still on the sides of the roads during strike windows limited the usefulness of JSTARS and its ground moving-target indicator.¹⁰ But the real limitation of JSTARS was the lack of a viable, onboard target-identification capability. Even when JSTARS could see vehicles moving around Kosovo, it still could not distinguish a tank from a tractor pulling a trailer loaded with refugees. Eventually, JSTARS crews did develop tactics in an attempt to overcome this deficiency and, on occasion, were able to correlate vehicle-identification data supplied by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to provide real-time targeting information to FACAs. For example, the Predator UAV could identify targets through its real-time video output. Yet, UAVs also experienced efficiency limitations during Allied Force, due mostly to the lack of integration with operational forces. UAVs had never been integrated into the air tasking order with strike packages, and the lack of training between UAVs and FACAs made tasks such as altitude deconfliction and target talk-ons difficult. Even so, the ability of UAVs to locate and identify Serbian forces was a much-needed capability, and operational techniques were patched together as quickly as possible. In the end, UAV-FACA employment techniques were still in their infancy as Allied Force drew to a close, and they had yet to produce a significant number of target engagements.

NATO’s in-theater intelligence organizations at the joint analysis center in Molesworth, England, and at the CAOC in Vicenza, Italy, monitored the Serbian Third Army. Neither facility was fully prepared for the enormous demand for tactical imagery that aircrews needed to attack fielded forces efficiently. In particular, lack of a strong Army intelligence presence at the CAOC was part of the problem.¹¹ This overall weakness in intelligence capability existed throughout the operation, but arrival of the Army’s Task Force Hawk in Tirana, Albania, and construction of a flexible targeting cell within the CAOC improved matters somewhat.

Given the limited support from intelligence, imagery, JSTARS, and UAVs, the FACA had to independently locate and identify the Serbian army. Specifically, FACAs had to positively identify all targets prior to attack. Visual target identification proved difficult during the day and virtually impossible at night, even with the use of night-vision goggles and targeting pods. On the other hand, despite the difficulty of locating and identifying targets, destroying them was relatively easy after they were identified. Precision-guided munitions proved effective against Serbian armor, as did cluster bomb units and general-purpose bombs dropped by aircraft with computed delivery systems. For the most part, once FACAs identified a target, aircraft could kill it.

Despite this capability, results against Third Army were mixed and merit some explanation. Measuring the effectiveness of air strikes proved as problematic as locating and identifying Serbian armor. Unlike Desert Storm, whose mission objectives called for 50 percent attrition of Iraq’s armor, no such quantitative objective was ever set for Allied Force. Furthermore, total numbers of Serbian armored vehicles in Kosovo were never well tracked, leaving no way for NATO intelligence to adequately assess attrition rates, even if that had been an objective. When asked in a NATO news conference of September 1999 how much of Third Army had been destroyed, General Clark replied, “Enough.”¹² The measurement of success lay not in counting the number of vehicles destroyed but in how well air attacks prevented the Serbs from conducting offensive operations and deterred them from acting against the Kosovar Albanians.

Obviously, battle damage assessment (BDA) is critical because war fighters need to know whether they have met objectives and airmen need to know whether they have to fly in harm’s way once again to meet those objectives. Unfortunately, controversy has clouded Allied Force’s BDA ever since the air strikes in Kosovo ended. But that controversy has concerned a discrepancy in numbers reported from several sources (table 1). Regardless of which numbers approximate reality, however, an accurate number/percentage of vehicles destroyed remains meaningless without some yardstick to measure overall effectiveness.¹³

Table 1
Tactical BDA Estimates from Allied Force

Architecture for Attacking
Fielded Forces

Allied Force demonstrated that target location, identification, and BDA are three of the most important and challenging aspects of applying airpower. Easily located and identified fixed-target sets tended to be politically sensitive, and the targets most politically acceptable for attack—namely, the Serbian Third Army in Kosovo—were much more difficult to locate and identify. Yet, how were our airmen trained going into this war? They were trained, prepared, and organized to attack exactly the types of fixed targets that ended up being off limits! And they were relatively untrained and ill prepared to attack a mobile army in the field. The challenge of attacking fielded forces from the air is not limited to the Air Force but requires a joint/ combined approach. The Air Force has no monopoly on the requisite ISR assets and intelligence expertise; furthermore, given the realities of the joint/combined command structure, an airman might not make key airpower decisions.

Therefore, the argument presented here does not call for the Air Force to abandon its capabilities for strategic attack, based on the politically sensitive nature of its target set. Rather, it urges acknowledgment and acceptance of the reality that enemy fielded forces will continue to be viable targets and that the Air Force will continue to attack these forces prior to the onset of, or in the absence of, friendly ground operations.

Again, the key to future success lies with target identification and BDA. The JFACC must contend with the unique challenge and special requirements of attacking an army from the air without the helpful, clarifying presence of friendly ground forces.

When attacking fielded forces, one must integrate a unique set of capabilities into a system designed for the rigorous, fast-paced nature of war against a reactive and mobile enemy. At the operational level, the JFACC must have a joint air operations center (JAOC) with an intelligence shop (J-2) capable of maintaining an up-to-date ground order of battle while simultaneously processing applicable ISR products for real-time or near-real-time use by combat operations—a monumental task. Intelligence should use an Allied Force–styled flex-targeting cell to receive and integrate BDA to continuously update the battle-space picture for the JFACC. At the tactical level, a mixture of national- and tactical-level ISR assets should be used to locate, identify, and track fielded forces in real or near-real time. Joint assets such as the US Navy’s tactical-reconnaissance pods or the US Army’s counterbattery radar may be required to provide capabilities not available from Air Force assets. Terminal-attack-control assets capable of final target identification and collateral damage assessment will remain critical, as will strikers trained to attack mobile targets and accurately deliver a variety of munitions.

It is at the tactical level that targets are physically destroyed, and the JFACC influences these attacks by designating terminal-control authority¹⁴ as necessary to address the nature of the conflict and the types of missions conducted. During close air support (CAS) missions in proximity to and coordination with friendly ground forces, terminal-control authority resides with a terminal-attack controller.¹⁵ Likewise, when attacking fielded forces without the help of friendly ground forces, the JFACC may assign terminal-control authority to an airborne terminal-attack controller in order to limit the potential for collateral damage and to accept responsibility for the difficult task of locating and identifying mobile targets.

Terminal-attack controllers must first be able to develop and maintain situational awareness in order to orchestrate successful attacks. This means surviving within the battle space in order to observe and maneuver to identify not only targets but also threats and the potential for collateral damage. Second, controllers must have onboard target-identification capability. Third, they must be trained in attacking fielded forces, which entails recognizing enemy armor and understanding how to direct strikers onto targets. Controllers must also be familiar with strikers’ capabilities and limitations as well as tactics. In short, controllers are key tacticians who determine what targets will be attacked and how.

Terminal air controllers have responsibility for final identification and prioritization of targets, but the striker delivers the firepower.¹⁶ In determining the suitability of a striker, one must consider three critical characteristics: the aircrew’s training, the platform, and the munitions available. During Vietnam, the entire Air Force fighter community was well versed in CAS procedures. With the introduction of the A-10 in the late 1970s, however, CAS became the specialty of one airframe, while the remainder of the fighter force gravitated towards interdiction, strategic attack, and air-superiority missions. Today, most fighter aircrews no longer receive training in CAS. Although, by definition, attacking fielded forces without the presence of friendly ground troops is not CAS, the fundamental skills remain the same.¹⁷ These skills include an understanding of terminology and coordination procedures, target marking and talk-on procedures, restrictions, and final control procedures. Aircrews performing striker missions must also have proficiency in weapons delivery. Only direct hits kill armor, particularly armor that is dug in or on the move. The potential for collateral damage may further restrict attack headings or delivery options, making successful attack more difficult.

Strikers must also have a survivable platform—a factor the JFACC needs to weigh against the risk of shootdown. The platform must also have a compatible secure-communications suite. Otherwise, strikers may degrade communications security, which, in turn, degrades survivability. Further, the platform should be able to accurately deliver a variety of munitions, whether precision-guided or free-fall weapons delivered from the altitude dictated by the ROE. The best possible aircrew proficiency imaginable cannot make up for a platform that cannot deliver munitions with requisite accuracy.¹⁸

Finally, munitions must be able to destroy the target without causing undue collateral damage. The munition of choice depends upon the situation, but a combination of precision and nonprecision weapons normally provides the flexibility needed for successful aerial attack.¹⁹

Obviously, this architecture for attacking fielded forces is systemic, relying on the existing JAOC structure and modifications at the operational and tactical levels to promote time-critical targeting required to attack mobile targets successfully. The flex-targeting cell becomes the central location for processing ISR inputs and for developing and distributing targeting products, as well as maintaining the enemy’s order of battle. Operations (J-3) then becomes responsible for the command and control of assets, ensuring the translation of the commander’s intent into appropriate action. At the tactical level, terminal air controllers are responsible for identifying and prioritizing targets as well as determining attack restrictions, based on criteria such as potential collateral damage or ROE. Finally, with inputs and guidance from the terminal air controller, the striker completes the attack.

Conclusion

Given US policy makers’ current preference for using airpower in crisis situations, the US military should prepare to support an air-first strategy. Its services need to organize, train, and equip for such operations. Airpower can destroy what it finds; however, an enemy under air attack quickly adapts, using dispersal and deception to conceal his location. Based on the experience of Allied Force, a systems approach helps to efficiently locate and attack such an enemy. At the operational level, the JAOC’s J-2 requires a flex-targeting cell, manned by Air Force and Army intelligence personnel, to build and maintain situational awareness on enemy ground forces and to process ISR products for near-real-time targeting and BDA. Intelligence must have immediate access to a variety of ISR assets, and it must be able to process the information quickly. This includes not only Air Force and national assets but also joint and combined assets, such as Army and coalition UAVs, counterbattery radar, and Navy and coalition tactical-reconnaissance platforms.

This systems approach will be effective only if one can prosecute the targeting information at the tactical level. Terminal air controllers, such as FACAs, must have the capability to locate and identify targets on the battlefield. Advances in optics and infrared targeting systems continue to increase the capability of medium-altitude target identification during day-and-night operations. Likewise, developing tactics, techniques, and procedures during peacetime to more fully integrate UAVs into operations will improve the target-marking or talk-on ability of these aircraft. Finally, strikers must train with FACAs to attack mobile targets and become familiar with the unique and flexible nature of attacking fielded forces.

The Air Force needs to adjust its training and tactics. The adage of “train the way you fight” has validity. It makes sense to take into combat time-tested tactics and techniques honed during peacetime training. In the heat of battle, military forces have no option other than fighting the way they have trained. Training develops the tactical skills and mind-set that define a combat force’s capabilities. Major exercises such as Red Flag and Air Warrior should incorporate attacks on fielded forces without the presence of friendly ground forces as a primary mission. Given this mission’s unique challenges, if the Air Force fails to develop adequate training or effective tactics, it will likely fail to meet the combat expectations of either the theater commander in chief or the NCA.

Notes

1. This article uses the terms Serbia and Serbian to refer to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and its forces, respectively.

2. Air War over Serbia: Initial Report (Ramstein Air Base, Germany: United States Air Forces in Europe, Studies and Analysis Directorate, April 2000), 8.

3. General Short believed that the key to meeting NATO’s objectives lay in attacking the political leadership in Belgrade. Lt Gen Michael Short, USAF, retired, lecture, School of Advanced Airpower Studies, Maxwell AFB, Ala., 21 November 2000.

4. Air War over Serbia, 9.

5. R. Jeffrey Smith and William Drozdiak, “Anatomy of a Purge,” Washington Post, 11 April 1999, A1.

6. Lt Col Phil M. Haun, unpublished A-10 war diary, March–June 1999. Eventually, FACAs expanded to include US Navy F-14s and Marine F/A-18D Hornets.

7. Ibid. Later, further modifications to the ROE allowed strike aircraft to fly as low as 8,000 feet above ground level during diving deliveries of weapons. This altitude restriction was further reduced to 5,000 feet after the bombing of a Kosovar refugee column by F-16CG FACAs on 14 April 1999.

8. Due to poor weather over Kosovo, the first strikes against mobile targets did not take place until 6 April.

9. Lt Steven Smith, intelligence officer, 81st Fighter Squadron, discussions with author, April 1999.

10. JSTARS is a long-range, air-to-ground surveillance system aboard the E-8C (a modified Boeing 707) consisting of (1) a synthetic-aperture radar capable of producing an image of a selected area and (2) a moving-target indicator designed to locate slow-moving ground targets.

11. Unlike Air Force intelligence, Army intelligence assesses the capabilities of the enemy army. Its familiarity with the ISR assets best suited for observing enemy ground forces adds a wealth of expertise to the CAOC in this area.

12. Gen Wesley Clark, USA, and Brig Gen John Corley, USAF, NATO press conference, Brussels, Belgium, 16 September 1999, on-line, Internet, 18 September 2001, available from "http://www.nato.int/kosovo/press/p990916a.htm" .

13. Briefing, Secretary of Defense William Cohen and Gen Henry Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, subject: Initial BDA Assessment, Washington, D.C., 10 June 1999, on-line, Internet, October 2000, available from http://www.defenselink. mil/news/Jun1999/t06101999_t0610asd.html. On 16 June 1999, Lt Gen Nebojsa Pavkovic of the Serb army refuted the numbers offered by Cohen and Shelton, citing a much lower total. Rebecca Grant, “True Blue: The Real Story behind the Kosovo Numbers Game,” AFA Issue Brief, 1 June 2000, on-line, Internet, October 2000, available from "http://www.afa.org/library/issues/trueblue.html" . By mid-July, General Clark had ordered an Air Force mission-effectiveness analysis team to go see what was on the ground. On 16 September, General Clark presented NATO’s BDA—similar to Cohen and Shelton’s but with slightly lower numbers, based on multiple strikes that had previously been double-counted. Clark and Corley, NATO press conference.

14. Air Force Doctrine Document (AFDD) 2-1.3, Counterland, 27 August 1999, 98. Terminal control, a type of air control, is the authority to direct the maneuver of aircraft delivering ordnance to a specific target.

15. Ibid. A terminal-attack controller is a qualified officer or enlisted member who, from a forward ground or airborne position, provides terminal control to aircraft performing CAS to ground forces.

16. This does not mean that controllers with inherent kill capability may not perform both controller and striker functions.

17. AFDD 2-1.3, 92. CAS involves air action by fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft against hostile targets in proximity to friendly forces, requiring detailed integration of each air mission with the fire and movement of those forces.

18. An excellent example is use of the British GR-7 during Allied Force. Although Royal Air Force pilots were some of the most professional and well trained available, at medium altitude the GR-7 delivered the BL-755 cluster bomb unit extremely inaccurately due to the absence of a computed delivery solution for this munition. Thus, the pilots had to perform a modified manual delivery from medium altitude with the aid of an electro-optical targeting pod. The first canister impacts were recorded as far away as one to two kilometers from the target. Haun diary.

19. A common misunderstanding is that the use of precision munitions lowers the potential for collateral damage. Although precision munitions such as laser-guided bombs or Maverick missiles are more accurate than free-fall munitions, if precision weapons do not guide properly, they can miss their targets by miles. Compare this to free-fall general-purpose bombs delivered from a dive, which might miss by meters but never by miles.

Lt Col Phil “Goldie” Haun (BA, Harvard University; MA, Vanderbilt University) is a student at the School of Advanced Airpower Studies, Maxwell AFB, Alabama. He has served as chief of weapons and tactics for the 52d Fighter Wing at Spangdahlem AB, Germany; flight commander of the 25th Fighter Squadron at Osan AB, South Korea; and instructor of economics at the United States Air Force Academy. A graduate of the USAF A-10 Weapons School and Air Command and Staff College, Colonel Haun has published articles in Air Land Sea Bulletin and Flight Journal Magazine.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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