The current battle damage assessment paradigm is obsolete

Air & Space Power Journal, Winter, 2004 by Hugh Curry

I just want to say this. I want to say it gently, but I want to say it firmly. There is a tendency for the world to say to America, "The big problems of the world are yours; you go and sort them out," and then to worry when America wants to sort them out.

--Prime Minister Tony Blair

DURING OPERATION IRAQI Freedom, the reporting of battle damage assessment (BDA) was neither fast enough nor adequate for operational commanders to make timely, informed decisions. (1) This problem is nothing new. Although we saw the same sort of debilitating core difficulties with BDA in after-action reporting from Operations Desert Storm, Deliberate Force, and Allied Force, we cannot blame the folks doing the job. The BDA analysts do the best they can to produce timely, accurate, and relevant assessments. The problem lies with the current BDA standard, which evolved from the attrition-based warfare conducted during World War II. Issues with BDA in Iraqi Freedom--nearly identical to findings identified in after-action reports of operations over the last 13 years--include inadequate tracking of mission execution; lack of a common BDA database; lack of BDA education and training; problems created by modern warfare's unprecedented speed, scope, and scale; and the low priority of BDA collection. Unfortunately, we had not resolved these matters by the time Iraqi Freedom began, although much well-intended time, effort, and money had gone into solving problems associated with legacy doctrine, tactics, techniques, and procedures. The type of warfare waged during Iraqi Freedom--characterized by technologyenabled effects-based planning and execution in a hyperoperations-tempo battlespace--has made the current BDA paradigm obsolete. In short, modern warfare begs for a new effects-based assessment approach, which the current BDA paradigm cannot provide.

According to Joint Publication 3-60, Joint Doctrine for Targeting, dated 17 January 2002, which describes the assessment terms and processes used by the joint community, the combatant command's staff members are responsible for all assessments produced during campaigns executed in its theater of operations (III-1, -4, -7). They typically assign teams of analysts to validate all assessments, including tactical assessments produced by the components. These processes described in current doctrine have their origins in World War II, Korean War, and Vietnam War legacies of slow, deliberate, nonintegrated, sequential, attrition-based campaigns. Such a mind-set has unnecessarily forced the joint force commanders' (JFC) staffs into confirming tactical, kinetic attacks at the expense of evaluating whether or not missions have produced broader lethal/nonlethal operational- and strategic-level effects that meet theater objectives. This legacy depends upon "pictures" or electro-optical images to definitively confirm kinetic attacks on targets. Historically, analysts rely on the delivery of images that normally come from national technical means, which typically causes assessment to lag behind the pace of modern operations. Thus, the combatant commander might unnecessarily delay operations while waiting on individual images of tactical targets.

To speed up delivery of the product, we can compress the process timeline by decentralizing responsibility for tactical assessment down to the component designated by the JFC to produce specific tactical effects. The component analysts, including weapons-effects experts, have more familiarity with effects generated by their own organic kinetic and nonkinetic weapons and rely on empirical evidence gathered in near real time by their organic sensors. Using predetermined tactical indicators, they can then make more timely assessments, based on how well attacks achieved the predicted tactical effects. In turn, the JFC staffs, integrating component tactical assessments, can concentrate on evaluating the production of higher-level operational effects, based on predetermined operational indicators. This has always been the intent. However, because the JFC staffs stay busy confirming tactical attacks on targets, they cannot concentrate on verifying higher-level lethal and nonlethal effects. Clearly, at a minimum, we need to reevaluate doctrine in light of the modern capability to create operational effects at a faster pace.

Collaborative system-automation tools can resolve many of these problems. After Desert Storm, we emphasized development of an automated, collaborative targeting-database software application that included access to BDA data and reporting, independent of the location of users and distributed BDA producers. Regrettably, after a decade of work, the application has not yet met all user requirements. We must continue the development, certification, and deployment of an assessment-database application interoperable with the Defense Intelligence Agency's Modernized Integrated Database and databases resident in the Theater Battle Management Core Systems, as well as other component command and control systems. Such an application is vitally important to the combatant commands and those distributed BDA producers tasked with supporting them. It will enable BDA-production organizations to deconflict production, making them more efficient and timely.