SOF on the contemporary battlefield

Military Review, May-June, 2003 by Mark Findlay, Robert Green, Eric Braganca

SPECIAL OPERATIONS forces (SOF) and joint air power achieved spectacular results during Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in Afghanistan. This was especially true in the first few months when the eyes of America and the world were watching. The initiative, courage, and strength of character of American fighting men and women shined, and we are all indebted to them.

We decided to investigate the integration of air power with special operations on the ground. We did this to gain insights into the challenges U.S. Armed Forces faced in Afghanistan and how frontline commanders worked together to overcome them.

The integration of airpower with special operations has significant doctrine, organizational, and training implications. As the Joint SOF trainer, Special Operations Command Joint Forces Command (SOCJFCOM) sent SOF joint training teams (JTTs) to assist joint special operations commanders in OEF. They shared insights, practices, and knowledge of the best tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to employ SOF While successful, SOF JTT could have done more to improve air-ground fire integration.

Integrating air power and special operations is not new. In fact, SOF and the joint air community are adept at close integration, and the men on the ground did a great job working with air support. However, at the operational level of war, integration on a noncontiguous battlefield with large indigenous maneuver forces was a new challenge to many. We saw a different paradigm from the traditional one of airpower in support of large maneuvering corps and division elements on a linear battlefield. We learned and adapted. Afterward, the operators and the writers of this article examined the challenges and solutions of fires integration in noncontiguous operations.

We have learned from OEF and hope that these insights are of assistance in future operations. We omitted detailed discussion of the SOF task organization and did not address the multiple SOF headquarters (HQs) effect on the combined force air component commander (CFACC) coordination nor the U.S. Army Central Command's (ARCENT) role as the combined force land component commander (CFLCC).(1)

In Afghanistan during OEF, U.S. forces operated in a noncontiguous battlefield and discovered numerous challenges to coordinating fire with maneuver when no traditional boundary lines demarcated areas of operation. We will discuss these challenges, how commanders overcame them, and offer insights for further improvement. These are key future challenges and offer insights to potential solutions. While these challenges and subsequent insights have a special operations perspective, many have value to future conventional force operations on noncontiguous battlefields.

We address challenges in battlespace geometry, command relationships, air apportionment, and fire support processes for noncontiguous environments. We then share insights on the increased use of gridded areas of operation in conjunction with overlaid killboxes, the value of ground-directed interdiction (GDI) initiatives, greater SOF leverage of joint targeting processes, continuous Blue-Force tracking, and more robust and better trained fire support organizations for SOF. Increased use of delineated areas of operation (AOs) and killbox management techniques will clarify fire support responsibilities. Increased SOF understanding and participation in the targeting process will result in better input into the apportionment process, timely target nominations, and more responsive fire support. This will enable SOF to take full advantage of the effects that joint fires can bring to the fight by better leveraging planned interdiction and strategic attack rather than primarily relying on close air support (CAS). We also support more investigation of the GDI concept in which the ground force identifies targets and directs interdiction fire. We concur with current emerging thoughts on developing an improved air support organization for special operations headquarters (much like the Air Support Operations Center [ASOC] in the corps headquarters) to better facilitate actual execution of fire support for special operations.

Many in SOF and the Air Force have focused on specific technical and tactical training-related challenges for the request and control of close air support. While these might offer some improvements, we believe that harnessing the power of existing command and control (C2) tools offers the best opportunity for integration.

Battlespace Geometry and Command Relationships

Through the first months of OEF, there was minimal establishment of any subordinate to CENTCOM joint operations areas (JOA) or ground AOs in Afghanistan. The CENTCOM commander did not initially assign the land mass of Afghanistan to the theater special operations command (SOC), a joint task force (JTF) commander, or a ground commander. None of these commands was readily capable of performing the functions of targeting, enemy situational awareness, or fire clearance in this large area. Instead, Afghanistan was retained as a CENTCOM area of responsibility. Later in the campaign, the land mass was assigned to the CFLCC and subsequently to the forward land component, the 10th Mountain Division. Even then, it could be argued that the CFLCC was not capable of performing all the functions of owning an area of operation.(2) Nor was the special operations component manned or trained to control such a large area. Neither organization had the C2 capability or the forces to monitor and control such a large area. It was only with the activation of CJTF-180, a joint task force formed around the XVIII Airborne Corps headquarters, that a subordinate joint command was able to monitor and control the Afghanistan AO, designated as a coalition joint operations area (CJOA).