Integrating carrier-based electronic attack into conventional army doctrine

Military Review, May-June, 2003 by Ronald Reis, Robbins Glenn F.

THE PROLIFERATION, of affordable communications technology provides even remote, developing countries with substantial connectivity. One person with a cellular phone or an off-the-shelf, push-to-talk radio can influence a battle's outcome. A powerful example of this occurs in the movie Black Hawk Down.(1) A small boy holds a cellular phone high above his head to transmit the sound of Black Hawk helicopters flying toward Mogadishu. If that sound had never reached its intended recipient, would the battle have unfolded differently? Joint force commanders in the modern battle arena must consider this question. The lives of their soldiers might depend on the answer.

Well before sunrise on 17 August 2002 in the North Arabian Sea, a lone EA-6B Prowler catapulted from the deck of the nuclear-powered attack aircraft carrier USS George Washington while the rest of Carrier Air Wing 17 (CVN-17) slept. The aircraft and its four-member crew turned north and headed for Afghanistan to support the initial airborne assault of Operation Mountain Sweep. The Prowler crew's mission was to deny the free and instantaneous flow of tactical information to and from the enemy's decisionmakers on the battlefield with preplanned electronic attack (EA). This was the first of 13 EA-6B missions flown in direct support of Operation Mountain Sweep, and it marked an evolutionary step toward a symbiotic relationship between conventional U.S. Army ground forces and the EA-6B community. The Army requested this support to minimize the vulnerabilities of large rotary-wing aircraft and mechanized troop movements that had come to light in earlier operations. This new relationship was the result of several key events and the coincidental gathering of the right personnel at the right place at the right time.

Operation Anaconda, code-named after the Union Army's plan to encircle and strangle the Confederacy during the Civil War, took place in early March 2002 in Afghanistan. The operation, which was designed to be the final blow against the last-known substantial force of al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters, took place in the Shah-i-khot Valley, a rugged mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan. In this same valley, in 1987, the Soviet Union lost over 250 soldiers in a single day of fighting.

The Army had opted for light infantry tactics and maneuver warfare using CH-47 Chinooks to place troops in key positions. Stiff enemy resistance forced a withdrawal after two CH-47 Chinooks were shot down and five more were damaged. Ten U.S. servicemen died. Unfortunately, pockets of determined enemy still remained, and the Army went back to the planning table to build another operation to expunge al-Queda and Taliban fighters from this notoriously dangerous region.

The Prowler Myth

During early summer 2002, the Army conducted cordon and search operations in central Afghanistan. By this time, the George Washington and CVW-17 had relieved the USS John E Kennedy and CVW-7 in the Gulf of Oman. CVW-17 was then tasked with direct support of coalition combat operations over Afghanistan.

The conventional Army's reluctance to use preemptive jamming in Afghanistan resulted from several factors. First, Army planners did not know that EA-6Bs were available to support them prior to Operation Mountain Sweep. As a result, the idea to incorporate carrier-based electronic attack came late in the planning process and was never properly staffed. Second, there was a misconception of potential fratricide against friendly forces' communications because of the lack of working understanding EA-6B capabilities. As a result, the EA-6Bs' unique ability to control the electromagnetic spectrum was not maximized.

Instead of helping the Army by denying al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters electronic communications, EA-6Bs were flying a mission that the Coalition Air Operations Center (CAOC) labeled as on-call electronic warfare. The CAOC tasked the EA-6Bs with conducting electronic surveillance (ES) while being an airborne alert asset for communications jamming. The mission was flown at the same time and to the same location each day. The livelihood of a request for jamming support during that small window of coverage was remote. Because they did not communicate with an air liaison officer or ground forward air controller, EA6B crews did not clearly understand what was taking place on the ground. Their mission lacked focus, and no specific tasking was ever delineated. As a result, electronic surveillance was circumstantial and random. Because the time between collection and analysis was often weeks, rarely, if ever, did EA-6B missions produce tactically relevant information. If an airborne refueling asset dropped out, the EA-6B was the first aircraft to be cut from the air tasking order. Also, if close air support (CAS) assets were called in to drop live ordnance, the EA-6B was ordered to return to the ship.

Days before the George Washington arrived in the Gulf of Oman, liaison officers (LNOs) from CVW-17's EA squadron were sent to the CAOC and remained in place for the entire time the battle group was in theater. Two CVW-17 LNOs were graduates of the Electronic Attack Weapons School and were Prowler tactics instructors (PTIs), the backbone of an EA-6B squadron's tactical expertise. PTIs undergo extensive training inside and outside the cockpit that concentrates as much on integration with the joint community as on tactical innovation.