Ghosts in the Machine: The Human Link in Precision Strike 'Kill Chain'

Sea Power, Jul 2004 by Keeter, Hunter C

While the term "precision strike" conjures high technology - GPS satellites and laser target designators guiding smart weapons straight through the eye of a needle - there is an often-overlooked human aspect.

As military leaders look at the kinds of effects they want to achieve in battle and post-conflict, the definition of precision strike is broadening. Skilled human operators on the ground, linked by information technology to command-and-control networks, are emerging as important enablers for precision strike capability.

On the morning of March 24, 2003, 35 U.S. Army AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopters of the 1st Battalion, 227th Aviation, 1st Cavalry Division attacked T-72 tanks of the Iraqi Republican Guard Medina Division between Karbala and al Hilah, 60 miles south of Baghdad. The AH-64Ds used powerful targeting systems to direct 30mm automatic cannon fire and millimeter-wave radar-guided Hellfire missiles to kill three Iraqi tanks. The Iraqis answered with a fusillade from low-tech small arms and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, battering 31 of the Longbows back from the line of engagement. One helicopter crashed and the Iraqis captured its crew.

At the same time, in western Iraq, a minimally equipped, 12-man U.S. Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha team destroyed 14 Iraqi tanks by calling in air strikes against them.

"The big advantage for using Special Forces is the fact that control of the weapons is almost covert," a U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) official told Sea Power. "The enemy really does not have any idea where the bombs are coming from or how they have been targeted."

In fairness, the incident near Karbala perhaps was overinterpreted by the press as an invalidation of using $25 million rotary wing platforms for close air support (CAS) and deep strike. Attack helicopters there and elsewhere have proved their toughness and value. Post-conflict, the Apache and the U.S. Marine Corps' AH-1W Super Cobra have been in high demand in Iraq as armed intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms.

What the Alpha team in western Iraq showed, though, was that big-budget platforms (an AH-64D, including its weapon system, costs almost $25 million) aren't the only links in the "kill chain" of precision strike. Human operators on the ground can use information technology - such as satellite telephones and programmable waveform radios - to access a virtual network that includes command-and-control centers, the ISR community and weapon systems platforms such as aircraft, ships and land-based artillery units. The result of this linkage is that the human operator - whether he is Special Forces, Army or Air Force joint forward air controller, or in a Marine air and naval gunfire liaison company - himself becomes a precision strike asset.

The Department of Defense now is re-evaluating approaches to precision strike, broadening the definition to emphasize effects over specific platforms or weapon systems, and human operators increasingly are the arbiters of those effects. A senior Navy official described it as "changing from an attrition warfare concept to a concept enabled by pervasive knowledge, created by sensors, married with persistent precision strike capability. That changes fundamentally the way of warfare."

Placing the Bull's-Eye

Information is the key to the success or failure of precision strike operations, according to Rear Adm. Timothy L. Heely, the Naval Air Systems Command's program executive officer for strike weapons and unmanned aviation.

"We can hit anything, any target we aim at. The challenge is to make sure it is the right target. ... That is the critical problem," Heely told Sea Power. "That is why we have people on the ground, someone who knows where and how to place the bull's-eye."

Information helps precision-guided munitions find and kill their targets, but it also saves lives by building a more complete picture of friendly and enemy forces.

Recalling the days of grease pencils and acetate - when maps showed icons for allied forces drawn in blue and opposing forces drawn in red - the concept is called "blue-force" tracking, or "combat identification."

As Sun Tzu wrote 2,500 years ago in the Art of War, One who knows the enemy and knows himself will not be in danger in a hundred battles. One who does not know the enemy but knows himself will sometimes win, sometimes lose. One who does not know the enemy and does not know himself will be in dan- ger in every battle.

For all of the ways technology contributes to the collection and dissemination of information, it has limits when it comes to blue-force tracking, according to Lt. Col. Brian McKinney, a project officer with the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory at Quantico, Va.

"Today, I can only tell if a target is a good guy; I cannot tell whether that target is a noncombatant or an enemy," he said. "Our situational awareness on the battlefield is better now than it ever has been before and as our communications systems improve, our blue-force situational awareness also will improve. We are, however, a long way off from knowing where every soldier is or how he is doing on the battlefield."