COIN and ISR Operations

Other Anon, yeah I recall reading about SA-24 in Aviation Week. It's truck-mounted and probably not much more slant range than a SA-16/18. It still can't reach altitudes that most UAS fly well above. Simple geometry and AGL is all you need against MANPAD, and of course there are all kinds of manned aircraft countermeasures.

Guess the Russians didn't get the memo or countermeasures because they lost numerous Su-25s and other aircraft to Georgian and friendly MANPADs. More open source. All this OSINT is great and is the only thing I deal in. But it and HUMINT alone are no substitute for UAS and other technical capabilities.

DTI linked from Aviation Week has an article saying the Euro allies are worried about flying low in Libya due to guns because their jets aren't as rugged as A-10s and it said we had pulled the AC-130s. It's hard to get positive ID at high altitude and high speed. Much easier at low altitude and speed I suspect...or if you have good stealthy EO/IR and DAS like F-35.;)

Ken, I misinterpreted your comments as being anti-UAS. The first paragraph was not clear but was essentially saying it is OK to use UAS and MRAPs etc for force protection...despite the study's complaints. Reduced casualties preserve the timelines required to stabilize the situation and train your host nation replacements. High casualties only ensure high pressure to bring troops home prematurely...and they are our sons/daughters after all.

Anon---just a side comment on SEAD/DEAD reference UAS----currently there is an estimated 20,000 plus SA-24s available to the current Libyian military---not a single one has been fired at US/NATO---the reason is not so clear but it keeps NATO well above it's effective range and that includes UAS.

<b>Anonymous at 9:15 PM:</b><blockquote>"Avoidance of unnecessary risk is good. Im confident the 45,000 fewer dead service members of today versus Vietnam appreciate that risk aversion."</blockquote>Probably so but that is really sort of peripheral to the issue of properly merging intelligence assets, products and capabilities.<blockquote>"...grossly overestimate how much UAS cost relative to other manned airpower. Also suspect UAS capabilities and fielding are inaccurately understood. Ken may be recalling stacked helicopters over Vietnam and micromanaging Generals."</blockquote>Actually, I'm not overestimating the costs -- I'm bemoaning the fact that we've known for over 50 years that a need to have better ISR -- including UAVs -- and HUMINT capability and that for fifty years the Army and the Intel community have been dragging their feet and fighting the problem. As stated, parochialism and egos...<br><br>

I'm probably not recalling stacked helicopters as they had little or nothing to do with the ISR problems and had I been, I probably would have provided a link to a Huey, not a Firebee / Lightning Bug article.<blockquote>"Dont examine Desert Storm or even the start of OIF 1 to understand UAS potential... there werent many."</blockquote>That's really the point of my comments. There weren't many -- there should have been plenty; we had adequate usage and result information to know the value but vested interests fought for manned systems and other things.<blockquote>"Army attack reconnaissance aircraft/UAS are maneuver systems. And please dont cite NTC because threat capabilities are exaggerated. Nary a unit succeeds at CTCs yet they all kick booty against actual less capable foes. Save the stealth features for manned aircraft and keep Army UAS cheap."</blockquote>In order:

I agree.

I wouldn't cite the NTC for much of anthing, IMO it is a monumental waste of talent, time and money -- it is not worth the cost.

Agree on keeping Army UAS affordable.

I've read your comment twice. Outside of a few standing broad jumps at erroneous conclsions, it doesn't seem to me to address the point that <b>slapout9</b> and I made -- Most people who are concrend are aware of the points made in the DSB Study and that you make. What my Alabama Airborne Buddy and I are saying is yes to the DSB, yes to your points <b><i>but</i></b> we have known all that for years and talking about it has been an ongoing thing.

Admitting that some things are now, 10 years after we started the latest wars, being done, why is it that no one does anything about many other well identified problems that are still festering 60 (existed in and after Korea, too...), 45 and 20 years ago? Too much talking and not enough doing what makes sense. To recast your opening statement above, real risk avoidance is getting the tools for the job and making sure people do their job. We have failed to do that...

Slapout/Ken,

Recall that Vietnam, like Afghanistan, was an infantry/helicopter war. Ken knows far more aircraft were lost in Vietnam due to accidents, lack of risk mitigation, and aircraft inability to withstand threats. For all the negative talk about risk aversion, it is actually pretty amazing that we have had as few lost aircraft and infantry IED casualties in Afghanistan/Iraq given the harsh flying/driving environment and potent threats. Avoidance of unnecessary risk is good. Im confident the 45,000 fewer dead service members of today versus Vietnam appreciate that risk aversion.

Neither Vietnam nor Afghanistan infantry could cover much ground moving around on foot at a few kms per hour. It is hard to simultaneously argue for a smaller ground footprint, and then demand that it perform more HUMINT and ground reconnaissance over an area the size of Texas. Maybe someone can show us how they used HUMINT ISR effectively for COIN back in Vietnam. Maybe it was better but I recall a half million troops on the ground were required.

Second, believe Slap/Ken grossly overestimate how much UAS cost relative to other manned airpower. Also suspect UAS capabilities and fielding are inaccurately understood. Ken may be recalling stacked helicopters over Vietnam and micromanaging Generals. Perhaps that is happening with UAS, too. But at least UAS assets and other firepower respond rapidly to TIC. Ground leaders, responding manned aircraft, and JTACs often get that same imagery and target telemetry to help make informed COA choices. Dont examine Desert Storm or even the start of OIF 1 to understand UAS potential... there werent many. Fielding efforts since the start of OIF 1 at about nil up until today have resulted in millions of UAS hours flown in about one decade.

Also please dont lump Army and Marine airpower/UAS into the EBO umbrella. It is tactical air support exemplifying decentralized control and execution... something the penny packet crowd likes to say wont work. Yet it does for ground components. Much has changed since WWII.

One study recommendation is to use open source intelligence and HUMINT. We can do that every day, but it is hardly a substitute for UAS. Can you follow a driving high value individual discreetly in your M-ATV or at all on foot? Can you watch a suspect house for days at a time? You want open source intelligence? Defensenews.com has an article about the 2012 House budget. In it, there is specific language protecting the Armys MQ-1C. This program literally flies under or above the weather minding its own business.

So it is out of sight...out of budget if some had their way. MQ-1C might have joined the ranks of Joint Cargo Aircraft and Joint High Speed Vessel in "avoiding duplication." But no redundancy exists because the USAF is giving up all its Predators in favor of more expensive Reapers. So the Army has evolved a better Predator and promises to provide improved tactical direct support at a reasonable price.

Some will claim all "theater-capable" UAS should be under JFACC control, allocated/apportioned on behalf of the Joint Force Commander. That may overemphasize the strategic which airpower advocates tend to favor. After all its hard to hit hiding and hugging close combat targets with big bombs.

Some call UAS "remotely piloted aircraft" because theirs are manually flown by satellite from the U.S. and have pretty good success...as long as commercial satellites survive, arent jammed, and targets don't move. Meanwhile, the Army modestly flies theirs via waypoints instead of joystick, from within the combat theater, in direct and dynamically re-tasked support of Army tactical requirements of that day... rather than just what the J2/CAOC planned three days ago at the start of the ATO cycle.

So we have two successful complementary programs. One is more responsive and dedicated to tactical needs... and costs less with enlisted pilots, yet has fewer crashes due to no manual flight or take-off/landing. The other is effective at strategic support and has greater lethality and Gorgon Stare capabilities at greater expense, greater analysis manpower and bandwidth, and with shorter endurance. Should we claim duplication of effort, or appreciate that competition improves the breed, especially when it is complementary, and proven. There is room for both strategic USAF and tactical Army UAS employment.

My fellow anon poster mentioned threats to UAS and wonders whether they will survive elsewhere. Well it would appear that few of the 45 listed nations that might involve insurgencies would be capable of shooting down UAS easily, especially after a few days/weeks of SEAD/DEAD. North Korea has primarily guns and old radar systems. Iran has some effective radars but sanctions have limited their numbers. North Korea and Iran both have pitiful air forces.

All major combat operations have pre-combat and post-combat phases where threat missiles/fighters are not engaging. Altitude deters most gun and IR threats. Radar threats are real. Live by emitting, die by emitting. Plus all those miniature air-launched decoys will deplete and jam many a missile. UAS cost relatively little. Its a good trade-off for loss of an enemy S-400/500. Few nations will have many of those and once they and fighter threats are gone, the few seldom-emitting mobile radar missiles will be the sole remaining threat.

Apaches and other systems are well-equipped to cue UAS away from radar threats. JSTARS can provide a good location of major threat formations with such mobile radar systems. Fret not about UAS ability to survive and provide RSTA imagery and communications relay for commanders and their wide area security and combined arms maneuver missions.

We employ UAS for more than intelligence after all. Army attack reconnaissance aircraft/UAS are maneuver systems. And please dont cite NTC because threat capabilities are exaggerated. Nary a unit succeeds at CTCs yet they all kick booty against actual less capable foes. Save the stealth features for manned aircraft and keep Army UAS cheap. Army UAS will never have comparable costs of Global Hawk/BAMS, and whatever optionally-manned next gen bomber, UCLASS and MQ-X end up costing. Let officer pilots fly those.

<b>Slapout9:</b><blockquote>"So fifty years and a couple of Jillion dollars later we are just now finding out we need this capability. What have been doing with all the money all these years."</blockquote>Yep. Good question. Aside from the one you cite, there was the old <a href=http://www.spyflight.co.uk/aqm34g.htm><u>Firebee</u></a&gt; and the brouhaha over its data and product usage. Even more recently, is the <a href=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/weapons/drones.html><u>Des… Storm</u></a> usage. Lot of flak about both and Intel not being responsive. This <a href=http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/941015lessonsgulfiv-chap05.pdf><u…; (.pdf)</a> is simply one example of many.

After both those wars, there was much open discussion about use, dissemination and integration with other intel. Those discussions also addressed fixes, new systems and changing the processes. Little happened, mostly due to parochialism and egos. Anyone interested should be able to Google up all sorts of media references.

Thus the discussions, plural, have been ongoing for years and hit the newspapers and both popular and professional magazines. Little bit on the TV news during Viet Nam and more during and after Desert Storm but not nearly as much as was in print after both. I cannot fathom why <b>Anonymous at 6:42 AM who may or may not be Anonymous at 7:54 PM above</b> asked this question:<blockquote>So yes everyone knows the problems for the last years---just why has there been no previous open discussions about them?"</blockquote>

The problem is everyone <i>has</i> been publicly discussing it for years and no one, including us on this Blog, is <i>doing</i> anything about it...

"Not a question of agreeing with the results, I for one do agree -- the article simply states the obvious and cites things that have long been known.

That article could have been written six or eight years ago -- nothing has changed. That's why we're nuts; for not having implemented the things we knew were needed. One quibble over methods but the issues are plain...

Parochialism and egos of decision makers are the problem. Not those who point out -- again -- what anyone with much sense knows." posted by Ken White

Ken, it is older than that, and I sure you were there (LOL). I posted an article called Operation Sky Cav from the Military Review,written about 1958 or 1959. The Army conducted what was considered to be radical operations at the time. They put a new technology... Television on Helicopters and small fixed wing aircraft and fed the real time pictures back to the ground force commander so he could see the enemy and do something about it. So fifty years and a couple of Jillion dollars later we are just now finding out we need this capability. What have been doing with all the money all these years.

Finally a start at a conversation---as the research was yes a statement of existing conditions---but what is interesting is that while the ISR assets have massively increased in the last months-effectiveness in their use has fallen.

If we take a standard MOP/MOE approach one could assume that MOP is running in the 80-90@ ranges in Afghanistan but what about effectiveness---guessing in the 25-35% ranges---the question is why?

If one looks at say Korsovo---that is a very robust HUMINT tied to national SIGINT standard fight--in Afghanistan the standard BCT organic abilities are not being used effectively---why---risk of losses and it takes far more planning to plull off a HUMINT MSO than it does to plan a Pred. flight.

Only now is there the beginnings of a robust HUMINT/CI surge into Afghanistan in support of the BCTs---too little too late IMO. Should have been there five years ago.

If one looks at the way ISR taskings are handled one will notice that in fact the TTPs that the AF requires are still the same as they where 25 yrs ago---the AF ISR side has never changed their processes and yet the Army in using ISR is trying to constantly adapt---why is there no AF vision of close combat ISR?

What happens to the toys that are now in theater when we draw down and shift to CAM homestation/CTC training scenariors---what does that ISR look like where SEAD and DEAD missions must be run prior to even using UAS?

That was lacking from the study.

Let's not even get into the current command staff problems in planning, using and cross cueing ISR at the BCT levels.

So yes everyone knows the problems for the last years---just why has there been no previous open discussions about them?

Obviously many brilliant individuals created this committee effort. But the result is far too much information (talk about processing, exploitation, dissemination problems!) to comprehend. Therefore, its unlikely it could be adequately explained to S-2s and Company Intel cells let alone rank-and-file platoon leaders to actually implement...pretty good MOE/MOP at the end notwithstanding.

In addition, commanders establish their own PIR. This study seems indicative of a desire to centralize intel and PIR at Joint level in the distant J2 and CAOC and stateside DCGS. Just don't understand how distant intel analysts can fully understand local commander/population needs near each COP attempting to provide security for Afghans/Iraqis.

The committee decries ISR assets used for force protection while ignoring that IED and other threats to Soldiers also affect the population. The attitude that UAS should not be armed, killing IED-layers, or providing route/area/zone recon and screen/guard/local security seems to contradict the Capstone Concept advocating the need for Wide Area Security and Combined Arms Maneuver. Many don't seem to want UAS used for RSTA (instead of ISR) supporting BCTs/battalion, or providing comms relay to save lives and enhance mission command.

Yet if Americans were dying in Afghanistan at the same rate they did in Vietnam, we would no longer be in Afghanistan to protect the population due to public outcry. Good old-fashioned armored vehicles, infantry body armor, Joint UAS/rotorcraft/jets have been major reasons why casualties have stayed low. We left Vietnam due to outcries about casualties...not its monetary costs which were far higher than Afghanistan.

You could argue that teaching the ANA to perform stability operations, counterterror, and defense of COPs and Afghanis is far more likely to keep Afghanistan intact and prevent thousands of lost American lives from future terrorist WMDs and other attacks that never occurred when North Vietnam conquered the South.

This study doesn't address any compromise between those advocating COIN and those who say we need fewer forces on the ground and more SOF and counterterror. COIN is great, yet to do what this study advocates would require many more boots on the ground for a much longer period than 2014. There must be a middle ground, and this approach does not address it.

We see this study seeming to imply the need for:

* More HUMINT which means more general purpose forces and State Dept. types even though the latter won't show up unless its secure. Where will we get the interpreters. More surveys?? Who will teach the Tajik and Hazara Soldiers to speak Pashto?
* Coverage of more areas to ascertain patterns of life with HUMINT (and more Soldiers/Marines/State Dept)...yet UAS can do it many times faster with far less risk and manpower
* More analysts to study trends/MOE/MOP in detail which implies consolidation in stateside DCGS or Kabul where they cannot full understand the mission, enemy, or civil considerations of local ground forces and Afghans
* More cameras on larger unarmed Reapers with Gorgon Stare can see a lot theoretically...in a relatively confined urban area like Baghdad, and at less resolution per camera. We are in rural Afghanistan now. Only one Kabul and Kandahar exists where such all-in-one imagery packages could excel. Having many more individual loitering UAS supporting CCIR of more dispersed BCTs/battalions remains a requirement that relatively few Reaper Gorgon Stares cannot satisfy alone.
* Because the USAF likes satellite control, it needs more computers aboard Reapers to process information to decrease bandwidth of disseminated information going to stateside DCGS for analysis. Aviation Week says the Army is testing Triclops to provide 3 sensors controlled by aerial, ground, and GCS teams at several battlefield locations while still partially armed. Today, Aviation Week says it is testing systems designed to allow squad-to-company leaders to access geo-synchronized imagery in raw form.

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=defens…. Army To Deploy On-Demand Imagery System

Excessive time-consuming intell analysis often leads to paralysis-by-analysis. Why not joint armed UAS <u>AND</u> ground HUMINT/recon. Top it off with local leader imagery/information interpretation and Company intell cells to protect Soldiers/Afghanis exposed to IEDs and insurgents in near real time?

I'm nuts, too -- the 9:10 Anon is me.

<b>Anonymous at 7:54 PM:</b>

Not a question of agreeing with the results, I for one do agree -- the article simply states the obvious and cites things that have long been known.

That article could have been written six or eight years ago -- nothing has changed. That's why we're nuts; for not having implemented the things we knew were needed. One quibble over methods but the issues are plain...

Parochialism and egos of decision makers are the problem. Not those who point out -- again -- what anyone with much sense knows.

Surprised in the lack of interest shown in this article unless everyone agrees with the research results?

An interesting if not massively well focused report---just a side note that goes to the heart of current BCT ISR usage.

If one uses the JP 3-60 definition of targeting how would a BCT Staff use ISR to "target" a behavior? Better yet just how would a BCT Staff use ISR in the daily support of HUMINT operations or why have a number of BCTs seemingly forgottten that HUMINT/OSINT are in fact ISR assets?

Why not discuss the fact that even with the massive ISR assets available to say a BCT it is still not being employed as effectively as it could be or the fact that BCTs have gotten so spoiled by the "toys" and risk averse at the prospect of having soldiers killed that they have totally forgotten how to use organic ISR assets when no "toys" are available or how the over all MDMP process in which ISR is nested has fallen apart thus really impacting the effective use of ISR at the tactical level.

IE many staff officers have simply forgottten that ISR is to confirm or deny in the targeting process/provide assessments and now have shifted that MDMP/ISR process to that of increasing operational awareness via ISR---thus the critique by the report on focus of ISR mainly on CT and FP.

Reference the parallel blog on Design and MDMP.

"Terrestrial Sensor Webs" yea we need some of those all right. How did we find Bill Laden...we followed a guy on a motorcycle right to his house. I don't much about National Intelligence but I know something about Criminal Intelligence and Ken is right.....we are completely nuts.

Agree with Ken and Dave.

I would only add that the report assumes that there is a right way to do coin--which is of the population centric persuasion--and that proper methods of social and cultural intel must conform to this prescribed way hence the ongoing problem of dogmatism of the way of countering and insurgency. Perhaps current changes in senior general officer positions might loosen things up a bit and allow for original and creative thinking.

gian

Hmm. Interagency collaboration produced a guide to counterinsurgency in 2009 and it appears no one has implemented any of the guidance...

What a surprise.

Excessive concentration on air and space borne assets to produce intelligence to the detriment of HumInt -- which also is avoided as risky. Urgently required and known for years that was so but you cannot have it...

Another surprise.

Turf battles impede cooperation and progress. Rapid rotation of people and units has an adverse effect.

Yet another startler...

We're nuts. Dave Maxwell has it right -- we usually know what's happening and what's needed, we just let petty considerations and politics get in the way and some people are too ego driven to listen...

Nuts.