A Quiet Noisy War

While B-52's have dropped a serious quantity of 500lb dumb bombs, they have also dropped an ever more serious quantity of smart weapons. This is the visible face of a new type of quiet war.

The Gulf War may be seen as a watershed; large armies and airforces faced off across a militarily perfect landscape, then the shooting began and one side had horribly underestimated what was going to happen. Iraq got a serious pounding. Probably only 1/3^rd of the assembled Allied forces even got to move, let alone shoot at Iraqi's. There was indeed a large tank battle, but the bulk of 100 hours of shooting was a quick romp through the gutted remains of a once proud army that had been the 4^th largest in the world. (Lesson: B-52's still work)

Next stop: Yugoslavia. Here it was harder to marshal those vast ground forces, the land didn't make for good assembly areas and the opposing forces were not in the same sort of strength. The Yugoslav's had learnt from the Iraqi's about shooting down Stealth fighters, but the US had another trick up its sleeve. The US was working on very advanced means of fusing data from multiple sources into a coherent battle picture in real-time, a picture that allowed battle commanders to use the smaller forces more effectively. While fusion of data sources was not the 'multispectral' system that the Pentagon is now working hard at, it came close to providing the same sort of tactical and strategic leap these new technologies will give. This meant using less men on the ground, less planes in the sky and keeping the risk down, all the while zapping the opposition with timely application of smart weapons, result: quick cessation of hostilities. (Lesson: Predators don't sleep)

On to Afghanistan: There was no opportunity to deploy large ground forces and much of the air power could only be deployed from carriers in the Indian Ocean. All the lessons of the wars before had to be brought to bear: use of specialist forces; use of smart weapons; use of electronic reconnaissance; and use of unmanned assets. These features have been used in this latest war, in a manner that I think has surprised many (even me to some extent).

The Bomb Bus

To drop enough bombs, over such long distances, has suddenly brought the B-52 and B-1 to center stage. These aircraft can be loaded with large numbers of a large variety of munitions. The first time I noticed something odd was during the bombing of hills around Mazar-E-Sharif, when a commentator stated that 2000lb and 500lb bombs were being dropped on the hills. Well, the 500lb bombs are normally dumb bombs (unguided) and used for blast effect (to kill people on the surface); the 2000lb bombs are normally either laser or GPS guided (smart bombs) (to penetrate bunkers - or caves - or hardened targets ). But to be dropping mixed bomb loads like this was, to say the least, unusual. Necessity is the mother of invention, they say, well if the F/A-18's can't fly far enough with these big 2000lb bombs then the airforce would be tasked with it, I suppose, and the only things they had that could get there from Diego Garcia would be BIG bombers. Already needing to fly the 500lb'ers in, I suppose the aircraft were just loaded up with a rotary carrier, allowing 6 or 8 2000lb bombs per flight, presumably being dropped on demand - I assume many are returned unused. The B-52's and B-1's were suddenly flying as interdictors.

Catching a Bomb Bus.

All those precision guided munitions (PGM's) need a home. They need to be given a home. The 2000lb bomb, a Mk84 bomb in GBU-24 guise which, I think, also comes in a version with a mixed GPS and Laser guidance package up front, wants to make a big hole deep in the ground. It is generally directed there by either another laser designating fighter or by someone on the ground with a laser targeting unit (the GPS seems to be updated with an offset from the laser units). As Special Forces troops were on the ground it seems reasonable to assume that many of the 2000lb bombs were going for specific locations, directed by these ground troops, however some were probably being given targets by the force planners. These bombs are being dropped on locations using GPS co- ordinates that had been previously defined, all because the targets seemed interesting for whatever reason.

The method of delivery (B-52/B-1) lead to a great deal of targeting flexibility. Many bombs could be dropped on many targets, though the timing of such drops must have presented problems (Mr. Laden, would you bring your boys up to the surface for their group photo, please?). I suspect that the Navy has been hard at work filling in for the Air Force in providing munitions carriage to lesser targets.

What presents "An Interesting Target?"

At the start of the Afghan conflict two news items stood out, both involved the shooting down of unmanned aerial reconnaissance planes. On of them was a Predator UAV, the other a smaller device used primarily by some faction in the CIA. The fact that these were shot down gets us to the first bit of the sensor spectrum that was being put in place. We have to assume that the CIA and NRO were using satellites (photo, ELINT and data transfer) and that these were giving them the initial strategic view. The use of the small drones gave them tactical, near 24 hour coverage, over a circumscribed chunk of Afghanistan. We know that JSTARS aircraft were deployed as were AWACS, RC-135's of various types, and even RAF Nimrod R2's. From this we know they were trying to build a picture of all major movement in the country. Given that Afghanistan is about the size of Texas, the ability to cover the area was not in question, the real breakthrough here will have been in the level of detail they were able to store information at, and then recover it when needed. Multispectral systems are intended to take readings across a broad swath of frequencies, from the Visual into the radio frequencies, then paste them all together in the hope of spotting targets in new ways. While no multi-spectral sensors exist (that I am aware of), it is safe to say that one aspect of them is that they need vast data processing systems and data retrieval methods that are fast and efficient. It seems likely that some of that data fusion was happening here.

Putting up standard photo reconnaissance tools such as F-16/F-18/F-14 (with appropriate camera pods) and even RAF Canberra PR-9's, gave the Allied command reasonable initial assessment information. These tools though are the old way of doing things.

The new way of doing things was seen deployed here. RQ-1 Predators and the new RQ-4 Global Hawk. The former even equipped with its only recently tested ability to fire Hellfire antitank missiles (used in a more general purpose mode here). General Atomics, the manufacturer of the Predator, even sold two previously declined prototypes of an improved Predator (Predator B) to the airforce for use in Afghanistan. These unmanned aircraft carry aloft a range of sensors, and can cover areas for long durations (The Predator can keep 450lb's of sensor in the air for 36 hours, while the Global Hawk carries 2000lb's for about the same period.) This coverage is the entry point of much of the real-time data used to conduct this war.

One bit of this jigsaw puzzle of data sources and command structure we have not seen is the data network which has been built up over Afghanistan. We have to presume that much of this network is satellite based, but there must be other aerial assets at play here, relaying information, that we are not being told of. And the bandwidth they must be using!!!

Yet another aspect in this war that we have not heard much of is the computer systems they must be using to eat and process all this data. JTIDS units are one thing, but in this type of situation they are more like internet browsers. The real processing is taking place elsewhere, possibly in the US, but not necessarily.

The ability to integrate photo reconnaissance, ELINT, satellite imagery, MTI radar, and foot soldiers observations is a work of art. This capability, if it is real (and it has to be presumed that it is real to some extent as the outward effects of it are readily apparent - bombs falling from the sky), then the computational tour de force that we are seeing here is a major break through in the way war can be conducted. Many US corporations think Data Warehousing is a petty neat technology, most have trouble implementing it. If the amalgamation of data is being conducted as I presume then war and the militaries that fight them will change rapidly - They have to.

If we were to look at a mythical display showing all these data sources merged into a cohesive picture of the battlefield we might see a real-time image of the country in false colours (colours probably demoting concentrations of force or densities of targets), there would be areas marked with gradated red domes that mark the effective range of active air defense systems, there would be a constant shimmer about the map, a flick of a mouse pointer would allow the user to display in detail, imagery and electronic scans of these shimmering items, there may even be a button to draw up higher security or older information about the item. This chessboard view of the battle field, or in this case an entire country, gives the force commander options to take targets and do what-if game plays to determine the best strategy for defeating or neutralizing an enemy (that shimmering dot on the screen).

This system would need several layers of software (data acquisition, data amalgamation, situation identification, target determination and prioritization.) A user might be able to look through all these layers to identify a specific source of data, but likely they just accept that a target has done something to throw it up onto the priority target list.

Recently, a Pentagon press conference detailed how Taliban forces were identified at a location and 20 minutes later they were struck by bombers. There is no indication that ground forces were near (special or otherwise), in fact the Pentagon stated it was a Predator that found the target. They identified that there was too much movement in the area, movement of a suspicious nature, and called in the big guns. The effect was to start the rout of Taliban forces in the Baghram area. Somewhere, in the system that monitors the battle field, someone identified movement, they were able to assert that the movement was not normal for this location (they had history), they were able to identify trends and common features in the way the movement was taking place (there were convoys and seemingly a fairly strong body guard contingent - meaning that the system, or someone close to it, probably flagged this as unusual behavior). The target became a priority, I am sure that it was analyzed and someone gave the go-ahead to shoot. A bomber was located and its GPS munitions programmed with the appropriate co-ordinates. From identifying the convoy and body guard movements (the body guards probably being the giveaway) to dropping steel took 20 minutes. The real breakthrough being that there were no ground observers to see this happening. A blind precision strike, made on the faith that the targeting data was of good and unambiguous quality. No tanks, no Marines running around, no squadrons of F-15's. A predator or two, a computer network and processing, a chain of command that has been streamlined to be paper edge sharp, a B-52 with a couple of tons of PGM's: a war by Nintendo, all at arms length.

Can you here that clacking sound?

It's the kneecaps of the generals in Beijing, Moscow, Baghdad and a dozen other capitals where the last big fright was Stealth, and that issue hasn't yet been cleared up to everyone's satisfaction. Now comes this ability to compute the happy little army into oblivion. While encryption of all communications will now become paramount to all these nations, if it wasn't already, the need to obfuscate the source of transmissions will gain new significance, together with the need to avoid doing things in signature ways all through the military. It was hard enough hiding tank regiments from satellites, now you have to hide the field kitchen and the latrines or the hidden tanks will have no crews to man them. Finally, many of these countries now have to look over their shoulders at their own populations and worry if everyone is on their side… Afghanistan was taken back by Afghani's, not US Marines.