The Associated Press raised a hoopla a couple of weeks ago about the use of the Vietnam-era E/A-6B Prowler to blast IEDs electronically from the sky. Many DT readers argued there was nothing new about the revelation, but as far as the mainstream press goes, it was new to the general public.
The Navy (and Marine Corps) is only too happy to be reaching down from the air to help their brethren on the ground however they can in the counter-IED fight both in Iraq and Afghanistan using Prowlers, Hornets, Harriers to spot roadside bombs or blow them up.
But the Air Force is starting the grumble about this unglamorous work.
A former Defense News colleague of mine pulled out some interesting quotes from a speech delivered by Air Force Air Combat Command chief, Gen. Ron Keys, last week whining about the effectiveness of aerial observation by his jets in pinpointing IEDs.
Aerospace Dailys Mike Fabey reports:
Using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and pod-equipped combat jets to find improvised explosive devices (IEDs) is often a misuse of time and resources, said U.S. Air Force Gen. Ronald Keys, commander of Air Combat Command.
Often, requests for airborne surveillance are based on the assumption that such aircraft help find IEDs and save ground forces from such attacks, he said. Certain military leaders feel they need the full-motion video feeds to locate the explosives. The truth, he said, is much different.
Based on Air Force analysis, the number of IEDs found by UAVs, surveillance aircraft or combat jets outfitted with advanced targeting pods per 100,000 flight hours is very low, according to Keys. “It’s a waste,” Keys said June 20 during a morning keynote speech at the Transformation Warfare 07 conference and exhibit in Virginia Beach, Va
Keys said ACC has developed a “concept of deployment” to help fight IEDs that is air-centric “to a certain point.” Without going into specifics, he said, “We ought to be attacking the system — to the left of ‘the bang,’” meaning the process before the IED is emplaced. What needs to be looked at is the network, “not the thing that’s buried out there,” he said.
Flying pod-outfitted F-16s up and down streets no one will be on for another 12 hours will not help the IED fight, he said. Looking for buried IEDs in Iraq in that fashion is not the best way to stop attacks. “It’s a junkyard out there,” he said, adding there are too many false positives.
Sounds like the Air Force wants to tell ground commanders to shove it when they call for eyes on a hotspot.
The statistics can be manipulated to say anything the Air Force wants, but experience shows infrared targeting pod-equipped aircraft of any kind on a normal close air support patrol are invaluable in the IED fight for units maneuvering their way through insurgent strongholds. Its like radioing for a 500 pounder but a lot less lethal.
When a patrol sees a potential IED, the call goes up to any aircraft within range to scan the area with their IR scope. The components of an IED give off heat, making it pretty easy for the jet to give some reassurance that the pile of bricks is a trap or just that: a pile of bricks. The IED is then either bypassed or another call goes out for the explosive ordnance disposal unit to dismantle the bomb.
Instead of lending this passive helping hand, Keys wants to attack the system to the left of the bang in other words, he wants to destroy the factory, the trigger man or the explosive storage areas with bombs of his own.
Thats pretty sexy stuff and makes for better headlines (if anyone bothers to report it). But with the Air Forces recent bad press on civilian deaths in Afghanistan, it might be worth keeping the non-lethal counter-IED mission on the front burner, pulling the left of the bang card out only in extreme circumstances. The grunts will thank Airmen just as well.
(Gouge: NC)
Good grief. What, this AF guy has something better to do with his time? He’d rather be running Arc Lights against “enemy concentration areas” over the border, right?
Inept Air Force leadership strikes again, as usually, General Keys joins the ranks of Air Force rocket scientists. Like the ground forces aren
Sure would be a shame if the Air Force was used to help save the lives of those poor dumb grunts on the ground.
Guess we have another Air Force General that does not like the idea of being a SUPPORTING service.
I don’t doubt that using $50 million jets to hunt for $1000 dollar boobytraps is wildly inefficient — but that’s “the American way of war”, no? It’s not much different from Vietnam, where multi-million dollar aircraft were routinely dispatched against dollar-a-day peasant partisans.
So what’s the good general complaining about? This is the best shot his service has at having any kind of useful role in this century. I can’t wait to see the IED-sniffing F-22 “White Elephant Raptor”!
What an ass. Ya know, people might start askin bout that huge ass budget for all those expensive toys if you can’t find a mission in our current conflict. STFU and GBTW General Douchebag.
Actually, General Keys has a very valid point. Although no number were given in the article, he was talking about few IEDs found per 100,000 flight hours. Airframes have a fairly limited lifespan before they have to be retired or SLEP’ed, as do engines and every other critical component. So if you burn 100,000 flight hours in order to stop 10 bombs, you have to accept the $300 million dollar bill for the couple of strike aircraft you’ll have to buy to make up for the ones you burnt out making IED runs. And that doesn’t take into account the actual cost of the flight hours themselves.
Essentially, ground fighters will complain that the USAF gets the number or costly systems they need to recaptialize, and they will complain if the AF budget rises to accommodate increased use. Gen. Keys appears to be wisely suggesting that rather than handing his command the lion’s share of the budget to put supersonic jets into COIN operations, maybe they should be looking at a better fit.
I’d go him one further , and point out that maybe we should up the USAF procurement dollars to outfit a couple wings with COIN aircraft. But as a general point to make, he’s right.
I swear all the chairforce does anyway in sector and fly around real fast and pop offa a couple of flares to scare haji. other then that are are also good at killing coalition ground forces.
I think since Noah left they should rename this blog ChairDefence.
Keys is right, it is a waste, that money should be going to that fruitless program called JASSM.
No way, we shouldnt be funding these programs and weapons that are actually seeing combat in the present conflict we find ourselves in… Nah, lets keep throwing money into the weapons we wont use in Iraq or Afghanistan like JASSM.
Sheesh. (Sarcasm)
Ahzee Dahak: Dropping bombs in civilian areas against IED factories or safe houses may kill a handful of insurgents, but is will also kill civilians which is no way to win in 4th generation warfare which we are now involved in, in Iraq.
Christian: Great article, that last line throws me off though, because I have many friends who have been deployed, and put on Weapons Intelligence Teams and have done out in counter IED operations along side the soldiers and marines in Iraq…
Keys will also hurt the Airmen in the field with the Soldiers and Marines.
Pardon me if I’m out of my technical depth here — I’m just interested in the subject matter…
…but I was wondering… would it be possible to get these ECM pods/electronics onto a Blackhawk or other helecopter, and have this entire mission taken out of AF hands and placed under the auspices of the Army? It does seem like a waste from the AF perspective in terms of money/fuel vs. amount of IEDs discovered/disarmed, but I would think it would be more cost effective for helocopters to take over this task — they’re all over the place, and much closer to the areas in question. Is this an unrealistic option?
James: Yes, I agree with you as well. The use of air power for conflicts other than war almost guarantees civilian casualties. And that’s before you take into account a guerrilla force deliberately hiding amongst a large non-combatant population.
I’m not arguing, and I hope Gen. Keys isn’t arguing, that massed bombardment is what the USAF ought to be doing. Rather, that on those occasions when an hard target has been identified, air power beats artillery every time and twice on Tuesdays. But running $60-$100 million dollar attack aircraft around acting like Mach 2 EOD techs is a fantastic waste of money.
I think what he’s arguing is that there’s a ‘right tool for the job,’ and there’s ‘panicky hammering on every button you’ve got hoping one of them saves your butt.’ The USAF inventory is pretty much all that stands between the army and irrelevancy when facing major regional nation states in conventional armed conflict. I know that sounds like guaranteed flamewar-starter, but it’s accurate. Imaging engaging North Korea, India, Iran, Russia, China, et cetera without fast attack, air superiority, PGM enabled heavy penetration bombers, range extenders, and active and passive ISR. It can’t be done. That said, you can’t win a theatre war without boots on the ground. The issue is that the USAF has already done the part of the warfighting they are equipped to handle. As of now, IED hunting via jet is a boondoggle, burning up flight hours and costing airframes for little practical benefit.
In the event we really wanted air power to make a difference in Iraq and Afghanistan, we would really need to invest in dedicated COIN aircraft like the Texan, Dragonfly, Bronco, or the Skymaster. Low cost, low speed, long loiter aircraft that can act as FAC, arty spotter, and light fire support. But the USAF has always hated buying and flying combat Cessnas.
It’s not an Air Force-specific malady, though. How fast did the USN retire their PT boats, and then their riverine forces? If you look at FCS, Crusader, Bradley, the M4, and Striker you see an Army completely focused on major combat operations at the expense of COIN, CT, and asymmetric warfare capability.
Maybe the best use of time and money is pulling the majority of the fast jet air support out o Iraq and Afghanistan, and using the money not spent there on ground-based IED defeating systems.
The Blue Suit guys are honored members of the US military, and they surely aren’t trying to avoid doing their part. It’s just that the vast majority of their firepower comes from ICBMs and free fall nukes. They are professionals, and they know when their efforts are being wasted. The least that we can do is note when tactics aren’t working, and call for a change towards the ones that are.
That’s all.
Ahzee Dahak makes some fine points. Personally I’m withholding judgment until I see a text of the speech General Keys made, but there’s no arguing that our air forces– and I mean every service– simply aren’t properly equipped for a full-bore COIN campaign. Some of the assets are suited for it, some are completely useless, and most do the best they can. Case in point, fast movers doing tactical recon. I doubt very much that the general meant to argue in favor of a new COIN aircraft (though they would certainly be handy right now), since he was addressing an event put on by a C3 organization, not the aerospace industry. But the bottom line is still there– like it or not, this is the fight we’re in, and the Air Force should be doing its best to support the grunts on the ground, and if that means 90% of the fighter missions are doing counter-IED work, so be it. As Mr. Rumsfeld said, you go to war with what you have– not what you wish you had.
Well I damn sure cant add much to that, nicely put
There isnt much if anything the Air Force can do in counter IED operations outside of WIT teams and USAF EOD in the AO.
You mentioned the ole Bronco, and its sad that it wont happen, because the Air Force is run by a bunch of old fighter jocks that would rather have F-22s and JASSMs than weapons that are more practical in the current battlefield… Dont get me wrong, I know the Raptor is built with future conflicts in mind… but the JASSM is an enormous waste.
God I hate that missile.
The air force is half right. The use of pod equiped manned platforms is a waste. The use of long endurance UAV’s is money well spent. Tehnically, we should be able to toss all the manned fighters out of Iraq and replace them with with 3–4 squadrons of predator B’s.
If One American life is saved, or one injury is prevented, than there is ABSOLUTELY no waste of resources of any kind. Stop complaining General, just fly the Missions!
I don’t know if referring to an AF general’s speech as “whining” was the right way to start the snowball rolling.
I read about Keys’ comments in AVIATION WEEK too. I don’t recall them mentioning the General “whining.” Rather, I sort of got the impression that he was saying we should use the right tool for the job, and he was proposing a better way to fight.
A Prowler, Growler or ELINT platform may make for a good IED buster; tickle the salient triggering freaks and you could set one off, or identify a receiver in place on a roadside. IIRC the thrust of Keys’ comments, the same is not true of a FLIR pod on an F-16. Looking for a warm spot on a desert road is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
I’m a civilian these days, so I can’t compromise any TTP; I don’t know it. All I can do is guess. From the thrust of Keys’ comments regarding “the left of the bang”, my guess is he’s talking about something like the following.
Finding an IED in place is way too late; you want to find it in transit to the emplacement site, or from or at the factory. The chair force has a) SAR and FLIR assets that can track multiple vehicles in real and archived time; b) SIGINT and ELINT that can track commo and trigger messaging, and c) an assload of computer assets that can cross reference a) and b). Assuming a fairly typical IED emplacement profile — for example, a vehicle stopping by the side of the road, people milling about, then leaving in that vehicle, or another — such an event can be identified and cross referenced against any vehicle track to or from another suspect location.
So if Johnny Jihad leaves a mosque outbuilding, stops three times dropping shit on an empty road, and returns to the mosque compound, and there are IED signatures where he stopped, you’ve got intel you may not have had if someone was allowed to pull the FLIR pod off mission to scan a road or pipeline for Halliburton.
That may just be my personal fantasy. Maybe some poor haji’s just dumping the mullah’s garbage, or he has the runs. On such a mission profile you’re still going to get false positives, or decoys. Still, you’re better off finding the bomb factory or maker, than finding the bomb AFTER he had it put there by some goober with a shovel.
I think that’s what Keys was saying. At the time, I sort of admired him for straying from the party line that anti-IED is a good mission for an F-22. At the time, I sort of had the impression that he was saying anti-IED is better handled by other assets, such as unit-organic choppers, UAVs, or UGVs, and that he’d rather have his F-16s with FLIR and Mavericks going after a a mosque outbuilding, or some sheik’s cathouse.
But hey, maybe I’m an optimist. Maybe Keys really is a wanker. Ain’t up to me. Seems to be up to you.
You can’t view this IED fight in isolation. During any given ATO cycle there are jets on station, if they aren’t responding to troops in contact or other CAS type missions, what are they doing? The flight hours are being flown regardless, so why not do some route security? They don’t have to come out of altitude, they don’t have to really do anything other that look at a particular stretch of road and report back if they see unusual activity. But I suppose for some that’s asking too much.
Check out TASK FORCE ODIN…Soldiers doing the work the USAF doesn’t want to. http://www.aviationtoday.com/categories/military/11325.html
Hell with that AF guy. Fire up the USAAF again and let the USAF get back to training to fight the Soviet Union.
If the general’s argument is valid then we might as well airlift everything. Why use roads?
On the other hand, if the army hasn’t got the resources/manpower to catch the guys who plant IEDs, the only viable solution is to get the Iraqis to do the job (sadly they don’t sound like they’re up to it).
Or maybe if they save the money to hire more mercenaries to do all the work there’ll be less bad press about ARMY casualties…
Outlaw:
Thanks for your service. Sorry, but I’m not in the AO; all I know about counter-IED comes from isolation, or open sources. Take it FWIW, if anything.
As for what else the jets are doing in the ATO, I don’t know or NTK, but an educated guess would be as follows.
The “left of the bang” stuff is probably derived from anti-AA/SAM/SSM network attack profiles. In those you use SAR, IR, SIGINT/ELINT and satellites to acquire and cross reference data on mobile launchers and nodes. Most SAMs, MANPADS, and/or AA artillery have pretty big signal returns, and, once used, point right back at their crew, if not their HQ or commo nodes. You don’t need (or, want) to stay on a defined station or track to find and kill the crew, unless you can do it from on high.
Using the same tools for counter-IED would be different. You’d have smaller footprints and less data to crunch all around, which might require more method to collecting it. My guess is, you’d need overlapping ISR search tracks. Maybe that’s what the jets are doing. It wouldn’t be that they can’t come down in the weeds; it would be more about staying in their kill box or fire lane.
At least, I hope that’s what they’re doing. I can’t stomach the thought that they’re just blowing your guys off. That would be mighty shitty.
As for Task Force ODIN, it looks like they’re using Guardrails, UAVs, and Apaches. That fleet mix is a better set of tools for IED — simpler, closer to the end users, with a shorter targeting cycle, and a more accurate and reliable kill mechanism. As you know, the Apache can be Hell on Earth. The force structure is also pretty consistent with Keys’ comments, if I understood them correctly.
One more thing. I don’t really know or NTK what else the jets are doing, but if you’re operating anywhere near the Iranian border, and you can’t order up a FLIR pod, well…no offense intended, but you might consider brushing up on your Farsi.
Good luck and Godspeed, Outlaw13. Watch your 6.
I swear all the chairforce does anyway in sector and fly around real fast and pop offa a couple of flares to scare haji. other then that are are also good at killing coalition ground forces.
Posted by: slntax at June 25, 2007 11:46 AM
Hmmm, Interesting comment. We just had a pilot loose his life performing a “scare haji” mission a week ago. Oh wait… he was doing a high speed STRAFING RUN with his 20MM cannon. “New Age” technology at its best right? And isnt it the troops on the ground asking for those “show of force” missions? I’m the guy that builds and stuffs that damn flare and every other “toy” the pilots get to fly around and hope… no, WISH, they could fire off and blow some rag head back to Allah. Put it to you this way. Noone that works on the flightline or anywhere else on base likes to see our planes come back loaded, much less with empty flare mods. It’s like… ok, we are on the ground getting taking shells, rockets, and small arms fire and the ONLY WAY we can fight back (because we are not allowed to have weapons in many places) is to build our Ammo and get it to the planes so our boys in the air can obliterate these guys and all the grunts do is call in a show of force? COME ON. Our pilots have itchy trigger fingers as much as the next guy but they cant just go bomb WHATEVER (unfortunately). I think the General has a point to an extent. The maintenance alone on these 1970–1980 airframes is staggering. If they are up in the air lets use them for whatever they are needed for. But lets not send a high demand low quantity asset up to pop off a few IED’s that a UAV operated by ground forces or able to stay up forever can take care of.
I find it disconcerning that everyone views the Air Force as simply a “flying machine.” I am an EOD technician tasked with defeating IEDs. We have lost a lot of EOD brothers in all four branches since the war kicked-off. Maybe people should inform themselves a little better before they make comments