FEATURE ARTICLE

November 2004

Urban Fighting in Iraq Spurs New Thinking in Strike Aviation

by Sandra I. Erwin

Unconventional tactics have become standard procedure for U.S. naval aviators who are supporting ground troops in the fight against insurgents in Iraq.

The conflict has forced pilots to think differently, but commanders insist that the current war is not likely to permanently change the culture of carrier aviation.

Notably, pilots who have trained their whole careers to drop bombs from their jet aircraft now are finding that they often return to the carrier with most of their ordnance. The dense urban fighting in Iraq has made it difficult for aviators to pinpoint targets and strike them without risking widespread civilian casualties.

These realities have shaken many of the long-held assumptions in naval aviation, including the practice of tying success to the number of bombs dropped, said Rear Adm. (Sel.) William Gortney, a former air wing commander and chief of staff of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet.

“It’s a very different war out there,” Gortney told naval aviators attending the 48th annual Tailhook convention, in Reno, Nev. “In this phase of the war, the metric for success is being there when you are needed, with the proper ordnance, with the proper training.”

In practice, that often means flying at low altitudes to scare hordes of suspected insurgents congregating in Iraqi cities.

These missions are about “show of force and presence,” and may or may not require weapon strikes, noted Capt. Mark A. “Cyrus” Vance, former commander of Carrier Air Wing 3.

In counterinsurgency enclaves such a Fallujah, typically “a crowd starts showing up some place, and guys on the ground feel threatened,” Vance said. “When you bring naval tac-air down into lower altitudes, that tends to disperse crowds.”

Similar tactics are employed in Afghanistan, where naval aviators also fly close air-support missions.

Capt. Haley Mills, who commanded Carrier Air Wing 1 last fall, said the wing flew 200 missions over Afghanistan and carried 300,000 pounds of ordnance without dropping a single bomb during a two-week period.

For more than a year, protecting U.S. vehicle convoys in Iraq from roadside bombs, rocket and mortar attacks has been a primary concern. Navy pilots were directed to provide security from the air. That required the development of new tactics and techniques to escort convoys, said Capt. Ice Field, commander of Carrier Air Wing 7.

“We were authorized to get down and make noise to disperse the crowd,” Field said. Close-air support in Iraq poses particular difficulties, because the cities are so closely packed.

In the United States, Navy and Marine Corps pilots are trained to identify buildings in a high-density environment. But the Iraqi landscape never has been replicated in a U.S. training range. “Iraqi cities have at least three times as many buildings in the same amount of space as we do,” said Field.

During the early stages of the Fallujah insurgency, in April and May, Navy pilots spent much of the time flying over the area and waiting to get called by Marines on the ground. Even seasoned Navy pilots such as Field were impressed by the poise of the Marines. “Eighteen-year-olds were cool under pressure,” he noted.

“We dropped a few weapons,” said Field. “But we found this was different than anything else we have done. We were taught to be on time, on target. But a lot of targets we were asked to find were so difficult that it took multiple trips, sometimes orbiting at low altitude, to pick them up.”

The difficulties in pinpointing targets also highlight the inadequacy of the sensors used on military aircraft. “Quite often we were using our eyeballs, our binoculars to identify the target,” he added.

Close-air support in urban areas has to be precise to be effective. “It has to be done perfectly the first time,” Field said. “We cannot accept any errors.”

Nevertheless, there have been civilian casualties as a result of U.S. air strikes.

“A lot of the targets we had were wedged between schools, mosques,” said Field. “This is an area we were prepared for, in some cases. In other areas we need to expand our training.”

At times the airspace over Fallujah was more congested than Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, noted Col. Jon “Punjab” Miclot, former operations officer for Marine Air Wing 3 in Iraq.

Dealing with the insurgency often becomes a cat-and-mouse game, said Miclot. “They move; we move. We get a little smarter; they figure out what we are doing, and vice versa.”

The problems identifying targets could be eased if Marines or soldiers on the ground could get a handheld computer with a real-time video link to unmanned aircraft orbiting the area, Miclot said. “Each squad leader needs a UAV to look down into Fallujah.”

Some of the most valuable tools for aviators are wing-mounted targeting pods, which have sophisticated sensors designed to help pilots get a clear view of the ground, especially at night.

It also has become obvious during the fighting in Iraq that U.S. aviators need smaller munitions that can hit targets without causing the devastation that ensues when 1,000-pound or 2,000-pound bombs are dropped. “The size of warheads is an issue,” said Vance. In many cases, Navy weapon engineers adjusted the fuze to make bombs less destructive, he said. “There is creative fuzing going on to keep the blast fragmentation low.”

Miclot recognized that Marine pilots could benefit from more realistic training in urban close-air support. The air wing under his command trained at Yuma Proving Ground, in Arizona, where a range known as Yoda was set up to replicate the Iraqi environment. “It’s pretty darn close,” Miclot said. “But the urban stuff is tough … Yoda doesn’t even come close to Fallujah.”

But it’s not yet clear how the lessons from the current fight will shape future training sites, he added. “I don’t know how we are going to do that in the future.”

Miclot cautioned that it would be a mistake to assume that all future conflicts will be like Iraq. He said aviation training should continue to accommodate all forms of fighting, including conventional bombing campaigns and air-to-air combat.

“Every war is different,” said Vice Adm. (Sel.) Mark Fitzgerald, former director of naval warfare. The Navy should strive to have a balanced force, so it can fight in different regions of the world, he said. This requires a broad range of capabilities.

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