FEATURE ARTICLE

August 2005

Afghanistan Taught U.S. “Hard Lessons” In Close Air Support

by Joe Pappalardo

The battle against the Taliban in Afghanistan changed the way U.S. forces conduct close-air support, and some of those lessons are still being implemented, said Air Force Col. Michael Longoria, joint air-ground operations office of Air Combat Command.

“It’s important to see how far we’ve come since Afghanistan,” he told attendees at a recent defense industry conference.

Longoria led specialized forward air operations as an expeditionary group commander during Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001 and later as director of the Air Combat Center at the combined forces land component command. During a presentation, he offered new details on what the Air Force learned from its experience in Afghanistan.

At the start of the conflict, Longoria described the Army and Air Force as services that had “grown apart” but were forced to work together in ways never before imagined. Conditions in Afghanistan were unique, challenging and evolved as the war progressed, and tested the level of coordination between the services. In terms of providing firepower to conventional and unconventional troops on the ground, the test was life-and-death.

“Close air support is the hardest thing we do in joint warfighting,” Longoria said. “When we make a mistake, we kill our own people.”

An early demonstration of the risks of climbing a steep learning curve while under fire occurred when a forward air controller inadvertently vectored a global positioning satellite-guided munition to his own position, killing three Green Berets. Although this error occurred two other times, no other incident caused casualties, he said.

When controllers began using digital instruments to coordinate air strikes, safety checks born of an earlier age were lost, he said. Things were moving faster, and new doctrine had to be enforced to ensure errant bombs were not dropped in haste.

When Operation Enduring Freedom began, there were few airspace issues, Longoria recalled. But as the conflict progressed, the simple targeting and unrestricted targeting areas became more complex.

One problem arose when Special Forces operators, fearing fratricide, established umbrella no-fire zones around themselves and their allied Afghan fighters. These zones did not move with the forces, and were left behind to clutter the pilots’ maps. “It’s very hard for a pilot to know what he can and can’t do when there are literally thousands of these no-fire areas,” Longoria recalled. “We didn’t fix it fast enough for Operation Anaconda.”

Operation Anaconda was launched in March 2002 in Afghanistan’s Shahikot valley. More than 200 soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division and 101st Airborne stormed mountain strongholds to kill or capture hundreds of Taliban soldiers.

Another aspect of the close air support that was to change was the amount of available air coverage. Longoria described aircraft being told “to go to the country of Afghanistan” and wait for further instructions. This ability to direct bombs at will was a bad lesson to pass on as the conflict progressed. “We taught some of our friends they didn’t have to have a plan,” he said. “That lack of planning will impact us as we go to Operation Anaconda.”

A large challenge of close air support is an organizational one. The battle for the Shahikot Valley provided a hard lesson in this area, as forward air controllers proliferated on a fairly tight battlefield. He said every 12-man Special Forces A team had an air force controller, as did SEAL teams, members of the 10th Mountain Division and “other government agencies”—popular vernacular for CIA operators. All told, Longoria said there were 37 controllers in the area, the highest density of FACs in a military operation.

“I’ve heard the critique that there was not enough close air support at Anaconda. That’s a crock,” he said. “It wasn’t that we didn’t have enough; we had too much … When one mortar round fell, you’d have 17 people on the net. The first thing we’d have to do is tell 16 of them to shut up.”

There was a lack of preparation in coordinating this at headquarters, Longoria said. It was up to an Air Force major in the 10th Mountain Division’s tactical operation center, literally standing on a tabletop and shouting to five different service representatives in the room, to ensure that each air strike wasn’t headed towards friendly forces.

Longoria said that such high numbers of forward air controllers is now expected, and that the ac hoc oversight had evolved into more established chains of communication and command.

The biggest risk, as always, was fratricide. Aside from the mistaken AC-130 strike that killed Army Chief Warrant Officer Stanley Harriman, no friendly fire incidents occurred from air support at Operation Anaconda, he said.

In Harriman’s death, an AC-130 broke contact with the convoy it was protecting to respond to calls from other ground units. While away, Harriman separated from the main convoy to go to a pre-planned location. When the AC-130 returned, its crew miscalculated their position and attacked Harriman, believing he and his troops to be enemies lurking ahead of the convoy.

There was another near miss, Longoria revealed. A 2,000-pound Joint Direct Attack Munition dropped close to the position of 70 American soldiers, but did not explode.

“Anaconda would have been a terrible tragedy for the U.S. if that 2,000 pound bomb worked,” he said. “It would have been one of the top 10 disasters for the U.S. military.”

The real issue was setting priorities for the air strikes amid the many requests. “What we needed was a ground commander to set the priority of fire, not some air controller back in Saudi Arabia,” Longoria said.

The future of close air support will be shaped by on the hard lessons learned in Afghanistan. Connecting the troops on the ground with the same picture is of the utmost importance. Longoria cited programs that patch pilots with ground controllers via PDAs, giving them the ability to share photos, images and even electric pen markings (similar in style to those used by football commentators) in near real time.

Also coming from Afghanistan is the knowledge that forward air controllers must be able to go and survive where the frontline troops go. They have to be as mobile as the units for whom they are arranging support.

A plan to outfit five Stryker vehicles for use by forward air control units is underway, Longoria said, but cited radio integration problems as a setback.

The largest change may be the way airmen view their status in combat zones. The idea that their job is distant is fading, particularly for forward air controllers, Longoria said. “Our airmen are, no kidding, ground-based warriors.”

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