[iwar] [fc:Speed.Key.To.Intelligence.War]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-22 07:45:22
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 07:45:22 -0700 (PDT)
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USA Today
October 19, 2001
Speed Key To Intelligence War
By Dave Moniz and Andrea Stone 
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military is filling the skies over Afghanistan with
fighter jets, heavily armed commando gunships and missile-firing
reconnaissance drones in an attempt to do something it has never done well:
identify seemingly ambiguous targets on the ground in a matter of minutes
and give pilots permission to attack them.
"This war is all about hitting moving targets," says Al Campen, a former Air
Force officer who wrote The First Information War, a book on the merging of
intelligence and military tactics during the Persian Gulf War.
Military sources and analysts say that a critical part of the war in
Afghanistan is reducing to 10 minutes or less the time it takes to find,
identify and order attacks on so-called "targets of opportunity." The need
to process this intelligence information and get it to the people the
military calls "trigger pullers" has seldom been more important to success
on a battlefield, experts say.
Being able to send video and digital data "significantly reduces the time
that it takes to (find a target) and allows pilots to get a richness of
information that you can't get with voice" communications, says John
Garstka, a civilian technology officer.
The war in Afghanistan may not introduce any startling new technologies, but
it will test the Pentagon's ability to adapt familiar weapons such as
laser-guided bombs and pilotless reconnaissance drones to battle a
hard-to-find enemy.
There are several new wrinkles:
*The Air Force has armed Predator reconnaissance drones with missiles that
can be fired remotely against targets the aircraft spot during missions.
* The Pentagon is flying senior officers in command aircraft near
Afghanistan. They can approve instant attacks on targets identified from
real-time intelligence.
* All Navy F-14s and most F-18s are equipped with cockpit data links to
surface ships, satellites, unpiloted surveillance drones and other aircraft.
They provide real-time video and global positioning coordinates of potential
targets, Garstka says.
* Although it is several years away, the Air Force is planning to place
surveillance and communications equipment on refueling planes, the aircraft
that stay aloft for hours at a time over or near enemy territory.
A big advocate for the push to get closer to real-time targeting is Gen.
John Jumper, the new Air Force chief of staff. Jumper has for several years
sought to improve the military's speed in attacking emerging targets.
Such decisions aren't difficult when they involve easy-to-identify objects
such as enemy tanks or military convoys. In some cases, pilots would not
need to get approval to attack identifiable military targets. But when
intelligence pictures show images that are not clearly targets, such as a
string of civilian vehicles, it has historically taken too long for
intelligence officers to identify them and for commanders to approve
attacks.
During a breakfast this week on Capitol Hill, Jumper acknowledged that the
biggest challenge to faster targeting is changing a culture that fostered
separation of intelligence specialists from bomber and fighter pilots.
"The key is developing a generation of intelligence warriors," Jumper said.
In Afghanistan, the Pentagon is attempting to leap ahead and mesh
surveillance technologies with precision-guided weapons. One military
official familiar with targeting decisions against Taliban forces said the
challenge is not getting clear, real-time pictures of the enemy. The
official said the military is now interpreting live reconnaissance images in
less than 10 minutes. But getting commanders to instantly approve attacks
remains a problem, the official says.
Since the Gulf War, the Pentagon has proved that it can employ an array of
precision-guided missiles and bombs to hit stationary targets or large
formations of military vehicles. But in Operation Allied Force in Kosovo in
1999, the inability to quickly identify and go after things that moved --
including small groups of soldiers -- showed the shortcomings of high-tech
aerial warfare.
"The track record isn't good," says Christopher Bolkcom, an aviation analyst
with the Congressional Research Service. "And it's hard -- is this guy in a
Toyota pickup a legitimate target or some poor civilian going about his
business?"
According to military sources, the Pentagon plans to station generals in
large, airborne command-and-control airplanes with the authority to give an
instant order to shoot should U.S. combat planes or reconnaissance aircraft
locate terrorists or Taliban leaders.
First reported in Aviation Week magazine, the new command structure would
provide constant surveillance of some moving targets through an array of
technologies that includes satellites and aircraft that can follow the
movements of people and vehicles.
Some are skeptical that the military will succeed in closing the gap in
real-time intelligence.
Nick Cook, an aerospace consultant for Jane's Defense Weekly, says that
during the Gulf War, the lag time between finding a new target and shooting
at it was "many hours, if not days. That was quite unacceptable for hunting
mobile Scud missile launchers."
Cook says he doubts the Pentagon can reduce the lag time below several
hours, even with its new technology.
During the Kosovo war, the Air Force reported being able to beam U-2 spy
plane photos from Europe to California and back in as little as 12 minutes.
Sources say the Pentagon has been able to further reduce the time it takes
to look at an image and determine if it's a target.
The military "has to invent as we go along," said David Alberts, a Pentagon
intelligence specialist.

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