http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/channel_awst_story.jsp?id=news/0424iraq2.xml
Royal Air Force GR7 Operators Ask For Even More High-Tech Upgrades
By Robert Wall
Aviation Week & Space Technology

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http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030427-10772613.htm
Rulers of the air
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

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Several days into the war against the government of Saddam Hussein, sandstorms raged across Iraq, and thinly stretched U.S. ground forces paused in their rapid march to Baghdad. But there was no pause in the air war. On the contrary, Air Force Lt. Gen. T. Michael Buzz Moseley ordered a dramatic escalation in the assault on Iraqi military forces dug in south of the capital.

Were killing the Republican Guard, Moseley said at the close of his morning briefing at the U.S. air operations center in Saudi Arabia, according to a deputy. But I want you to kill them faster.

Moseley did not just order more attacks; he rearranged the air battle. In a risky bid to extend strike missions by making it easier for planes to refuel, he ordered tanker aircraft -- which are relatively vulnerable, because they lack their own warning radar and armaments -- to venture into Iraqi airspace, even though Iraqs dense air defense network had not been eliminated.

At the same time, he shifted large, lumbering and similarly vulnerable surveillance aircraft into Iraq. Among them were JSTARS radar planes, each equipped with a Doppler radar system capable of viewing hundreds of square miles at once -- and unaffected by blowing sand.

Information from JSTARS and other monitoring systems was relayed in minutes to target planners on the ground, who then sent attack instructions to AWACS control planes over Iraq, which in turn directed warplanes to the target. If the Iraqis moved in a coherent formation, they were immediately detected and targeted, said Maj. Jon Prindle, a senior JSTARS director. Most of them got destroyed.

With such imagery streaming into the air operations center, U.S. commanders knew the layout of the Republican Guard forces better than their own division commanders did, said Air Force Brig. Gen. Dan Darnell, the centers director.

Although television cameras captured the dramatic bombardment of downtown Baghdad, Moseleys aggressive prosecution of the broader air war -- a campaign that dropped 29,000 bombs and missiles on thousands of targets in Iraq -- played out largely behind the scenes. There were several reasons for this: Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations playing host to U.S. air crews refused to accept embedded reporters, who might have conveyed a greater sense of the air strategy to American audiences; many targets were out of sight of journalists on the battlefield; and senior military officials did not discuss their strategy in public.

But in interviews over the past week, Air Force pilots and battlefield commanders described an air campaign significantly different from any the United States had waged before, one that not only featured far greater use of overhead imagery and all-weather precision munitions but that also saw an unprecedented degree of coordination between air and ground forces.

The main result was an intense, sustained air assault on Iraqi forces that cleared the way for the speedy advance of U.S. ground troops into Baghdad, followed by the sudden collapse of resistance in the Iraqi capital.

Beyond technology, the air war also stood out for the way commanders fought it, showing a willingness to take considerable risks -- risks that mirrored those taken by ground commanders, who invaded with a smaller force than traditionalists would have liked. They were emboldened in part by the fact that Iraqi air defense forces put up less of a threat than anticipated, never sending their own fighter jets aloft and keeping their targeting radars turned off to avoid being located by U.S. planes. But the Americans also had planned an aggressive campaign from the start.

Moseley credited Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the wars top commander, with setting the campaigns push-the-limits tone before the first bombs fell.

Frankss guidance was to make it fast and final, Moseley said in written response to questions. That was the mark on the wall for his commanders.

Pulling Punches

That aggressive spirit was evident from the beginning. When the air campaign kicked off in earnest on March 21, it unleashed more than 2,500 missiles and bombs across Iraq in the first 72 hours. There were 11 missions reflected in the campaigns daily blueprint, the air tasking order. They included close air support for Special Operations Forces in southern, western and northern Iraq; suppression and destruction of Iraqi air defenses; and missions designed to keep Iraqs air force on the ground by patrolling the sky and bombing Iraqi airfields.

Nonetheless, two senior military officials acknowledged that U.S. commanders, anticipating a possible quick victory, pulled some punches in the opening days of airstrikes. In part to limit civilian casualties, about two dozen targets, mostly communication nodes and a few leadership sites, were dropped from the hit list, they said.

There was a hope that there would be a complete and utter collapse of the regime early on, said Lt. Col. David Hathaway, deputy chief of strategy at the Combined Air Operations Center at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. In order to let that come to fruition, they initially held back those targets.

When U.S. and British ground troops entered southern Iraq a day ahead of schedule on March 21, scores of other targets in that region also fell off the list. Hundreds of bridges, rail lines, power stations and other facilities, once considered potential targets, were spared to preserve infrastructure for a speedier postwar recovery.

This restricted approach drew criticism from some inside and outside the Air Force for weakening the impact of what was widely labeled a shock and awe campaign. But architects of the strategy said they believed that by focusing the first strikes on Husseins palaces, security operations, intelligence services and Baath party buildings, the protective screen around the Iraqi leader could be removed and his downfall precipitated.

We wanted to make it clear to the Iraqi people that we were attacking regime targets, said Col. Mace Carpenter, chief strategist at the air operations center. We wanted them to see that we were clearly targeting those people who had been repressing them.

Targeting the Guard

Once it became clear that the initial attacks had not broken the governments will to fight, the air campaign shifted focus to Republican Guard forces, particularly the three divisions -- the Medina, Hammurabi and Nida -- arrayed south of Baghdad.

While the ground forces paused during the last week of March to refuel, refit and wait for the sandstorms to blow over, air commanders pressed the attack.

There was no pause, said Vice Adm. Timothy Keating, who commanded naval forces in the war, including more than 250 strike aircraft flying from five aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean. The visibility was lousy and Im sure brutal for the folks on the ground, but from the various sensors we had and the very good intelligence work done before the campaign started, it was a simple matter to continue prosecuting a certain target set -- the Republican Guard. We could tell where they were.

Lt. Col. Robert Givens, an operations officer with the 524th Fighter Squadron who was piloting an F-16, could see through the dust using an infrared scope. With coordinates provided by Army intelligence officials, he bore in on a battalion of the Medina Division about 20 miles east of Karbala, dropping 500-pound, laser-guided GBU-12 bombs on eight tanks and infantry fighting vehicles one night.

We would set up different types of attack patterns to try to be random to defeat any enemy gunners, who were still shooting in the sandstorm, still putting up antiaircraft artillery, Givens said in a telephone interview.

The Iraqis appeared to believe the sandstorm would provide cover. For example, instead of dispersing to avoid detection, so many T-72 tanks and other armored vehicles ended up packed together tightly near Najaf that a U.S. strike took out 30 of them with four satellite-guided bombs, according to Air Force Maj. Gen. Dan Leaf, the senior air commander at the allied land forces headquarters in Kuwait.

Lt. Col. Mike Webb, an operations officer for the 190th Fighter Squadron, told how A-10 attack planes in his unit were given additional latitude to operate during the sandstorm. Normally, he said, A-10 pilots are required to identify their targets either by eyeball -- binoculars -- or onboard sensors before firing. But in this case, the requirement was lifted. Authorization to drop 1,000-pound CBU-87 cluster munitions -- weapons that disperse hundreds of smaller bomblets across the ground -- on Republican Guard positions came from airborne controllers, who took responsibility for assessing the potential damage to civilians.

At any other time, that would not be standard procedure for us, Webb said.

As the weather improved, the attacks on the Republican Guard intensified, occupying more than two-thirds of the approximately 800 strike missions being flown by U.S. and allied aircraft in the wars second week. By then, U.S. forces had seized Tallil air base outside Nasiriyah and turned it into a refueling station for A-10 attack planes, providing them an extra hour over most target areas.

Aircraft flying a variety of missions over all parts of Iraq were also instructed, before returning home, to circle back over the Republican Guard divisions and unload whatever ordnance they still had on board.

Finishing the Job

Unlike the 1991 Persian Gulf War, which had distinct air and ground campaigns, this air war was designed, in Darnells words, to stay very tightly lashed to the ground campaign.

To pound the Republican Guard harder, U.S. commanders had to resolve an early difficulty with what the military calls the fire support coordination line. That is the line, demarcated ahead of advancing Army forces, that keeps U.S. warplanes from bombing too close to U.S. ground troops. But in this case, it had been set so far ahead that it was inhibiting air attacks on Iraqi fighters on whom U.S. soldiers were closing in.

When the problem became clear, Moseley arranged with Army ground commanders to allow warplanes to operate behind the line in 30-mile-by-30-mile kill boxes -- areas that had been identified as free of U.S. troops.

The first few days, things were moving so fast that it was difficult to optimize the use of anything, said one senior Air Force officer who requested anonymity. Theres a price to be paid for simultaneity.

By pushing the tankers and surveillance aircraft north nearer to Baghdad starting on March 24, Moseley was extending the time that U.S. warplanes could spend over Iraq between refuelings and support advancing Army and Marine forces. Moseley himself questioned whether his gamble was paying off and queried Leaf after several days. Leaf recalled telling Moseley that the improved intelligence from the surveillance aircraft was indeed proving worth the risk.

Moseley left the guarded security of the air operations center on April 3 and flew on a tanker mission that brought him within 60 miles of Baghdad.

He knew he was pushing the risk envelope, and he wanted to show the folks who flew for him that he was willing to take the risk, Leaf said.

Much of the air attack on the Republican Guard by then was being watched -- and coordinated -- by soldiers and Marines on the battlefield. On April 4, for instance, as the Marines were advancing on Baghdad, a Hunter reconnaissance drone spotted a large group of Iraqi artillery and other military vehicles moving out of the capital under the cover of darkness. In the Marines Combat Operations Center, the video stream played live on a display screen, and the officers coordinated a devastating attack on the convoy.

Lt. Col. David Pere, the senior watch officer, called out grid coordinates as other officers forwarded them either by telephone or even Internet chat rooms. A flock of F/A-18 Hornets and AV/8B Harriers raced to the scene. On the video, tiny figures could be seen running from the vehicles. At times a giant flash of light would blind the Hunter camera, and all that would be left on the highway would be smoking wreckage. On a few occasions, the initial hit was followed by repeated secondary explosions and crackling fireworks, suggesting that an ammunition truck had been struck.

A bomb-damage assessment report indicated that about 80 vehicles were destroyed in what amounted to a turkey shoot.

By April 4, U.S. Army intelligence estimated the Medina Division had been reduced to 18 percent of its full strength. The Hammurabi Division was rated at 44 percent. An Army intelligence officer, presenting these figures to unit commanders, added: These numbers are somewhat in dispute. They may actually be lower.

Battle over Baghdad

As they bore down on Republican Guard forces in the field, U.S. commanders also turned more aggressive in striking Baghdad, going after those targets that had been held back initially out of concern for avoiding civilian casualties or damaging civilian property. These included not only telephone exchanges and other communication nodes, but also Iraqi television broadcast facilities.

To provide air cover for the U.S. Army and Marine forces moving into Baghdad, air commanders had developed a special concept for close-air support in a large urban area. It involved stacking different types of warplanes with varying munitions over the city to provide multiple attack options. It also involved allowing aircraft to fly as low as they needed to identify targets and to shoot.

For the A-10s, which are equipped with 30mm Gatling guns, this meant getting down to 2,000 or 3,000 feet at times for strafing runs. Webb, the A-10 operations officer, said his aviators were very concerned about the lingering air defense threat in the capital, particularly from dozens and dozens of portable, shoulder-mounted launchers.

One shoulder-fired missile ended up downing an A-10 on April 8. Another A-10 was hit nine minutes later but managed to fly back to Kuwait. The day before, an A-10 was also struck but limped to Tallil air base.

Of 1,800 U.S. and allied aircraft, only two U.S. warplanes were lost to enemy fire: the A-10 over Baghdad and an F-15E fighter jet that went down April 7 near Tikrit north of the capital. The A-10 pilot was rescued; the two F-15E crewmen were killed.

One of the lingering mysteries is why no Iraqi warplane took to the air. Moseley suspects the Iraqi air force was intimidated by the U.S. attack, which included heavy bombing of airfields.

We hit him pretty hard up front, Moseley said in a news conference on April 5. So I believe that he has not flown because in their mind, theyve made a calculation that they will not survive.

AFM的每月失事專欄中，介紹了這架直昇機的編制。它真正的編制是第227航空團第一營，但平常卻是配發到第一騎兵師。而這次卻是跟著第11航空旅來到伊拉克。

Written By Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade

I can remember vividly -- I dont remember the date, exactly, but I can remember vividly one day, when we attacked to an objective along the Euphrates River between the town of Al Hillah and Karbala with the 3rd Infantry Division, simultaneously we moved the 3rd of the 7th Cavalry of the 3d Infantry Division into a position just south of the Karbala Gap, which was where we intended to make our main effort. At the same time, I directed the 101st Air Assault Division to conduct an attack from the vicinity of An Najaf toward Al Hillah. I also directed the 82nd Airborne Division to do a similar attack into al-Samawa. And the 101st did a armed recon with two squadrons or two battalions of their attack aviation to the west of (Mill Lake ?) to the western flank of the corps.

All of those attacks, all five of them, took place at 0300 Zulu on the same morning. And while we were doing the attack, the 3rd Infantry Division was repositioning the brigades of the division that werent participating in that attack to prepare for the attack through the Karbala Gap and ultimately into Baghdad.

As we completed those attacks, defeated the enemy in and around Al Hillah -- which is the first time, by the way, that we had confirmed contact with the Republican Guard -- we began to receive reports from our UAVs and aerial observers and from our intelligence folks that the Iraqi Army was repositioning. And it was about 3:00, maybe 4:00 in the afternoon on a beautiful sunlit day, low wind, no restrictions to flight, and at that point the U.S. Air Force had a heyday against those repositioning Iraqi forces.

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May 11, 2003

SOUTH POMFRET, Vt. � On April 3, the U.S. Armys 3rd Infantry Division was poised to move through Iraqs Karbala Gap toward Baghdad. The fighting was widely expected to be tough. Saddam Husseins back was to the wall, and the Republican Guards Medina Division barred the way.

The original plan for the 3rd Division, a heavy force of Abrams tanks and armored Bradley fighting vehicles, followed the precept of Hans Guderian, legendary German tank commander of World War II: fist, not fingers. Armor should deliver a single smashing blow, not be spread out in weaker individual thrusts.

On the eve of the U.S. assault, however, intelligence analysts reported that the Medina Division had been so badly damaged by U.S. air, artillery and rocket attacks that it was combat-ineffective. Acting on that assessment, division commanders undertook a daring change in plans: They would abandon the fist and opt for fingers.

As it turned out, April 3 was a pivotal day, with the U.S. Army fighting its last full battle of the Iraq war. The days events, and the change in plans, are vividly portrayed in 800 pages of dispatches from journalists embedded with the 3rd Division. The 85 journalists assigned to the division included such media stars as Ted Koppel and the late David Bloom, who died while covering the war, as well as correspondents for major national newspapers. Journalists were also assigned to the division from less prominent news outlets, ranging from the Voice of America to local newspapers in Georgia.

Some have argued that embedding was a masterstroke of Pentagon public relations that destroyed the independence of the news media. But a review of the news stories out of the 3rd Division, collected by a military source, tells a different story.

By the end of the day on April 3, the divisions 20,000 troops were everywhere. The change of plans had paid off. In one day, forward elements advanced almost 40 miles to Saddam International Airport. Ten miles east of the airport, U.S. infantry seized the intersection of Highways 8 and 1, the main roads leading into Baghdad. Twenty-five miles farther east, armored units neared the Medina Divisions onetime headquarters in Suwayrah on the Tigris River.

Each of these finger thrusts was described in news dispatches with an immediacy that matches the best of the reporting from World War II. These firsthand reports will one day be a treasure trove for historians. And they give the lie to the notion that the embeds were censored or that they lost objectivity by getting too close to individual soldiers and units.

That said, embedding alone didnt make for comprehensive war coverage. No single reporter working at the level of a company or battalion could hope to convey the full scope of a military campaign, much less its political and other ramifications. Providing context and meaning was the responsibility of editors back home.

What is clear, however, is that the embedded journalists did not shy away from reporting things that the U.S. military was doing its best to ignore. Most notably, Iraqi casualties. Fearful of public reaction, senior U.S. officials in the region and in Washington steadfastly refused to discuss how many Iraqi soldiers and others were dying as a result of the coalitions overwhelming firepower. Not so the embeds.

As the 3rd Infantry moved forward April 3, embedded reporters gave combat a human face � an Iraqi, as well as an American, face. Although official briefers seemed to suggest enemy resistance had somehow evaporated, reporters on the scene made clear that thousands of Iraqi fighters were killed. By the time U.S. units reached the Euphrates River, William Branigin of the Washington Post reported, the Medina Division had been effectively annihilated by airstrikes and rocket barrages.

The road from the Euphrates to Baghdad was lined with hundreds of burning vehicles, civilian and military, Chris Tomlinson of Associated Press wrote. Hundreds of dead Iraqis, most in uniform, lay next to the vehicles.

Oliver Poole of the British Daily Telegraph reported that bodies dressed in the uniform of the Republican Guard and burnt-out vehicles were strewn around the roadways. A sergeant who had also served in Operation Desert Storm told Poole: I hope we dont experience anything like that again When I see that many bodies, I just dont want to be here anymore.

Michael Corkery of the Providence Journal reported that U.S. officers in the field estimated Iraqi losses at about 500 soldiers from the 14th Brigade of the Medina Division alone.

Were told 3rd Infantry has inflicted 4,000 Iraqi deaths by some estimation from several officers that I have talked to today, CBS reporter Jim Axelrod told viewers. Ron Synovitz of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported that Maj. Joffery Watson, an intelligence officer with the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Division, estimated that 3,000 to 4,000 Iraqi troops were killed by combined U.S. air and ground attacks.

I have seen scores of dead Iraqi soldiers lying on the roadside, more dead bodies than I have seen in my entire 20 years of work as a journalist, both in battlefields and as a police reporter in the inner cities of the United States, Synovitz reported.

The battlefield is a chaotic place, and reporting from the 3rd reflects that chaos. It is also, by its nature, a view of the trees, not the forest. On April 3, hardly anyone could digest such rapid movement on so many fronts. At the airport and on the southern doorstep of the city, no one quite knew what lay ahead.

The seizure of the airport raised one pressing question that even commanders here said they could not answer: What comes next? wrote Steven Lee Myers of the New York Times.

Hopefully this is a sign that were able to send to the residents of Baghdad that were here and they can rise up and deal with the regime appropriately and save some future battle inside the city, Lt. Col. Scott Rutter, commander of the 2nd Battalion 7th Regiment of the 3rd Infantry, told AP.

The Los Angeles Times, in a story by Geoffrey Mohan and Tony Perry, speculated that control of the airport should give the Pentagon the ability to fly in a brigade-sized force of the Armys 4th Infantry Division There now are about 40,000 U.S. Army and Marine troops on the outskirts of Baghdad � not enough, in the estimation of many military officials, to mount a well-thought-out and cautious attack on a city of more than 5 million people.

Embedded reporters were describing an Iraqi opponent that was, although they couldnt know it, already defeated.

Two days after the 3rd Divisions drive north through the Karbala Gap, it undertook the most audacious move of the war. Desert Rogue, the 1st Battalion, 64th Armor, left the crossroads of Highways 8 and 1 at dawn to drive through downtown Baghdad on a mad dash for the airport. It was three hours of organized chaos, the battalion commander told the New York Times Myers.

All along the 15-mile route, Iraqis fired from rooftops and storefronts, bridges and underpasses. When it was over, U.S. commanders estimated that 1,000 Iraqi fighters had been killed. One U.S. soldier died.

Its called Let me poke you in the eye because we can and you cant do anything about it, Col. William Grimsley told Agence France-Presse.

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Petraeus: First of all, we dont know when were coming home. We think were here for at least probably three more months or so. And that -- the latest briefing we had was that possibly a coalition force might replace us then, but everything is really still quite uncertain at this time.

Our Apaches did a great job for us. We did in fact change our tactics from night-long deep attack operations, for two reasons. After a successful deep attack, but one in which we crashed a helicopter in a night dust landing on return, and also had problems on take-off -- so we had two problems.

One was that night dust landings at -- southwest of An Najaf, where we were, and all throughout the area, where we originally began these operations, about 400-plus kilometers into Iraq, were very, very difficult, and its despite soldiers who had flown in Afghanistan, spent quite a bit of time with environmental training in Kuwait, had no problems there, and so forth.

The other problem, frankly, was that the Iraqis dispersed very early on and moved their tanks and fighting vehicles and artillery away from the avenues of approach that the 3rd Infantry Division, in particular, was going to use. And so they flat -- werent massed in the way that we want usually for Apache operations. We did, as I say, have one quite successful deep attack operation, had reasonable BDA. But it was not the kind that we had hoped to with the, frankly, you know, 100-plus tanks, tracks, artillery and air defense systems.

Following that, when we could not get the target definition that we needed, we went to daylight, deep armed reconnaissance operations and conducted a number of very successful operations of that type. I dont think they were given the publicity, in part because, frankly, exciting offensive operations were being conducted against Karbala, some of the stuff we were doing in Najaf, Karbala and Al Hillah. And the BDA in some cases was not huge, although they did knock out very significant targets on a number of occasions, and did have one or two that did have very substantial BDA, on the order of several batteries of D-30 artillery, a number of air-defense pieces, and so forth.

We packaged these operations with ATACMS missiles, and as I mentioned, we shot -- or we called for 114 of these. Each of these clears an entire grid square. Theyre massive munitions. We had those a direct line between the shooters and the Apaches. We also had JSTARS supporting them, to direct them; AWACS, EA-6 jammers, and close-air support all packaged together with HARM shooters. And that package went down range; we could identify the target at up to eight kilometers. And then, depending on how much fuel the Apache had, if he had a lot of fuel, would bring in close air support, ATACMS, and save his missiles and rockets for later. And then, as he got toward the end of his time on station, find a target, use his munitions, be relieved in place by another platoon or company of Apaches, and do the same thing again and again and again.

We also had considerable success with attack helicopters operating in close support of our infantry soldiers. The one operation in which we actually ran into a substantial fight with the Republican Guards, and one of the few cases that Im aware of where the Republican Guards employed combined arm operations was the morning that the V Corps attacked with an armed recon by our Apaches to the northwest of Karbala, the lake; the 3rd Infantry Division attacked into the Karbala Gap, both in the west and the east of the city; and then, of course, really never stopped from there.

We attacked into south Al Hillah, where we encountered a dug-in Republican Guard battalion with a tank company, with artillery and with air defense, and it fought very, very effectively. We had a very heavy fight there, lost our first soldier. The tank battalion commander attached to us received a Silver Star for his actions already. The Apache company in that operation fought very, very hard, and eight helicopters take some degree of fire. All of them made it safely back, another sign that the Apache can get hit and just keep on flying, as it showed in Afghanistan as well, in close combat.

In that fight, we destroyed that Republican Guards battalion. We destroyed the tank company. We destroyed two D-30 artillery battalions, destroyed an artillery battery and a number of other systems. We never again saw a Republican Guard unit stand and fight and employ combined arms like that.

We also employed our Kiowa Warrior cavalry squadron attack helicopters directly over cities, with enormous success. That squadron commander, in fact, also will receive a Silver Star and a Distinguished Flying Cross and a Bronze Star with V for actions in three different fights. He had two helicopters shot up underneath him. Each of them made it back safely. And again, they were very, very effective in their role as well.

We tended to use the Kiowas over the cities, where they flitted around a bit, were hard targets to hit generally, and could take the doors off and look directly down through the palm trees and into the city streets where the regular army and militia and Fedayeen were hiding their systems, and then using the Apaches around the edge of the city and occasionally bringing them in for really robust attacks. That, again, worked quite successfully.

Petraeus: First of all, the ATACMS were tremendous. You obviously have to have a large area to fire them into. Needless to say, we didnt use them anywhere near built-up areas or civilian targets. We did use them, again, very, very effectively out in the desert, both west of Karbala and northwest of Karbala, packaged with our Apaches for both suppression of enemy air defenses en route to battle positions and then once our Apaches were in those positions. As I mentioned earlier, those missiles clear a grid square, a square kilometer. And so, those are incredibly lethal. And they were absolutely devastating against those enemy targets in which we employed them. And as I mentioned, we used 114.

I dont know how many Javelins we used, and Ill probably have to research that. I do know that we used Javelins and TOW missiles on a number of occasions, and also the SMAW-D, the squad medium anti-tank weapon, which is a very good bunker buster. And we used these against buildings typically in the outskirts of cities and then inside when we encountered fire.

One of my battalions also, which went in with 3 ID to the airport and cleared the airport terminal, and later fought a very, very substantial fight at the east gate of the terminal -- I believe that they also used the Javelin quite effectively that night that they were attacked, along with a lot of close air support, and again, the TOW ITAS system, which proved very, very effective for us.

The FLIR and the TOW ITAS, in particular, was the hero of the battlefield. It enabled us to see the enemy way, way out before he could even believe we could see him. And that night outside the airfield, for example, our TOW gunners could see the enemy and bring in either close air support or artillery before the enemy even realized he was being seen. Same with, of course, the tank FLIR or the Avenger FLIR.

By James Kitfield, National Journal

When addressing U.S. Army troops shortly before the Iraq war, V Corps commander Lt. Gen. William Wallace frequently noted his Scottish ancestry, drawing inevitable comparisons to his namesake of Braveheart fame. Yet his highlander fortitude was tested when the campaign seemed to sputter after the first week.

Comments Wallace made to a reporter that Iraqi resistance was fiercer than expected, and that the war might take longer than anticipated, became the center of a whirling controversy over Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfelds war plan. As the commander of Army maneuver forces and of the battle for Baghdad, however, Wallace was a key leader in a campaign that defeated the Iraqi army and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in roughly three weeks. Embedded with V Corps throughout the war, National Journal Correspondent James Kitfield spoke with Wallace at his headquarters in Baghdad on April 20. Edited excerpts follow.

NJ: In recent comments to U.S. troops in Baghdad, you commended them for traveling farther in less time, and fighting more decisively, than any army in history. In general terms, what do you think were the key ingredients to this Iraq victory?

Wallace: My overriding impression is one of admiration for the bravery, heroism, and aggressiveness of our young soldiers. Unless they were in an advantageous position to defend, they just constantly attacked throughout the whole campaign.

The other aspect of this campaign that really impressed me was the ability of my young field-grade officers to employ combined arms—direct fire, indirect fire, close air support—in the right balance on the battlefield, and to great advantage. I would also note that this war was executed almost exclusively at the battalion level and below. The divisions moved guys around the map, but the guys who really did the fighting were the lower echelons, at battalion and below.

I was also very impressed with the way our young leaders in those units got out in front and led when their troops were in harms way. I gave out 26 Purple Hearts the other day, and many if not most of them were to young sergeants and lieutenants. Thats different from a Desert Storm type of campaign.

NJ: When we talked shortly before the war began, you stressed that there would be several different fights going on simultaneously within the overall campaign, and I would like you to comment on how each of those fights went. The first was the fight to get your forces deployed and ready in a theater halfway around the world. From my perspective, it seemed that forcing all of those troops and equipment through the eye of a single needle, in terms of the Kuwaiti port and airfield, was very constraining. Was it?

Wallace: First of all, I think we were right to characterize the fight to get here as a critical part of the equation. Certainly the fact that we only had a single airport and port through which our entire formation had to flow was a limiting factor in our operations. I think we did pretty well in adapting ourselves to that reality, but in hindsight, I might have made some different adjustments in terms of what flowed into the country, and when.

For example, early in the flow we were very concerned about fuel. There was a companys worth of 5,000-gallon tankers sitting in Kuwait, but the truck drivers werent due into the theater for weeks. Ultimately we asked for and received permission to fly in truck drivers from V Corps to fall in on that equipment, in order to get our truck companies moving. Those kinds of decisions and adjustments were being made virtually every day by our logisticians and leaders in the rear area. And ultimately, it worked.

NJ: In retrospect, do you believe this rolling start, with its necessary focus on deploying new forces even while the war was being fought hundreds of kilometers away, and delivering just-in- time supplies, was the best way to go?

Wallace: Well, its hard to argue with success. All of us would like more predictability in our lives and jobs. But we made this work—thats how I would phrase it. We had some very talented people who made it work.

There are also advantages to a rolling start, because it allows you to get into the fight quicker. You gain some strategic as well as tactical advantages from that fact. The impression we have from talking to some Iraqi officers, for instance, is that some were expecting a Desert Storm-type campaign preceded by a long period of aerial bombardment. As you recall, instead we actually started the ground war before we started the air war. That decision was made for a number of different reasons, but I have to believe it surprised some Iraqi military officers who found themselves confronting U.S. tanks very early in the war.

NJ: One of the other major fights involved in this war was against tough and variable terrain, from the dusty desert of western Iraq to the fertile farmland between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, with its many canals and waterways. How well did your forces cope with that?

Wallace: I was certainly happy with the way our forces handled the terrain. We captured a map that an Iraqi reconnaissance battalion commander in the Republican Guards was carrying, and it showed they were anticipating our forces to go exactly where we decided not to go, largely because the terrain between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers was so difficult for maneuver forces.

Having said that, we were surprised by the texture of the desert terrain. The dust problem in those areas was orders of magnitude worse than any of our terrain analysts had predicted. That caused us a number of problems. It caused us a problem in terms of convoy movement, and in terms of aviation assets. Anytime anything moved out there, it kicked up a dust cloud. It was like driving through talcum powder.

NJ: You said from the beginning that maintaining a fast pace of operations would be crucial to this campaign, which brings us to the question of the so-called pause in offensive operations that began with the sandstorm near the end of the first week. That halt to your forward progress obviously sparked some controversy back in the United States, didnt it?

Wallace: I would suggest to you that tempo can be fast or slow, either of which is OK as long as you are in control of the tempo, and the enemy is not. When we slowed our forward progress and tempo, it was for a very deliberate, two-fold reason. First, we wanted to build our logistics stance prior to moving into the battle for Baghdad. Second, even though we werent moving forward, we were attacking the enemy every day. We had three fights going on nearly simultaneously around Najaf in that time frame, and a very serious fight down in Samawa. The fact that we werent advancing through the Karbala Gap didnt mean that we werent fighting. We continued to fight, we continued to secure our [logistics] lines, and we continued to kill a lot of bad guys.

NJ: At one time, you were dealing simultaneously with a dust storm of near-biblical proportions, unexpectedly fierce fights with Iraqi paramilitaries, and the distraction of the controversy back in Washington over your comments. What was that period like for you personally?

Wallace: Personally, the period during the dust storm was the low point of the entire campaign for me. That was definitely the hardest part and the low point of the war. You have to remember that the 3rd Infantry Division crossed the line of departure to open the war with about five days of supplies in terms of water, food, and ammunition. Then the dust storm hit on the fifth day of the fight, and lasted for most of three days. During that storm, our convoys took three to four days to reach our forward forces, and they were carrying two days of resupply. So the math didnt add up at that point, which concerned me. Not that we couldnt hold on to the ground we had gained, but we couldnt advance a lot further in our plans until we had solved the logistics issue.

The period of the dust storm was also tough because we were fighting our tails off. There was all of this discussion on the lack of progress, but in actual fact, we were still maintaining a high operations tempo. We just werent gaining ground. What we were doing was setting conditions for a decisive fight to follow.

NJ: The period of the dust storm also revealed the other great surprise of the war, which was the suicidal fanaticism with which the Fedayeen Saddam and some other paramilitary forces fought. How did you react to that?

Wallace: At the time, we simply couldnt discount the fanaticism with which those paramilitaries fought. I was not willing to ignore the threat it posed, or to expose my critical logistics train to it.

In terms of forces to meet that threat, I had a very strong point of the spear with the 3rd Infantry Division. What I didnt have was a heavily mobile secondary force. The ability of the 101st Airborne Division to move itself around at that time was limited, quite frankly, because some of the trucks they rely on for mobility hadnt arrived in theater yet. So I was constrained in my ability to get one of the divisions around the battlefield. That led to some really tough calls on where to employ the 101st Division.

NJ: Also at that time, some of your commanders characterized the fighting taking place around Najaf and Karbala as a preview of the battle of Baghdad. Did it turn out that way?

Wallace: That may very well represent the single most significant adjustment we made in this entire war. We never had any intention of fighting in those southern cities, because we felt that would put us at a disadvantage; so we intended to bypass them.

As it turned out, the enemy was so aggressive in coming out of the cities and attacking us that we had to counterattack, first to secure our lines of communication, and second because the enemy was going to keep coming at us until we went into the cities and whacked him. So we had to make an adjustment to our battle plan and tactics to compensate for that aggressive tactic by the enemy.

I think Saddams forces were trying to draw us into the cities, where they thought they had an advantage. Instead, we turned the cities into a disadvantage, with our armored raids taking out their heavy equipment, technical vehicles, and bunker complexes. Once we did that with our heavy armored forces, we switched to light infantry, backed by heavy reinforcements, to do the more detailed clearing operations. In the process of those fights, we not only secured our lines of communication and diminished the enemys capabilities, but we also began to take control of population centers that we had anticipated addressing later, in Phase 4 stability operations. We just ended up confronting that issue earlier in the campaign than we anticipated.

NJ: Once you went back on the offensive at the start of April, and pushed your forces successfully through the Karbala Gap, the campaign seemed to come quickly to a head. Why was that?

Wallace: For nearly a year, we had recognized collectively that once we were through the Karbala Gap, the fight would not be over until we seized the international airport in Baghdad. The entire fight from Karbala to the airport was considered as one continuous assault, because once we crossed through the gap, we were inside the range of all the artillery that was in support of Baghdad and all the Republican Guard divisions around Baghdad.

We were also obviously worried about if and when Saddam would use chemical weapons. If you got 10 people in a room, youd get 10 opinions on the subject, but clearly Karbala Gap was one of those choke points where Saddam could have used those weapons to some effect in terms of slowing us down. So the judgment I stated to my commanders was that once we crossed through the gap, we would be within Saddams red zone in terms of defenses, and we had damn sure better be ready to continue the fight all the way to the encirclement of Baghdad.

NJ: At what point in that offensive from Karbala Gap to Baghdad did you sense that you had your enemy defeated?

Wallace: When we seized the bridge over the Euphrates River at what we called Objective Peach. At that point, I was pretty confident that we had Saddam by the balls. If we hadnt seized that bridge, we were prepared to put our own bridges in the water, but that probably would have added 24 hours to our operations. If he had the capability at the time—and its not clear to me now that he did—he could have used that 24 hours to reposition forces and mass artillery, making life a lot harder for us. So when we got the main bridge across the Euphrates, I knew we were essentially home free.

NJ: Before the war, you targeted the Republican Guard Medina Division, which defended the southern approaches to Baghdad, as the center of gravity in the campaign. Yet the Medina never seemed able to fight as a coherent division-sized force, did it?

Wallace: No, it never did. As I look back, I think it fell victim to a successful, joint, combined-arms fight. Im about 95 percent convinced that when we crossed the Euphrates in a series of feints just after the dust storm hit, it forced the Medina to start repositioning its forces to counter an advance between the rivers that was never our main intent.

We had beautiful weather with clear skies at that point, and we started getting reports of enemy armor moving on trucks, of Iraqi artillery forces repositioning, and of attempts by Medina brigades to occupy what they believed would be optimum defensive positions. All that happened in the full view of the U.S. Air Force, and they started whacking the hell out of the Medina. So that was a pretty good feeling, knowing that the enemy felt he had to move his forces under conditions that were of great advantage to us as the attacker.

NJ: Perhaps the place where reality deviated most dramatically from your war plan was in the battle of Baghdad, which you planned as a very methodical series of strikes from staging bases on the citys periphery. The reality happened much faster, in two successive armored assaults into the city, didnt it?

Wallace: Once again, you have to go back to the battle of Najaf to understand our actions at that point, because thats where we learned we could do better. We learned that armor could fight in the city and survive, and that if you took heavy armored forces into the city—given the way Saddam was defending the city with technical vehicles and bunker positions—we could knock all of those defenses out and survive. As a result of Najaf, I think our soldiers also gained an extraordinary appreciation for the survivability of their equipment. So Najaf made decisions associated with being more aggressive when we got to Baghdad a hell of a lot easier. We didnt have to be as cautious as we had anticipated, because by the time we got to Baghdad we had learned some important lessons along the way, and we applied them to the Baghdad fight.

NJ: On the second of those armored assaults into downtown Baghdad, elements of the 3rd Infantry Division captured the main palace and city center, and then unexpectedly asked if they could simply stay and occupy downtown. That wasnt planned, was it?

Wallace: No, it wasnt. And it brought concerns. Not about our ability to stay in Baghdad, because we had already demonstrated an ability to dominate the urban battlefield. Rather, the concern was about our ability to get light-skinned vehicles in to resupply those armored forces sitting downtown.

In the end, we were able to protect those convoys, allowing us to stay in downtown Baghdad. In fact, we found that the positioning of our forces around the palace downtown was actually more defensible than our positions on the outside of town, because the parks and broad plazas in the city gave us good fields of fire, and we were in a place where he couldnt mass his artillery on us because we were in the middle of his artillery forces. When you got right down to it, all of that added up to making our decision to stay in downtown Baghdad a good one. Third Infantry commander Maj. Gen. Buford Blount called me up and said, Well, we control all the intersections, and I recommend we stay, because if we stay, we have the city. I agreed.

NJ: In many ways, doesnt this transition now under way from combat to stability and peace enforcement seem more difficult than pure war fighting?

Wallace: We train for war fighting, but peacekeeping is something that we do. If you look across our formation, I would bet that 30 percent or more of our soldiers have had some real-world peacekeeping experience in the Balkans. So we have a lot of experience in how to deal with civil affairs, with civilian populations, with establishing institutions to get civilian populations involved in their own destiny. There is just a lot of experience in our forces with this civil-military dynamic, largely as a result of our operations in Bosnia and Kosovo.

NJ: Even in the Balkans, however, you didnt have to make that transition from such intense combat operations, did you?

Wallace: The rapidity with which we have transitioned from one to the other in Iraq is the real trick. One day our troops are kicking down doors, and the next theyre passing out Band-Aids. And in some cases, theyre kicking down doors without really knowing if they are going to have to pull a trigger or pass out a Band-Aid on the other side. And its really a remarkable tribute to the mental acuity of our soldiers that they are able to do that.

NJ: Other than the Fedayeen Saddam fights, were there any surprises that Iraqi forces threw at you that forced you to react or adjust?

WASHINGTON, May 14 (AFP) - 22:08 GMT - US forces used a thermobaric Hellfire missile during the war in Iraq for the first time, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld disclosed Wednesday, unveiling a deadly new US weapon against underground targets.
The air-to-ground missile can be fired from remote-controlled Predator drones or US attack helicopters, US defense officials said.

Its thermobaric warhead is designed to unleash an incinerating shock wave and fuel explosion in tunnels or other confined spaces.

Rumsfeld said a themobaric Hellfire missile, can take out the first floor of a building without damaging the floors above, and is capable of reaching around corners, striking enemy forces that hide in caves or bunkers and hardened multi-room complexes.

Revealing the weapons use in Iraq, he told members of Congress that it was developed and deployed in less than a year.

It was not immediately known how many times the weapon was used or against what targets.

But such a weapon could be useful in attacking suspected underground labs or depots for chemical or biological weapons. In theory, the intense heat generated by the fuel air explosion would burn up agents before they could escape into the atmosphere.

A US F-15E fighter dropped a thermobaric bomb in Afghanistan, the BLU-118S, to clear out caves and bunkers.

But putting a thermobaric warhead on a Hellfire missile capitalizes on the versatility of Predator drones, AH-64 Apache and AH-1 Super Cobra helicopter gunships in urban settings.

A modified Wind-Corrected Munitions Dispenser (WCMD) packed with 3,700 non-explosive penetrator rods made its first combat appearance in Iraq after a rushed 98-day, $40 million development effort, a U.S. Air Force official said May 2.

The Air Force is only now disclosing details of the new CBU-107 Passive Attack Weapon (PAW), which a senior acquisition official first made public in testimony before House lawmakers last month.

The 1,000-pound class weapon is designed to strike unshielded targets where explosive fills are unnecessary or undesirable, said Col. James Knox, area attack program director at the Air Armament Center at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. Attractive options include chemical and biological weapons targets, which an explosive weapon would jettison into the atmosphere, and soft structures in populated areas where the potential for collateral damage is high, Knox said.

You might want to deny or degrade the military target without destroying adjacent structures, Knox said.

PAW functions like a traditional munitions dispenser, but ejects the non-explosive rods instead of explosive submunitions. The weapons full payload includes 350 14-inch rods, 1,000 7-inch rods and 2,400 2-inch rods.

The Air Force launched the program Dec. 10 and closed the production line in early March after delivering more than 58 CBU-107s to the field. General Dynamics supplied the payload and Textron produced the dispenser body. Lockheed Martin delivered an upgraded Inertial Navigation Unit for the WCMD kit, reducing the weapons destructive radius to less than 100 feet, Knox said.

Knox declined to specify how Air Force crews in Iraq employed the weapon or how often, but said, It was used. ... Ive gotten no negative feedback.

Marvin Sambur, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, first described the weapon in an April 3 hearing before the House Armed Services subcommittee on tactical air and land forces.

Production was completed on time, he said, with 15 percent more weapons delivered than originally proposed as we completed the program under budget.

An analysis two years ago by the Air Combat Command recommended such a weapon. The Air Force Research Laboratorys Eglin site produced an early design, but a funded program was never approved.

Recalling the 28-day effort in 1991 to produce the BLU-113 Desert Storm Special, Knox said he produced the CBU-107 by forming an ad hoc development team composed of a unique mixture of AAC, AFRL and operational test officials based at Eglin.

This came in a hurry, Knox said. It wasnt something we planned for, and no new people came with it.

The weapons shape and weight was not altered to avoid a time-consuming series of flight certification checks, he said. Air crews did, however, subject the weapon frame to extreme air buffeting before deploying it to the field. Three aircraft - the F-16, B-52 and F-15E - are cleared to use the CBU-107. Air Force officials clearly are encouraged by the programs results, but theres been no movement yet to make the program permanent, Knox said.