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Aviation History
1994
1994 - 1842.PDF
COMMAND AND CONTROL One of two USAF RC-135Us, configured to acquire technical data on foreign emitters Dynamics F-lll, the McDonnell Douglas F-15 and F-18, the Northrop Grumman A- 6 and the US Army's McDonnell Douglas AH-64 attack helicopter. Weapons used in support of these missions included the Texas Instruments (Tl) AGM-88 high speed anti-radiation missile (HARM) and cruise missiles. The acquisition of the intelligence nec essary to define targets also relied heavily on aircraft, which, on the US side, includ ed the Lockheed U-2R, Boeing RC-135 Rivet Joint and US Navy Lockheed EP-3 Aries II. Offensive C2W operations have three goals: slowing an enemy's speed of opera tions, disrupting planning and decision making capacity and degrading the ability of the C2 structure to implement decisions reached. In the case of Iraq, Tanksley summed this up as "paralysing the leader ship". Of US air operations flown during the campaign, 10% were dedicated to engaging C2 targets, 25% were against logistics targets, and the remainder against air defence or tactical targets. DECEPTION CAMPAIGN Other Gulf War C2W-type considerations included a deception campaign over the launch by the Coalition of a seaborne inva sion of Kuwait, and "own-force" security measures, such as flying airlift operations below the Iraqi radar horizon and "absolute" communications security. USN Cdr Frank Folly, a member of the USA's Joint EW Center at San Antonio, Texas, characterises the EW component as falling into three categories. These are elec tronic attack, electronic protection and electronic support). Electronic atack cov ers jamming, systems deception and the destruction of enemy assets, using anti- radiation missiles, precision-guided weapons, and electro-magnetic pulse weapons. Electronic protection of friendly forces' ability to use the electro-magnetic spec trum includes elements such as emission- control strategies, operating procedures and the provision of redundant communi cations links. Electronic support covers intelligence-gathering operations and sup ports both electronic attack and threat avoidance and targeting. Folly, also in attendance at the Stockholm symposium, recognises that EW operations only offer short-term effec tiveness, while also posing a risk to the friendly use of the electro-magnetic spec trum and the danger of fratricide. He stresses the need for any operation to be aimed at targets which will have the maxi mum impact on the enemy's ability to func tion effectively. Targeting decisions should also be weighed against whether the survival of a particular node can be exploited to "advan tage" by another element of C2W doctrine. Operational-security tactics are intend ed to "hide the truth" from the enemy and cause what Folly terms an "information void" which deprives the enemy of intelli gence data. Deception operations can be characterised as "perception manipula tion", whereby the enemy is provided with plausible, but incorrect, information which "...distorts, manipulates or falsifies the true situation". To be successful, such opera tions must be consistent and fully integrat ed with continuing operational-security and psychological-warfare operations. Tanksley cited the threatened use of the devastatingly effective BLU-82 fuel-air munition as having increased the effective ness of the Volant Solo propaganda broad casts exhorting Iraqi soldiers to surrender during the Gulf War. CALLING A BLUFF A UK speaker at Stockholm gave another example from operations in Bosnia, where air-dropped leaflets carried threats that the HARM would be used if ground-based sur face-to-air missile systems "illuminated" NATO aircraft with radar. Whereas BLU- 82s were used in Kuwait, the refusal bythe United Nations to sanction air strikes allowed a bluff to be called, a factor which probably resulted in the loss of a Royal Navy British Aerospace Sea Harrier FRS.l in the region. Of a list of 32 tri-service sys tems quoted by Folly as supporting the concept of C2W, no less than 22 of them are aircraft or air-launched weapons. Considering potential targets for C2W, Folly picks out the cellular telephone, satellite communications and the global- positioning system as "deserving atten tion". All three systems are characterised by him as having considerable tactical util ity, while being "robust". The USA first encountered the cellular telephone as a weapon of war in Panama and, by the time of the Kuwait conflict, all three technologies were firmly established in the military context. While resistant to current measures, Folly believes that more "sophisticated" techniques can defeat such technologies. By way of example, he cited a generic 1W GPS jammer capable of blocking civil reception within a 22km (12nm) radius. A 64W output increases the jamming radius to 175km. He also made it clear that, dur ing a war, the use of satellite technology by the broadcast media would be a legitimate target for C2W operations. US and UK speakers at the Stockholm symposium emphasised that, while C2W offers the prospect of considerable improvements in war-fighting effective ness, the concept is rooted in existing tech nology and assets. C2W effectively aims to codify trends covering multi-service opera tions, while focusing on the education of senior operational and staff officers. The aim is that they will be completely grounded in the concept of all-arms inte grated war fighting and aware of the tech nologies used by all three services. To this end, C2W lectures are already being pre sented at UK staff colleges. The Pentagon has developed a C2W/Information Warfare course, with three training centres already teaching the doctrine as a basic element of the syllabus. D 36 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 3 -9 August, 1994
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