US News & World Report has a new dispatch from the carrier USS Constellation, detailing how the air war in Iraq is evolving to emphasize close air support.
Close air support strikes this week covered the Iraqi map, including surface-to-surface missile and antiartillery sites in Al Amarah; military vehicles and barracks in Najaf; Republican Guard AAA sites and fielded forces in Al Kut; and armored personnel carriers near Karbala.
Still, the Constellation's air wing is "gradually migrating away from" long-identified fixed targets, says Costello, "to supporting the troops" in battles now raging across Iraq. Pilots flying this war's brand of close air support learned the lessons of Afghanistan: "Afghanistan was the first time we dropped through the clouds," says Fox. Before the Taliban takeout and precision-guided weaponry, soldiers on the ground typically talked pilots to a target, in back-and-forth negotiations using line-of-sight landmarks like trees, roads, and rivers. "He'd get a warm fuzzy from knowing he'd guided us directly to the target," says Marine Corps Capt. and Hornet pilot Benedict Burke, 28, from Yardley, Pa., of a ground soldier's spoken directions in the old CAS model: "But with GPS [global positioning systems], close air support is amazing."
Now, more often than not, the forward air controller simply syncs GPS coordinates up to pilots flying thousands of feet above: "We have good intelligence, and ground troops have good technology," says Hornet pilot Lt. Mike Hall, a 27-year-old from Milpitas, Calif., of the mission he flew last week near Karbala, in which ground troops' zapped coordinates helped him take out several tanks of the Republican Guard's Medina Division. Commanders hope the new, technology-dependent strategy will continue to keep pilots safer, as the war moves into more densely populated areas. "The majority of air losses in war are from small arms," says Fox. "So now we don't spend a lot of time rooting around down low, because that's where you get shot."
Posted by Alan at March 29, 2003 08:32 PM