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Newhouse.com
February 7, 2003
Grisly Accidents Call 'Precision Warfare' Into Question
By David Wood, Newhouse News Service
[reprinted with permission]
It is well after dark in Kuwait but still warm out on the desert floor.
In the constellations of stars overhead on March 12, 2001, are the faint,
winking navigation lights of three jets, circling high.
One is piloted by squadron commander David O. Zimmerman, among the most
experienced aviators in the Navy. On the ground below is a cluster of
men including Jason Faley, an Air Force special operations forward air
controller. Together they are practicing close air support, the most
difficult and dangerous mission in today's military: dropping bombs
in the vicinity of friendly troops, on small targets, at night.
Zimmerman pushes his F-18 over into a power dive, 26 tons of high technology
plummeting the equivalent of a 30-story building every second. All systems
go. Three 500-pound bombs on the racks. Airspeed 533 mph. Zimmerman
searching for his target, thumb poised above the bomb-release button.
Then a terrible moment in which it becomes clear the pilot is in the
wrong place. Someone on the ground screams into his radio, "Abort! Abort!
Abort!" But Zimmerman's thumb has already depressed the bomb release.
As the explosions blossom below, there are words of shock in another
cockpit: "He just killed every single one of them."
Six were dead, in fact. And 11 wounded.
The United States military heads toward war in Iraq boasting of its
ability to wage "precision warfare" -- not only to hit any target at
any time, but to accomplish "the surgical destruction of specific aim
points within a target," as Navy Vice Adm. John Nathman, a senior naval
air commander, once said.
Indeed, the notion that Americans have mastered technology to produce
a "revolution" in warfare is gospel to today's military, a bedrock belief
that brooks no challenge.
Out in the real world, though, things look different: a long and continuing
history of accidents including, notoriously, last year's deadly bombing
by an Air Force F-16 of Canadian troops on maneuvers in Afghanistan.
The mounting death toll -- of U.S. soldiers, allied troops, innocent
civilians and simply "unknowns" -- is bloody evidence that despite the
best pilots, the best forward air controllers and indeed the best technology,
"The system is out of control," as a strike fighter pilot phrases it.
Despite a rising chorus of critics, the high command maintains there
is no problem -- or at least, that any problem can be fixed with some
tweaks and patches.
"In the history of warfare, there's always been friendly fire; it's
always heartbreaking," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last fall.
But, Rumsfeld added: "I've not heard nor seen anybody who has seen a
pattern that's correctable. ... It's just the way life is, I suppose,
and when you're dealing with bombs ... people get hurt. It's a shame."
In her immaculate bedroom, by the curtained window that looks across
a suburban cul-de-sac outside Richmond, Va., Sue Faley bends her head
over her Gateway computer and begins once again to type. The keys clack
into the emptiness of the new white frame house. The room smells of
furniture polish and despair.
"Dear Mr. President, we are writing to you today, asking for your help
-- on March 12, 2001, our beloved son, Staff Sgt. Jason Faley, was taken
from us."
She got the news from a relative who heard it on the radio. Six killed,
11 wounded in Kuwait by bombs mistakenly dropped on their position.
Without hearing his name, she knew, in the terrible and final way that
mothers, with sons at war, know.
In the old days, pilots flew low and slow over the battlefield, craning
out the cockpit window, jawing by radio with the grunts below who talked
them onto the target. World War II pilots lived with the Army -- indeed,
they were the Army Air Corps. They had a gut feel for the flow of battle
and became murderously adept at finding and killing pockets of German
forces.
In 1947 the Air Corps was wrenched away from the Army and made an independent
Air Force, and some say the trouble started then.
With exceptions -- notably during Vietnam when some fighter jocks would
come in under 500 feet to strike enemy that were in direct contact with
U.S. troops -- pilots have been flying faster and higher ever since,
relying on instructions from elsewhere to distinguish their targets.
In recent years, the wildfire spread of lethal shoulder-fired missiles,
common to armies and terrorists alike, has forced pilots still farther
from the ground -- to heights of three miles and more. Dizzying advances
in such precision bombs as the satellite-guided JDAM, for Joint Direct
Attack Munition, give air crews confidence that from any altitude, in
any weather, they can "hit the `dimpi,"' the Desired Mean Point of Impact.
To compensate for the pilot's loss of direct awareness of the situation
on the ground, the military has devised a network of remote sensors,
intelligence fusion centers, targeting cells and high-speed data streams
linking airborne and ground control nodes that may be hundreds of miles
or even continents apart.
Airborne platforms such as the Predator spyplane and AWACS and JSTARS
aircraft, which use sophisticated radar and other sensors to track air
and ground traffic, transmit data back toward an air operation center.
There, analysts assign targets and coordinate air traffic hours or
days in advance. In the process, critics say, the exercise of
judgment has left the cockpit and gone inside this complex "command
and control" system.
Deviations from the plan are bucked to higher-ranking officers, who
hold authority over requests from pilots to respond to unanticipated
targets or threats.
Forward air controllers on the ground -- like Jason Faley -- provide
final guidance to inbound strike aircraft.
The weaknesses of this rigid, bureaucratic structure in swiftly and
accurately handling today's swirling, unpredictable battles are evident.
But there are other problems as well.
One is that Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps jets don't all use the
same communications equipment, complicating efforts to get everyone
the same data. Different models of the same airplane can carry different
and incompatible communications gear.
And so, persistently, the "dimpi" turns out to be something other than
the target, sometimes with tragic consequences.
"We can put a munition on that three-dimensional spot," says Mark Mandeles,
an independent systems analyst who has studied the problem for the Pentagon.
"But we have not put even a fraction of that effort into figuring out
what it is we are killing."
In December, five of the nation's most experienced retired warriors
-- two infantrymen and three strike fighter pilots -- launched a fusillade
against the Pentagon, warning of "severe deficiencies" in the strike
aircraft, tactics, equipment and training involved in close air support.
"Our armed forces' ability to provide and employ effective CAS (close
air support) is waning," wrote these experts, including Chuck Myers,
who flew close air support missions in two wars and was director of
air warfare for the Pentagon.
The Navy, Air Force and Army all declined to talk about close air support
for this article and referred questions to the Defense Department's
joint staff, which designated Army Col. Peter T. Hayward, an air defense
officer, to respond.
"The system is way too complex for a (single) `fix,"' Hayward
says. "We're looking at a series of fixes that will evolve over time."
But with senior officers acknowledging that they are "years away"
from a solution, the unfolding of grisly accidents is expected to continue.
Among them:
In 1983 in Grenada, Navy fighter-bombers mistakenly
attacked a mental institution, killing 21 patients, and four Navy strike
jets strafed a U.S. Army command post, wounding 17 soldiers.
During Desert Storm eight years later, seven U.S.
Marines were killed and two wounded when an Air Force A-10 fired a Maverick
missile into the Marines' Light Armored Vehicle.
In Serbia four years ago, U.S. fighter-bombers put
precision-guided bombs directly on a target in Belgrade -- which turned
out to be the Chinese embassy.
In Kosovo, a "misfire" caused bombs to hit a civilian
convoy, incinerating several dozen men, women and children.
In December 2001, a B-52 bomber dropped a satellite-guided
bomb that went "errant," according to a Defense Department press statement.
The 2,000-pound bomb killed three U.S. soldiers and five allied Afghans
and narrowly missed killing the just-appointed president of Afghanistan,
Hamid Karzai.
Three months later, a Special Forces soldier was
killed in Afghanistan by precision-fire from an AC-130 gunship.
Last April, four Canadian soldiers were killed and
eight wounded by a bomb dropped by an F-16.
In dozens of exhaustive investigations of these and other incidents
runs a common thread. The equipment worked perfectly. The pilot
was well trained and experienced. The system worked. Conclusion:
human error.
In a small house outside Fort Campbell, Ky., where Jason Faley was stationed,
his wife Shannon and their son Andrew, now 3, go on with their lives.
Shannon is pursuing a doctorate in biomedical engineering and works
fulltime as a single mom.
Sometimes, she says, she and Andrew will be strolling down the street
and Andrew, spying a distant figure, will shout, "There he is! That's
my Dad!" Andrew, she says, "is just beginning his own struggle" with
what happened.
Doggedly, with her grandson in mind, Sue Faley writes on.
June 10: "Dear Sen. Warner, I am writing to you today to ask for your
help in getting answers to what really happened on March 12, 2001."
June 17: "Dear Sen. Clinton, I am writing to you today to appeal to
you as a woman and a mother to please help me."
E-mail, July 17: "Dear Sen. Lott, This is not my first letter or e-mail,
nor will it be the last."
When she receives a copy of Jason Faley's death certificate, it is dated
12 March 1945. "Hell, I wasn't even born then," she says.
"Dear Mr. President, On May 17th I wrote to you in regard to the `military
accident' in Kuwait. It seems you must be too busy to reply."
Hours after Jason Faley was killed, the military convened an investigations
board. Its findings became known as the Udairi Range report, after the
training area where the incident took place.
Among those testifying was Air Force Staff Sgt. Timothy B. Crusing,
a forward air controller who was in charge on the ground that night,
working at Observation Post 10 with Faley and the others.
"Incidents like this have happened before," Crusing said, according
to a transcript that has not been made public. "It's just -- it's never
killed anybody and we as staff sergeants rant and rave -- but it's not
-- it doesn't seem to be heard higher up -- nothing was said or done
about it."
Three weeks before Faley's death, in fact, an inbound strike fighter
had mistakenly bombed the observation post -- in broad daylight. No
one was hurt. Authorities ordered the roof on the observation tower
painted white with a red cross, to distinguish it from the target, a
cluster of vehicles 1.2 miles away.
Somehow, the Udairi Range board decided, Zimmerman mistook the observation
tower for the target and dropped his bombs, without being cleared by
the ground controllers as required. Besides Faley, the blast and shrapnel
killed four American soldiers and a New Zealand officer. The 11 wounded
included Crusing.
The carnage was the result of "human error," the board concluded. And
closed the books.
Zimmerman exercised his right not to testify, but did give a voluntary
verbal statement "indicating he was deeply saddened." The board amassed
hundreds of documents and statements in its effort to understand how
one of the nation's most senior pilots could make such a blunder.
But that material is locked away, as Sue Faley found when she pleaded
repeatedly with the Navy to help her understand how and why her son
was killed.
Eighteen months after Jason's death, she received a letter from the
U.S. Central Command rejecting her plea for more information about the
incident.
"Dear Ms. Faley," the letter read. "After a thorough review of the requested
information, we have determined ... (it) is properly classified in accordance
with executive order 12958, section 1.5(a) and (g) and therefore exempt
from release under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 50 U.S.C.552(b)
and DoD 5400.7-r, paragraph C3.2.1.1.
"Release of this information could damage the national security and
pose a danger to the safety of forces involved in future operations.
...
"Please accept my condolences regarding the death of your son."
(Signed) Michael P. DeLong, Lieutenant General, United States Marine
Corps and Deputy Commander in Chief, United States Central Command.
DeLong did not respond to requests for comment for this article. Zimmerman
was relieved of squadron command and retired last August. He could not
be located for comment.
"They're not going to give me any answers, I am resigned to that," Sue
Faley says in a flat voice. "I have lost a lot of respect for our government."
What the classified documents reveal, according to an internal
Navy assessment by a frustrated Navy captain, a veteran F-18 pilot,
are "systemic close air support failures."
The Defense Department denied permission for the officer to speak on
the record.
"To my knowledge," the officer wrote 17 months after the Udairi Range
accident, "the changes necessary to fundamentally improve these deficiencies
were never taken -- another missed opportunity.
"The pattern is, we go kill a bunch of people, we have an investigation,
nothing happens. Then we kill another bunch of people, and usually,
they shoot the lowest possible person in the career head and nothing
is addressed in the fundamental underlying problem."
The military has a documented propensity to blame pilots for "human
error," or what pilots call the "fat finger" problem of hitting
the wrong switch.
Others, however, blame the command-and-control system, the enormously
complex means of gathering, analyzing and distributing information on
targets. Moreover, there is evidence that all the data streaming into
strike aircraft are testing the crews' ability to focus.
In Bosnia a few years ago a Navy F-18 mistakenly dropped a 500-pound
guided bomb just outside a military barracks packed with U.S. troops.
Investigators said the pilot was "an experienced and highly trained
aviator," a test pilot and combat veteran. But he was too busy ("task-saturated,"
the investigators concluded) and inadvertently hit the wrong switch.
Beyond these concerns, critics such as Army Lt. Col. Chris Bentley,
the 10th Mountain Division's fire control officer during Operation Anaconda
in Afghanistan last March, say the command-and-control system is too
rigid to be much use.
"When there's a bad decision," says systems analyst Mandeles, "it cascades
through the whole system -- and bad things happen."
Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, an F-15 pilot and chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, acknowledges that adjustments are needed in "organization,
some doctrine, some tactics, techniques and procedures, some technological
changes, training, I mean, across that whole gamut of things."
He insists the basic system is sound.
"We are going to have to continue to work that, because war is not a
science, it is an art," Myers says. "I think we will be much better
in the next potential conflict than we were in Afghanistan."
But critics reject mere polishing.
"We need to stop and do a full accounting of the system and the failures,"
says the Pentagon-based pilot who was not allowed to speak for attribution.
"Because unless we correct this, we open ourselves up to legitimate
charges that we are cooking the books, just like Enron did.
"And we're going to kill more people."
That thought also visits Shannon Faley, especially as she thinks fondly
of the military's young enlisted people -- those enthusiastic, proud,
underpaid and under-recognized kids Jason worked with. She ponders the
implicit moral contract among warriors, and the concepts of military
command and accountability.
"By failing to uncover every detail of the accident, those responsible
are essentially signing the future death certificates of unsuspecting
soldiers," she says.
"As the old saying goes, `If we do not learn from our mistakes, then
we are destined to repeat them."'
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