The Impact of USAF Close Air Support of the Army on Joint Doctrine 1943-2003 #5

Close Air Support 1991-2003

The aftermath of the Vietnam War left much of the Department of Defense in disarray. Similar to the post-World War II period, the US military underwent significant downsizing and a strategic realignment amid the ongoing Cold War. However, this transition was marred by declining public support and a substantial drop in morale, particularly within the Army. Funding cuts exacerbated these challenges, leading to deteriorating standards and discipline across conventional units. During this period, the Department of Defense continued to emphasize strategic bombing and nuclear strike in anticipation of a potential conflict with the Soviet Union, which helped the Air Force avoid some of the difficulties faced by other branches. The Air Force internalized some lessons from Vietnam and spearheaded a training revolution from the 1970s through the Gulf War in 1991.[1] In conjunction with the A-10, technological and tactical innovations were integrated into the AC-130 gunship and other systems initially not intended for CAS but eventually adapted for that role. Notable technologies included the Laser Guided Bomb (LGB), the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) with a GPS-guided precision of six meters, and various enhancements designed for ground-based forward air controllers.

            The second advancement for close air support came in the form of the forward air controllers themselves. The Tactical Air Control Party evolved from a TACS entity to an Air Force career field in 1977.[2] Enlisted TACPs, known colloquially for their practical role as Radio Operators, Maintainers, and Drivers (ROMADS), operated within their own career field and were led by ALOs on temporary assignments to act as forward air controllers. With the creation of their career field, the proliferation of TACPs around the world exploded, with TACPs operating permanently with almost all Army units in the United States, Korea, and Europe. Alongside that new wide spreading of the TACP, the enlisted ROMADs came to uncomfortably outnumber their ALO leadership, who were still (mostly) fighter pilots undergoing a two-year ALO tour, many of which found that tour undesirable and performed with sometimes negative attitudes.[3] Many ALOs underperformed in their duties and started handing some of the FAC training and responsibility to their ROMADs. As the ROMADs began taking the brunt of CAS training, the USAF and the Army came to the realization that the enlisted men may as well become officially and legally qualified to control close air support missions. In the late 1980s, the USAF initiated the Enlisted Terminal Attack Controller (ETAC) Qualification Course at the Air Ground Operations School at Hurlburt Field, Florida.[4] With the advent of the TACP as a career field and the ETAC qualification, the Air Force vastly increased the number of CAS experts within their branch and increased CAS support for the Army for future conflicts, which turned out to be right around the corner. The ongoing evolution of the TACP throughout the 1990s would prove vital to the way the United States fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

            The third advancement came in the form of training. After Vietnam, both the USAF and the Army invented large-scale exercises designed to fully mobilize large units to designated areas for month-long wargames. For the USAF, the advent of the Red Flag exercise in 1975 marked a significant turning point in the way the USAF operated. First executed at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, Red Flag simulated large-scale air wars, including mission sets like offensive and defensive air-to-air combat, interdiction, strategic bombing, reconnaissance, and electronic warfare. From the beginning, Red Flag integrated a capable simulated enemy force, known as OPFOR or Red Air, including advanced surface-to-air threats. Eventually, Red Flag evolved to include ground parties and close air support. [5] Meanwhile, the Army created two major training centers designed for brigade-sized units and SOF, known as the National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin, California, and the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) at Fort Polk, Louisiana. These training centers operated similarly to the Red Flag exercise, focusing on large-scale combat and integrating a robust OPFOR to simulate combat. Like Red Flag, these exercises grew in the 1990s to integrate their aligned TACP and a significant amount of close air support into these maneuvers.[6]

            All these advancements were in place as the United States prepared to respond to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The Gulf War proved to be an anomaly in American Warfare. The USAF-led coalition air campaign lasted over a month, absolutely pummeling Iraqi strategic targets. The air phase transitioned into a quick and sound defeat of Saddam’s remaining forces by coalition ground assault that lasted a mere 100 hours before General Schwarzkopf called the cease-fire. Hard-line USAF leaders harkened back to the pre-WWII strategic bombing theory, claiming that it had finally worked, and that airpower had won the First Gulf War. Meanwhile, Army hardliners ignored the month-long air campaign that paved the way for their breezy 100-hour war, calling it a victory and proof of concept for Army tank and mechanized infantry maneuver. Little recognized to high-level Army or Air Force leadership was the close air support provided in areas like the “highway of death,” which set the stage for significant CAS emphasis throughout the 1990s by lower-echelon and specialized Army units.[7]

            Desert Storm was the first large-scale mobilization of US Forces since Vietnam, and each service had plenty of new doctrine and equipment they wanted to show off. They were also much better trained than they were going into Vietnam. While this was most clearly displayed by the devastating interdiction campaign followed by the 100-hour coalition ground campaign, even close air support had its chance to shine in the First Gulf War, even though it went largely unnoticed in postwar analysis.[8] The 8^th Air Support Operations Center had processed 969 sorties during the 100-hour ground effort, with 609 CAS sorties in direct support of VII Corps.[9] The 8^th ASOC’s after-action report wrote of CAS effectiveness as if it were inherently obvious. It reported that in almost every case in which the coalition had combined air and ground attack, the opposing Iraqi force immediately surrendered. What the report was more concerned with, and what the bulk of the eighty-page document recorded, were the things that worked well for close air support and points for improvement in future conflicts.[10] The report operated under the assumption that because CAS worked so well, the USAF would be invested in approving upon the system and TTPs.

            Things that worked well included the use of vehicle-mounted GPS, the use of FAC-As to report battle damage assessments to the Army, push CAS, and the spin-up training for ETACs, F-16s, and A-10s. The TACPs writing the report recognized that “in a fast-moving CAV operation, the Army is very dependent on air support. Tanks and Bradleys are much faster than Howitzers and tend to outrun their coverage.”[11] That’s where the value in the GPS and push CAS came into play. In a fast-moving desert environment, it can be challenging for ground parties within vehicles to keep tabs on their whereabouts using just a map and compass. By the time the aircraft checked in, the ground controller often had to waste valuable time verifying his location and the target's, time that could have been used to strike targets, especially since the aircraft often had limited time on station. With the GPS functioning within the ground party HMMWVs, they could get straight to striking targets without wasting precious time.  In a questionnaire of TACP Desert Storm veterans, almost all found the GPS to be an indispensable tool. At the same time, no one had used another technological innovation, the laser target designator.[12]

With push CAS available, the Army only had to wait a maximum of fifteen minutes to receive close air support aircraft, and often times they received more aircraft than the forward air controllers could handle.[13] For training, the 8^th ASOC noticed that the spin-up training they conducted with fighter and attack aircraft paid dividends. There was confusion on the part of the ground controllers at certain times on the tactics, particularly standoff techniques, being used by F-16 and A-10 pilots. Still, the familiarity with those pilots raised the comfort level of those ground controllers, who could rely on months of spin-up training to execute CAS effectively. 

The fact that pilots and forward air controllers could produce accurate effects without any fratricides in Desert Storm, even amid some confusion, is a testament to the attention to close air support in the spin-up and to the competency of the controllers. The limited close air support in Desert Storm was effective because the Air Force and the Army were well prepared to provide detailed integration for each other’s operations. The TACP provided detailed integration and pressed that information to both the TACS elements and pilots, and the Army followed up on CAS strikes with their own maneuvers. Although CAS was effective during Desert Storm, it is near impossible to measure its effectiveness or impact on the overall success of the ground invasion. The most significant reason for the difficulty in measuring effectiveness during Desert Storm is the blurred lines between close air support and Battlefield Air Interdiction (BAI). Nonetheless, the entities and systems responsible for CAS were the same that provided the detailed integration necessary for BAI.

The BAI concept emerged from 1980s Army-driven doctrinal conversations regarding integrating air and land power to produce an effect similar to the WWII Blitzkrieg. These conversations led to the Air Land Battle doctrine, which essentially described the combination of air and tank maneuvering performed by Patton and Weyland in WWII but without ever drawing a parallel between the two.[14] The Army presented the ideas as if they were new, and the Air Force half-heartedly bought off on them. The main idea that the Army was pushing was the need for Follow-on Forces Attack (FOFA). The idea behind FOFA was that if there were to be a conventional fight between the USSR and NATO, the Army would be able to handle the front-line Soviet forces but not the second-echelon follow-on forces. A 1987 congressional study on FOFA best describes it: "In general terms, it is the use of various conventionally armed long-range weapons to attack Warsaw Pact ground forces that have not yet engaged NATO defenders. From the Air Force’s perspective it is interdiction; to the Army it is deep battle. The basic objective is to delay, disrupt, and destroy these follow-on forces so that NATO’s defenses can hold as far forward as possible.”[15]

While the Army focused on tank maneuvers and long-range artillery, Congress cornered the Air Force into reinventing an interdiction role that it already doctrinally adhered to. In response, the Air Force took the traditional air interdiction mission, brought it short of the Fire Support Coordination Line, and called it BAI. Therefore, the interdiction and CAS missions now overlapped in the BAI mission. BAI was essentially no different than traditional interdiction; it was just closer to the front lines and required slightly less coordination than close air support.[16] While the mission benefitted both the Air Force and the Army in blasting through the Iraqi Army in 1991, it proved to be a headache to conduct further coordination between Army long-range artillery, which typically had free reign to fire short of the FSCL and long of CAS missions. Normally, the USAF could conduct interdiction without coordination with the Army because those interdiction missions outrange Army artillery. Still, BAI introduced an extra layer of coordination and, consequently, more room for error. It blurred the lines between interdiction and CAS and could be seen as either long-range CAS or short-range interdiction. Although FOFA, Air Land Battle, and BAI were designed for a war against the Soviets in Europe, it was employed effectively against the Iraqis in 1991 because it was what the Army and Air Force had trained to. Nonetheless, it blurred the lines between CAS and AI, making it difficult to assess the influence of typical CAS on Desert Storm.

One instance highlighting the blurred lines of BAI and CAS occurred at the Saudi border town of Al Khafji on January 29^th. A group of marines at the town was alerted by a nearby JSTARS of the arrival of a division-sized Iraqi element. The marines executed CAS using platforms from all services, while the JSTARS directed others to the rear elements to conduct interdiction. In this instance, we see CAS and BAI being utilized simultaneously on what is essentially the same target set by various platforms across the DoD and coalition partners. In this sense, the combination of BAI and CAS appeared to create effective coordination between the services and should have served as a case study for further doctrinal review. The Air Force, refusing to acknowledge its effect on ground forces in combat in favor of proving that its strategic bombing dream had finally come true, neglected the Al Kafji case study.[17]

[18]

Figure 7: Air Force Mission Area of Responsibility

Doctrinal definitions aside, the CAS players within the USAF viewed their contribution to the fight as valuable and sought to improve their work. Largely due to the lack of recognition that both CAS and BAI received from Desert Storm, the only long-lasting suggestions that were acted upon from the AAR included communications procedures for request nets, relays, and the continuation of the push CAS concept. There were some issues with secure calls over HF being cut off by other ones, and the transmission of CAS requests being piecemealed. This was eventually solved by SATCOM and computer-based communications for CAS requests in the late 1990s. For improvements on the push CAS concept, the USAF, by the time the GWOT kicked off, had moved to the on-call CAS concept in which ground alert (G-CAS) and air alert (X-CAS) sorties were allocated into the ATO for emergency or high-value situations.[19] At least from the TACP perspective, the close air support provided during the short ground phase of Desert Storm was highly successful but not significantly impactful on the end result. It at least enhanced the effectiveness of the Army and expedited enemy decisions to surrender. Almost no one else gave it any attention, whether the Army for arguing their own organic capabilities or the Air Force selling the notion that the interdiction campaign realized the dreams of pre-WWII strategic bombing strategists. For whatever reason, from BAI to service emphases on their own preferences, CAS was disregarded in major doctrinal discussions and historical analysis. However, the troops on the ground at least respected close air support’s ability to save Army lives. 

Changes Throughout the 1990’s

            Although close air support received little attention from higher command echelons after 1991, certain Army divisions recognized the value that CAS and TACP brought to the ground fight. The Tactical Air Control Party and the role of close air support gained significant appreciation from those divisions following Desert Storm and throughout the 1990s. During this period, TACPs, primarily stationed on Army installations, built strong relationships with their Army counterparts.[20] They developed particularly close ties with the Army’s fires (artillery) sections and, through extensive training exercises and day-to-day joint training, became proficient in all aspects of joint fires, not just CAS. Instead of being merely CAS specialists, TACPs typically became well-versed in the operational methods of their assigned Army units and adept at integrating joint fires effects into the ground commander’s scheme of maneuver. As a result, TACP and simulated close air support became a staple in the Army’s National Training Center (NTC) and Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) exercises. The effectiveness of CAS in these exercises was so pronounced that planners often had to limit its use to ensure the Army derived sufficient training value from the mobilizations, as the overwhelming effectiveness of CAS tended to make the exercises too easy for the Army. This led to scenarios where the Army was compelled by trainers to operate without CAS to achieve more challenging and realistic training outcomes. The TACP highlighted its value during one early 2000 NTC rotation when a brand-new Senior Airman (E-4) ETAC was awarded the “hero of the battle” accolade for being the highest performer of the rotation. For any Air Force member to win such an award at a major Army exercise was noteworthy, but for an E-4 to have such a significant impact underscored the vital role and exceptional performance of TACPs in joint operations.[21]  

            Outside of their training with the Army, the TACPs also became more proficient at close air support than any FAC entity ever had, thanks to their peacetime training and the FAC-centric nature of their career field. This high level of proficiency especially applied to units stationed near a bombing range, such as the 20^th Air Support Operations Squadron, aligned with the 10^th Mountain Division at Ft. Drum, NY. These TACPs not only regularly trained with the same battalions and even companies throughout their tours at Ft. Drum, but they also were able to control CAS aircraft multiple times a week at their local bombing range. This regular CAS training allowed them to experiment with advanced TTPs, and they grew their skillsets to be able to think critically while under pressure and using live ordnance. Their training competency would come into play when the 10^th Mountain Division eventually became involved in Afghanistan in late 2001/early 2002.[22]

            As the TACP had proved their value to the conventional Army, specialized units also began recognizing the importance of maintaining joint fires and integration expertise. Starting in 1994, TACP units began assigning individual Enlisted Terminal Attack Controllers (ETACs) to Special Operations Forces (SOF) groups. These ETACs guided the Green Berets on joint fires, trained them in emergency close air support procedures, and sometimes coordinated their fires training and execution. Although these assignments were initially intended to be advisory, by the late 1990s, TACPs frequently deployed worldwide with the Green Berets for training and operational missions.[23]

Following the 9/11 attacks, as the Army prepared to invade Afghanistan primarily with SOF members deployed in 12-man Operational Detachment Alphas (ODAs), these ODAs insisted on bringing their aligned TACP. Even though TACPs were originally intended to serve primarily as advisors, their extensive experience and expertise in CAS and joint fires, honed through years of collaboration and training with the SOF units, made them indispensable. No one cared that those TACPs were only supposed to be advisors; they were the CAS and joint fires experts who had been working and training alongside them for years, and they were going to bring their CAS experts to the fight in Afghanistan. When 9/11 happened and the United States decided to respond quickly and violently, they called upon SOF to get it done by any means necessary, and that included bringing the people who could bring the most effective close air support to the battlefield. 

            Doctrinally, CAS remained much the same as it had been in Vietnam before the GWOT began. Even the FOFA, BAI, and Air Land Battle concepts had been abandoned after Desert Storm, placing the joint USAF/Army doctrine in much the same doctrinal layout as existed during Vietnam.[24] The TACS entities and the immediate and preplanned airstrike request processes were roughly unchanged. The main differences were advancements in technology and an increase in personnel at lower echelons. TACPs, positioned from the battalion to the corps level, coordinated most CAS requests for the Army. Even preplanned requests, routed through Army fires channels, required significant input from TACPs due to the complexity of the DD Form 1972 request form. The supported unit’s FSE would route Form 1972’s to the next echelon’s Fire Support Element (FSE), which would either deny the request or forward it up the chain until approved at the highest operating level. Once the highest Army level in theater approved the request, it was sent to the Air Operations Center, which allocated a sortie to the mission based on the Joint Force Air Component Commander’s (JFACC) apportionment of aircraft to CAS.[25]

            Immediate request processes for close air support remained the exact same as Vietnam. These originated from a request from the local ground commander to his co-located TACP. The TACP communicated directly to the Air Support Operations Center (ASOC) or through an airborne relay to request CAS.[26] The ASOC then approved or denied the request. If approved, the ASOC or Control and Reporting Center (CRC) routed aircraft to the most forward TACP to conduct strikes. Communications advancements in the late 80s and 90s greatly enhanced this system. The TACPs were then equipped with Satellite Communications (SATCOM) radios that could reach the ASOC from just about anywhere in the world. USAF had also gotten into the habit of providing large airborne control centers in the form of the radar-equipped Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) and the Joint Surveillance Attack Radar System (JSTARS) to provide further communications relay capabilities. Technology, along with the doctrine of including ground alert and air alert close air support missions waiting to respond to CAS requests, lowered response times for close air support from its WWII high of ninety minutes down to as low as ten minutes in the early 2000s.[27]

Figure 8: GWOT-Era Immediate CAS Request Process

            While the broad and big picture doctrine for CAS stayed mostly the same between Vietnam and the GWOT, TTPs significantly improved throughout the late 1980s and accelerated with lessons learned from Desert Storm. Standardized tactics, techniques, and procedures, such as the "CAS flow," were consistently taught to USAF, USMC, and Navy personnel, including FACs and ETACs. The process was formalized in doctrine, covering everything from aircraft check-in procedures with the forward controller to the "nine-line" attack brief. This standardization helped reduce the time from request to CAS effects on the battlefield. By training everyone involved in the same procedures and emphasizing repetition, both air and ground personnel developed a high level of comfort and efficiency. Pilots and controllers knew exactly what to expect during the check-in process, leading to unprecedented efficiency in CAS, especially when combined with an effective air request and routing system.[28] Additionally, almost all fighter aircraft in the USAF inventory had at least some CAS training in throughout the 90s and 2000s, allowing a smooth transition to a CAS-centric battlefield in 2001 and 2003.

Figure 9: CAS 9-Line Brief

Afghanistan 2001-2003 

            The United States entered the initial phases of the war in Afghanistan with modest objectives. American strategy involved leveraging SOF, CIA, and OGA forces, supported by mobility, airpower, and the recruitment of local militias. The goal was to secure a foothold in Afghanistan and capture at least one airfield before winter set in. The SOF-led foothold would pave the way for conventional forces to move in and undertake most of the combat operations after winter, during the spring fighting season. Each of the SOF teams that entered the fray early on had brought an ETAC with them, many of which were TACP, but some of the ODAs brought a USAF combat controller with them.[29]  

            The TACP’s purpose with the SOF teams was never to deploy with them, but the feeling that they were needed to support the ODAs in Afghanistan was mutual. Luckily for the TACP, the commander of the 18^th Air Support Operations Group, Colonel Mike Longoria, was a career CCT who recognized the SOF teams’ need for TACP in Afghanistan.[30] Without Longoria’s influence in getting the SOF TACPs to deploy with their aligned teams, the degree of early success the ODAs enjoyed would have been unlikely. Of his efforts to deploy the first TACPs to Afghanistan, Longoria said, “Nobody wanted us. We kind of forced ourselves on people and then within a day or day and a half they couldn’t live without us. Literally couldn’t live without us… I’m talking about the leadership… But if the mission required just simply directing air power, there is nobody better in the world than ETACs or Special Tactics guys [CCT]. Nobody better in the world.”[31] Thanks to Longoria’s boldness, the SOF teams were equipped with adequate numbers of CCT and TACP enablers to allow them to leverage all the allocated CAS in 2001 and 2002. 

            The opening months of the United States’ war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda can be roughly seen as an accelerated version of the Vietnam War. Similar to the Vietnam War, the period from October to December 2001 involved Army SOF integrating with an indigenous force, using CAS as a primary weapon, and attempting to place the majority of the combat burden on a third-world indigenous force in a land where another superpower had previously struggled and failed to achieve its military objectives. Albeit similar, the US forces in Afghanistan had some unprecedented problems to deal with. First, there was no existing air-ground coordination structure, and CENTCOM failed to implement a doctrinal TACS/AAGS until conventional forces arrived for Operation Anaconda. Unlike Vietnam, the JSOC-led elements went into Afghanistan quickly and without realizing the need for detailed integration between air and ground.

 Second, the primary CAS aircraft in the opening months were bombers because they and carrier-based F-18s were the only ones who had the range to fly to Afghanistan and back. Third, the SOF forces were very openly and purposely involved in hands-on fighting immediately instead of covertly, as they were in Vietnam. Lastly, the technology advancements up to 2001 initially hindered CAS efforts rather than helped. The technology issue took an immense effort of learning on the fly for CAS to be effective – a crucial task for the CCT and TACP on the ground, one that the success of early operations depended upon.

            Between 1991 and 2001, USAF inventory had seen significant technological advancements, including new equipment for its ETACs. Notable additions include man-portable GPS devices and the Special Operations Forces Laser Acquisition Marker (SOFLAM) for ground-based lasing of certain bombs. Enhanced targeting pods were installed on fighters, helicopters, bombers, and gunships. Among the most crucial advancements for CAS in Afghanistan was the introduction of the GPS-guided bomb, known as the JDAM. These innovations greatly enhanced the capabilities and precision of CAS operations, but most of these technologies weren’t designed for close air support, and the operators on the ground had to figure out how to use them for CAS in combat rather than in training. Most ETACs preferred to use the tried-and-true map and compass for their targeting data, and the new technology introduced variables that no leadership nor operator on the ground had accounted for until they encountered them in combat.[32]

            The man-portable GPS was only sometimes a valuable tool for the ETACs operating in Afghanistan. It was useful in that it helped the controller ensure he knew his own location, and when coupled with a laser range finder, it could pull accurate grids that potentially enabled the ETAC to employ a JDAM more accurately than he could with a map and compass. The capability for an ETAC to drop on a grid allowed CAS pilots to deliver ordnance when they previously couldn’t, such as when there was cloud coverage disallowing them from seeing the target or when it proved too difficult to talk the pilot onto the target. The problem with the military-supplied GPS was that it was too cumbersome, and many of the ETACs were ill-trained in its use. One of the few close air support fratricides of the war occurred when a TACP, turning to the GPS to aid in striking some targets he had struggled to score direct hits on, had replaced the battery on his GPS. When he turned the GPS back on, he failed to realize that the GPS had reset to his own position. Thus, he passed his own grid to a B-52 thinking that he was passing a target grid, causing the bomber to drop a JDAM on his position. The bomb was a 2,000-pound JDAM that killed twenty and injured fifty of Karzai’s troops while killing two and wounding nineteen Americans. This incident was the largest fratricide of the first years of the war in Afghanistan.[33]

Luckily, some of the ETACs carried wrist-mounted commercial GPS devices with them that pulled just as accurate grids as the military version.[34] Even with the availability of GPS devices, most ETACs preferred to rely on the analog tools they had grown up with—the map and compass. Interviews revealed no correlation between the type of technology used by ETACs and their mission effectiveness; both high-tech ETACs and those who chose the analog method performed at comparable levels.[35] In the first months of the war in Afghanistan, most strikes were performed by long-range bombers, with the ETAC performing sensor talk-ons utilizing the familiar “big-to-small” methodology.[36] Using this methodology, ETACs were able to drop even unguided “dumb” bombs more accurately than ever, thanks to computers aboard aircraft that assisted in targeting.

 The JDAM was essentially the same bomb body as the dumb bomb version but was outfitted with a GPS kit that allowed the bomb to steer to designated GPS coordinates typed in by the aircrew mid-flight. Although JDAMs were designed for fixed interdiction and strategic-level targets, ETACs on the ground in Afghanistan quickly found them useful for CAS. Although the bombs could be simply dropped on a coordinate without the pilot ever seeing the target itself, most pilots still preferred to get their eyes on the target before releasing their ordnance. Pilots would often work off the grid passed in line six of the CAS nine-line, get talked on to the target from the ETAC, pull a more accurate grid from their onboard sensor, and drop the bomb on that grid. If guided by GPS coordinates, any JDAM had a “circular error probability” of less than six meters.[37] This was extremely effective for stationary targets like buildings, bunkers, trenches, and other fixed positions and was less ideal for targets that were likely to move, such as vehicles or personnel in the open. The JDAM could also be used as a mark to get the pilot’s eyes on the target area; the ETAC could direct the bomb to a grid that was near the actual target (it could be very difficult to derive a pinpoint grid for the target), and the explosion would then make it easy for the pilot to locate.[38]

            The SOFLAM was an ETAC innovation that improved upon Vietnam-era technology in the laser-guided bomb (LGB). Instead of the aircraft or a wingman lasing their own bombs in, the ground-based laser concept was yet another all-weather capability added to the ETAC’s arsenal. Just like the GPS-guided bomb, the laser-guided bomb was now a munition in which the pilot was not forced to see the target to strike it. The pilot could simply come in on an appropriate heading, release the ordnance, and tell the ground controller when to turn his laser on. When the ETAC turned on his laser, the laser-seeking guidance kit on the bomb would steer to the most visible laser energy. The advantage of laser-guided munitions over the JDAM was that it was well-suited for moving targets (if lased by the pilot). If the target was moving, the pilot could move the laser energy via the sensor to guide the bomb. The circular error probability of the LGB was similar to that of the JDAM but was more reliant on clear conditions on the ground and restrictive attack parameters for accuracy.[39]

            The ETACs on the ground from October through December used these methods to great effect alongside their SOF counterparts and Afghan indigenous forces. The plans for SOF insertion in Afghanistan included a rallying of Afghan forces before the winter months wherein the SOF forces could adjust the Afghan national attitude against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, setting the stage for a brief conventional invasion.[40] The speed at which the combined SOF/CAS effort accomplished its goals and more was a shock to American plans. In the first months, the combined SOF and Afghan forces decimated Taliban and Al Qaeda positions within Afghanistan, eventually forcing them to the Shahi-Kot Valley in Eastern Afghanistan by February. The combination of CAS and SOF proved to be unexpectedly effective. In one instance, when ODA 555 took over the Bagram airfield on October 20^th, four Americans entered the control tower for CAS targeting. They continuously struck camouflaged and dug-in targets, utilizing forty to fifty aircraft on multiple occasions, essentially eliminating Taliban presence in the area.[41]

            Similar CAS efforts enabled ODA 595 and Northern Alliance leader General Dostum to advance to capture Mazar-e Sharif in October and early November. Once the ODAs and ETACs convinced Dostum to allow them to take the CAS fight to the Taliban, Dostum couldn’t get enough of it. Dostum’s forces picked up a rhythm in which ODA scouts and an ETAC would find observation posts, decimate Taliban positions with constant close air support, and sweep up with Northern Alliance ground forces. That methodology led to the dispersion of Taliban forces at Konduz and Mazar-e Sharif. Mazar-e Sharif brought new challenges in relatively urbanized warfare. Stephen Tomat, the ETAC responsible for conducting strikes in Mazar-e Sharif, couldn’t use JDAMs to target grids because he lacked a reliable map, and he couldn’t use his SOFLAM because his CAS aircraft weren’t picking up the laser energy within the city.[42] So, he resorted to an old-fashioned talk on. He related the experience of calling CAS on the 900 Taliban within the city to Dr. Steve Call in his book Danger Close as such:  

“So I said, "That's fine, I'll do a talk-on:" [It] took me about fifteen minutes to talk him onto the target, for me to know for sure that he saw the exact target I was telling him [to strike]. By then these guys are getting restless in the building because [they] know "we got birds in the area;' so they know birds means bombs, bombs means ... some guys were around there directing the aircraft.  

I finally talked the lead aircraft onto the target, he says, "I got it," he comes in, first bomb right off the rack shacks right through the center of the building-exactly in the center of the building. This is like a hornet's nest-maybe killed a hundred, 150 of the guys, if we're lucky, on that first bomb. Number two [second aircraft in the formation] comes in-goes to pickle-bomb hung [would not release]. He says, "I'm going to have to RTB [return to base], I got bombs hung." And I say "Well brother, we just stirred up a hornet's nest, we're 340 meters away and we're getting shot at right now 'cause they know we're here. I need you to come in and figure out some way to get those bombs off the rack."  

Number one came back in. He had three more remaining and he said, "No problem:' He comes back in, below the deck and all three at the same time. Just levels the place, absolutely levels it. We found later about eighty of the bad guys survived. Of that eighty, only thirty lived because after we released the remainder of the ordnance, these guys just scattered out of the rubble and as they were scattering they moved into the surrounding buildings. It was there that the citizens of the city took over and just started shwacking on them in the streets. From that time on, we liberated Mazar-e Sharif and the surrounding areas.”[43]

The marriage of SOF and CAS in Afghanistan is clearly the reason for the early fall of the Taliban and its retreat into the Eastern mountains, but this effort did not come without often annoying challenges. With Mazar-e Sharif fallen into American hands, all that was left to cause a collapse of Taliban control in Afghanistan were the remaining forces in Kunduz, now heavily reinforced by remnants of routed Taliban forces that fled to the city. One of the generals responsible for the capture of Kunduz and the defeat of an estimated ten to twenty thousand Taliban fighters within the city was General Daud and his aligned ODAs. Initially, Daud was reluctant to allow the ETACs with the ODA to conduct close air support, but once he did, he and his forces became totally reliant on it. In fact, Daud became reliant on close air support to a fault. Once Daud and his fighters saw what CAS could do to an enemy force, his own forces stopped fighting over an eight-day stretch instead of following up CAS strikes with ground forces. This inaction allowed the Taliban within Kunduz to disperse, dig in, and negate the benefits reaped from close air support.[44] Because of his inaction, Daud’s forces became entrenched and unable to enter the city.

The siege of Kunduz, when contrasted with Dostum’s capture of Mazar-e Sharif, underscores the necessity of combined air and ground coordination for ultimate battlefield effectiveness. Air power can clear the way for easy ground force victory, but if ground forces don’t immediately follow up with maneuver to take advantage of a weakened and dispersed enemy, then those strikes aren’t worth much. Fortunately, Dostum’s forces trekked 150 kilometers to Kunduz to assist Daud’s fighters, curing Daud of his self-inflicted immobility. When Daud finally moved in on Kunduz, it forced the remaining Taliban out of their dug-in positions, and the ETACs had a field day with their close air support and cleared the way for another relatively easy capture of a fortified Afghan city, effectively securing Northern Afghanistan for the Northern Alliance and their SOF counterparts.[45]

As the United States and its aligned Afghan forces swiftly conquered Northern Afghanistan, they began to move South, where task forces Dagger and Sword were nearly just as swiftly able to rout the Taliban from Kandahar and Kabul using CAS tactics similar to the ones used in the North. Simultaneously, the American conventional forces were beginning to show up in an environment they did not expect – an environment lacking a large Taliban resistance in nearly the entire country.[46] As conventional Army and Marine forces began to intermingle, the situation grew increasingly chaotic. General Franks and Secretary Rumsfeld's efforts to build on early successes only added to the bureaucratic complexity. General Mikolashek (Army), the Combined Forces Land Component Commander (CFLCC), was ready to take command of all operations in Afghanistan on November 20^th. Mikolashek and Franks both sought to get conventional forces into Afghanistan before the originally projected conventional arrival in early spring 2002. After all, the objectives of Kunduz, Mazar-e Sharif, and Kabul, which were to be conventional operations in the spring, had already been accomplished by the SOF/CAS/Afghan effort. [47]

The early introduction of brigades from the 10^th Mountain and 101^st Airborne/Air Assault Divisions severely complicated US command, control, and communications structures across the theatre. As US intelligence gathered information that Taliban forces had regrouped in the Shahi-Kot Valley in Eastern Afghanistan, General Mikolashek placed the 10^th Mountain Division commander, General Hagenbeck, in command of Combined-Joint Task Force Mountain (TF-Mountain) to rout the Taliban out of the valley. Hagenbeck, who was ultimately responsible for planning the operation that came to be known as Anaconda, curiously excluded an extensive use of air power from his planning.[48] Operation Anaconda has been studied in-depth for all its planning flaws, and for that reason, this dissertation will only briefly explain the impact of close air support on the operation.[49]

Anaconda included too many different specialized units from SOF, CIA, Afghan forces, foreign special forces units, and the piecemealed conventional 10^th Mountain and 101^st Air Assault divisions. On the air side, the USAF was providing mostly bombers, F-15s, F-16s, AC-130s, and AWACS command and control aircraft. The Navy/Marine Corps supplied mostly F-18s and AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters, and the Army brought their AH-64 Apache attack helicopters. These units, specifically the ground units, were unaccustomed to working together (thus optimal planning was virtually out of the picture), were planning for a hasty winter operation in mountainous terrain, and the Taliban knew they were coming and were well prepared to defend their positions.[50] 

As for air-ground coordination, planners for Anaconda, believing they were going to rely on the element of surprise, opted to avoid an extensive bombing of key positions before units began infiltrating their objectives. Luckily for Hagenbeck, Colonel Mike Longoria, the 18^th Air Support Operations Group commander responsible for TACP aligned to the 101^st and 10^th divisions, bent the rules and brought a division ALO and some ETACs into Afghanistan. Even though he opted not to bring his aligned TACP, those ETACs were all employed at Anaconda; the Army used all of them and wanted more.[51] When the TACP from Ft. Drum arrived in mid-February, they found the plans for Anaconda already mostly set, with no air plan and no ASOC for a doctrinal request process. Thankfully, there were air-to-ground coordination experts all over the place in the form of CCT and TACP, with almost every unit from the CJSOTF and TF-Mountain HQ down to the battalion and ODAs.

While the coordination piece was certainly not ideal, these operators were experienced enough to figure out a way to get CAS into the fight. Consequently, they fell back on a system that was already in place – immediate requests went to either the CJSOTF, who then routed the request directly to the Air Operations Center, or they went to TF-Mountain HQ who would do the same. Some ETACs found a backdoor that earned them a talking-to for breaking the rules in the form of the AWACS. The Airborne Warning and Control System, a Boeing 737 outfitted to act as a flying command, control, and communications center for airspace management, had direct communications with some of the ETACs on the ground. Seeing the AWACS as an obvious method to get aircraft routed to a unit in an emergency, some of the ETACs went straight to the Air Battle Managers aboard the plane to get CAS routed to them. Most of the ETACs who were at Anaconda conceded that the airspace and request situation was chaotic and operated as a “pickup game” in which every operator figured out the best way for him to get aircraft to his team with no doctrinal CAS process in place. Naturally, they knew it was wrong for it to have turned out this way, but they did the best with what they could.[52] 

The fact that CAS was available in abundance during Anaconda can be largely attributed to Major Pete Donnelly, an ALO aligned with 10^th Mountain. By February 2002, Donnelly had already been in the country for a few weeks thanks to Colonel Longoria’s efforts to get TACP in theatre despite Hagenbeck’s resistance, so Donnelly went into the operation familiar with air operations in Afghanistan and how CAS flowed on the SOF side. The complicated part for Donnelly was showing up on February 20^th with only ten days to start the air-ground coordination piece for a major conventional operation from scratch.[53] Major Donnelly relocated to Bagram, where he could better coordinate with the AOC, which was staffed by non-CAS experts, for tanker support, CAS scheduling, and pre-assault strikes. Without his efforts from February 20^th through March 1^st, the close air support situation at Anaconda could have been disastrous. 

Anaconda kicked off at dawn on March 2^nd, and the close air support provided by the USAF, Marines, and Navy was superb throughout the operation, outside of a morale-devastating fratricide on the first day. The fratricide came not from a CAS-inexperienced F-15 or F-16 pilot but from an AC-130, one of the most CAS-proficient platforms in the DoD. The crew’s sensors had developed a five-mile error, and when scanning an area ahead of General Zia Lodin’s forces, they mistakenly identified Lodin’s SOF-led friendly force for an enemy massing. They fired upon what they thought was the enemy, killing numerous coalition Afghans and Green Beret CW2 Stanley Harriman. The SOF-led force believed they were hit by an overwhelming enemy force, and after MEDEVAC helicopters evacuated the wounded, Lodin’s forces returned to Gardez to refit for day two.[54] It took several weeks to discover that the AC-130 had caused the friendly fire incident.[55] Another AC-130 the next day was also mistakenly targeting friendly forces, but thankfully another ETAC who was listening to the strike net was battle tracking that friendly force and stopped the AC-130 before it fired. This situation was not unique to the air-ground picture. Many friendly ground units had no idea where other units were, and the SOF and conventional units had a tough time battle-tracking each other. Even at the SOF level, some of the 3^rd Special Forces Group ODAs had no idea where Tier 1 and CIA units were located; they just knew “those guys were out there somewhere.”[56]

Despite the early fratricide incident, units around the Shahi-Kot Valley continued to utilize extensive close air support from both fixed-wing and rotary-wing platforms. One of the most effective instances of CAS during the operation came early when the 10^th Mountain’s C Company, 1-87 Infantry, landed at HLZ Ginger, where they found continuous contact through the entirety of March 2^nd. The two ETACs with the unit were able to continuously control close air support throughout the day to buy the unit time to survive until nightfall as friendly casualties continued to pile on. With the heavy enemy contact, MEDEVAC helicopters were unable to land to pick up the wounded. When night came, an AC-130 was able to come on station; the AC-130 crew and the ETACs performed what came to be known as the “18-hour miracle.” Of his experience on March 2^nd, one of the ETACs said, “When nighttime came that’s when the real good stuff started happening… The AC-130 showed up and just literally killed everything… We told them there were cave entrances over there on that side of the ridgeline, so they looked around and said, ‘Okay, I found one. I’m going to put 40-mm into it and see what happens.’ He did, and people came out of everywhere and the good times rolled! He just couldn’t shoot fast enough.”[57] That ETAC earned a Silver Star for his actions both with a radio and a rifle for the “18-hour miracle.”[58]

Although this situation was unique in its volume and intensity, similar situations were a common occurrence through March 4^th. On March 3^rd, many similar instances happened as the bulk of the fighting shifted from the SOF-led forces to the conventional forces. The 10^th and 101^st soaked up most of the CAS, forcing the Taliban and Uzbek fighters to face the classic dilemma of victims of American CAS – mass and fight or disperse and retreat. They chose to mass and fight, and CAS swept up the positions confronted by the conventional forces.[59] On March 4^th, the entirety of Coalition forces turned its eye to the peak at Takur Ghar, thereafter known as Robert’s Ridge, just above HLZ Ginger, where 1-87 infantry was pinned down for a whole day on March 2^nd.[60] After the events of March 4^th, the Taliban was no longer a unified fighting force, they were mostly beaten and fighting out of isolated pockets, and Operation Anaconda slowly wound down.  

Leaders across the CENTCOM pointed many fingers in the aftermath of Anaconda. Hagenbeck most notably blamed the Air Force for his failures to mount a coherent “hammer and anvil” operation against the Taliban and for the heavier-than-expected losses. In the years following Anaconda, reporters grilled Hagenbeck, and he received largely negative press for what amounted to a blatant lack of self-accountability and knowledge about the air-ground system. One reporter summed up the common sentiment when she wrote, “It would be fair to say that Hagen­beck’s after-action interview showed a commander with a light grasp of the workings of the air component and even key aspects of the battle.”[61] Her assessment of Hagenbeck’s leadership during Anaconda echoes that of Dr. Call previously mentioned. Additionally, Hagenbeck’s stated reasoning for not permitting a preemptive bombing of the valley was to maintain the element of surprise.[62] Hagenbeck took such extremes as to not allow Zia Lodin’s and other SOF-led forces to not know the plan, only where they were to attack. This aspect of the plan flipped on its head, and thanks to individuals within Lodin’s force contacting enemy forces through common radio frequencies, the enemy knew when and where the SOF-led forces would be moving into the valley.[63] Although the outcome of Operation Anaconda may or may not have drastically changed, had there been adequate air coordination during the earliest planning phase, there at least would have been far fewer American and partner force casualties.

Iraq 2003  

            The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a completely different beast than Afghanistan. Plans for the invasion began as early as late 2001/early 2002 and included a much smaller invasion force than the one that fought Saddam’s Iraq in 1991. Given the planning time, the US and its (slim) lineup of coalition partners went into the invasion doctrinally correct on all fronts. While many planners argued for a prolonged air campaign like Desert Storm, Franks and Rumsfeld eventually approved a plan involving a massive opening salvo from the air along with conventional and SOF ground invasions. It is difficult to tell by the current availability of primary sources how much the Afghanistan SOF experience influenced the decision to quickly initiate the ground invasion with heavy CAS support, but the connection appears obvious.[64] Thanks to Turkey’s lack of cooperation in early 2003, the 4^th Infantry Division could not invade Iraq from the North, leaving a huge question mark on the feasibility of an invasion force in the North. The fact that the responsibility for Northern Iraq and the sealing of Kirkuk and Mosul fell strictly on a relatively tiny contingent from the 10^th Special Forces Group and their aligned Iraqi militia force supported by swaths of close air support serves as evidence that the SOF CAS experience in Afghanistan at least significantly influenced the planning for Iraq.[65]    

            The state of coalition and Iraqi forces in 2003 was much different than in 1991. John Keegan summed it up, “In February 1991, a very large and high-quality Western army confronted an equally large but low-quality Iraqi army and, following six weeks of intense aerial attack, destroyed its military capability in four days of fighting. In March 2003 a much smaller but even higher quality Western army confronted an Iraqi army degraded and enervated by its earlier defeat and by twelve years of isolation from its foreign sources of supply and, during three weeks of high-speed advance over long distances, brought about not merely its disintegration but its apparent evaporation from the field of battle.”[66] Although the Iraqi army was in poor state and its air force nonexistent, the new, smaller coalition force still had plenty of challenges to deal with. The “elite” Republican Guard retained six divisions of roughly 10,000 men each and the regular army totaled seventeen divisions. The Iraqi army had an estimated 2,000 tanks, 2,000 towed artillery pieces, 2,000 armored personnel carriers, and 150 self-propelled artillery pieces within its fighting force. Although the Iraqis were still somewhat numerically formidable, their equipment was in shambles. Their T-55 tanks may as well have been a speed bump for the M-1 Abrams sported by the US, and the lack of an air force left their guns pathetically vulnerable to USAF, Marine, and Navy interdiction. The last military aspect of the Iraqi war was the fedayeen, a loosely organized group of radical militants who introduced an aspect of irregular warfare into the invasion.[67]

            The Coalition land forces, on the other hand, comprised one British division, Australian special forces, two American army divisions, and the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. The American forces were organized under CENTCOM, still commanded by General Franks, who delegated authority for Iraq to a single field army – the 3rd Army commanded by Lieutenant General David McKiernan. The Army divisions fell under V Corps, which included the 3rd Infantry Division and parts of the 101^st Airborne (Air Assault), 82^nd Airborne, 173^rd Airborne, and 4^th Infantry.[68] McKiernan and Franks’ main fighting force were to be the 3^rd Infantry Division and the 1^st Marine Division. At the same time, the 101^st and 82^nd acted as ancillary follow-on forces, and one brigade from the 173^rd Infantry jumped into Northern Iraq to assist the 10^th Special Forces Group-supported peshmerga. The overall manpower strength of the Third Army was 160,000 compared to roughly 375,000 Iraqis, but overwhelmingly superior technology, training, and air power put the US-led Coalition in a dominant position going into invasion planning. 

            The US and its combined air strength were bolstered by units from the British Royal Air Force and led by CFACC Lt. General Michael Moseley. Moseley and many of his counterparts argued for a prolonged air campaign like that of Desert Storm, which Franks opposed for multiple reasons. Most importantly, the Iraqi Army was not condensed into a “Highway of Death” as it had been in 1991. Instead, it was spread across the entire country and ready to respond to a massive air campaign.[69] Secondarily, the Coalition air forces consisted of 790 fighters and bombers in 2003 compared to 1,800 from twelve different countries in 1991. A prolonged air effort would have exhausted these constrained resources and especially burdened USAF pilots, aircraft, and maintainers since the Air Force flew 58% of all sorties in OIF.[70] Since Franks and McKiernan committed to a ground-centric invasion of Iraq, USAF would be forced to maintain its CAS focus as it had in Afghanistan instead of repeating its strategic, fixed-target, tank-plinking approach from Desert Storm. Therefore, the joint commanders ensured their TACPs were well-equipped to support every Army unit down to the battalion, even to the point of supplementing TACPs from other units to support the 3^rd Infantry Division.[71]  

[72]

Figure 10: Iraq 2003 Task Organization

            Much of the air-ground coordination in planning for close air support occurred between the main effort commander and his TACP counterpart. The spearhead unit of the invasion, the 3^rd Infantry Division, was commanded by Major General Buford C. Blount, who Dr. Steve Call referred to as the man who largely shaped the coalition air-ground team.[73] General Blount and his primary CAS counterpart, 15^th Air Support Operations Squadron commander, Lt. Colonel Byron Risner, faced some significant obstacles in their operations planning. Compared to Afghanistan, they were fortunate to have a fully functional TACS/AAGS system in place. Still, there were so many cooks in the kitchen at higher echelons that certain control measures became points of contention or otherwise out of sorts to the point in which new methods had to be invented.[74]

            General Moseley committed to the support of ground forces in planning, and together the joint staff devised four objectives for air attacks in support of V Corps. First, to facilitate the advance of the 3^rd Infantry Division and the 1^st Marine Division. Next was the protection of the 1^st Marine Division’s Eastern flank. Third, to destroy the Republican Guard divisions around Baghdad, and fourth, to fix Iraqi forces in Northern Iraq along the “green line.”[75] Although the operational objectives from higher echelons were ideal for General Blount and enabled his rapid movement through the desert, he still had a major issue to deal with. The Fire Support Coordination Line (FSCL) had become a point of contention. Through a high-level bureaucratic decision-making process at V Corps, Army leadership decided that the FSCL would remain a fixed 140 kilometers ahead of the front lines.[76] General McKiernan reasoned that the FSCL needed to be extended in case his forces moved so quickly that they might run themselves into active interdiction missions. The whole point of the Fire Support Coordination Line was/is to deconflict air interdiction from artillery. Anything short of the FSCL was free reign for artillery, which is part of the reason why CAS required such detailed integration. Long of the FSCL, the CFACC (Gen. Moseley) had free reign. In an ideal world, the FSCL is just ahead of the maximum range of artillery, so the only aircraft that need to be deconflicted short of the line are those performing CAS. In this case of an exceptionally long distance from the front line to the FSCL, the CFACC was forced to provide extensive coordination for interdiction short of the FSCL. Too bad the Air Force abandoned BAI after Desert Storm.

The inflexible 140-kilometer FSCL forced in-depth coordination for interdiction missions that otherwise could have been avoided with a shorter or more flexible FSCL. The solution came from the CAS cell at the Air Operations Center, the hub for all air operations in the theatre.[77] Their solution, dubbed Killbox Interdiction and Close Air Support (KICAS), involved organizing the battlespace short of the FSCL into nine-square keypads that could be opened or closed by the battlespace owner (the ground commander responsible for the area). The ground commander could open any keypad/killbox, giving interdiction/CAS aircraft freedom to strike at will within that box without coordination with a ground or air controller. These missions were unofficially called Strike Coordination and Reconnaissance (SCAR) missions. In closed killboxes, the attacking aircraft performed CAS and had to coordinate and receive clearance from an ETAC or FAC(A).[78] In designing the KICAS/SCAR system, the CAS cell at the AOC had inadvertently reimagined the BAI concept for modern warfare. 

Air-ground teams across Iraq also had to figure out how to perform close air support missions in a closed killbox that an ETAC on the ground could not see. Traditionally, the ETAC had to have “eyes on” the target to be able to strike it. In the command and control situation devised for the invasion, there could very likely be situations in which a target needed to be struck near enough to friendlies that the killbox was closed but where the controller couldn’t see it. An ALO at the 4^th ASOC, the ASOC aligned to V Corps, devised a system in which an ETAC could control based on high-quality imagery, map data, and aircraft sensors to strike targets he could not see. This relatively simple solution to the problem, an ETAC providing detailed integration via map/sensor data and beyond line-of-sight communications, turned into a tactical advantage. V Corps commander General Wallace leveraged this type of CAS control later in the war by allowing his forces to take an operational pause while the ETACs handled nearby Iraqi forces with close air support.[79] The methodology was later codified in Joint Publication 3.09-3 Close Air Support as one of the “types of control.”[80] More importantly, Wallace leveraged this CAS system along with his maneuver. Come March 31^st, Wallace’s five simultaneous attacks concept was “a conscious attempt to use ground maneuver to draw enemy forces into the open so they could be found and killed by air power.”[81] In other words, he used the classic advantage afforded to him by close air support in forcing the enemy to mass and become hopelessly vulnerable to airpower.

The 3^rd Infantry Division’s main effort was ready to perform utilizing CAS as a primary weapon when it came time, thanks to its rigorous training in armor/mechanized maneuvering alongside CAS at the Udari training range in Kuwait as they prepared to fight Iraq. General Blount was prepared to rely heavily on CAS and sought to bring all of his soldiers home without scratching their tanks.[82] He was given 24-hour CAS support across the division to accomplish this goal. Still, on March 21^st, M2 Bradleys from the 1-15 mechanized infantry battalion received their first scratches when they encountered an ambush near Talil airfield by roughly a company worth of infantry equipped with .50 caliber machine guns. 1-15 fought off the ambush for fifteen to twenty minutes while the ETAC requested close air support, then withdrew to allow CAS to work. With four A-10s, the ETAC expended sixteen Mk-82 500lb dumb bombs, four AGM-65 Maverick missiles, and thousands of rounds of 30mm, decimating the enemy position. In total, that CAS mission destroyed five warehouses and two other buildings and killed 50-60 Iraqi soldiers.[83] This engagement was thematic of the first days of the invasion and according to General Wallace’s vision of how the war would run. His main force would get in a fight, keep the enemy engaged, and allow close air support to decimate their fighting positions. The only surprise was how hard some of the Iraqi formations fought. 

One of the most notable instances of CAS heroism came during the March 24^th-28^th Battle of Najaf. The 3^rd Infantry Division’s 3-7 CAV found itself overwhelmed by enemy troops, rocket fire, artillery, and tanks over nearly a 24-hour period and in the middle of Iraq’s largest sandstorm in twenty years. Staff Sergeant Michael Shropshire, the ETAC attached to 3-7 CAV, requested close air support via SATCOM and was rewarded with a massive stack of CAS aircraft from OH-58D Kiowa helicopters to A-10s to B-1 bombers, with munitions of all types, from guns to guided bombs to cluster munitions.[84] The ETAC constantly struck targets and dropped bombs on roads in an attempt to deny the Iraqis any maneuverable terrain, but they just kept coming. At one point, Shropshire was asked by his ROMAD (a junior TACP and assistant to the ETAC) if they were going to die, to which Shropshire responded, “Probably, but hey if we can take out 100-150 of them for every one of us, that’s pretty good right?”[85] In large part thanks to Shropshire’s actions that day, 3-7 CAV made it through the sandstorm battle. At one point, when faced with an overwhelming force of T-72 tanks after all the CAS aircraft left, the ETAC requested close air support and received a B-1 bomber that was transiting to another location. Shropshire eliminated that tank force with the B-1 with munitions to spare to pass off to another battalion’s ETAC to take out another Iraqi tank unit. He earned a silver star for his actions at the Battle of Najaf.[86] 

The only reason the ETACs supporting 3^rd Infantry Division were able to get close air support effects down was thanks to the JDAM. With JDAMs, certain fighter platforms like F-18s and F-16s, as well as the B-1s, could fly above or around the weather and drop their ordnance on coordinates without ever getting “eyes on” the target. In total, these platforms effectively delivered 52 JDAMs during the sandstorm. The B-1 accounted for twenty-four GBU-31 2,000lb bombs, and the F-18s and F-16s released a mix of twenty-eight GBU-32s and GBU-35s. The Battle of Najaf was also the only instance in the invasion where the B-1 participated in close air support.[87] That terminal attack controllers had used JDAMs effectively in Afghanistan for the previous two years and passed that knowledge and TTPs to their peers certainly impacted CAS effectiveness with JDAMs at Al Najaf. It also contributed to the survival of some of 3^rd Infantry Division’s stranded battalions alongside their own organic fire support, superior training, and tenacious fighting.

A few days later, away from the main effort, the 3^rd Ranger Battalion was given a CENTCOM-directed task to seize and secure Haditha Dam in central Iraq before Saddam Hussein could destroy it and impede the 3^rd Infantry Division’s advance through the Karbala gap.[88] The Rangers, thanks to advice from a special reconnaissance unit, knew they would be “decisively engaged” when they assaulted the dam. Luckily, they went into the fight with multiple ETACs and plenty of preplanned close air support. The ETACs on the scene set up pre-assault strikes with a B-52, which turned out to be very accurate and exactly where the Rangers wanted them, including destroying surface-to-air threats and allowing for follow-on CAS missions.[89] As the Rangers infiltrated the dam, they came into heavy contact with the defenders. Fortunately, there was an ETAC with each of the dislocated Ranger units, so each location had an adequate CAS capability, and the two ETACs could rely on each other to pick up some of the task saturation. 

That’s exactly what happened. Both elements took fire, and one was much heavier than the other. One of the TACPs, Staff Sergeant Tom Case, was with the lesser engaged element. After enemy fire badly damaged his antenna, he had to innovate to request more CAS over SATCOM.[90] The two ETACs continued to get more CAS aircraft on station over the ensuing hours, and Case enlisted the help of another ETAC, this one a CCT, and the two worked together in a system where they could efficiently help each other out as the fight continued through the next three days. Together, the three ETACs destroyed countless enemy positions and, crucially, some 155mm artillery pieces that constantly harassed their Ranger counterparts. At the end of the day, the Rangers seized the dam and miraculously, with zero Rangers KIA and few injuries. It is tremendously unlikely that the Rangers could have taken Haditha Dam without the expert utilization of close air support by the ETACs and pilots, given that the Rangers were only equipped with rifles and a handful of shoulder-fired anti-tank rounds.

For their actions that day, both TACP ETACs Staff Sergeant Tom Case and Technical Sergeant Eric Brandenburg were awarded the Silver Star. Tom Case’s Silver Star Citation reads, “While engaging the enemy with his personal weapon, often within 30 meters of his position, he simultaneously directed air strikes. After three days of continuous firefight, they began receiving heavy and accurate artillery fire, over 300 rounds within eight hours. With complete disregard for his own safety, Sergeant Case exposed himself to this unrelenting attack to control close air support while fragments of concrete and shrapnel from the blasts punctured his rucksack and often knocked him to the ground. At one point he controlled fourteen aircraft simultaneously. Refusing to be relieved until the objective was secure, Sergeant Case was responsible for more than 300 enemy casualties and the destruction of 29 tanks, three heavy cargo trucks, nine S-60s, fourteen anti-aircraft pieces, nine 155-millimeter artillery, twenty-two 82-millimeter mortar, six 60-millimeter mortars, eight ammunition caches, and ten enemy boats. His situational awareness, skill as a controller, and courage under fire were decisive in the battle and ensured mission success and the safety of 152 Rangers.”[91] With a very similar preamble, Eric Brandenburg’s citation reads, “As a result of his courage and calmness under extremely adverse conditions, Sergeant Brandenburg was responsible for more than 200 enemy casualties and the destruction of twenty tanks, ten 155-millimeter artillery, twenty mortar tubs, ten military vehicles, fifteen buildings, two boats and a radar dish. His skill and situational awareness were decisive in the battle and ensured mission success and the safety of 152 Rangers.”[92] The two ETACs combined for 500 enemy casualties and 49 tanks. It forces one to wonder how the Rangers would have fared without their CAS experts that day. Brandenburg and Case received their Silver Stars from Secretary of the Air Force James G. Roche, alongside Michael Shropshire and F-15 pilot Lt. Colonel James Fairchild, who was credited with saving the lives of twenty-three soldiers by dropping a laser-guided bomb on enemy fighters only 200 meters from friendly positions.[93]

            The Northern Front was an entirely different scenario than the conventional warfare going on in the South with V Corps and the Rangers. Thanks to Turkey’s refusal to allow conventional forces to transit through its borders or even its airspace, Franks and Rumsfeld opted to send 10^th Special Forces group to mount a Kurdish guerilla army to fight the Iraqis in the North. Operation Viking Hammer, as the operation came to be known, was very reminiscent of the early Afghanistan campaign. Small SOF teams, bolstered by their CCT and TACP CAS experts, led a native force against some of the strongest military forces in the country. Before the main SOF infill into Northern Iraq, some 10^th SFG operators met up with the Kurds early to provide targeting data to the AOC shock and awe planners. They quickly discovered the high reliability of their Kurdish counterparts, who had already performed reconnaissance of Iraqi positions and relayed precise locations and compositions to the Green Berets. The Green Berets successfully passed this targeting data up the chain, which the targeting cells in the AOC used in the initial hours of heavy bombardment.[94]

Viking Hammer began with a March 22^nd infill into Northern Iraq via six MC-130s carrying fifty SOF personnel and enablers apiece.[95] These six SOF teams and their Peshmerga allies were about to fight thousands of Ansar al-Islam fighters and up to three corps of Iraqi armor, mechanized, and dismounted infantry.[96] Most of the fighting up front was with the Ansar al-Islam in a guerilla on-guerilla fight, except one side of the fight had CAS and naval fire support. These opening days were not close, especially since the ETACs with the ODAs received more CAS than they could manage. One ETAC with 10^th Group stated that he had so many aircraft on station at one point that he thought about turning his radio off because the volume of aircraft in his stack was simply unmanageable.[97] This is not to say that CAS was the only reason 10^th Group and their Peshmerga allies made it through the first days of Viking Hammer. The Green Berets and their allies fought valiantly, at times overwhelmed by the volume of fire brought to bear by the Ansar al Islam.[98] The Northern Front forces quickly defeated the AAI, forced them to flee to Iran, and captured Sargat, completing Operation Viking Hammer and starting 10^th Group’s next fight. Their next task was to head South toward the Green Line, Mosul, and Kirkuk to face Iraqi regulars and Republican Guard. [99] 

One of the most intense CAS missions of the Iraq War occurred in this next phase when the Green Berets and Kurds found themselves confronted with a massive Iraqi formation near the cities of Taqtaq and Kirkuk. Along one of the ridge lines North of Kirkuk, the Green Berets and one of their ETACs spotted the four-kilometer-wide formation, consisting of tanks, armored personnel carriers, support vehicles, heavy artillery, surface-to-air missiles, and dug-in positions.[100] Eventually, the team started getting fired upon by the formation, and the ETAC radioed for close air support, specifically for a platform with as many bombs as possible. He received something he didn’t expect – a B-52 bomber carrying sixteen CBU-105 cluster munitions. The CBU-105 is a highly uncommon munition, especially for close air support. Each bomb is really a 1,000-pound container with ten BLU-108 submunitions. Each BLU-108 contains four heat-seeking, skeet-shaped, armor-piercing, exploding disks. Each tank-killing CBU-105 contains forty disks, can cover an impressive amount of space.. The entire munition is released from the aircraft, and as it approaches the target, it deploys a parachute. When the parachute opens, a canister is released from the bomb, spinning violently to eject the discs laterally. These discs then fire downward into the target. In one of the two times the CBU-105 has been used in combat, the ETAC at Taqtaq dropped all sixteen on the Iraqi formation, rendering the brigade-sized Iraqi force combat ineffective in roughly six minutes without losing a single American life.[101]

The combination of fast-paced maneuvers and close air support continued its success as the Coalition closed in on Baghdad. In the first week of April, the 3^rd Infantry Division was poised to conduct the first of two “thunder runs” reminiscent of Patton’s drive armored blitzkriegs through France. With Baghdad International Airport under the control of US forces on April 2^nd, Iraqi morale fell to a new low, and the Coalition was ready to deliver its final blows to Saddam’s regime. Still, they faced a significant potential problem in the form of urban warfare. The Marines had already experienced some of the difficulties in urban war at Nasiriyah, and the Coalition was justifiably reluctant to bomb urban areas recklessly. Leadership rightly did everything they could to limit civilian casualties for ethical and political reasons. Nevertheless, heavy amounts of CAS were still available in urban areas thanks to the reliability of PGMs. As the 3rd Infantry Division had essentially already completed an armored dash through Iraq up to this point, Franks, Rumsfeld, McKiernan, and Blount wanted to keep the momentum going into Baghdad while the Iraqis were still flat-footed.[102]

             Close air support in Baghdad brought some additional challenges natural to urban warfare. First, no one wanted to kill innocent civilians; second, planners wanted to maintain Baghdad’s infrastructure as much as possible; and third, battle-tracking friendly forces within an urban environment can be a nightmare for both the Army and ETACs. To ease some of the coordination pressure, an Urban Close Air Support concept was devised that established a restricted operating zone (ROZ) split into separate sections for aircraft deconfliction above Baghdad. Second, Baghdad was split into 55 numbered sections and published in the Airspace Control Order (ATO – a list of airspace control measures published for all pilots in theatre) so that all CAS pilots could maintain high situational awareness of enemy and friendly locations. The last piece of the UCAS plan implemented a weapons priority order. The order of weapons preference from most to least was precision-guided munitions, dumb bombs, aircraft guns, and artillery/MLRS as a last resort. The AOC activated the ROZ on April 2^nd, and the UCAS plan was implemented on April 5^th, the day 3^rd Infantry conducted their first thunder run.[103]

            The first thunder run, conducted by the 1-64 armor battalion, was intended to speed up Highway 8, sew chaos in Western Baghdad, and secure key terrain east of Baghdad International Airport. The first run was immediately met with stiff resistance early along Highway 8. The ETAC with the lead element controlled most, if not all, the CAS in support of the battalion for the day. He initially struggled to get effects down because of the intense flak his A-10s received from the heavy anti-aircraft artillery presence in Baghdad. After forty-five to sixty minutes, a blend of CAS and SCAR neutralized the AAA, and the ETAC could finally get CAS working ahead of friendly maneuver elements to clear the way. The ETAC recalled the situation when he said, “The idea for using CAS during the Thunder Runs was to hit them before we got there. They were working ahead of us. I mean, a lot of the targets we attacked I didn’t have eyes on, I just had eyes on the aircraft and the friendlies… Actually, I give more credit to the aircraft because they were the ones finding them. Basically, all I was doing was linking the aircraft to the man who owned the ground to get permission to attack.”[104] After a day of intense fighting, 1-64 accomplished all the intended goals for the first thunder run. They proved to leadership and the Iraqis that the Coalition could go wherever they wanted and do whatever they wanted within Baghdad proper, setting the stage for the second thunder run two days later. 

            Planners devised a more ambitious run for April 7^th, including a dash down Palace Row to capture key governmental and military targets in downtown Baghdad. The April 7^th thunder run was executed similarly to the first, but the 3^rd ID had easier access to CAS thanks to the degraded AAA in the city. They faced similar resistance and handled it much like they had on April 5^th. In the process, they captured the Republican Palace and established a firm, permanent foothold in central Baghdad. This sustained presence in the city led to the collapse of Saddam’s regime two days later, on April 9^th. 4^th Infantry Division, assisted by SOF and the 101^st Airborne, captured Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit less than a week later. At this point, the major maneuver phase of the war ended, and Coalition forces continued to sweep through Iraq to root out the rest of Iraq’s regulars through the rest of April, using similar CAS/mech/armor tactics as they had during the dash to and through Baghdad. George W. Bush declared victory aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1^st.    

By the numbers, the USAF dedicated more resources to close air support in Iraq from March 21^st through April 30^th than it had in any other war. The CFACC, General Moseley, dedicated 50.7% of total USAF sorties to close air support. The second highest apportioned mission, air supremacy, was allotted 14.1%. Of 30,542 Desired Mean Point of Impact (DMPI) nominations, 17,613 were nominated for close air support.[105] Of the total number of targeted DMPIs for all missions, 17,613 were nominated by ground forces, 6,918 by air forces, and 5,282 by special operations forces. In other words, 69.2% of all munitions released from aircraft during the Iraq War were in direct support of ground forces. The USAF maintained its dominance in total sorties flown, with 24,196 out of 41,404. The next closest sortie contribution came from the Navy with 8,945, followed by the Marines with 4,948.[106] From March 21^st through April 30^th, Coalition air forces dropped over twice as many PGMs than unguided bombs (19,948 PGMs and 9,251 dumb bombs). The most dropped bombs were the GBU-12 (500lb, laser-guided) with 7,114, followed by the Mk-82 (500lb, unguided) with 5,504, and the GBU-31 (2,000lb, GPS-guided) with 5,086.[107]

The question for CAS that accompanied the Iraq War is whether the purposeful use of CAS was thematic of advancing joint doctrine or if it was a one-off solution devised by a few wise commanders – McKiernan and Blount, most notably. It was undoubtedly the most rational approach to the war, as proven by the barely more than a month-long campaign that included highly urbanized environments that could have been a source of disaster. Of course, such a strategy might not have been possible if air superiority was not a given before the war even started. But, if air superiority is a preliminary condition for a ground campaign, which it essentially is, then it shouldn’t make a difference. If Iraq had a robust air force to fight the Coalition, there would have been a brief air superiority campaign, likely followed by a similar course of action as the events from March 21^st to April 30^th.

As of the time of writing, it is difficult to determine whether the planners of OIF realized they had devised a strategy reminiscent of the American blitzkriegs of WWII. The similarities are striking. Both strategies focus on the maneuverability of armor and mechanized units, with close air support as the primary destructive weapon, while defensively employing organic firepower. This approach is thematic of both OIF strategy and Patton’s strategy in the ETO. Both examples leveraged the advantage afforded by air superiority to a high degree; they forced the enemy to mass to be vulnerable to CAS or to disperse and allow US ground forces to maneuver at will. It is also unclear whether the planners themselves recognized this parallel.  

Furthermore, the broader influence of close air support on joint doctrine was on full display in Iraq. The Theatre Air Control System, with its fully service-integrated roots in Vietnam, delivered aircraft from the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and the Air Force into one congested battlespace. The CAS team at the AOC reinvented BAI in the form of KICAS and SCAR, significantly enhancing the interdiction effort ahead of the main efforts. Most importantly, close air support directly influenced how the coalition planned and fought the invasion. Planners realized the futility of a 1991-style air campaign in the light of a blitzkrieg that could accomplish the mission far quicker with fewer casualties for both armies and civilians.

Close air support had a profound impact on both the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, being central to the early successes in both conflicts. The speed of success in Afghanistan was unexpected, leading to the deployment of conventional forces months ahead of schedule. In Iraq, many speculated that the United States would become entangled in urban warfare, with Baghdad turning into a 21st-century Stalingrad. A prolonged standoff never happened, thanks to the rapid advance of V Corps and 1st MEF through southern Iraq, which decimated Saddam’s forces. In many aspects, close air support proved its effectiveness in both smaller-scale guerilla wars and large-scale maneuver wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For a time, it garnered a large deal of respect in the higher echelons of the DoD, and for the rest of the GWOT, there was a significant push for higher degrees of joint warfare as the services found themselves working more closely together in the 2000s and 2010s.

The Army’s request for JTACs at every battalion and preferably for every infantry company is evidence of the effectiveness of the JTAC/ETAC and the Army’s perceived desire for more.[108] A RAND Corporation study was published in line with the Army’s requests for more terminal attack controllers, providing suggestions to both the Army and the Air Force. Two significant suggestions came out of the study. The first was that the Army didn’t necessarily need a terminal attack controller with every infantry company, but every infantry company needed the means, via training and technology, to transmit timely and accurate targeting data to their aligned controller. The second recommendation, which this dissertation has consistently supported, stated: “Air attack and ground maneuver should be planned as mutually enabling activities. Whenever possible, air forces should be free to conduct operations deep within enemy territory against enemy maneuver forces, thereby isolating the battlefield. Friendly ground forces can operate in a dispersed fashion, finding and fixing enemy forces so that they become targets for friendly fires from any service component.”[109] RAND recognized what the air-ground leaders of WWII realized sixty years prior – that detailed integration of air and ground forces leads to a mutually exclusive relationship with the potential for exponential success.

The USAF recognized that its primary mission in Iraq and Afghanistan was close air support and took steps to increase its proficiency to maintain relevance. In 2004, the term ETAC was replaced with Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC), and each of the services complied in its own way. Additionally, the services abandoned their branch-specific request nets in favor of a Joint Air Request Net.[110] The Marines had their own TACP, some of which became JTAC qualified; the USAF sought to advance its own TACP by mandating that each member of the career field be JTAC qualified in the late 2010s. Meanwhile, SOF and SEALS created their own JTACs in the form of Special Operations Terminal Attack Controllers (SOTACs). The A-10, used to being on the USAF’s chopping block since its inception, was upgraded in 2005 to the A-10C instead of being forced into retirement. The A-10C upgrades included new targeting pods, a new digital cockpit, PGM capability upgrades, and avionics upgrades to make it more survivable and accurate in the coming CAS-centric years of the GWOT.[111]

For the next twenty years after 9/11, US forces remained in Iraq and Afghanistan, fighting protracted, irregular warfare. In the process, close air support became central to Army planning, and the mission gained a fair amount of clout in the USAF and especially in the Army. The GWOT made the A-10 famous among its veterans, and even young JTACs gained a degree of reverence from their Army peers thanks to the CAS display from 2001-2003, followed by continued value in the years to come.

---

[1] This training revolution is covered well by Brian D. Laslie in The Air Force Way of War: U.S. Tactics and Training after Vietnam. (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2015).

[2] FAC / TACP / ROMAD history. Accessed June 1, 2024. https://www.afdasf.org/dasf/4thdasf/robin/fac_history/fac-history.html; Steve Call. Danger close: Tactical Air Controllers in Afghanistan and Iraq. (College Station, TX: Texas A & M University Press, 2009), 4-7.

[3] Don Becken, Mark George, John Foeller, John Knipe, Tom Case, interviews by author.

[4] Don Becken, Mark George, and John Foeller interviews by author, Fort Walton Beach, Florida, May 24^th, 2024; The origin of the TACP career field is an untapped historical topic that merits its own research.

[5] Brian D. Laslie. The Air Force Way of War: U.S. tactics and training after Vietnam. (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2015), 85-100.

[6] The integration between the two services in these exercises took time to smooth itself out. There was some natural friction between the services in the first decades of peacetime joint training exercises; J.D. Welsh, host. “Episode 9: Tom Case.” Not Just War Stories (podcast). December 21^st, 2022.

[7] Don Becken, interview by author, Fort Walton Beach, FL, May 24^th, 2024. This transition to CAS emphasis because of CAS and TACP performance is also covered to an extent in Steve Call. Danger close: Tactical Air Controllers in Afghanistan and Iraq. (College Station, TX: Texas A & M University Press, 2009).  

[8] Don Becken, Mark George, and John Foeller (TACP Ret.) interviews by author, Fort Walton Beach, Florida, May 24^th, 2024.

[9] 8^th Air Support Operations Center. After Action Review, Operation Desert Shield/Storm. December 1991. Call #TF-4-12-239 in the USAF Collection, DAFHRA, Maxwell AFB, AL. 1.

[10] Ibid., 1-3.

[11] Ibid., 6.

[12] Task Force IV TACP Operations (TACP Questionnaire). December 1990 – May 1991. Call # TF4-14-297 in the USAF Collection, DAFHRA, Maxwell AFB, AL.     

[13] 8^th Air Support Operations Center. After Action Review, Operation Desert Shield/Storm; The lack of wait time for push CAS can also be attributed to geography. Coalition forces were in a relatively condensed area in Kuwait and Southern Iraq, making the allocation of aircraft relatively straightforward.

[14] Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), US Army. TRADOC Pamphlet 525-5: US Army Operational Concepts, Air Land Battle and Corps. Ft. Leavenworth, KS, 1981. 3.

[15] U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, “New Technology for NATO: Implementing Follow-On Force Attack,” OTA-ISC-309. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, June 1987. 3-5.

[16] Terrance MCaffrey. “What Happened to BAI? Army and Air Force Battlefield Doctrine Development from pre-desert storm to 2001.” (Air University Press, Maxwell AFB, AL. 2002), V.

[17] Steve Call. Danger Close. 104-105.

[18] United States Army Training and Doctrine Command. FM 71-123: Tactics and Techniques for Combined Arms Heavy Forces. Ft. Leavenworth, KS, 1992. Figure 7-1.

[19] 8^th Air Support Operations Center. After Action Review, Operation Desert Shield/Storm.

[20] Mark George (MSgt (Ret)) and John Knipe (SMSgt (Ret)) interview by author, Fort Walton Beach, FL, May 24^th, 2024.

[21] Tom Case (CMSgt (Ret)) interview by author, June 1^st, 2024. This is the same Tom Case who later became the third enlisted Airman ever to be awarded two Silver Stars later in the GWOT. He retired as a Chief Master Sergeant in 2023.

[22] Chris Spann, Stephen Achey interviews by author.

[23] Welsh, J.D., host. “Episode 33: Shawn Minyon.” Not Just War Stories (podcast). July 30^th, 2023. Shawn Minyon was a SOF TACP who was attached to SOF units throughout the 90s and early 2000s.

[24] Terrance McCaffrey. “What Happened to BAI?” 110-112.

[25] Joint Chiefs of Staff. Joint Publication 3-09.3: Joint Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for Close Air Support (CAS). 1995, III-2 - III-3.

[26] SOF TACP, Combat Control Teams, and other SOF units often worked outside this system. For them, they either relayed a request through an on-station aircraft or to their next higher headquarters element, which then went straight to the Air Operations Center to get CAS aircraft on station. Typically, they were organically supported by Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) platforms that operated in their own smaller and expedited coordination channels.

[27] Ibid., III-4.

[28] Headquarters, Department of the Army. FM 6-30 Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for Observed Fire. July 16^th, 1991. Page 8-3.

[29] USAF Combat Control Teams, known commonly as CCT or “controllers” also control close air support for non-air force units. The core mission of the CCT is to provide air traffic control at austere airfields, and they are often attached to SOF or SEAL teams. Due to their high proficiency in controlling aircraft, they often fulfilled the role of the CAS controller for specialized teams in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It is worth reiterating that unlike the CCTs, TACP were never meant to deploy as the primary ETAC for the Green Berets. They were meant to be trainers and fires help in training, but after 9/11 the TACPs had already proven their competency, and the SOF teams wanted their aligned TACP to come and work the high volumes of CAS to be executed in Afghanistan.

[30] For a CCT to be the commander of an Air Support Operations Group was highly unusual. The officer that held that position was almost always a rated Air Liaison Officer. Colonel Longoria was well-liked during his command by his subordinates and is still highly regarded today by those that served under him.

[31] Steve Call. Danger close: Tactical Air Controllers in Afghanistan and Iraq. (College Station, TX: Texas A & M University Press, 2009), 27-28.

[32] Some of the ETACs were afforded a SOF-funded trip to REI before they left for Afghanistan, where they acquired Garmin E-TREX wrist-mounted GPS devisces; Chris Spann interview by author, June 15^th, 2024; John Knipe interview by author, Fort Walton Beach, FL, May 24^th, 2024; Kevin Davis interview by author, June 8^th, 2024.

[33] Edmund J. Degen, and Mark J. Reardon. Modern War in an Ancient Land: The United States Army and Afghanistan, 2001-2014, Volume I. 118; Although tragic, the fact that this was the largest fratricide incident in the war at its most kinetic phase shows progress between the USAF and Army in limiting the possibility of fratricide. The instances of fratricide in the GWOT pale in comparison to that of WWII bomber integration into close air support.

[34] J.D. Welsh, host. “Episode 9: Tom Case.” Not Just War Stories (podcast). December 21^st, 2022.

[35] John Knipe interview by author, May 4^th, 2024.

[36] Ibid.,

[37] “Joint Direct Attack Munition Fact Sheet: GBU- 31/32/38.”

[38] Chris Spann interview by author, June 15^th.

[39] “Raytheon (Texas Instruments) Directory of U.S. Military Rockets and Missiles, Appendix 5: Bombs, Paveway II.”

[40] Edmund J. Degen, and Mark J. Reardon. Modern War in an Ancient Land: The United States Army and Afghanistan, 2001-2014, Volume I. (Washington, DC: United States Center of Military History, 2021), 62-63.

[41] Edmund J. Degen, and Mark J. Reardon. Modern War in an Ancient Land, 85.

[42] Silver Star Citation, Stephen Tomat. December 15^th, 2001.

[43] Steve Call. Danger close: Tactical Air Controllers in Afghanistan and Iraq. 22-23.

[44] Ibid., 50.

[45] Ibid., 51; Edmund J. Degen, and Mark J. Reardon. Modern War in an Ancient Land. 97.

[46] The piecemealed division comprised brigades from the 10^th Mountain Division and the 101^st Airborne/Air Assault Division. Their original purpose was to provide security at the K2 airfield and for prisoners of war within Afghanistan. They were not there to take part in significant operations or offensives.

[47] Ibid., 105-107.

[48] Interview with Chriss Spann by Author; Some of the SOF teams knew their role in Anaconda but didn’t know the name of the operation until it was over. High levels of coordination did not extensively reach the SOF concentration at Gardez.

[49] The historiography on the planning for Anaconda is mixed. Some eyewitnesses place the blame on the Air Force elements involved with planning, such as the reporter Sean Naylor in Not a Good Day to Die. Others, such as Dr. Steve Call in Danger Close, used interviews from the Air Force TACP who were involved in the planning, who placed the responsibility for poor planning on Hagenbeck, who sought to go to Afghanistan in the first place without his aligned TACP and failed to plan for detailed air integration until it was too late. When Dr. Call attempted to contact General Hagenbeck for a response, he was met with disregard for his questions. Steve Call. Danger close: Tactical Air Controllers in Afghanistan and Iraq. 59, 75. Regardless of whose fault the poor air-ground coordination was, all parties agreed that the airspace, request nets, and coordination for CAS was a terrible mess (per author’s interviews with Kevin Davis, Chris Spann, Tom Case; J.D., host. “Episode 20: Pete Donnelly.” Not Just War Stories (podcast). April 2^nd, 2023). Other sources that dive into the planning process at Anaconda include Edmund J. Degen and Mark J. Reardon. Modern War in an Ancient Land; Jody Jacobs, Gary McLeod, and Eric Larson. Enhancing the Integration of Special Operations and Conventional Air Operations: Focus on the Air-Surface Interface. July 2007. RAND Corporation, Project Air Force, Arlington, VA. 

[50] Rebecca Grant. “The Airpower of Anaconda.” Air & Space Forces Magazine, September 1, 2002.

[51] Steve Call. Danger close: Tactical Air Controllers in Afghanistan and Iraq. 60-61.

[52] Chris Spann interview by author, June 15^th, 2024; Kevin Davis interview by author, June 8^th, 2024.

[53] J.D. Welsh, host. “Episode 20: Pete Donnelly.” Not Just War Stories (podcast). April 2^nd, 2023; Steve Call. Danger close: Tactical Air Controllers in Afghanistan and Iraq. 60-61

[54] The fratricide wasn’t the only factor in Zia Lodin’s decision to head back to Gardez, but it was certainly a major one. Lodin’s retreat effectively ended the “hammer and anvil” concept revolving around Anaconda planning.

[55] Edmund J., and Mark J. Reardon. Modern War in an Ancient Land: The United States Army and Afghanistan, 2001-2014, Volume I. (Washington, DC: United States Center of Military History, 2021), 152.

[56] Ibid., 155; Chris Spann interview by author, June 15^th, 2024.

[57] Stephen Achey interviewed by Steve Call in Danger close: Tactical Air Controllers in Afghanistan and Iraq. 70-71.

[58] Silver Star Citation, Staff Sergeant Stephen Achey. March 2^nd, 2002. https://valor.militarytimes.com/hero/3773

[59] Steve Call. Danger close: Tactical Air Controllers in Afghanistan and Iraq. 79.

[60] After the SEAL team member, P01C Neil Roberts fell out of a helicopter upon infil at Takur Ghar, the entirety of American Forces focused on rescuing him. This eventually resulted in the mission in which Air Force Combat Controller, TSgt John Chapman was killed and eventually awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor. March 4^th was a confusing, chaotic, and controversy-filled day with multiple books written just on that day.

[61] Rebecca Grant. “The Echoes of Anaconda.” Air and Space Magazine. April 1^st, 2005.

[62] Edmund J. Degen, and Mark J. Reardon. Modern War in an Ancient Land: The United States Army and Afghanistan, 2001-2014, Volume I. 151.

[63] Chris Spann, interviewed by author. June 15^th, 2024.

[64] Steve Call. Danger close: Tactical Air Controllers in Afghanistan and Iraq. 105-109; In Danger Close, Steve Call captures the planning process for Iraq and the influence of the George Bochain and General Hagenbeck debacle. There was a dialogue between the planners of Anaconda and the planners for the Iraq invasion from the 3^rd Infantry Division at Ft. Stewart, GA.

[65] Kevin Davis interviewed by author. June 8^th, 2024.

[66] John Keegan. The Iraq War. (NY: Alfred A. Knopf (Random House), 2004), 127.

[67] Ibid., 128-129.

[68] Ibid., 132-133; while all those divisions took part in the invasion, no one division was at full strength. Altogether, the Army force totaled the equivalent strength of two divisions.

[69] Ibid., 142.

[70] Walter L. Perry, Richard E. Darilek, Laurinda L. Rohn, and Jerry M. Sollinger. Eds. Operation Iraqi Freedom: by the Numbers.

Decisive War, Elusive Peace (Santa Monica: RAND, 2015), 151.

[71] Stephen Achey, interviewed by author; Steve Call. Danger Close; Most of the “augmentees” that supported the 15^th ASOS came from the 20^th ASOS at Ft. Drum, the same unit that deployed to Afghanistan in 2001/2002.

[72] Walter L. Perry, Richard E. Darilek, Laurinda L. Rohn, and Jerry M. Sollinger. Eds. Operation Iraqi Freedom:

Decisive War, Elusive Peace, 169.

[73] The FSCL was/is the modern version of the bomb-fall line. Its purpose is to deconflict Air Force planes from Army artillery. Long FSCLs are put in place when the Army expects to move quickly and their artillery to come into close range of the FSCL. All Air Force sorties occurring short of the FSCL, such as CAS or interdiction, require a level of coordination between air and ground components; Steve Call. Danger Close. 108.

[74] Matt Dietz. “Eagles Overhead: The History of US Air Force Forward Air Controllers, from the Meuse-Argonne to Mosul.” Dissertation, University of North Texas Press, 2023. 273-274.

[75] Walter L. Perry, Richard E. Darilek, Laurinda L. Rohn, and Jerry M. Sollinger. Eds. Operation Iraqi Freedom:

Decisive War, Elusive Peace, 158.

[76] Ibid., 163-164.

[77] Steve Call, Danger Close. 112.

[78] Walter L. Perry, Richard E. Darilek, Laurinda L. Rohn, and Jerry M. Sollinger. Eds. Operation Iraqi Freedom:

Decisive War, Elusive Peace, 158.

[79] Steve Call. Danger Close. 117-123.

[80] Joint Chiefs of Staff. Joint Publication 3-09.3: Close Air Support (CAS). 2019; There were no “types of control” codified until after the invasion. The three types of control vary based on what the controller can see and the type of clearance they provide. A “Type 1” requires the controller to see the target and the aircraft with his eyes. A “Type 2” control requires the controller to have accurate targeting data and does not require him to see the target or the aircraft; this is the type of control that the TACPs at the 4^th ASOG invented on the eve of the invasion. A “Type 3” control is the same as the former, except the controller provides clearance for multiple attacks instead of being required to say “cleared hot” before every weapon release.

[81] Steve Call. Danger Close. 122.

[82] Stephen Achey interview by author, June 23^rd, 2024.

[83] Steve Call. Danger Close. 137.

[84] J.D. Welsh, host. “Episode 17: Michael Shropshire.” Not Just War Stories (podcast). March 10^th, 2023.

[85] Ibid.,

[86] Ibid; Silver Star Citation, Michael Shropshire. September 1^st, 2004; Steve Call, Danger Close. 139-140, 156-161.

[87] Walter L. Perry, Richard E. Darilek, Laurinda L. Rohn, and Jerry M. Sollinger. Eds. Operation Iraqi Freedom:

Decisive War, Elusive Peace (Santa Monica: RAND, 2015), 160.

[88] U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) History Department. “The Rangers Take Hadithah Dam.”

[89] J.D. Welsh, host. “Episode 9: Tom Case.” Not Just War Stories (podcast). December 21^st, 2022.

[90] Ibid.; Tom Case, Interview by author, June 1^st, 2024.

[91] Silver Star Citation, Tom Case. September 1^st, 2004.

[92] Silver Star Citation, Eric Brandenburg. September 1^st, 2004.

[93] “Five Airmen Receive Silver Stars.” Air Force. Pope Air Force Base, NC. December 10^th, 2004.

[94] Mark Gianconia. Operation Viking Hammer: A Green Beret’s Firsthand Account of Unconventional Warfare in Northern Iraq, 2003. Self-published, 2018. 29-32.

[95] This MC-130 flight was also the longest SOF infill in American history and the longest infill ever performed by MC-130 crews. The infiltration could take up an entire book chapter; Mark Gianconia. Operation Viking Hammer. 32; John Knipe interview by author; Steve Call. Danger Close. 225.

[96] U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) History Department. “Operation Viking Hammer.” Operation VIKING HAMMER: 3/10 Special Forces Group against the Ansar Al-Islam.

[97] John Knipe, interview by author.

[98] For a firsthand account of some of the intense fighting in the opening days of Viking Hammer, see Mark Gianconia. Operation Viking Hammer: A Green Beret’s Firsthand Account of Unconventional Warfare in Northern Iraq, 2003.

[99] Ibid., 78, 85; U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) History Department. “Operation Viking Hammer.” Operation VIKING HAMMER: 3/10 Special Forces Group against the Ansar Al-Islam.

[100] John Knipe, Interview by author; “The Road to Kirkuk Sensor Fuzed Weapon.” YouTube

[101] “CBU-105 SFW Archives.” Air & Space Forces Magazine; John Knipe interview by author.

[102] Steve Call. Danger Close. 188-189.

[103] Walter L. Perry, Richard E. Darilek, Laurinda L. Rohn, and Jerry M. Sollinger. Eds. Operation Iraqi Freedom:

Decisive War, Elusive Peace (Santa Monica: RAND, 2015), 173-174.

[104] Jon Pinson interview by Steve Call in Danger Close. 194.

[105] DMPI is an indicator of where a munition needs to be placed. One target may have multiple DMPIs, such as a building, surface-to-air threat, or area target like troops in the open. DMPI nominations are by no means synonymous with target nominations; U.S. Air Forces Central Command Assessment and Analysis Division, Operation Iraqi Freedom – By the Numbers, Unclassified. by Michael Moseley. April 30, 2003. 5.

[106] Ibid., 6-7.

[107] Ibid., 11.

[108] Rhett B. Lawing. "American Armed Forces' Service Culture Impact on Close Air Support." Air & Space Power Journal (2006), 8.

[109] Bruce R. Pirnie, Alan J. Vick, Adam R. Grissom, Karl P. Mueller, and David T. Orletsky, “Beyond Close Air Support: Forging a New Air-Ground Partnership.” (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2005).

[110] Previously, the Air Force and Department of the Navy request systems were separate communications networks. In 2004, they merged into a single net.

[111] “A-10 Thunderbolt (Warthog), United States of America.” Airforce Technology, March 21, 2023.