[Dialogue] Edging Away From Air Force, Army Adds Air Unit

[Harry Wainwright]

June 22, 2008


Edging Away From Air Force, Army Adds Air Unit 


By THOM SHANKER
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/thom_shanker/i
ndex.html?inline=nyt-per> 

WASHINGTON - Ever since the Army lost its warplanes to a newly independent
Air Force
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/us_air_
force/index.html?inline=nyt-org>  after World War II, soldiers have depended
on the sister service for help from the sky, from bombing and strafing to
transport and surveillance.

But the wars in Iraq
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/ir
aq/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>  and Afghanistan
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/af
ghanistan/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>  have frayed the relationship, with
Army officers making increasingly vocal complaints that the Air Force is not
pulling its weight.

In Afghanistan, Army officers have complained about bombing missions gone
awry that have killed innocent civilians. In Iraq, Army officers say the Air
Force has often been out of touch, fulfilling only half of their requests
for the sophisticated surveillance aircraft that ground commanders say are
needed to find roadside bombs and track down insurgents.

The Air Force responds that it has only a limited number of those remotely
piloted Predators and other advanced surveillance aircraft, so priorities
for assigning them must be set by senior commanders at the headquarters in
Baghdad working with counterparts at the Air Force's regional command in
Qatar. There are more than 14,000 airmen performing tasks on the ground in
Iraq and Afghanistan, including Air Force civil engineers replacing Army
construction engineers.

But now in Iraq, the Army has quietly decided to try going it alone for the
important surveillance mission, organizing an all-Army surveillance unit
that represents a new move by the service toward self-sufficiency, and away
from joint operations. 

Senior aides to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/robert_m_gates
/index.html?inline=nyt-per>  say that he has shown keen interest in the Army
initiative - much to the frustration of embattled Air Force leaders - as a
potential way to improve battlefield surveillance.

The work of the new aviation battalion was initially kept secret, but Army
officials involved in its planning say it has been exceptionally active,
using remotely piloted surveillance aircraft to call in Apache helicopter
strikes with missiles and heavy machine gun fire that have killed more than
3,000 adversaries in the last year and led to the capture of almost 150
insurgent leaders.

The Army aviation task force became fully operational last July with
headquarters at Camp Speicher, in the north-central city of Tikrit, and
focuses its efforts on insurgents planting roadside bombs. But it also has
located and attacked insurgents in battles with American and Iraqi troops,
and has supported missions of the top-secret Special Operations units
assigned to capture or kill the most high-value targets in Iraq.

The battalion is called Task Force Odin - the name is that of the chief god
of Norse mythology, but it also is an acronym for "observe, detect, identify
and neutralize." The task force of about 300 people and 25 aircraft is a
Rube Goldberg collection of surveillance and communications and attack
systems, a mash-up of manned and remotely piloted vehicles, commercial
aircraft with high-tech infrared sensors strapped to the fuselage, along
with attack helicopters and infantry.

The Army cobbled together small civilian aircraft, including the Beech C-12,
and placed advanced reconnaissance sensors on board. Also assigned to the
task force are small, medium and larger remotely piloted Army surveillance
vehicles, including the Warrior and Shadow, with infrared cameras for night
operations and full-motion video cameras.

All are linked by radio to Apache attack helicopters, with Hellfire missiles
and 30-millimeter guns, and to infantry units in armored vehicles.

Civilian casualties are always a risk in air raids, particularly those
attacking bomb-placing teams that operate in cities and villages. Army
officials declined to say whether they believed the casualties from the new
Army raids included innocent civilians, but they sought to pre-empt some
criticism by screening an aerial surveillance video that they said showed
the precise nature of the raids.

The video showed an insurgent who had escaped attack and hid in a courtyard
a few feet from a grazing mule. It then showed Apache helicopter fire
killing the insurgent, while the mule was left grazing beside the corpse.

In contrast to Predators, which are assigned by the top headquarters for
missions all across Iraq, Task Force Odin is on call for commanders at the
level of brigade and below, an effort by the Army to be responsive to the
needs of smaller combat units in direct contact with adversaries - and a
clear sign of rivaling concepts with the Air Force.

Task Force Odin was created on orders of Gen. Richard A. Cody, the Army's
outgoing vice chief of staff, as a way to improve the detection of roadside
bombs before they explode, and to strike more adversaries more safely, from
a distance. Thus far, not a single helicopter or piloted surveillance
airplane has been lost in the unit's missions.

"Task Force Odin provides a current example in Iraq that reveals how
reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition improves survivability,"
General Cody said in a statement.

Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said Mr. Gates "wants to make
sure that we are looking at not just top-down solutions, but ground-up
solutions. We need to pay attention to anything that works."

Strains between the services have surfaced in the years since the military
undertook the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Army and Marine Corps officers in Afghanistan have complained that Air Force
pilots flying attack missions in support of ground operations do not come in
as low as their Navy and Marine counterparts. Instances of civilian
casualties from bombing and missile attacks have increased tensions among
local populations, which have to be eased by ground commanders, adding to
their burden of winning hearts and minds in the counterinsurgency efforts.

"We are supporting the Army as best we can," Michael W. Wynne, the departing
Air Force secretary, said Friday. He said that as the Army and Marine Corps
increased ground forces in Iraq as part of the so-called troop surge over
the past year, the Air Force quadrupled its number of sorties and increased
its bombing tenfold. The number of surveillance flights by Predators and the
larger Reaper vehicles over Iraq and Afghanistan has doubled since January
of 2007.

Army officers who are promoting the new concept have shown senior Pentagon
officials classified video clips intended to advertise the service's
increasing go-it-alone ability. One clip from a remotely piloted vehicle
shows an insurgent using palm fronds to smooth dirt over a bomb he had
buried late at night along a major convoy route. Moments later, he
disappeared in 30-millimeter fire from an Apache that was alerted by the
remotely piloted Army surveillance craft overhead.

The Army is asking for money to create a similar unit in Afghanistan within
the next six months. 

 

 <http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html> Copyright
2008 The New York Times Company <http://www.nytco.com/>  

DCSIMG




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