The DoD UAV Debacle: costly failures rob troops of air cover in Iraq/Afghanistan

The debacle in Iraq and decaying situation in Afghanistan are directly tied to the failure of DoD's RMA mental gadgetry/firepower fantasies. A centerpiece of DoD's physical emasculation and under value of ground maneuver is the pre-occupation with model airplanes called Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs). Not only do UAVs fail to see the enemy with their narrow "soda straw" views they are expensive and costing us a fortune taking funds away from other necessary things like tracked vehicle armor and gunshields. UAVs are crashing themselves at an alarming rate as these power point imagery from an UAV over Kabul, Afghanistan shows. This lack of effective MANNED air surveillance/attack is a fatal error that must be corrected at once.

A retired Army Colonel with Vietnam combat experience writes:

"See the attached Army public affairs announcement.

http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/read.php?story_id_key=6412

With regard to the counter-mortar effort in Iraq, it seems to me that this process could be made a lot easier by having a Cessna up overhead with an observer in the back seat with FOFAC binoculars (i.e. grid coordinates) which could give the artillery an almost instantaneous target for counter-mortar. Just another mission that a low-cost, easy to maintain, long-loiter fixed wing aircraft could do that the UAV has to be configured for.

You can buy 30 Cessnas or Pipers or Steermans for the price of one M1A2 Abrams [conversion or vulnerable, overweight $3.3 million Stryker truck]. For 24/7 operations, you need slightly over 180 to cover the various Areas of Operations in Iraq. If you want to patrol the border, you need about that many again. The pilot is easily trained, the aircraft is easy to maintain. It can land on the road alongside a unit it supports and get direct liaison. It can put a soldier or marine with a SINCGARS or ICOM in the back seat to provide continuous communications with the supported unit. At night the pilot and observer can wear the PVS-7 [ANVIS-6] NVG and spot ambushes being implaced, people planting IEDs, and mortar tube flashes. In a heartbeat they can call in artillery (day/night/all weather), AC-130 (night), and Close Air Support (day).

I don't want to hear about the threat to a 5,000 ft AGL aircraft until you convince me that our troops are not threatened every day at ranges of 25 meters or less by ambushes, IEDs, suicide bombers, and RPGs. I've ridden back seat in an O-1 (Cessna) in combat, and survived being shot at a number of times; whereas, I have been shot down riding back seat in a helicopter. And yes, we did fly a lot lower than 5K ft over the target areas, but that is how the FACs earned their medals.

In the past, the O-1, O-2, OV-1s, OV-10s have been armed to directly attack the target or at least mark it. We could arm these new Cessnas with laser weapons, missiles, and/or light automatic weapons for immediate attack at a lot lower pricetag than the UCAS -- or not at all. In my war, Capt Pete Peterson had 6 WP rockets to use for marking targets from the front seat. I used an M-2 30 cal carbine and hand grenades from the back seat, and once, just once, a mason jar of piss. (4 hour plane rides require mason jars for both pilot and observer as standard equipment). No significant results with these back seat weapons other than to send them scurrying, but the fast movers we directed in when they came on station sure put a hurt on the bad guys on several occasions. The difficult point to grasp is that suppression counts. These terrorists in Iraq won't have time to fire mortars when they are dodging even light stuff.

If you want comms in built-up areas, you need an overhead comms relay platform The Cessna can do this too. So can the UAV, but it has to choose what packages it can carry. The Cessna is far more flexible and adaptable and useful. Helos can do this too, but it isn't their mission and they are high maintenance, limited loiter time.

Interestingly enough, the U.S. has allowed the new Iraqi Army to purchase 6 new light, fixed-wing observation planes from Jordan. The ultimate buy is 16. We won't buy them for our own troops - but we continue to let our own soldiers and marines die as a result of no overhead surveillance or support. So we spend time trying to kluge together counter-mortar radars and UAV. If you think the UAVs are going to be the answer, then you are smoking pot. While UAVs are supposed to be with every battalion, they are consolidated at Division and higher levels for maintenance and admin reasons. As a consequence, they are not in the areas they are needed. This is another remarkable, but true, feat of mis-management of tactical operations.

There is a place for every system on the battlefield. The missing man is the light fixed wing observation aircraft that can do a multitude of jobs and still survive in this environment. Will we lose some? Probably, but the fact of the matter is, that we refuse to even put one of these things up to experiment with saving lives on the ground. And that is criminal.

Even calling up the Civil Air Patrol (USAF SAR Auxiliary) and sending it and its fixed-winged manned aircraft plus some more military training/equipment to Iraq would be better than further wastage on UAVs, especially if we are worried about Iraq becoming another South Vietnam and we want our OB/ATK planes back.

The problem is Iraq is not being handled by warfighters but being used as "cash cows" for war profiteers. One "cash cow" is the Army Shadow UAV with no attack capability and a 10 minute data link delay for $3.8 million for two model airplanes. Instead of solving the battlefield problem with a hard choice to get platforms into the air, Iraq is being used as a greed and ego fest for RMA and mankind worship hubris. Our troops need results not "I Love Me and I'm Smart and making history" TV programs on the Discovery Channel.

Current "cash cow" expensive UAVs have failed miserably in Iraq to protect our troops or secure the main supply routes.

So much so, the new Iraqi AF is getting the impotent but manned Seeker observation aircraft without attack capabilities. Again, the American military industrial complex's penchant for handfuls of "perfect" solutions ignores that we could get 30+ good enough Cessnas N-O-W which can be armed and be fitted with STOL devices used by missionaries to land and take-off from within 300 feet. Iraqi AF pilots can be trained here in the U.S. in a matter of weeks. Instead we are dragging out the Seeker thing for months and months when we don't have months to reverse situation in Iraq.

However, we suspect deep down inside we are getting ready to "cut and run" from Iraq because we would rather lose than ADAPT. With that undercurrent of distrust we do not want to arm OB/ATK aircraft for the Iraqi AF.

Fine.

Then get a couple squadron's worth of OB/ATK aircraft for Iraq PILOTED BY U.S. ARMY PILOTS (USAF get with program or get the @##%% out of the way) and when we retreat from Iraq we GAIN SOMETHING @##$$%^ NEW FROM THE IRAQ DEBACLE that we can use elsewhere in current/future wars against sub-national groups ie: Afghanistan.

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A Defense expert writes in:

"There are lots of good fast civilian airplanes out there that could serve this purpose, now with the addition of small turbine engines, the reliablity goes up drastically, and these airplanes have the ability to go very slow and then accelerate just as quickly.

The loiter time would be tremendous, there are a lot of pilots out there that worked in counter drugs that was a similar mission.

Until the deaf ears want some type of force able to see in the 3rd dimension we won´t have anything to work with. I think the way it works, is we pick a company that we want, and they lobby and the item then becomes part of the military hardware, hence Rumsfeld´s frustration. Do you really think that one AH-64 equals 8 AH-1 Cobra´s. NO way, but Boeing has better lobbyists than Bell right now. We need to work this angle from the top down, congress mandates some type of fixed wing contract. The military doesn´t knowwhat it wants.

We could send the Civil Air Patrol over there with there equipment!!!