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  ollateral
damage" is a cold, impersonal term for breaking things and
killing people that you did not mean to break of kill. The U.S.
goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid collateral damage. When innocent
people are killed or injured in battle, it is not the result of
a premeditated act by the U.S. military — and the tentative
coalition suffers when collateral damage occurs.
In the current
situation, the Taliban and bin Laden make some amount of propaganda
hay when collateral damage occurs. This impacts military operations,
which become more closely controlled. Some targets or target classes
are passed by the planners or the shooters. Extra passes (fly-bys)
are taken to guarantee target identification. Additional intelligence
resources are assigned to improve target nomination and identification.
On the ground, forces crawl closer.
There are now
two stories on the cable networks about civilian deaths from air
strikes. In one, the story is that a Navy fighter dropped a bomb
aimed at a helicopter sitting at Kabul's airport, but the bomb went
astray by about a mile and reportedly killed four Afghans. According
to unidentified government sources, it missed because the coordinates
for the target were misprogrammed into the bomb — there was
a typo. The bomb was guided by global positioning satellites (GPS)
to a precisely predetermined, exactly wrong place.
This is an
example of the fog of war. The U.S. admits and regrets the error
and has provided a logical and truthful explanation. It does not
relish its error and glory in the loss of life. No obfuscation,
no word games — even at the risk of unsettling the antiterrorism
coalition. You can count on the fact that an extra, extra set of
eyes will check the bomb coordinates from now on.
The other story
centers on a Taliban-arranged tour of the village of Karam in eastern
Afghanistan, supposedly struck on October 11. There are claims of
200 deaths. Pictures show a "bombed out" village, many
dead livestock, a hospital with wounded people, and about 18 graves.
There is also a picture of what appears to be a bomb casing —
reported to be unexploded — with several "officials"
examining it. The other 180 graves are reported to be further away
in the mountains.
The facts are
still one-sided and we know that the U.S. government will have to
address the allegations. The U.S. is in a psychological war with
a sophisticated manipulator of the media; it is not too difficult
to imagine that the whole affair was staged, or at least important
parts of it enhanced for television. We, of course, have the Taliban's
word that this was not a training camp and that the area did not
supported al Qaeda or Taliban operations. In any case, the U.S.
did not purposely pick out a remote village of innocents to target.
The
Campaign Shifts
There is a clear shift in one portion of the military campaign,
President Bush has announced. The U.S. is now aiming its lethal
armory of modern weapons at a different set of targets — ones
that have a more direct bearing on the battlefield. Taliban troop
concentrations, garrisons, and supply facilities, have increasingly
appeared on the reported target lists, with artillery and tank locations
being added as well. Soon we will see reports of convoys and other
moving targets being attacked. Satellite-guided weapons, designed
to strike-fixed location targets, increasingly will be replaced
with weapons such as Maverick missiles that lock onto the infrared
signature of the selected target.
Target identification
will become more difficult — the shooters will be working from
15,000 feet or higher, or they will be in a hurry because they are
operating from lower altitudes within range of anti-aircraft guns
and shoulder-fired missiles. Attack helicopters are generally the
delivery platform of choice for such low-level fighting, along with
Air Force A-10 ground attack aircraft. The fixed wing A-10 (a large,
"ugly" aircraft nick-named Warthog by its pilots) requires
the same kind of airbases as other fighter aircraft and would have
to operate from fairly near by.
Correction
& Addendum
In my recent article
concerning air superiority, I indirectly, and incorrectly, suggested
that the 5,000-pound "bunker buster" bombs were being
dropped on fielded troops. These bombs, originally developed during
the Gulf War to attack well-built aircraft shelters, have been improved
to be used to attack more deeply buried targets — such as command
centers and bomb shelters for senior leaders. In that article, I
also failed to mention that as air superiority is achieved, air
forces begin to operate around the clock. The sustained air campaign
keeps continuous pressure on enemy leaders, gets well inside their
decision and reaction cycles, and makes it increasingly difficult
to move their high-value items (say troops and tanks) away from
where they think there will be attacks in the coming night. Such
movement actually invites attack during the daylight.
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