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recent decisions to deploy the Joint STARS radar aircraft and the
Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle do not necessarily foretell
a major deployment of U.S. ground forces into Afghanistan, as some
have suggested. In fact, their use fits very well the emerging operational
pattern of fighting the war by building a targeting network for
informing and directing air strikes against Taliban and al Qaeda
targets.
The Joint STARS
(Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System) was originally conceived
during the Cold War. It was envisioned as supporting the targeting
of second-echelon Soviet ground forces as part of a Follow On Forces
Attack operational concept — all aimed at disrupting the Soviet's
ability to take advantage of breakthroughs. In the Gulf War, a developmental
version of the aircraft and its supporting systems was used to identify
and target (and destroy) an Iraqi column of 80 vehicles sent to
reinforce the attack on Khafji, as well as to track Iraqi columns
on the highway of death out of Kuwait City. In both cases, the information
was used to direct air attacks on the targets.
The E-8C Joint
STARS aircraft is a Boeing 707 modified to carry a 26-foot-long,
side-looking synthetic aperture radar. It can look over 150 miles
deep into an adversary's territory in all weather and can readily
identify slow moving and fixed targets with great accuracy. It can
easily distinguish between a truck and a tank, for example, or note
the lift off and flight of a helicopter. Equally, it can identify
trench lines, bridges, and tunnel entrances.
The aircraft
covers about 400,000 square miles in its eight-to-ten-hour mission
profile. Sensor data can be stored, processed on-board, and/or transmitted
via secure communications links to satellites. The on-board systems
crew of twenty-plus can be hooked directly into the strike aircraft
command and control network. The U.S. Army has also developed ground
stations to take advantage of Joint STARS capabilities, but the
Afghanistan pattern says that these aircraft will first, and primarily,
be used to target air strikes, and then to inform U.S. Special Forces
of the ground situation as it affects anti-Taliban forces.
Hawking
the Air
The U.S. also has also deployed the RQ-4A Global Hawk unmanned aerial
vehicle to Afghanistan. With a wingspan similar to a Boeing 737,
it can operate at over 60,000 feet carrying a sensor package of
about 2,000 pounds. It can fly six hours from Germany and stay overhead
of Afghanistan for forty hours or so. It carries a synthetic aperture
radar as well as an infrared sensor and an electro-optical sensor.
In wide area sweeps, it can detect moving and fixed targets about
a meter long, and then focus down to one foot resolution on items
of interest. It feeds its data via secure communications to satellites
and onto a team that oversees the data and the aircraft. It can
watchdog a given location or fly a broader search pattern of 40,000
square miles. The Global Hawk is designed to integrate into existing
command-and-control structures. This appears to be an excellent
tool for assisting in the search for bin Laden and the al Qaeda
terror network, or for detailed mapping of the "front lines."
When the Pentagon
leadership talk of increased ground presence, they mean a few hundred
more, not thousands more. They are relying heavily on precise and
fairly precise air strikes (still no real carpet bombing) and minimal
ground forces. They appear to be very patient, grinding down the
Taliban forces with "un-massive" air strikes, food packets
for the starving, and ammunition (and apparently uniforms) for the
opposition forces.
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