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Stardate
20020817.1622 (On Screen): Tom writes as follows:
In your response to Perry de Havilland, you were correct on just about everything, except for one detail. Army personnel of any rank rarely control Air Force aircraft performing air strikes. The USAF would prefer that nobody but USAF personnel control USAF assets. There are a few exceptions, but generally if the mission is expected to include CAS (Close Air Support), a TACP (Tactical Air Control Party) is sent along with the ground forces.
I wouldn't make much hay about this, but I did that job for 4 years, and the guys who are still doing it get very little respect or recognition for what is a very difficult job. If you'd like to learn a little more, visit www.romad.com and check out the "What is a ROMAD?" section.
This particular career field makes your point better than you could have made it yourself. They are made up of ONLY enlisted members - there is no officer corps affiliated with the field (perhaps that's why they get so little respect). The only officers in these units are temps, removed from a fighter cockpit, and put in charge of each unit. In theory they can control missions, but in practice the USAF won't risk a qualified pilot's life by sending him out in the mud with a rifle and a radio. It's the enlisted guys between the ranks of E-1 and E-6 that end up doing the controls (higher ranking enlisted are more managers than operators).
In combat, they have nearly total control over the mission, with oversight and final mission approval coming from the Army ground commander. During a mission, the enlisted guy says where, how, and when the aircraft will drop its ordnance. A pilot may refuse a mission if it excessively endangers the aircraft, or he believes it endangers friendlies on the ground, but he can't proceed without clearance from the ETAC (enlisted terminal attack controller) on the ground. If he drops without clearance and good guys get hurt, that pilot is in serious trouble.
In Gulf War I, ETACs were farmed out to many of our allies, because, as you state, they just don't have any integral assets that can do that job. Aircraft from allied nations that hadn't trained in this sort of skill were not allowed to perform CAS missions. You are right when you claim that other countries would never allow lower ranking military members to wield that amount of responsibility. It takes a great deal of trust to let a 25-year-old enlisted guy direct that kind of firepower without someone right there telling him what button to push and when.
Without going into detail, they quickly became very popular in Afghanistan. Every forward unit wanted a TACP with them at all times, and those that had them can in some cases credit them with saving a unit from significant casualties. Guys were controlling air non-stop for 10-12 hours in some cases, keeping the enemy at bay with air power and rifle fire.
I knew it was being done by enlisted men, but I didn't realize that they were USAF personnel operating with the Army. (Though I should have suspected it.)
It probably should be pointed out that the Army has equivalent men whose job is to go up front and try to figure out where the artillery should shoot, and they too are enlisted. Artillery units are commanded by officers, but the targeting decisions are being made by noncoms up front. I'm not sure if they're formally considered to be affiliated with the artillery, but even if they are the artillery is usually a regimental or divisional asset instead of going across higher levels of hierarchy. And there's much closer coordination with Army attack helicopters, which are integral or attached at the level of army divisions. Each of artillery, helicopters and air support are used for different things. Helicopters are particularly good at taking out enemy armor and other combat vehicles, not to mention scouting. One of the big advantages of air strikes is that the Air Force brings its own munitions to the party (and often brings a hell of a lot of it at once), so the Army doesn't have to haul it. By far the biggest advantage of artillery is 24 hour service. You can get an artillery firing mission with five minutes notice, any time of the day or night. Aircraft and helicopters come and go, but the artillery will always be there for you.
As I understand it, the Marines handle this differently. The service split between the Army and Air Force carries a lot of baggage, since the Air Force used to be part of the Army (when it was the Army Air Corps, until 1948). And I think there's still a certain amount of residual suspicion in there, with the Air Force wanting to keep its independence, which I suspect is why the ETACs are Air Force guys accompanying the Army.
By contrast, fixed-wing Marine attack aircraft (Harriers and Hornets, mostly) are an integral part of the Corps. They also have controller units which accompany the ground-pounders and control the air, only in the Marines they really are pilots, which means they're officers. But the reason they're there is because they are pilots, not because they are officers. All Marine pilots have to serve in ground units before pilot training, which gives them a much better appreciation of the problems of the guys on the ground. And unlike the Air Force, Marine Air sees ground support as its primary mission. The Marines also get support from the Navy as air strikes and missile strikes and gunfire, and I'm not sure how that's coordinated. Likely there are sailors serving with the Marines doing that job. Generally the Marines are accompanied by a surprisingly large number of sailors when they go into action. All their medics are sailors, for instance, and like all medics they are very highly regarded. (I've never heard a Marine say anything but good things about the Navy medics.)
The Marines also rely heavily on their enlisted and give them a lot of responsibility. (That's actually a matter of pride in the Corps. If you can't handle it, you should switch to the Army. Or the Navy. Or the French.) The LCAC (Landing Craft Air Cushion) is the most advanced amphibious landing craft in use in the world today. It can carry tanks and trucks and HMMVs and men and whatever else is required from its mother LHA or LHD to the landing zone across tidal flats and water and anything else that's reasonably flat at better than 45 MPH, and like any hovercraft it is not at all easy to maneuver. Making a turn with any hovercraft is a different experience because it has no traction at all. (That is, in fact, the entire point of a hovercraft.) Even stopping one at the right place is not easy, because it doesn't have any brakes, and on a crowded beach if you overshoot you can kill people. On the other hand, there's no time to waste because the guys who are fighting on the beach need what you're carrying, and you better get it to them ASAP.
These are large, sophisticated and extremely expensive vehicles doing a really difficult job under fire, where speed is essential and mistakes can be fatal, and it requires a lot of training to operate one. It has a crew of five and its commander is a Marine sergeant.
Since ETACs amount to infantry in blue uniforms, out there serving in the mud with the Army, I think they probably understand the problems of ground as well as the Marine controllers do, even if it's a bit more academic for the Air Force pilots, and it's a matter of record that the ETACs largely do a superb job. As Tom says, they certainly did in Afghanistan; they were the key to the victory both on attack and on defense.
And despite what Perry says, I'm hard pressed to think of any other military in the world that routinely trusts that kind of power and responsibility to enlisted men. The UK may do it to some extent, in elite units like the Royal Marines. No one else really does it at all.
Update 20020819: Rob writes as follows:
I served in the 82nd Airborne as a field artillery officer, and spent eighteen months as a rifle company fire support officer in the mid-'90s.
The Army uses both officers and NCOs in rifle companies as forward observers. The NCOs accompany the rifle platoons as forward observers, while an artillery lieutenant travels with the company commander to make the decisions about targeting and clearance of fires (for the record, the British Army actually sends artillery unit commanders forward to accompany the infantry unit they're supporting, rather than delegating the task to a liaison team). The officers and NCOs who do this in the US Army are artillerymen, trained by and assigned to the artillery unit that's supporting the infantry. Ordinarily, there is a regularized relationship between those artillery units designated as "direct support" and the maneuver units, quite apart from the formal assignment to divisional artilleries and independent brigades.
The Marines handle the problem in a very similar fashion, attaching artillery officers and NCOs to rifle companies to observe fires. In most cases, these liaisons (both Army and Marine) handle all types of fire support- helos, close air, whatever- unless they're lucky enough to get an ETAC. It can get pretty busy- but there's not really much of a question about the officers being back in the rear and the enlisted making the decisions on their own: they're pretty close together.
I've been getting different stories about that from different people who served in the Army and Marines, mostly in terms of how they describe the extent of involvement of officers in this. For instance, Gil writes:
I was a Scout Observer in the Marine Corps. We were part of an Artillery battery, but attached to infantry units at the company level, so I liked to call us "artillery grunts". We ran artillery for our supported unit. Nominally, we always had an officer with us, but in reality, the officers were just doing their time until they could get a position in the battery, so we enlisted troops generally had a vast amount of experience and fired most of the missions. I did this as a Lance Corporal (E-3). In my MOS, we also provided naval gunfire support (again, the Navy provided Liaison Officers, but they were at the battalion level) and ran the fire support from UAVs.
My last unit was called ANGLICO (Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company). There were four in the Marine Corps at one time (2 active, 2 reserve). Our job was to attach to Army and Allied nation units when they wanted to use Navy-Marine Corps air or supporting arms. We had Marine Corps pilot FACs, Navy Liaison Officers and Marine Corps artillery officers and spotters. As a team chief (Corporal) I could run Marine Corps artillery and mortars (though the grunts have their own spotters for that), Navy and Marine Corps air strikes, and naval gunfire from any gun platform. In fact, I could control any mission except a B-52 strike.
ANGLICO was disbanded after the first Gulf War, though the two reserve units remain. ANGLICO teams were heavily involved at the Battle of Khafji before the ground war broke out. They were probably victims of "losing the bubble" on what their real mission was, and trying too hard to be a "run, jump, swim" club competing with the Recon folks. (Because we were tasked to support the Rangers and Special Forces, we were all jump qualed and some members were Rangers as well).
Obviously Afghanistan would have been an ideal mission for ANGLICO to support and I saw reference to some after-action reports from the Marine Corps that recommended reactivating them. I hope they do, and that they stay focused on their support and coordination role the next time around.
I would like to point out that company commanders in rifle battalions tend to be somewhat back from the line; the platoons are where the action really is. So if the artillery officers are accompanying a company command, then they will be relying on reports from the non-coms further forward. And as with all human endeavors, there was probably a lot of variation in this.
Of course, it's also going to vary a great deal depending on the kind of operation you're talking about, and the personality of the rifle company commander. Many of them like to operate very far forward.
I think the one thing everyone can agree on is that the artillery does a good job supporting the front line riflemen, and the riflemen are glad to have it. After his shovel (er, "entrenching tool") and his rifle and the unit medic, a rifleman has no better friend than the redlegs behind him.
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