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U.S. defense officials have acknowledged that the United States is using armed drones in Afghanistan. This could have a substantial impact on the debate over U.S. defense restructuring.
Deployment of unmanned combat air vehicles, or UCAVs, could signal a major shift in the focus of Air Force planners away from manned tactical aircraft. This will be just one of the many repercussions the Sept. 11 attacks and the war in Afghanistan will have on the future structure of U.S. forces.
Bush administration officials have repeatedly said the United States is now waging “a new kind of war.” That new war is already revealing weaknesses in force structure, and Defense Department officials are taking their first steps to deal with the new shape of battle.
On Oct. 18, unnamed U.S. defense officials told journalists the United States has been using armed variants of unmanned aerial vehicles in Afghanistan for several months. According to the Washington Post, a few RQ-1 Predator UAVs, designed for reconnaissance, have been fitted with Hellfire air-to-surface anti-tank missiles. The first test-firing of missiles from what is now a Predator UCAV took place in Nevada in February, and the remote-controlled UCAVs have reportedly fired missiles in combat several times in Afghanistan.
The United States has increasingly used UAVs in its sub-critical military engagements abroad over the past six years. UAVs are used in areas where the risks to manned operations outweigh the potential benefits of the mission. They were used extensively over Yugoslavia and have seen recent service over Iraq. UAVs are relatively simple, cheap and, most important, unmanned – rendering their loss in combat less politically and militarily costly.
By fitting arms to unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, the military is able to reduce the time between identification and destruction of a target during an air strike. The arming of UAVs mirrors the evolution of manned combat aircraft from simple reconnaissance platforms to ground attack systems. Further evolution into fighter, long-range bomber and electronic warfare systems will undoubtedly follow soon.
The arrival of the Predator UCAV on the Afghan battlefield has limited impact. Reportedly only a few of the conversions are available. Moreover they are crude, first-generation UCAVs, with vulnerable communications and control systems and no defensive countermeasures. And UCAVs face the same problems as manned aircraft – specifically, scarce targets in unforgiving terrain.
The significance of the UCAV’s deployment lies in what it says about the mindset among senior planners and commanders in the Air Force.
The Air Force has been loath to throw its full support to UCAVs because they threaten manned combat aircraft, the bread and butter of the Air Force. Senior officers built their careers on fighter jets and cling to them as the 1930s Navy clung to battleships.
UCAVs lack glamour and can be used by anyone. The CIA reportedly controls the Predators in Afghanistan. U.S. Marines have already practiced with man portable UAVs for tactical reconnaissance. If the Air Force is fully behind the deployment of UCAVs in Afghanistan, this indicates Air Force planners are ahead of the curve in recognizing the military shakeup the Afghan war and the ongoing war against radical Islamic militants will generate.
Of all the services, the Air Force stands to emerge from Afghanistan on track for the greatest changes. But this in no way will be thanks to its strategic bombing or ground attack record in that country. Quite the contrary, Afghanistan demonstrates the weaknesses of the Air Force’s current structure. Landlocked and surrounded by countries to varying degrees politically at odds with the United States, Afghanistan is a difficult target for the Air Force to reach.
This necessitated the use of long-range assets based well out of theater, such as the B-1, B-2 and B-52, as well as cruise missiles. The United States had to do substantial political horse-trading to open airspace to U.S. overflights and even more to obtain access to bases near enough to deploy tactical aircraft. The security of those tactical bases and the air space surrounding Afghanistan is in jeopardy daily. And even when all goes well, targets in Afghanistan are few and of limited value.
In demonstrating these limitations, the war in Afghanistan shifts attention to new systems and missions already proposed by Pentagon and Air Force planners. The lack of secure bases near Afghanistan bolsters the argument for the proposed intercontinental hypersonic strategic bomber. Increasing the sortie rate from bases far outside the target theater would give the Air Force the “global reach” it has been touting.
The same factors that promote the intercontinental bomber will lower the priority of manned fighters. Manned jet fighters are expensive, they require tremendous logistical support and they carry a great deal of political baggage when they go looking for overseas bases. UCAVs, with low acquisition and operating costs, low profile, low risk and the ability to loiter for long periods over the target, are much better suited than jet tactical fighters for a prolonged anti-guerrilla campaign in the Afghan wastes.
The Air Force will experience its biggest boost from the Afghan campaign in the area of space operations. Although it can eventually be fitted with defensive countermeasures, the UCAV’s greatest inherent weakness is in its link to communications satellites. The Taliban do not have electronic warfare or anti-satellite capabilities, but the same cannot be said for other countries that harbor or assist Islamic militants. The satellites and lines of communication are increasingly vulnerable and in need of defense.
This is the case for more than just UCAV command and control. The center of gravity for almost every U.S. system deployed in Afghanistan – from cruise missiles and other precision-guided munitions to Special Forces ground troops – is the global positioning system. GPS is a vulnerable system whose architecture was built on the assumption that its ground- and space-based facilities were secure. Space Command, a largely Air Force joint command, will assume much higher priority following the Afghan war.
The Army also will experience a post-Afghanistan restructuring. The war against Islamic extremists will not be confined to one engagement, and it will not be confined to Afghanistan. It will be a decade-long campaign spanning the globe. But even though further military action is likely, it probably will not involve major deployments of ground troops. Most of the targets in this war are small units, and national level targets like Iraq are gradually becoming off limits, given the political demands of regional allies.
At the same time, there is no other large strategic threat on the horizon – a perspective that, however shortsighted, will be encouraged by the pressing demands of this war. Earlier this year, China was shaping up as a potential new strategic threat, but even had the Sept. 11 attacks not occurred, the United States was never going to muster and deploy large units of ground troops against China. As long as the war on Islamic extremists is under way, Russia is more likely to maneuver into an allied role rather than challenge the United States in large-scale land combat.
Certainly a demand for larger units will remain, to deal with commitments like North Korea and Kosovo. There also will be an increased demand and role for the National Guard in homeland defense. But the overall emphasis in the Army after Afghanistan will be on smaller and more efficient units.
Afghanistan and the subsequent engagements of the war on Islamic militants will place tremendous emphasis on Special Forces. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. Special Operations Command has been elevated to report directly, via the secretary of defense, to the president. With higher priority and higher prestige will come higher funding, something the Army will encourage.
As these units are deployed with increasing regularity, they will need to grow in number. They are also likely to adopt high-tech force multipliers such as integrated command and control systems, advanced fire control and body armor. Special Forces units currently using 1960s and 1970s vintage helicopters will need better aviation assets for long-range, covert operations. This could give impetus to the development of the V-22 Osprey or to follow-on systems, as the Marine Corps has already suggested.
As for Marines, the Afghan campaign and subsequent engagements may offer a role somewhere between the old large Army unit and the new focus on Special Forces. Some scenarios in Afghanistan call for the creation of enclaves inside Afghanistan, from which Special Forces missions could be launched deeper into the country. The United States would not accept foreign control of these beachheads, but the limited numbers of Special Forces could not secure their own bases. Regular Army troops would be inappropriate to the mission.
Units more specialized in training and equipment than the regular Army – but larger in size than Special Forces – are needed. These units could do what a small unit can’t: take and hold ground. The Marines, along with Army units like the 82nd and 101st Airborne Division and 10th Mountain Division, could perform this role.
Afghanistan will deal a major blow to the Navy in terms of U.S. military priorities. Al-Qaida does not have much of a navy, and its one naval encounter with the United States turned out badly for the USS Cole. The Navy’s nuclear arm is sidelined, as boomers are of little use against terrorist cells in Florida. And carrier-based aircraft face the same range problem as Air Force tactical assets, only more so. Navy fighters and attack aircraft don’t have the range to strike deep in Afghanistan without refueling over politically volatile countries.
The Navy will still have a significant role to play. Maritime threats remain the first strategic priority for the United States, and the Navy will be tasked with keeping other crises in check while the Air Force and Army focus on al-Qaida. However, the Navy will be forced to struggle for funding to deal with long-term threats – competing with other services’ demands for immediate funding to deal with clear and present dangers.
The Navy could draw something new from the two valuable roles it played against Afghanistan. Naval vessels served first as mobile cruise missile launch pads. Additionally the USS Kitty Hawk was converted to serve as an offshore base for Special Forces units. These roles could revive two dead projects: the Arsenal Ship, a missile-laden dreadnought, and the Mobile Offshore Base, a cross between an aircraft carrier, oil drilling platform and military depot.
Finally, the war on Islamic militants will prompt a reorganization of the U.S. intelligence community and its interactions with the military. In spite of an attempt to create a centralized intelligence system for the United States following World War II, the U.S. intelligence and counter-intelligence communities have become a tangled mass of bureaucracies. Apart from the CIA, there are NSA, NRO, DIA, FBI, the intelligence services of various military branches and so on.
There are also a number of military, paramilitary and non-military entities capable of taking action in covert operations. These range from the CIA’s Directorate of Operations to the Defense Department’s Special Operations Command. Laid end to end, there is endless opportunity for misunderstanding and chaos. Homeland defense is about streamlining security. There will have to be an equivalent streamlining of foreign intelligence collection and military operations.
The war in Afghanistan is the first step in a decade-long war, and it is already demonstrating the weaknesses of the U.S. force structure. Prior to the Sept. 11 attacks, the Defense Department was deep in a bottoms-up review. That process will now be accelerated and revised to deal with the new shape of battle, and it will impose some dramatic changes on the U.S. armed services
