GIS Special Topical Studies: Iraq War 2003. ? GIS
COLLECTED BY
Organization:
Alexa Crawls
Starting in 1996,
Alexa Internet
has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the
Wayback Machine
after an embargo period.
Crawl data donated by Alexa Internet. This data is currently not publicly accessible
The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20040818140212/http://128.121.186.47:80/ISSA/reports/Iraq/May0503.htm
|
Iraq War
2003: Background & Lessons
|
Return to Iraq War index page
May 5, 2003
A Look at the Naval Lessons
Available to the US from the Iraq War
n
?
It seems that the major navies ?
especially the US Navy ? after every major conflict in which small combatants
have played a critical r?le in the conduct of that same war, become intent on
wiping out that same capability
[provided by small combatants].
Then
they have to learn what they found out the hard way all over again.
?
? Defense analyst currently employed as a contractor to US Navy.
By GIS Naval Analysis Team.
An important lesson to
be learned from the March-April 2003 Iraq War (Gulf War II) by the US Navy,
which was not learned from previous wars, is that small combatant vessels are
critical to the task of force-projection not simply force-protection. These
two ?buzz-phrases? ? force-projection and force-protection ? have been
considered by some as mutually exclusive; they are not so. The US Navy
approach to ship acquisition is viewed by the author as ?all-or-nothing?.
Lessons not learned are noted as ?
LNL
?.
The phrase ?force-projection? connotes aircraft carrier
battlegroups (CVBG), surface action groups (SAG), and amphibious ready groups (ARG),
steaming well out to sea beyond the reach of enemy coastal defenses and
land-based aircraft. The CVBGs and SAGs, as seen in Operation
Iraqi
Freedom
(OIF), would launch devastating strikes on targets critical to the
opponent?s capacity to conduct hostilities. The ARGs would deliver US
Marines to the beach or cause an enemy to tie down numbers of his own forces to
repel such an attack. In 1991, Operation
Desert Storm
(ODS) saw US
Marines as an important part of the liberation of Kuwait, but sizeable numbers
of Iraqi troops were assigned to the coastal defense mission and the movement of
a large ARG was monitored as it sailed up the coastline. During OIF, the US
Marines acted in concert with the US Army?s 3
rd
Infantry Division
to the vicinity of Baghdad that provided a nasty surprise to the Iraqi
Republican Guard divisions.
The phrase ?force-protection? connotes the terminal
defenses for the CVBGs, SAGs, and ARGs at sea, in close waters, or in port. The
US Navy operates on the assumption that detection the threat as far away as
possible and dealing with it is the best force-protection; this assumption does
not extend to the r?le of small combatants and should be put in some
perspective.
A tremendous effort has been made by the US Navy over the
past decades to defend the fleet while at sea from attack from the air, enemy
warships, and underwater attack. The
Aegis
weapon system is the
primary tool for defense against air attack from sea level to over 100,000 feet. Air
threats to the fleet may come from anti-ship missiles and fighters ranging from
the out-of-date to the most sophisticated. Repelling surface threats is a
task shared by naval aviation and surface warfare (SUW) weapons such as the
Harpoon
anti-ship missile and the Mk.45 5-inch gun. The defense against undersea
warfare (USW) threats relies upon detection of the USW threat outside of the
engagement zone and prosecution of such contacts by
P-3
Orion
s
,
S-3B
Viking
s
,
SH-60B
Seahawk
s, and SH-60F
Oceanhawk
s
. The Mk.46 series
torpedoes provide the close-in defense of CVBGs, SAGs, and ARGs. The
follow-on to the
Mk46
is the
Mk50
torpedo and is arriving slowly
to fleet units. The primary countermeasure to defeat enemy homing
torpedoes is the AN/SLQ-25A NIXIE towed torpedo decoy. This is a rough
sketch of how the fleet defends itself at sea from high-technology threats.
But what of strategy, tactics, and weapons aimed at
providing an asymmetrical warfare capability?
The US Navy prides itself on creating a seamless defense
against anti-ship missiles, although much work is needed still to provide
adequate defense against wake-homing torpedoes. Mine warfare (MIW), offensive
and defensive, remains a serious gap at best and presents an overall
embarrassing picture within the US Navy.
However, when the focus is placed on defending the fleet
against attacks in port, close to land, or in shallow waters, the picture is
downright painful for the US Navy. The failure to provide adequate
protection in port resulted in the attack conducted on the
USS
Cole
in Aden harbor in September 2000. The attack on the
Cole
was not the first time that US Navy assets have come under attack in port. The
LNL
s from the Vietnam War include a lesson learned not learned by the
sinking of a World War II-vintage escort aircraft carrier which was being
employed as a transport for aircraft. Several other vessels were damaged by
enemy action. Even in 2002,
al-Qaida
affiliates within
Jamaah
Islamiyyah
were caught before they could execute attacks on US Navy vessels
in Singapore anchorages.
It must be noted that that in the Vietnam War, the US Navy
was compelled to rebuild a small combatant capability almost from scratch. This
same capability was disposed of almost as quickly after the Summer of 1975.
There was an after-effect to the earlier USS
Vincennes
incident; the CO
of the USS
Cole
in September 2000 was in an ambivalent situation. The CO
of the
Cole
was expected to defend his ship, do so under unclear rules of
engagement, and later was not supported by higher elements in his chain of
command.
Operations close to land, or in restricted waters, have
shown the vulnerability of US Navy ships to hostile fire and the psychological
effect of such attacks. The commanding officer (CO) of the USS
Vincennes
,
an
Aegis
cruiser designed for naval warfare on the Atlantic or Pacific,
felt his ship to be under a two-dimensional attack from Iranian patrol boats and
combat aircraft. Unfortunately, the aerial portion of the ?threat? was
Iran Air Flight 655, an Airbus A300B2. The training given to naval
personnel emphasizes the worst-case scenario engagements; portions of the
tactical picture presented to the
Vincennes
combat information center (CIC)
crew matched slices of a worst-case scenario engagement, a simultaneous attack
by surface and air units. The value placed an
Aegis
cruiser by the
US Navy is so great that any CO who did not shoot in wartime and let his ship be
hit would be court-martialed, and rightly so. The
Vincennes
was not
in a war, but the ship was most definitely in a combat zone.
Once more, the Navy insistence on all-or-nothing in
acquiring surface units was a major factor in the loss of Iran Air Flight 655.
The task of patrolling a portion of the Persian Gulf better suited to a
La
Combattante
or L?rrsen fast-attack missile craft was given to a warship
costing a sizeable fraction of an aircraft carrier.
[As an aside, the ?all-or-nothing? rules of
engagement issued to
Vincennes
, and even the commitment of such a
high-value ship itself, gets back to an understanding, or lack of
understanding of the contextual environment of the operations. A clear
understanding of the potential threat posed by Iran at the time would clearly
have indicated that the Iranian Air Force (IAF) represented one of the assets
which the Tehran clerics had been unable and/or unwilling to even hint at
using against US military targets. Therefore, to allow no ?grey? area, for
human intervention into the engagement, was fatal, leading to the automatic
destruction of the Iran Air ?target?. It was this which subsequently led
to the Iranian decision to bomb Pan Am Flight PA103 over Lockerbie, and the
dramatic polarization of US-Iranian relations to the point that Iran?s
clerics committed themselves fully to support for such radical Islamists as
Osama bin Laden. ?
Ed
.]
Operations in shallow waters are not always close to land;
shallow waters permit any possible opponent to employ moored contact mines,
bottom influence mines, or even in particular scenarios controlled bottom and
moored mines. In recent history, the guided-missile frigate USS
Samuel
B. Roberts
was a victim of a moored contact mine laid by Iranian
Pasdaran
forces in 1987; that vessel suffered considerable damage and was transported
back to the US by a heavylift ship. There is another picture from the time
of the Iran-Iraq War. It is often forgotten after Kuwaiti-registered large
crude carriers (LCC) were re-flagged in the US during the Iran-Iraq ?Tanker?
War, those same ships were provided with a US Navy escort. The danger of
naval mines had been overlooked and the SS
Sea Isle City
struck a moored
contact mine; the US Navy escorts were forced to take up positions astern of the
tankers they were supposed to protect. This became a major
LNL
.
During ODS, two US Navy ships ? USS
Princeton
(an
Aegis
-type
cruiser) and the USS
Tripoli
(an amphibious warfare ship) ? were both
damaged by Iraqi naval mines, with the guided-missile cruiser
Princeton
nearly being lost. This became another major
LNL
.
Since the US Navy did not have small combatants to escort
minesweepers working in the area where the
Princeton
was damaged, once
more a sister ship to the
Vincennes
was placed in harm?s way. A smaller
combatant may not have survived the underwater detonation of one or more bottom
mines, but the same mines may have been calibrated to ignore smaller ships and
go for the ?big boys?. Although there has been plenty of time for the
US Navy to develop mine countermeasures (MCM) for littoral warfare, the progress
has been as painfully slow. It should be noted that the MCM assets and
personnel are as dedicated as those in any other navy, but many other navies
appear to regard mine warfare as a serious threat.
A comment often heard by this analytical team, and from the
US Navy community, has been the general theme that the US Navy does not need its
own small combatants since we can
always
depend upon our NATO or other
allies. OIF disproves that case.
Another theme has been that the US Navy does need a larger
MCM force afloat since MCM helicopters are ready to sweep the sealanes clear of
any mine hazards. OIF disproved this as well, since Royal Australian Navy
(RAN) vessels and specialist personnel played a key r?le in clearing the
approaches to Basra, thus enabling the UK RFA
Sir Galahad
to deliver food
supplies at the critical opening stages of the conflict. MCM surface assets are
better suited to a broad range of tasks needed in postwar Iraq; these include
hydrographic surveys, locating unexploded ordnance from years of war, repairing
aids to navigation, and anti-smuggling patrols.
If the RAN had not been there, supplies would have to reach
Iraq by overland route at great expense and with the obvious question: Why
can?t the US Navy do the job of MCM?
What have possible future opponents learned from ODS and
OIF and intervening incidents?
During ODS in 1991, the Iraqi Navy quickly ceased to exist
in the regular sense, but it kept up offensive and defensive mine warfare
operations even when most of the assigned platforms were being destroyed by
helicopters from Royal Navy (RN) and US Navy ships or tactical aircraft.
Although the loss in manpower and equipment was severe, damage was inflicted on
one of the largest amphibious warfare assets in the area (the
Tripoli
)
and an
Aegis
cruiser (the
Princeton
) was nearly lost. Generally,
Coalition naval operations in the northernmost part of the Gulf were curtailed
? had there been a major amphibious landing ? losses could have been
considerable. [In the 1991 conflict, as in 2003, the RAN also played a key
r?le in mine clearance when it was apparent that no viable US capability
existed; as well, RAN radio warnings were ignored when, for example, USS
Tripoli
began venturing into a known minefield.]
During OIF in 2003, the Iraqi Navy took a different tack. Minelayers
had been made to look like the many oilfield support vessels (OSV) working in
the Gulf, tugboats, or other innocuous non-military craft. While the OIF
Coalition naval forces suffered no mine damage as of this writing, the movement
of shipping into and out of Basra was severely curtailed. This was a minor
victory for the forces loyal to Saddam Hussein, but a victory nonetheless.
A place where there are valuable lessons to be learned is
Sri Lanka. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam
(LTTE) have shown
considerable ingenuity in years past in developing a host of weapons to employ
against the Sri Lankan Navy (SLN). These weapons have included moored and
bottom mines, suicide attack craft, suicide swimmers, rocket-propelled grenades,
and multiple rocket launchers. The Sri Lankan Navy has suffered
considerable losses in manpower and personnel; these have served as
psychological as well as material victories. Despite the disparity in the
correlation of forces, the LTTE has made selected areas off-limits to the Sri
Lankan Navy; these waters are most often those contiguous to areas where Tamils
are the ethnic majority.
Although the US Navy is not engaged in operations near Sri
Lanka (although it has been negotiating for the use of port facilities in the
county), LTTE successes reportedly have been studied by other nations and
terrorist groups. This should be of some concern to the US Navy and other
major navies. The political windfall from an action that inflicts serious
damage to or causes the loss of an expensive warship would be worth the risk to
many terrorist groups. In scenarios where the opponent would have
insufficient naval forces to contest control of its waters, asymmetrical warfare
may be the only option.
Small combatants may be the best option to deal with such
threats. Platforms, such as the Norwegian
Skjold
-class or the
INCAT-Bollinger
High Speed Vessel
(HSV), may provide an answer. As
with small combatants used in previous conflicts, there will be a need for
vessels at both ends of the spectrum light and heavy. The current trend in
US Navy thinking according to industry sources is that the small combatant, the
Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), will be unacceptable unless it is outfitted with
sensors, weapons, C3I, and helicopters driving displacement above 4,000 to 5,000
tons. This displacement value range would result in a larger platform than the
Oliver
Hazard Perry
-class
guided-missile frigates. The only means by which
displacement may be kept under control is to reduce the loadout of sensors,
weapons, C3I, and helicopters. This whole evolution speaks volumes of the
many LNLs by the US Navy; it is interesting to contrast this with the MEKO
designs and other non-US warship designs of late.