Strategic Capabilities: ISO Container "Battle Boxes": Containerize the entire U.S. Army
Slide 6a of 48
"The ultimate objective of an army is to impose its collective will on the enemy. But its first mission is simply to exist. Its first problem is to feed and clothe and shelter itself, and to be able to move itself from one place to another. Most people think of an army as expending its energy in fighting the enemy. Actually, most of an army's energy goes into keeping itself alive and in being; and in getting itself to where a very small portion of its numbers can fight an equally small portion of the enemy's total army.
As soon as we won in Tunisia, we had no place for our army to fight the Reichswehr. But even when Rommel's armies were still terrible, a surprisingly small portion of the Allied "armed forces" in Africa was engaged in fighting it. And of those who are entitled to battle stars on their ribbons, only a small fraction were killing in the literal sense. And even the killers spent most of their time --I would guess an average of twenty-two hours out of twenty-four-- in house-keeping for themselves, and in moving from one place to another.
Yet the whole effect of the army is as integrated as the 'shaft and the head and the point of the tip of a spear.'
A human being is such a frail thing that he cannot live more than a few days without both food and sleep. Nature is still his real enemy even though he takes his eternal struggle with her for granted. So the army as a whole must survive against nature before it can harm a single enemy by surviving and moving itself from one place to another is ninety per cent of the army's business, and unless it does this well it is not an army. The army solves its problems of surviving by two dull words: organization and standardization --and an enormous personal effort and submergence of the individual will to the collective welfare."
- Capt. Ralph Ingersoll, The Battle is the Pay-Off; 1943; pp. 84-85 Regarding operations of U.S. Army Rangers and the 1st Infantry Division near El Quettar, Tunisia in early 1943
*******************************************
The Roman Legions used to carry EVERYTHING they needed to form their own stockade, an armed camp to include the wood for fencing! No matter where they were, deserts, woods, swamps they could stop and set up a protective camp. In fact, you can still see the traces of their encampments today in archaeological ruins. However, when one examines the U.S. make shift presence in Iraq where our men are getting killed in their vulnerable base camps as they hunker down to avoid getting killed on the main supply routes by roadside bombs and RPGs, you have to wonder if we are up to the task of world conquest when we don't have the Roman Legion's encampment and stay ensconced capability. We are paying civilian truck drivers to shuttle fuel in unarmored trucks to keep our Soldiers/marines supplied in Iraq, and that they are refusing to be a human BBQ should come as no surprise. Were we Americans always this inept? The answer to this question can be found in our past and projected into the present with new technologies to reverse the present debacle.
How did America win the West?
We conquered the west with covered wagons that protected ourselves and our supplies to sustain us for days, weeks and months before game could be shot and killed and crops grown. With Indians shooting at us with arrows and throwing Tomahawk axes, this was good enough for that 1st Generation War threat; but its not enough for today's 4th Generation of War (4GW) threats. We have forgotten that we have a legacy of self-sufficient mobile warfare and need to rediscover it in 21st century form so we bring our own infrastructure to sustain ourselves against the battle against the earth and protect it against man.
We must get our troops out of tactically unsound tent cities and plywood shacks in Iraq
Unsafe Plywood Shacks: do these provide our Soldiers ANY protection from enemy attacks?
As Guard Posts?
As Out Houses?
As Showers?
As Guard Towers?
Even with sand bags stacked all around how far can guards see? Can they survive even a burst of AKM bullets if they are not directly behind sand bags?
Living in rotting tents? What protection do these provide?
The Answer is staring at us right in our faces: Hard-Shell ISO Containers
Why not after they are emptied dig them in and surround them with earth-filled metal walls and use them for guard posts and troop living spaces instead of flimsy tents and plywood shacks?
Sidebar: How did we win World War 2? rethinking BattleBoxes as Quonset Huts---but better
I can't believe I didn't make this connection sooner! In 1986 I went to USMC OCS at Camp Upshur living in the last of the marine quonset huts.....the point here is that we knew as far back as WWII that tents are not good enough....we retired the quonset hut and did not replace it....planet earth has not changed....we still need portable hard shell housing...but the way to do it better is by using ISO containers that can be fortified and transported by land/sea/air...Battle Boxes! Why live in a tent and run to a bomb shelter every time the enemy attacks giving the enemy the disruption he seeks when we can already be in fortified BattleBoxes as bomb shelters?
www.uh.edu/engines/epi1278.htm
No. 1278:
QUONSET HUTS
by John H. Lienhard
Click here for audio of Episode 1278.
Today, we build an instant house. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
As WW-II war clouds gathered in 1941, the Navy knew it would soon face vast problems of moving and housing people and materiel. War is about logistics, and people need shelter. Someone had a bright idea. Why not create a cheap, lightweight, portable structure that could be put up by untrained people?
So they went to the George A. Fuller construction company in New York. The Navy wanted buildings within two months. The British had developed a light prefab structure called a Nissen hut during WW-I. Now the Navy wanted an improved version.
And they got it: Peter Dejongh and Otto Brandenberger went to work. Within a month they'd set up a production facility near Quonset, Rhode Island. They moved so quickly that they were producing units while the design was still being tinkered.
That's how the famous Quonset hut came into being. Some people thought the old Nissen hut had been modeled on Iroquois council lodges. Now the Quonset hut version had the same shape and an Iroquois-sounding name. The Indian connection was probably fortuitous. Still, the resemblance was strong. The Quonset hut skeleton was a row of semi-circular steel ribs covered with corrugated sheet metal. The ribs sat on a low steel-frame foundation with a plywood floor. The basic model was 20 feet wide and 48 feet long with 720 square feet of usable floor space. The larger model was 40 by 100 feet.
So we entered the war armed with this cheap housing meant for airstrips, MASH units, barracks -- you name it. Historian Michael Lamm tells how Quonsets were strung together in Guam to form a 54,000-square-foot warehouse.
Around 170,000 Quonset huts were produced during the war -- enough to house the combined populations of Portland and Seattle. Then the war ended, and they were too good a resource to throw away. So the military sold them to civilians for about a thousand dollars each. They made serviceable single-family homes.
Returning veterans now occupied Quonset huts by choice. Universities made them into student housing. Architects took an interest and gussied them up in odd ways. Churches and small businesses took up residence in them. In 1948 the Sacramento Peak observatory was housed in Quonset huts. Playwright Robert Finton has written a play about them. He titled it Tents of Tin.
Drive your streets today and you'll see them here and there. Much more than relics of war, they're icons of a day in our history -- icons that spread all the way from North Africa to the Aleutian Islands. And now, a new memorial museum for war correspondent Ernie Pyle has just been built of Quonset huts. Once in a while, a really good design surfaces -- robust, simple, and enduring. The DC-3, the Jeep, and the Quonset hut are all examples of the clear thinking that was needed to keep us out of serious trouble, back in the 1940s.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work.
(Theme music)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lamm, M., The Instant Building. Invention & And Technology, Winter, 1998, pp. 68-72.
See also the following websites which reflect some of the continuation of the Quonset hut in our lives today:
While we see few orginal Quonset huts around today, we do find the form being utilized in modern versions of it. See, for example,
http://www.archtechnology.com/
Here is a U.S. Government photo of Quonset huts as seen in front of Laguna Peak, Point Mugu, in 1946:
Today's covered wagon descendents, the soft-skin, canvass covered rubber-tired truck with an internal combustion engine will not cut it against RPGs and RSBs let alone weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) delivered by theater ballistic missiles (TBMs). See William Story's thesis at bottom of this page. A SCUD missile in the first Gulf War narrowly missed the USS Tarawa packed full of 2,000 marines and a nearby pier with ammunition and fuel by just 300 meters. Today's TBMs are getting exceedingly accurate via GPS/Glonass and if we do not get away from large and easily targeted fixed air and sea bases we are going to have an immense catastrophe.
Our civilian lives are held together today by "covered wagon" tractor-trailers piloted by brave truck drivers who go without sleep, but of course no one is shooting at them as long as they don't go on strike. So why should we try to resupply ourselves with unarmored tractor-trailers in a shooting war? War is different than peace-time. The U.S. Army has been inadequately cobbling together ad hoc, non-comprehensive field living work-arounds for decades after the motor driven truck was invented and are still not properly adapted to the earth environment. Human needs are scoffed at with machismo disdain. The U.S. Army still lives in completely vulnerable tents that we pack, repack and erect wasting enormous time and of course fail to protect our Soldiers! The time has come for us to adapt once and for all to earth field living conditions, the non-linear battle enemy threat and end the scourge of the garrison pampered/field deprivation feast/famine mentalities. We can no longer every time we go to war learn our adolescent machismo is no match for bullets, bombs and infections. We need to grow up about field living and war conditions, and admit we are not third world fighters who will live in squalid conditions and trade years off our lives in order to win in battle. The way to success is to properly take care of our high health standard human needs and then focus all of our, in general, greater available energies to warfighting.
Make Sea/Air/Land ISO Containers our "building blocks", our "Battle Boxes"
"The DOD relies on commercial sealift to move 85 percent of cargo during contingency operations. The US and world merchant fleets are dominated by large, fast containerships with supporting corporate infrastructure (for example, CHE [Container Handling Equipment], terminals, information systems, tractors/chassis, and experienced personnel). Experience in ODS [Operation Desert Storm] revealed that DOD was unprepared to use effectively, containers and containerships to move UE [Unit Equipment] and ammunition. This contributed, in conjunction with port saturation and lack of ITV, to the slow deployment of CS/CSS forces and resulted in significant delays in moving Class V [ammunition] resupply. Also, large numbers of small, slow breakbulk vessels were used instead of containerships which resulted in significant costs in time and money.
The transition to a CONUS-based, power projection force increases the need for the Army to be able to rapidly deploy anywhere, anytime. Strategic lift must be maximized to rapidly project power to meet our force projection goals. Strategic lift is supplied by either ocean-going vessels or air transport. Both are limited resources. Having the largest requirement for strategic lift demands that the Army maximize its use of containerization. Containerization increases the types of ships available to support strategic deployment as well as increasing the cargo capacity of other available ships. It also streamlines handling requirements within the distribution system. Other added bonuses of containerization are increased protection against shipping damage and safeguards against pilferage."
The number one, central piece of "equipment" for the Navy is ships. For the Air Force its aircraft.
Awhile back, British military expert, William Owen suggested we put light tanks like M113 Gavins inside sea/air/land containers also known as "milvans" in U.S. parlance to container ship and truck them into battle areas.
Its a great idea I haven't stopped tinkering with. I think small
aircraft and helicopters need to be carried inside armored milvans as
suggested by Brent Orr to effect the ground mobility I propose so we
don't have to work around them like we do now and get them co-located
with ground maneuver units for more responsiveness.
My buddy from college is a SF MSG, and he just returned from Iraq. He
gave me this picture of the Sea/Air/Land container HOUSE he lived in
called a "Cormex". He says its made in Italy and not only stacks like
a container for ship, truck, air transport, they FLATTEN, too. I
haven't found much on the www of this development.
"As a deployed civilian, I was assigned to live in a 'Cormex,' a steel
box composed of "storage container" components. Storage containers
are often stacked three high on the deck of ocean-going ships. The
interior walls and ceiling of units were covered in thick plastic,
with a linoleum-covered floor. Cormexes have a front door and small
window. The unit is eight strides long and three strides wide and
contains two beds, two nightstands, a shelf attached to one wall and
two chairs."
Scott Miller adds:
"This isn't a bad system but we can actually do better as well -
expandable containers are available in a variety of designs allowing for
even more room. I've advocated these for years as replacements for all
major tentage. Keep the force mobile in the early stages of conflict
and when it's time to settle in, truck in these shelters on load
handling trailers. Also ideal for office space. The medical corps is
already working on converting to this format with the primary mode of
transport being an LHS-equipped MTV."
So let's get rid of all the buildings and lawn areas possible from the Army and marines. What are we waiting for? Are we warfighters or janitors?
The key invention here is the sea/air/land ISO shipping container which easily stacks on top of each other for container ship delivery by sea, mounts on railroad flat cars, truck beds and in aircraft. Here is where equipment and doctrine collide. Replace everything with military ISO sea/air/land containers that are mobile by trains, trucks and planes. If it cannot fit in an ISO and deploy with us to war, throw it out. What we do in garrison out of ISO containers better damn well be exactly what we would do in war.
Thanks to my friend Last Dingo, we have done a quick "market survey" of the military ISO containers out there. There are ISO containers that FLOAT that connect like lego pieces to form piers and causeways...there are several fully functional hospitals with patient bed ISOs....aircraft workshop repair facilities (no excuse not to do our aircraft-in-a-box idea!), kitchens, commo facilities, CPs.....
Researcher Phil West uncovered the following:
"Some more stuff on container living from the guy who first put me
onto them"
I must admit that I have lost track with the majority of my shipping
container housing URL's, having gone through a number of computers
since posting to you on that subject. I have looked through your links
(thanks) and searching through several Google results pages and see the topic
has proliferated. As I recall, the container that caught my eye was an
expandable mil spec unit...from a Norwegan company named Uniteam (at
www.uniteam.org) ,it was designed as a command post or something,
with the sidewalls sliding outwards (like a Caravan or RV's "tip-out" rooms) to
convert from a standard container-width, to triple size after being
towed to a destination. Made for NATO.
Uniteam International AS
Tevlingveien 23
PO Box 200
N-0614 Oslo
Norway
Tel: +47 23 14 22 80
Fax: +47 23 14 22 90
Email: international@uniteam.no
URL: www.uniteam.org
There are also a number of pre-fab shelters that are sold in a
shipping container and which setup "quickly". One such are Deltec prefab homes.
Google it. Also a yurt is a very livable shelter which can be
transported in the back of a truck. Build a deck and setup on top. Might look at
some at http://www.nbyurts.com/ - Here's a compact treatise on how to make
a small fortune by living in a yurt. Inspiring:
"Stop paying rent without mortgaging your next 30 years. Shelter is
an area where all people experience a common ground - everyone needs a place
to stay warm and dry. Fortunately, we have choices. For example, instead of
paying $600 a month rent, why not stay at a friend's or camp out for 3-4
months?
You could use the $2400 you would save to buy a Yurt. Then find some
land you could use for low or no cost. In 2 years, you could save $14,400 -
enough to buy some nice land and move your portable Yurt. 10 years of
saving the $600 a month rent yields $72,000; over $100,000 if reinvested at
10%"
Retire in some easy 3rd world country. Someplace like Goa, Thailand,
Panama...move to Brazil and take up the saxaphone...it's your call.
Good hearing from you, but I've been up about 24 hrs., so must steal
some sleep before doing another night shift...you know how it is.
best,
Chris
These are some I found
http://www.escapeartist.com/OREQ4/Nomadic_Housing2000.html
http://www.escapeartist.com/efam17/At_The_Edge.html
http://www.enr.com/news/buildings/archives/031117.asp
http://www.archpaper.com/feature_articles/shipping_news.html
http://www.totse.com/en/ego/self_improvement/howtomakeachea173260.htm
l
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28394-2004May14.html
EXCLUSIVE! See Finnish Naval Infantry using ISO container "Battle Boxes"
OK, the Euros may not be the most willing to fight, but they are sure damn well better organized to do it than we are! Chuck Jarnot here is your "modules" you wanted for a future Army aircraft. Air-Mech-Strike co-author, Chuck and I have long advocated the Army needs to start training as we would fight by using modules that would be ready to go to snap into deployment aircraft CH-54 SkyCrane style. Well we don't have to wait. We should get on board with the sea/air/land ISO concept and containerize EVERYTHING, troop barrack areas, bunkers for defenses, ammunition, supplies, transport our aircraft and tanks in ISO containers. What are we doing in the U.S. Army? We are still foolng around with TENTS that don't protect against SQUAT, be it the battle against the earth weather let alone the battle against humans. If we are serious about rapid-deployment, we should cut out all of this break-bulk packing and repacking non-sense that is hidden away during garrison and get everything ready-to-use and ready-to-go NOW via ISO battle boxes. Palletized Loading System/ISO container interface kit exists---what are we waiting for?
The rest of the world uses ISO containers to move everything to include our NATO allies; everybody but the U.S. Army seems to have grasped some but not all of their utility and potential. What we need is for the U.S. Army to develop a family of ISO container "battle boxes" that can deploy ALL of its men, equipment and supplies and then dig them in if necessary to withstand possible WMD attacks. We need to "circle our wagons" but they need to be armored to withstand Indians with modern weaponry like RPGs, RSBs, AKMs and WMDs. We need to containerize the entire U.S. Army to instill an expeditionary mindset NOW and to get our geare packed NOW.
Civilian Chuckhouses: Solar/Battery-Powered ISO Container Housing Modules: Almost a Battle Box!
Solar Powered
"The ChuckHouse"™ portable building comes standard with an onboard Solar Power system with back up battery supply included providing lighting and basic electrical service anytime, anyplace.
SOLAR ENERGY AND BATTERY STORAGE - The 8' x 20' ChuckHouse™ has 150 watts of adjustable solar panels supporting 600 amps of DC power through 6 maintenance free deep cycle batteries. Our 8' x 40' ChuckHouse™ has 300 watts of adjustable solar panels supporting 1200 amps of DC power through 12 maintenance free deep cycle batteries.
Control panels are installed inside each ChuckHouse™ unit for monitoring and management of electrical systems.
In addition to the solar power, all units are pre-wired for 110/220 vAC power and can quickly and easily be connected to a local power grid or generator.
12 VOLT DC ADAPTERS - Each unit has two 12 volt DC adapters for powering cell phones, small appliances, electronic equipment, and can accommodate a DC/AC
inverter for computer, fax, printer or small 110 AC appliances.
LIGHTING - 12 Volt DC ceiling mounted lights with standard 12" fluorescent tubes.
FAN - Each unit is supplied with a 12 volt DC fan to provide additional ventilation.
Proposed U.S. Army Standard ISO Battle Box (BB)
* Outer sacrificial wall to predetonate RPGs which can be filled with ice/sand/dirt via exclusive SOA expertise proven in DoD tests
* Butch Walker's ANT-ISO trailers so units self-move when required
* PLS interface built-in to be picked up and dropped off by PLS system equipped vehicles
* Wartertight, able to float to form bridges
* Insulated to be cool in summer/warm in winter even without heat/AC
* Electrical outlets/wiring for 110V and 12V via roof solar panels
* Top troop hatches or guard towers on roof to fight from while moving as troop transport or stationary as pillbox/guard towers
* Side entrance/exit doors
* Link together to form unified walls, larger enclosed bunkers/meeting places
* Lightweight versions airland and cargo parachute air-droppable
* REQUIRES NO PETROL FUEL WHATSOEVER: combination of solar panels, 12v deep-cycle batteries and peda-generator exercise bikes powers lighting, cooling and laptop computers, DVDs etc.
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT THE BATTLE BOX GROUP:
J.C. Bown
Creative Building Products
Division of Spirit of America Corporation
6409 Highview Drive
Fort Wayne, Indiana 46818-1385
(260) 432-7158
FAX: (260) 459-0929
(800) 860-2855 spirit@soacorp.com
Consider a Light Mechanized Infantry Company designed for 3D air/land/sea maneuver with 14 x M113A4 Gavin hybrid-electric 500 hp drive light tracked Infantry carriers. They would have 14 ISO Battle Boxes (BBs). In CONUS, 7.5 BBs would store their M113A4s, 2 per BB to keep them out of the sun, heat, dust, rain, snow, cold to better preserve them for when they are needed in battle, saving millions of dollars in the long run. PMCS can be done within the BB to protect Soldiers from skin cancer causing sun, saving more money and making motor stable less onerous a task. There is no "motor pool" to guard and have vandals take parts from vehicles. The 14 Gavins are securely locked in their BBs in the company area which can be guarded at the same time the company office, also in a BB is manned by a phone watch CQ. The 8 BBs used for vehicle storage in the field would be used as armored troop barracks/pill boxes as the tactical situation dictates by snapping in bunk hammocks into slots in the BB walls. The unit is in combat mode at all times even in CONUS.
Except for weapons that would be secured in a static building's security vault, EVERYTHING the infantry company or ECAV troop owns would be in their 14 BBs and ready to go to war instantly without days, weeks and months of break bulk packing to fit into trucks and other makeshift schemes to get overseas. There would be enough BBs space for over 1 year's of food and just before deploying months of ammunition and water. One BB would have decontamination/shower/washing machine/toilet facilities with water tanks on top and below to recover from NBC attacks as well as to sustain the troops indefinitely in the field. Power would be from solar panels stretched on top of the roof and pedal-power, 12 volt deep-cycle batteries and portable JP8 generators or other power piped in only as the last resort. Its time we stop the macho posturing and face the fact that the human body cannot stay healthy and dirty at the same time. So instead of living in denial, let's factor this need in and make it organic to every company-sized unit in the army to be self-sufficient. Clean Soldiers and uniforms saves money and logistics for medical care and replacing ACU uniforms at $80 each. Another BB unit would be a solar powered kitchen with insulated refrigeration and bulk water purification capable of walk in and out feeding of the entire company in the field. The men would return to their troop living battle boxes to eat under armor protection. All Soldiers in the company would take turns being cooks. A water well drilling kit would be standard to get water from the ground to purify if a lake/river is not nearby. One BB would be conference room/recreation room with computers to stay in contact with home when overseas via satellite link up.
The point is that the Infantry Company even in CONUS need not get bogged down with lawn and building care, they work out of the exact troop BBs that they would use in combat. When time to go into the field maneuver train, they can use their 14 M113A4 Gavins to tow their BBs to their training area and set up a Forward Operating Base (FOB) just as they would during real world missions. With 14-30 BBs, a walled inner perimeter could be made (circle-the-wagons) to protect the Tactical Operations Center (TOC) M113A4 Gavin from observation and possible enemy snipers. A landing spot for helicopters to land and take-off could be formed as the British container Ship Atlantic Conveyor did for CH-47 Chinooks in the Falklands war in 1982. If the BN M88 or a M113 Gavin recovery vehicle's crane is available, BBs could be stacked to be elevated guard towers. The BBs could stay on their ANT-ISO trailer towing wheels or be lowered onto the ground for better protection. With a blade-equipped M113A4 Gavin, all 14 BBs could be dug into the ground for further protection from enemy weaponry, concealment to include WMDs. The outer perimeter would be manned by the ultimate mobile battle box itself, the M113A4 HED Gavin with lots of battery electrical power to operate turrets and electro-optical sensors like TOW-ITA or LRAS and its Soldiers on foot and on pedal and electric mountain bikes. As these Soldiers need relief they can go into the company perimeter center and get hot chow and a shower as well as a safe, protected night's sleep in a BB in the inner perimeter.
To deploy off-post, the company gets its last minute fill of ammunition/supplies, draw weapons and hops on a train co-located with their BBs for a trip to Fort Iwin, NTC or Fort Polk, JRTC saving the Army lots of money. To go overseas, their 14-30 BBs can be loaded onto a civilian contract or a new high-speed U.S. Landing Ship Tank Battle Box (derived from David Giles' FastShip). If they are needed faster, they can fly by 7 x C-17 Globemaster III jet sorties. Its even possible that BBs could be cargo parachute airdropped along with the men who would jump using personnel parachutes. Once on the scene of battle, the BBs could be opened, their M113A4 Gavins driven out, and used to destroy the enemy and secure the drop zone. After this, the BB's ANT-ISO wheels could be used to towed them out of the DZ or picked up by a XM1108 Gavin variant with PLS flat rack/BB pick-up capability to be positioned as pill boxes to further strengthen the perimeter defenses or moved out to follow the light mechanized infantry company as it moves ahead on offense. Once the BBs catch up with their Gavin infantry they can form their own company perimeter defense or with other units form an outer-walled perimeter (think Fort Apache in the Old West movies or the Mormon base camp in the film Starship Troopers). If the Gavins deploy inside their BBs in less dramatic form, their ships could offload them and prime mover truck drivers link them up with their infantrymen at an assembly area prior to going into battle. The mech infantry company could tow their own BBs and their own protected logistics if there is still more distances to travel or leave them behind at the assembly area to be shuttled forward. This could mean their own JP8 fuel in Flex-Cell bladders strapped to their vehicle outsides and/or packed in their 7.5 BB's space freed by their vehicles no longer inside. When you consider a Hybrid-Electric drive M113A4 Gavin gets twice the fuel economy and range compared to a conventional engine (7.0 mpg for 600 mile range vs. 3.5 mpg and 300 mile range) the ability to essentially have several ARMORED tractor/trailers full of fuel enables the force to operate for days and weeks without vulnerable resupply along road MSRs. Once the infantry company has its BBs its almost completely self-sufficient and need not occupy former enemy palaces to inflame the locals who we are trying to win over by toppling their former dictator(s). They even have the infrastructure to share with suffering peoples who need water, food and power. At all times our troops have at least some protection from enemy artillery and indirect fires while in base camps.
Rhino Snot helps Battle Boxes (BBs) & makes runways/LZs
* Seals ground underneath and around BBs: no mud, keeps troop area clean
* Seals dirt piled up against BBs as spall protection
* Hardens trails leading in/out of Forward Operating bases composed of BBs
Environmental Products & Applications, Inc.
Manufacturer of Envirotac II Soil Stabilizer
73-710 Fred Waring Drive, Suite 220
Palm Desert, CA 92260
Phone: (888) 674-9174
Fax: (760) 779-1815
Mobile: (909) 908-3052
Email: Info@Envirotac.com
Website: www.envirotac.com
AH-64 Apache Attack Helicopter Company new mobile, non-linear warfare capabilities
Consider an AH-64 Apache gunship company that would have BBs and be able to do everything the mech infantry company could do with its BBs; plus it would be able to sea deploy without costly and time consuming plastic shrink wrapping that doesn't physically protect the birds. America no longer has unused aircraft carriers that can be filled with shrink-wrapped helicopters to get from CONUS to global point B. The LPH-2 USS Boxer depicted below from Vietnam shows a by-gone era/possibility:
In BBs, the Apaches are totally safe from bumps and collision damages. Standard container ships instead of non-available aircraft carriers or top deck space on RO-RO ships can now transport Army helicopters. The BBs enable the force commander to save enormous amounts of JP8 fuel because he can truck his Apaches if they are not needed to fight in the air. He can conceal who he is from the enemy by thenm being covered in their BBs until they exit their cacoons and take flight to strike with tactical and even strategic surprise. The enemy doesn't know if the BB is full of MREs or Apaches or troops. At a fixed air base the BBs become defacto hardened shelters.
The BBs enable the apaches to be maintained in clean environments so their flight hours before overhaul are conserved and allows them to be forward deployed and co-located with ground maneuver units! Their BBs can be staggered to form a wall yet still offering an open end for them to emerge and roll out into the perimeter center to take-off and fly into battle. Wounded aircraft are not stuck with BBs. Downed aircraft can be recovered by BBs and prime movers instead of being destroyed in place as took place in Afghanistan months ago. A Forward Arming And Refueling Point (FAARP) could be in Indian country using BBs to form a protective perimeter via ground personnel in BBs and roving in XM1108 Gavin prime mover AFVs. Crews could sleep soundly inside a BB in the perimeter center to be ready to fly after their rest period. The helicopters themselves would have a shielded, center landing zone to operate from wherever they take their BBs.
Transport Helicopter Battle Box Mobility: the Next Chinook should be a SpeedCrane
The Sky Crane was a most noteworthy program for the Army as it was desperately needed to off load container ships in 'Nam" since "Nam" has no deep water ports to accommodate large freighters.
Other research has found that the U.S. Army's CH-54 Tarhe ("SkyCrane") heavy lift helicopter's universal cargo pods also proved very useful, for they could be used to carry up to eighty-seven troops in addition to serving as mobile hospitals, command posts or barracks.
If the Army were smart, its next Chinook should be a Piasecki SpeedCrane type helicopter that can transport ISO container "Battle Boxes".
Historical Discovery Below from Naval Aircraft Combat Developer, George Spangenberg.
My observations:
If the Army was not so foolish wanting 22 tons for the XCH-62 Heavy Lift Helicopter (HLH) to lift the MICV (the early version of the now 33-ton Bradley) we could have had a SkyCrane that could lift 18 tons to lift M113 Gavins EASILY or the heaviest 40 foot ISO Container Battle boxes. Carry people in a pod, what's the mental block here?
I think we are going to make the same mistake with the 20-25 ton FCS that needs a non-existant FTR/JTR/HLH with a huge fuselage. At the end of the day we might have another BS medium weight ground vehicle with no V/TOL aircraft to fly it. Not enough money even in the U.S. of A.
We need to stop trying to lift ground vehicles that are too heavy and make the light ones we have more combat capable (multiple armor layers, 1-man autocannon turrets etc.) and fly them with EXISTING AIRCRAFT for our 3D forces and use the heavier vehicles for 2D maneuver forces. Two basic forms of maneuver for the open and closed terrain types we find on planet earth.
The CH-47F has progressed to where it can carry the 10.5 ton M113A3 Gavin for short distances (about 50 miles). I think we should take the CH-53E's 3-engines and splice them to a SkyCrane so we can lift the 17-ton M8 Buford AGS light tank as well as ISO containerize the entire U.S. Army to get it out of its garrison doldrums and be packed and ready for war at all times. The SkyCrane configuration eliminates the sling load swinging and 100 mph speed restrictions that happens when you can't load the M113 Gavin or M8 Buford into the CH-53E's fuselage. We could make the fuselage bigger but then you lose 2 tons of payload and can't lift ISO Battle Boxes.
The next program that also is not on the chart is the CH-53E and that's because it didn't get started until after the chart was drawn, and also an HLH which also would not have been on there because it turned out to be an Army program. The whole effort really started when they deployed the CH-53A which you will remember was started in '63, flew in '64 and then deployed in early '67 to Vietnam. When it reached Vietnam the marines found that they had a problem, they had so few of these helicopters available to them and if one went down in enemy territory they could not retrieve it. The other helicopters, CH-46 for example, could be picked up either by the Army Chinooks or the 'Cranes, CH-54, or by the H-53s and brought back. It apparently became a severe enough problem that the marines got together and came up with a requirement for a crane-type helicopter with self-retrieval capability. In other words, if one went down a similar helicopter could go in and pick it up. The marines were really working quite closely with Sikorsky at the time and Sikorsky then came up with a study for a modification of the CH-53 in which they added a seventh blade, increased the rotor diameter from 72 to 81 feet, added a third engine of the same type as the other two and went to a crane-type configuration similar to the CH-54 which was also one of their designs, of course. At the time it was estimated that configuration would give a lift capability of about eighteen tons and that became really the selling point for the program. NAVAIR was willing to buy the design. In other words, if performance and the weights were agreed upon, we wanted to buy it on a directed procurement. However, the ASN (R&D) decided that we should have a competition and let other manufacturers bid. The program then ran into budget problems. The crane configuration of course was a pretty specialized one and eventually when everyone finally got together on the specification requirements, a conventional fuselage on the helicopter was required. We ended up losing a couple tons worth of lift capability when we did that so the helicopters that resulted were more like a sixteen ton lift capacity.
We had proposals from Sikorsky, Vertol and Hughes, that I remember, perhaps there were others too. The Hughes was the least attractive of the three proposals. Vertol submitted a version of the Chinook. The Chinook was always a competitor for the CH-53 but the height of the helicopter was enough so that Vertol never did get around to really working out an arrangement where it fit well on the ships. The tandem arrangement of course always gave a nice compact spot, an advantage for shipboard use. Well, Sikorsky ended up winning the competition and we had only lost a couple of years fooling around with the competition rather than going with them in the first place. But it's also clear that having a conventional fuselage on the design was a good decision.
When the item went into the budget it was unfortunately called the "marine HLH." At the time the Army also had an item in the budget for an "HLH", and as presented initially, the marine version was described as an 18 ton lift, the Army design as 22 ½ ton lift capability. The Army wanted the ability to lift any of the containers that went on container ships which explained the 22 ½ ton lift requirement. It was basically a crane-type helicopter, although they could put container pods on the bottom to carry people as well. The Army did not have their program well defined and for several years they refused to define their long-range plans and only talked about technology, an R&D program, or a prototype program.
At the time within OSD there was an active duty Army Colonel assigned to DDR&E. Naturally, he pushed very strongly for all Army programs over those of the competing services and did his best to, I'll say, mislead, he probably said, to educate, his bosses into the fact that we could have a joint program, with no need for separate marine HLH and Air Force HLHs. In his version of the DCP (the Development Concept Paper), part of the acquisition process at the time, he claimed by combining the two programs the country could save a half a billion dollars. This related to the one billion that McNamara had claimed that he could save on the joint TFX program. The Navy's stand on the DCP was actually signed by the assistant secretary of the Navy, the R&D secretary, Mr. Frosch. It seemed to him that we could probably save money by doing separate programs, that the extra costs that the marines would suffer from the size of the Army HLH was enough to pay for the development of the Navy HLH. Well, it became a big issue for a long time. The general feeling was that among those that just glanced at numbers that you certainly ought to be able to compromise with a single project if you're only talking the difference between 18 tons and 22 tons. Unfortunately, that wasn't the whole story.
The Army requirement also said they should do the lift at what I believe was a 4,000 foot altitude and at 95 at that altitude, a tough requirement. The marines also had a high temperature requirement but it was 90 at sea level, really our standard hot day requirement for the Navy.
After the big argument on the DCP and with nobody being able to agree, a joint Army-Navy-Industry study was set up in which the participants tried to arrive at a common helicopter to serve the needs or meet the requirements of the two services. It turned out about as expected that the biggest one that the marines could accept provided too little capability for the Army and the smallest one the Army would accept was too big for the marines to operate from most of our ships.
About the same time there was a budget hearing in the Congress and Mr. Foster, who was then DDR&E, was asked a question, "Why can't you combine them?" and in widely read testimony he promptly said, "Oh, we can. There's no problem to that." He obviously did not know the background at all. Well a joint program then got directed, despite the studies, by Mr. Packard, then DepSecDef. It was an extremely stupid decision and since Mr. Packard was not a stupid man, all I can conclude is that he had to have had bum dope. Eventually the working level part of the Navy and of course the marines finally got to see Secretary Chaffee, Secretary of the Navy, and appealed to him. He would not permit us to go directly to Mr. Packard but he said give him the dope and he would go to Packard, which he did. Packard made the decision then, "Well, we'll go ahead with this joint competition with the Army requirements being specified as the most difficult to meet but that it also should have shipboard compatibility requirements." If the industry proposals then confirmed the statements that we were making to Packard, he would reconsider the decision.
So the next step of course was to run the competition. Actually the Army ran it. But we had to work with them on getting the specs out and then of course later we had to evaluate the proposals when they came in. The Navy's main input to the spec of course was just ship compatibility. The marines wanted full shipboard compatibility with the LPH-2 (a former Essex class CV) and this of course gave them more problems than if they had specified a larger ship. OSD finally directed the Navy, or the marines really, to require shipboard compatibility only with the larger LHA class, the first ship of which was under construction. Since the total number of these ships wasn't really very large there was a lot of opposition to the fact that the shipboard compatibility requirements had been cut back. The Army set up their typical remote location kind of an evaluation board. Evaluation was held at Ft. Eustis, I believe. We had one representative that we sent down there and then evaluated the helicopters in place at NAVAIR. We had five competitors who submitted proposals -- Boeing Vertol, Sikorsky, Hughes, Kaman and even Gyrodyne. All the designs came in just about as we expected. The Army versions running about 120,000 pounds gross weight, and really impossible to operate in any normal way from ships. Obviously you could put them aboard the big carriers and you could operate from the decks of the LHAs but there wasn't much clearance with the island and getting them down below was impracticable. The Army ended up by recommending the Boeing Vertol design, a tandem helicopter similar to the ones that -- well, it was a big Chinook in a crane version. Had 90 foot rotors, was 150 feet or so long, with a huge operating spot on any ship. We obviously couldn't accept any of the designs.
Eventually Packard reviewed the situation. Some of the Army DDR&E people still wanted the joint program I presume because they thought that we would never get approval for two heavy lift helicopters at once. So we really argued that we (the marines) didn't have a heavy lift helicopter, we certainly were on the low side of what the Army was trying to do. Packard finally allowed us to get started again with the CH-53E. We finally got a go-ahead for the CH-53E in November of '71, a decision delayed from January of '68, so we had almost a four year delay between the time we wanted to buy the capability and the time we were allowed to get started. The situation then went from bad to worse as the acquisition system was being changed by the proponents of prototyping, "fly-before-buy", and so on. The CH-53E production release got delayed until actually 1976, although Sikorsky had built two prototypes and then two preproduction models before that production release. The first real production delivery didn't come about until late in 1980. I've always used the program as one of our best examples of how not to buy aircraft. It's very, very expensive to stretch things out that long. If a program is going to take ten or fifteen years to go from concept to fleet it's going to have a lot of changes and the costs are going to skyrocket. And when it gets there it may well be obsolete A schedule comparison of the CH-53A with the CH-53E should be instructive. If you compare the two programs, the E obviously took years longer. In fact the first production E was the fifth actual aircraft built. It was delivered some nine years after go-ahead while the fifth A was delivered in less than two years from go-ahead. The four-year delay in getting the E started was about four times as long as the delay introduced in the 53A program by those in OSD who forced the poorly conceived Tri-Service Transport Program on the services. Again, it's not the right way to buy aircraft.
To finish up the HLH, the Army went ahead with its Vertol design, but advertised it as only a technology program, with some calling it a prototype program. In their Congressional testimony, they claimed they had made no cost estimates of either the engineering development or production. This caused them all kinds of trouble in Congress of course and why they took that tack I'll never know. If they had never made any cost estimates as they claimed they should never have been allowed to get started and all the delays could have been avoided. They ran the program for a while, let an engine contract, but eventually cancelled the program after a year or two. I think that probably ends my official involvement with helicopters. I had retired before the Black Hawk and the UTTAS came along. Those were programs that probably should have ended up by replacing the CH-46 as well. A replacement for the 46 could have been a marinized version of the Army's Blackhawk."
Unfortunately the current bloated CH-53E with cargo/payload eating heavy fuselage is what we got! Look at the current CH-53E Super Stallion lifting an ISO container that even with dual-point sling-load is slow and prevents the aircraft from evading enemy defenses!
EXCLUSIVE TO THE 1ST TSG (A)! MEET THE CH-53E SkyCrane!
We spliced a very-hard-to-find 1/72 scale model kit MH-53E Sea Stallion's 3 engines, main and tail rotors to a 1/72 scale CH-54/S-64 SkyCrane to illustrate what we could do today to effect SeaBasing and Air-Mech-Strike. No model kit exists for a 17-ton M8 Buford AGS so we did the best we could and hooked up a 8-ton Scimitar light tank with a sizable turret to illustrate somewhat that the CH-53E SkyCrane could be the AMS delivery means for a M113 MTVL Gavin/M8 Buford/Tracer 3D maneuver force. Note that the CH-53E SkyCrane has Infared CounterMeasures (IRCM) and an in-flight refueling probe to extend its range indefinitely if tankers are available.
CH-53E SkyCrane Flexibility!
Maximum power, minimum weight: CH-53E SkyCrane sheds 6 tons of CH-53E fuselage to become a 20-ton cargo lifter!
Note the powerful 3-engined CH-53E powertrain & 7-bladed rotor system
The streamlined CH-53E SkyCrane should fly as-is @ 200 mph!
The extra lift capability is contained within the SkyCrane's compact body
SEL: Streamlined External Loads
Instead of hanging AMS combat vehicles by sling-loading which reduces speeds to 100 mph or less without evasive maneuvering, SEL enables the SkyCrane to fly at full speed, aggressive flight profiles to evade enemy air defenses and get combat power to the ground faster.
However, SEL does not preclude the AMS tracked combat vehicle from being winched up/down from a hover to offer deliver into tight spaces where the CH-53E SkyCrane cannot land.
A M113A3 Gavin infantry fighting vehicle is winched up to the hovering CH-53E SkyCrane
MODULAR PODS = 3D Maneuver Air Assault "Battle Boxes"
In addition to AMS combat vehicles by SEL, CH-53E SkyCranes can lift a family of modular "Battle Boxes" in the ISO container format. Here, a Battle Box has delivered infantry with a Wiesel tracked AFV towing a 105mm howitzer artillery piece.
Landing Ship Tank Battle Box (LST-BB)
British Harriers on a sea/air/land ISO container ship: what if the aircraft had folding wings to fit IN the boxes? What if tanks and other equipment were in these "battle boxes", too?
As Colonel Douglas MacGregor surmised in his visionary book, "Transformation under Fire" we again need a new fleet of Landing Ship Tanks (LSTs) that can deliver Army forces right onto beaches by bow ramps since the navy/marines have given up on the idea. Churchill's idea of a LST saved the day in WWII and in Korea and many wars before the seamine problem overcame the complacent navy/marines leading them to their current impotent over-the-horizon (OTH) mentality of problem avoidance. At some point we are going to have to clear the sea lanes of mines and we don't need to be pussy footing around with offloading because we are in a wimpy high speed, fuel hog catamaran ferry that needs a pierside port or a RO-RO ship that needs deep waters near the shore just to get close to a port. We need a new technology LST that is a fast catamaran for better stability in the oceans than the flat bottom LSTs that made them unpopular with sailors but can land its bow upon a beach to roll off Army tracked armored fighting vehicles and BBs in trailer configuration. David Giles' FASTSHIP proposes to do just this.
ISO Battle Box Containerized Army Faster to deploy than the Roll-on/Roll-Off Army?
The U.S. Army relies on Bob Hope class Roll-On-Roll-Off medium speed ships to get itself to global battlefields. APS-3 has its RO/RO ships pre-loaded with 2 armor and 2 mechanized infantry battalion's worth of vehicles and supplies. These tracked combat vehicles could be expedited ashore even without a pier if floating causeway sections are placed under their stern and side vehicle ramps for USN LCAC hovercraft to pick up vehicles and speed them to shore as BLA has pioneered. If their combat crews and Soldiers can somehow link up at sea before the LCAC shuttling takes place, this force can fight immediately after the vehicles leave the LCAC onto the beach. Details:
However, the majority of the RO-RO ships are empty and are "surge" vessels that sail to where the nearest Army unit has its SPOD and load up their vehicles.
My contention is that by insisting that we work around our ground vehicles as the cornerstone of our unit's identity we have created the resultant garrison break bulk culture of "tent cities" that when pitched in combat zones do not provide any protection to our troops from enemy ballistics missiles, artillery, mortars, ground attacks and little protection from the harsh environment of thew earth itself. The Army break bulk tent city culture lives a double life; during garrison the canvass tentage rots in ISO containers and supply rooms and are rarely opened up and used in training. With no place to live using field equipment, our troops 9-to-5 live in permanent barracks and office buildings and end up mowing lawns and polishing floors instead of training for combat. When its time to go to war, the rotting tents are thrown into the back of the unit's vehicles and driven onto RO-RO ships. In the paragraphs above I've explained why its far better to do shelter volume right the first time with stackable ISO Container "Battle Boxes" that can be hardened to resist the effects of enemy fires. The $5,000 and 5,000 pound cost per Battle Box is well worth the revolutionary capabilities we gain.
Guess who used ISO container Battle Boxes in war already?
As bad as the Iraqis were at times technotactically, one thing they did NOT do was occupy Saddam palaces and try to fight from them. Today, Americans are still occupying dictator palaces in Iraq. In Chapter 18 title "The Bridge" of the book, Thunder Run: the Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad starting on pages 277, author David Zucchino describes how Iraqis guarding the approaches to the bridge over the Tigris river where to the east the marines had yet to show up had thousands of enemy Soldiers crossing over to fight them. Denied permission to blow the bridge, they sought to physically block it with TAFVs and got engaged by well dug-in Iraqi troops in bunkers. Organic 120mm tank, 25mm Bradley and .50 caliber Gavin direct fires, and 120mm mortar indirect fires did not suppress the enemy fires and the task force led by Captain Wolford had to withdraw with several damaged tanks and wounded Soldiers. A-10s and F/A-18s were called in and did little damage. Only after the Iraqis had given up were these bunkers able to be cleared.
Page 320: "At the intersection near the Jumhuriya Bridge, Wolford discovered an elaborate bunker at the southwest corner. It was made from a metal cargo container that had been buried underground. It was equipped with a thick wooden door, and inside were a desk, a nonworking military field phone, and piles of supplies--an entire command post".
Let's consider a notional Army unit with 100 x M113 Gavin sized vehicles loading onto a surge RO-RO ship.
Army Post-to-SPOD (Post-to-Port)
If the Gavins are already loaded into ISO container 20 foot flat racks with posts to stack, a truck can pick up each within 2 minutes and start driving to the sea port. If we keep the Gavin free to RO-RO, we have to gingerly drive it onto a truck tractor-trailer flat bed and chain it down, taking dozens of minutes. The 100 vehicle unit in ISO containers could be headed down the road or down the rail road tracks within 200 minutes, the tractor-trailer unit will need 1,000 minutes.
SPOD-to-Ship
Forgetting the head start the ISO containerized Gavin unit has, let's say we are even and both units are at pierside at the SPOD.
Go! Shouts the judge with a starter's gun.
Immediately, a container crane starts picking up an ISO flat rack with a Gavin in it and lowers it into a small 2,000 container ship within 1 minute has it onto the cargo top deck; in another 30 seconds its locked down onto the hull. The crane goes for another Gavin/flat rack.
Meanwhile, one Gavin has driven onto the RO-RO ship ramp and is getting parking instructions. 5 minutes later, its chained down taking another 5 minutes.
200 minutes (3 hours, 20 minutes) later, the Gavins in ISO flat racks are stowed ready to go on their container ship.
1,000 minutes (19 hours) later, the RO-RO Gavin unit is loaded.
Ship-to-Friendly Pierside (Port-to-Port)
Small Container ships have their own cranes to load/offload their ISO containers. The container ship pulls up alongside pier and offloads its 100 Gavin vehicles within 3 hours, 20 minutes. Their drivers, Track Commanders and infantry detach them from their flat racks and drive them off into combat, within another hour tops. 4 hours total.
The RO-RO ship pulls in to pier and starts driving off 100 Gavins. 19 hours later, they are pierside and ready for combat operations under their own power.
Assuming that 3 Gavins can be RO-ROed out the stern and left/right ramps, that's still 7 hours to offload.
Ship-to-Unfriendly Shore (Port-to-Foxhole)
Small Container ships have their own cranes to load/offload their ISO containers onto a floating causeway section for LCAC pick-up. As the flat racks are emptied they are stacked and brought back onto the ship during the lulls when no LCAC is on the causeway section for loading.
The RO-RO ship having its vehicles be unchained and roll off onto the LCAC would have a slight time advantage.
The Rapid Deployment Pay-Off for a ISO Battle Box Containerized U.S. Army
Let's take a look at a unit that has trouble rapidly deploying: the 101st Airborne (Air Assault) Division with its hundreds of short-range V/TOL helicopters.
On August 17, 1990 the first units of the 101st arrived in Saudi Arabia. 2,700 troops, 117 helicopters, 487 vehicles, and 125 pallets of supplies was transported on board 110 U.S. Air Force C-5 and C-141 transport aircraft. Meanwhile, the remainder of the division was loaded onto transport ships in Jacksonville, FL and 46 days later arrived in the Saudi port of Ad Daman.
In contrast to the air and sea deployment of the 101st, imagine that it was completely containerized. A tortoise and the hare relationship follows.
The lead battalion 3/502d flew in 110 USAF aircraft sorties. Assuming 1 day to prepare the vehicles, 1 day to load the planes, and 1 day to fly, and one day to offload the planes, it took 4 days to get from Post to APOD.
Since ISO container Battle Boxes can be pre-loaded at all times, it takes just 1 day to truck or rail the 3/502d to the SPOD and load them into their container ship. Then at 20 knots, 5 days to sail from the SPOD to Saudi. Then 1 day to offload. Total time: 7 days.
This same formula if applied to the rest of the division, gets it to Saudi Arabia within another 7 days.
Thus, if the 101st was containerized, it could by SEA ALONE get to the middle east in 7 days. If it flies in a spearhead it can be there 3 days earlier.
In fact, OH-58D Kiowa Warriors and/or AH/MH-6 Little Birds can be carried INSIDE and transported in ISO SEA/AIR/LAND containers!
C 1, TM 55-1520-400-14 CHAPTER 8 TRANSPORTABILITY GUIDANCE, OH-6 HELlCOPTER
Section I. TRANSPORT OF THE OH-6 HELlCOPTER IN CONTAINER
NOTE
Minimum disassembly applicable to all surface modes is removal of main rotor blades and horizontal stabilizer. CAUTION TM 55-1520-214-S will be consulted before any disassembly and loading takes place.
CAUTION
Only container chassis trailers equipped with soft ride suspension system will be used to transport the container by highway to the port. The use of soft ride suspension chassis trailers within the port is not necessary. Deviations from the procedure will be authorized only by Commander. TSARCOM. Stuffing the container at locations other than the port is not recommended.
8-1.
Preparation Disassembly, preservation, and packaging are accomplished in accordance with TM 55-1520-214-S. Additional guidance may be obtained through contact with personnel of the U.S. Army Troop Support and Aviation Material Readiness Command, St. Louis, MO. To reduce congestion in the vicinity of the loading area, the main rotor blades, vertical and horizontal stabilizers, tail rotor, and mast and rotor head are removed prior to positioning the helicopter at the loading site. The main rotor blades are packed in a plywood container; the mast and rotor head secured to a skin-mounted base; the horizontal stabilizer is placed in a fiberboard carton; that is secured to the prefabricated metal spreader bar (para 8-4a): and the tail rotor and vertical stabilizer are wrapped in a protective material and secured in the helicopter cabin.
NOTE Remove antennas as necessary; wrap, identify, and stow in cargo compartment, as required.
8-2. Positioning For Loading
The loading site should be a loading platform equal in height to the height of the container floor. The helicopter can be moved short distances over smooth surfaces by means of ground-handling wheels, tow bar, and warehouse tractor. Maneuver the helicopter (with the aid of the ground-handling wheels) to the rear of the container and align the container door for loading.
8-3. Loading
CAUTION
Extreme care must be taken in loading and unloading helicopters to prevent gouging, scratching, or tearing the airframe skin.
a. General. Bridging material is to be placed directly in front of the landing skids. It consists of ½-inch (1.2 cm) thick plywood or ¼-inch (.6 cm-) thick steel plate sufficiently wide to accommodate the ground-handling wheels and landing skids and long enough to span the distance between the loading platform and the inside of the container; extending beyond the rear door header. When safety requirements do not restrict, paste soap or grease may be applied on the bridging material to facilitate skidding the helicopter through the container door. The ground-handling wheels are removed and reinstalled after the high point of the helicopter clears the container door header. To help reduce the height of the helicopter, the landing skid struts may have to be extended to their maximum position and secured in the extended position, this is done with prefabricated spreader bars or with notched and cushioned 4- by 4-inch (10- by 10-cm) lumber spreader tiedown pieces. Approximate measurements of major removed and packaged components for each helicopter are as follows: Main rotor blades: 144- x 10- x 17 in. (366- x 25- x 43-cm) Mast and rotor head: 30- x 30- x 30-in. (76 x 76- x 76-cm) 8-1
Section I. TRANSPORT OF OH–58 HELICOPTER IN CONTAINERS
CAUTION
TM 55-1500-338-S will be consulted before any disassembly and loading takes place. Container chassis trailers equipped with soft-ride suspension system will be used only to transport the container by highway to the port. The use of soft-ride suspension chassis trailers within the port is not necessary. Deviations from this procedure will be authorized only by Commander, TSARCOM. Stuffing the container at locations other than the port is not recommended.
Preparation 4–1.
Disassembly, preservation, and packaging are accomplished in accordance with TM 55–1500– 338-S. Additional guidance may be obtained by contacting the U.S. Army Troop Support and Aviation Material Readiness Command (TSAR- COM), St. Louis, MO 63166. To reduce congestion in the vicinity of the loading area, the main rotor blades are removed and protected with cushioning material for later loading under helicopter cabin. The following items are re- moved, wrapped with cushioning material, and secured in the helicopter cabin: pitot tube, top anticollision light fixture, engine exhaust stacks, main rotor hub, main rotor drive shaft, main rotor mast, tail boom support, tail rotor blades, and antennas (as necessary). The verti- cal fin and horizontal stabilizer are removed and boxed. The tail boom section is removed, and the tail rotor rods are removed from the tail boom; then the tail boom is mounted on top of the helicopter fuselage.
4–2. Positioning for Loading
The loading site should be a loading platform with a height equal to the height of the container floor. Two ground-handling wheel assemblies are used for moving the helicopter on the ground. Each assembly consists of a wheel, support, and lever that is used to retract or extend the wheels. The wheels are manually oper- ated and are held in place by a lock pin. The helicopter (with the aid of the wheels) should be maneuvered to the rear of the container and aligned with the container door for loading.
4–3. Loading
CAUTION
Extreme care must be taken in loading and unloading helicopters to prevent gouging, scratching, or tearing the air- frame skin. a. General. Bridging material is placed be- tween the loading dock and container in front of the landing skids. It consists of ½-inch-(1.27-cm) thick plywood or ¼-inch-(.63-cm) thick steel plate of sufficient width to accommodate the widest point on the helicopter and of sufficient length to span the distance between the loading platform and extending into the container beyond the rear door header. Approximate measurements of removed and packaged com- ponents for each helicopter are as follows: Vertical fin assembly: 86- x 45¼- x 6¼-in. (218- X 115- X 15.9-cm) Horizontal stabilizer: 81- x 20- x 7-in. (205.7- x 50.8- x 17.8-cm) b. Two Helicopters on Loading Skids in 35- or 40-Foot Containers. The two boxed vertical fins are placed on end, one on each side at the front of the container. The first helicopter is moved into the container nose first, with the aid of ground-handling wheels, and is positioned 4 inches (10 cm) from the front of the container with left rear end and right front end of the landing skids close to the sides of the container (fig. 4-1). The two boxed horizontal stabilizers are then placed side by side between the landing skids under the helicopter. The second helicopter is moved, tail first, into a position similar to that of the first helicopter with the nose 4 inches (10 cm) from the door of the container. The main rotor blades are protected with cushioning ma- terial and secured to the main rotor blade tiedown fixture under the second helicopter (fig 4-1
Here is a picture of two OH-58s in an ISO container:
Thus, small OH-58D Kiowa Warrior and/or AH/MH-6 Little Bird attack/transport helicopters could also be hid in ISO containers and trucked to FAARPs and operated clandestinely.
So the problem is containerizing the Army's larger UH-60, AH-64 and CH-47 helicopters. Its probably not feasible to containerize the very large CH-47, but if you look at the UH-60 and AH-64's dimensions a special 40 foot ISO flat rack:
Thus, its possible to transport a AH-64 helicopter with its rotors removed in a special 40 FOOT FLATRACK. It would have its nose stick out by about 10 feet. UH-60 would be a similar situation.
What we need ideally is a 40 foot flat rack but with coverings that expand out to fully enclose the AH-64/UH-60 from the weather so we can just push it inside and strap it down to the flat rack floor and not have to shrink wrap plastic as we do now. This would "containerize" all of the Army's helicopters except for the CH-47 which would be shrink-wrapped and transported on deck.
NEW! BattleBoxes on Container Assault Ship pictures!
Battle Boxes for supplies and embarking troops with living areas
With the BattleBox system its now possible to make any container ship into a "Container Assault Ship" capable of launching both air, land and sea craft as well as house Soldiers/Airmen to operate them. One application of this concept for Special Operations Forces would be to create a "Non-Linear Maneuver Brigade". Details:
The Container Assault Ship can with its flight deck carry hundreds of ISO container BattleBoxes as well as launch V/TOL and STOVL aircraft whicle those with RO-RO ramps can simultaneously deliver amphibious vehicles and vehicles/cargo onto landing craft while far out to sea, eliminating the need for ports and piers.
Aircraft like CH/MH-47 Chinooks and A/MH-6 Little Birds could also easily operate from Container Assault Ships
The Container Assault Ship can even defend itself from air attack by carrying its own STOVL fighter/attack aircraft. [Note we couldn't find 1/350 scale F-35 JSF models so F-18 Hornets are shown here as notional surrogates].
M113A4 Amphigavins can splash into the water from RO-RO ramps and swim themselves ashore to secure beach landing sites (BLSs) for the follow-on echelons delivering non-amphibious ground vehicles
CH-53E Sky and SpeedCranes for V/TOL air delivery
A CH-53E SpeedCrane takes off from the Container Assault Ship with an Amphigavin snug under its skeletal fuselage as a "Streamlined External Load" (SEL)
Amphigavins can also by flown by SkyCranes/SpeedCranes over potential sea mines for 3D air assaults to secure BLSs and other mission objectives
The basic CH-53E SkyCrane is fitted with Piasecki VTDP thrust units and wings can double ship-to-shore speeds making "SpeedCranes"
With its high 200+ mph speeds, the CH-53E SpeedCrane can fly high above the clouds to deliver cargo like M113A4 Amphigavins and troops deep inland for 3D operational maneuver
LCAC/RO-RO Ramp Interface
Many combination container and RO-RO ships could be used as Container Assault Ships
Here a container ship owned by the U.S. Army with a stern RO-RO ramp interfaces with a floating platform to enable U.S. Navy LCAC hovercraft to land and pick-up/drop-off cargo and vehicles.
This sideview shows how simultaneous actions can occur from the Container Assault Ship to speed deliveries ashore.
A close-up of the RO-RO ramp and LCAC landing platform
Here LCACs deliver a pair of Bradley medium Fighting Vehicles and a M1 Abrams heavy tank ashore at 60 mph speeds, over potential sea mines
Armored Resupply for the Lethal Non-Linear Battlefield (NLB)
Cargo carrying XM1108 Amphigavins can speed cargo like ISO Container BattleBoxes ashore by swimming themselves or hitching a ride using the LCAC platform RO-RO ramp interface
Ski Jumps for STOVL F-35 Joint Strike Fighters
With the addition of a bow ski jump, Container Assault Ships can launch STOVL fighters like the F-35 JSF with full ordnance loads. The JSFs would land vertically back onto the container assault ship for refuel and rearming.
NEWS ALERT! Tsunami Rescue: SeaBasing 21 and the Battle Box Survival of the Human Race
December 26, 2004: a 9.0 richter scale earthquake creates a giant tsunami (wave of water) that blankets southeast asia killing 155,000 people. The largest human loss of life in one event in over a century. Left in the water's wake is 1-5 million people without shelter, water, food and sanitation facilities who could also die in large numbers unless relief comes to them.
The nations of the world rally and begin sending relief supplies in an ad hoc way but not systematically and thoroughly to meet all the millions of people's human needs. Militaries like the U.S. Navy are sent to the scene but all of their platforms are designed to deliver compact mechanisms with high explosives to kill other humans in war not bulk deliver the raw physical things needed to sustain human life.
In a situation where human civilization is wiped out, what people need is a way to rapidly reconstitute the basics of civilization and in a massive way and get it to the endangered part of the world overnight. Like Noah's ark in reverse, the answer is CONTAINER SHIPS. The largest container ship in the world carries over 8,000 containers, the smaller ones a boggling 3,000 standard 20 foot long, 8 foot high, 8 foot wide metal boxes with hinged front doors. Each of these ISO Sea-Air-Land containers are the primary means which the world trades during less violent times and a way to sustain the life of 1,000 people for 30 days and shelter 10. We shall refer to the concept as 1,000/10. To get the 1,000 lives sustained effect we could start loading up food and water ad hoc into existing $5,000 ISO containers and load them onto container ships and rush to to southeast asia. However, once there there will be no pierside ports to offload them and no way to transport the ISO containers inland to the people who need them. Even if we used heavy lift helicopters to fly in the containers, once their food stuffs were emptied they'd do only a little to shelter people and do nothing to provide sanitization. More thousands could die.
In our SeaBasing 21 proposal, we seize upon the ISO container's hard metal box as a "BattleBox" (BB) for protecting our troops above and below ground in human war. Fold-up bunks to sleep in and a simple chemical bathroom with ventilation means are provided along with features to enable Soldiers to harden and fight from BattleBoxes. We propose a Civilian life "Battle against the Earth" box be created without the military features to create the desired 1,000/10 relief effect every time a box is delivered. The civilian BB would have on its roof clear plastic bladders to hold sea water that would be desalinated into a drip tank to provide water for the 10 inhabitants. A robust chemical toilet would be provided inside that would end up in disposal modules that can be buried. Doors on the opposite end would help air flow/ventilation.
To deliver civilian BBs, container ships would interface with U.S. military LCAC hovercraft a short distance off-shore using a floating barge set called the RRDF alongside the ship with a special air cushion vehicle platform. Smaller container ships have their own cranes to lower BBs into the LCACs to rush them to a beach landing site. If we had David Giles FastShips that can beach their bows like WWII LSTs we could speed the procerss by eliminating trans-loading to landing craft as a delivery step. Now we have piles of BBs on the beach. How to move them?
The U.S. Army has thousands of M113 Gavin light tracked armored fighting vehicles in storage that can be converted into XM1108 resupply vehicles. Their tracks and low ground pressures enable them to travel across country and over debris even if roads are not open--to deliver supplies to needy people. The XM1108's cut-down rear bed area can have a palletized loading system (PLS) fitted to lift and load ISO container BBs on and off. M113 Gavins can even be fitted with waterjets from ARIS SPA of Italy to swim themselves to shore as the LCACs shuttle BBs to the beach. Called "Amphigavins" these 11 ton vehicles are light enough to be air-delivered by CH-53E Super Stallion and CH-47D/F Chinook helicopters used by the U.S. military via sling-loading. However a simpler and safer, faster way to helicopter in the BBs would be by an Erickson AirCrane S-64 modern version of the CH-54 SkyCrane since these can snug up the BB into its skeletal fuselage so there is no fumbling around with complicated sling ropes/chains. Not having a load dangle beneath the helicopter enables it to fly at full speed instead of half 3/4 speed, getting supplies and shelter to needy people significantly faster. After the BBs on board container ships are off-loaded, there will be a need for direct delivery to shore by air. This can be done by Chuck Myer's HULA airship shaped like an aerofoil which can lift 20+ tons and like a helicopter can set down into any large enough open area and not need runways like a fixed-wing aircraft needs to airland.
Putting it all together to Save the 2004 Tsunami Victims
The AirCranes needed will not be ready for months but we should get busy building them now in time for the next natural disaster and to better win the current man-made disaster in Iraq. The XM1108s needed, say 100 would need 30 days to build. The simple civilian BB would need 30 days of design work anyway. During these 30 days food, water supplies will be coming in a steady influx, so as the BBs begin to be mass produced no time will be wasted. The U.S. military with LCAC hovercraft and heavy lift helicopters are already on the scene in southeast asia. How many will we need?
Assuming 5,000, 000 people in the worse case scenario, using the feed 1,000/house 10 formula; we will need 5,000 BBs to feed the people for 30 days. This first wave (pardon the pun, not to be insensitive) will also house 50,000 people indefinitely. Second wave will keep the 5,000 alive for another 30 days and up the total of those housed to 100,000.
So you can see every 6 months of BB influx keeps 5, 000, 000 people fed and semi-permanently houses 300,000. A year would result in housing 600, 000 people. As this "life support for a civilization" occurs the people themselves secure in their own survival can pitch in with energy/confidence to clean up the debris and dead bodies. With their manpower and skills they can get their own life support means of food/water/sanitation going that can PLUG INTO THE BBs which become ipso facto nation-(re) building housing units. Once food/water/sanitation is restored by renewable means the relief effort could speed up delivery of EMPTY BBs to finish sheltering the remaining people and NGOs get their temporary relief tents back. Using the 1 year recovery ball park figure, we'd still need 4, 400, 000 people sheltered...or another 440,000 BB units.
Costs? For 500,000 BBs at $5,000 each = $2,500, 000, 000 or $2.5 BILLION
Dress Rehearsal for Earth Doomsday?
A lot of people are depressed about the recent disaster and ask "Where is God in all of this?". Maybe this is his way of a dress rehearsal for us to "get our act together" to prepare our human civilization for an upcoming Earth-wide cataclysm by fire? We need to use the recent Asian Tsunami tragedy as a chance to perfect our abilities to rapidly reconstitute civilizations in event of destructive natural forces or better yet PREPARE IN ADVANCE for them. The desirability of BBs for human war is that they can be BURIED IN THE GROUND TO BE BELOW THE LINE OF BULLETS AND ENEMY PROJECTILES. If for example, we know a civilization-killing asteroid is hurtling towards earth and our nuclear missiles cannot stop it, having millions of people rapidly seek shelter in below ground BBs would get them out of the blast effects of the impact. Watertight BBs can even float if tsunamis from an asteroid impact wash over the boxes in the ground. We can no longer look at life here on earth as a cowboy movie of low technology when the TRUTH is that we are all like it or not in a science fiction movie aboard "space ship earth" traveling at 66,000 MPH through the heavens.
While the population of the earth is now estimated to be 7 BILLION people, the recent Tsunami proves that we can lose hundreds of thousands in one fell swoop of destructive force we are not adapted to overcome. In the past such catastrophes has indeed nearly wiped out the entire population of the earth had it not been for Noah building an ark amidst peer ridicule. Then his peers drowned in the world-wide flood. Why don't we wake up as a human race and realize that sudden global disasters and climate shifts are possible and ADAPT CORRECTLY to our earth environment once and for all? Let's not wait for the next death tolls to stun us, let's THINK AHEAD and BattleBox the human race for the immediate future.
What should U.S. Congress do next?
We should build enough disaster relief Battle Boxes to shelter a large American city in an emergency....enough for 7 million to cover a New York City, Chicago, San Francisco etc. in event of a major disaster man or natural...
OTHER NEW SeaBasing 21 Ideas:
SCADS & SKYHOOK: ideas for Container Assult Ships
Here's the excerpt from the excellent Greg Goebell Vector web site, a reader recently pointed out to us on SCADS/SKYHOOK:
www.vectorsite.net/avav83.html
[3.5] FOOTNOTES: SCADS & SKYHOOK / VAAC HARRIER
* Several ingenious ideas were promoted by Harrier enthusiasts in the post-Falklands period to use the Harrier as a naval "force multiplier", based on unconventional replacements for a traditional aircraft carrier.
One was called the "shipborne containerized air-defense system (SCADS)". This was a clever idea by which all the equipment needed to put together the operational apparatus of a small ski-jump Harrier carrier -- including living quarters, fuel and munitions storage, maintenance facilities, missile and decoy launchers, antisubmarine helicopter facilities, and of course a ski-jump deck -- would be built in a modular fashion, based on the standard container sizes used on container ships, and put in storage. The entire kit could be assembled in about two days on a container ship when needed, with provisions for 30 days of operation without resupply. The kit would be removed and stored again when the emergency was over.
An even cleverer idea was the "Skyhook". This concept was to use a crane that could be mounted on a small ship, such as a helicopter frigate, to lift Harriers off the deck and allow them to fly off, and then recover them later. On recovery, they could be returned to their deck hangar, or refueled while they dangled on the crane, and released to continue operations. The crane would be "smart", with stabilization capabilities and a panel indicator mounted to give the Harrier pilot location information. With such a system, even a helicopter frigate could operate four Harriers as a kind of "mini-carrier".
While British Aerospace experimented with the Skyhook on land using their G-VTOL demonstrator, neither SCADS nor the Skyhook became realities. Critics suggested that they implied a dispersal of forces that made logistics impractically difficult. Nonetheless, they remain interesting ideas to be kept in mind for the future of STOVL combat aircraft.
A reader writes in:
"Hi,
I am a regular reader of your site(s) now for a while but this is the first time I have contacted you concerning your innovative (yet often common sense) ideas. The idea(s) in question are the ISO "battle box" and the container assault ship. In parallel (and before I saw your idea) my self and a friend discussed your "battle boxes" and arrived at a similar concept but being British we focused on the SCADS (Sea-borne Containerised Air-defence System) concept developed in the wake of the Falklands War.
http://www.vectorsite.net/avav83.html
This essentially turns cargo ships into v/stovl carriers. All elements to operate a small number of Harriers and helicopters can be modularised within ISO containers including a lightweight 4-cell seawolf anti-aircraft/missile missile launcher, reloads and control/aiming radars. If this weapon system can be containerised, couldn't others? CIWS is one ides, but what about offensive weapons?
Being containerised and modular means the systems and aircraft can easily be moved from one ship to another but what about other options...
If SCADS and Battle Boxes could be combined then not only could vehicles and equipment be moved by ship/aircraft/tracked vehicle but so could containerised weapon systems - go any where air defence? mobile cruise missiles? Battle-field CIWS?
I believe this idea has a lot more room for growth, and hope to hear back from you regarding these simple ideas,
XXXXXXX
Wales, UK
Don't Live in Palaces here at home or abroad: stay humble, stay in your Battle Box
Let's stop talking about "out-of-box" thinking and get ourselves IN battle boxes so we can cut through this time-wasting and start being what we need to be right now. With ISO "battle boxes" everything we would use for war is readily available in peacetime for training just as we would use it in war because we would be the same military for war as we are 24/7/365.
Now I know why God kept Moses and the Israelites mobile for all those years--to keep them on their toes. CSA Gen Schoomaker talks about a "modular" Army: ISO battle boxes would make it modular for REAL.
REFERENCES
U.S. "Lilly Pads" need protective Battle Boxes
U.S. bases overseas show new strategy
Monday, July 26, 2004
By Michael Mainville, Special to the Post-Gazette
MANAS AIR FIELD, Kyrgyzstan -- As he supervised a crew of mechanics working on a C-130 Hercules supply plane, U.S. Air Force Capt. Dale Linafelter marveled at finding himself at a dusty, long-abandoned bomber base in what was once the Soviet Union.
"I'd never even heard of Kyrgyzstan," Linafelter said.
The captain has got a lot company.
Manas Air Field near the capital of Kyrgyzstan now hosts more than 1,150 U.S. servicemen, the largest American military presence in Central Asia outside Afghanistan.
Yet "some of them still don't know where they are," joked Lt. Col. Stan Giles, the base chaplain. "You know, there's an old saying: 'War is God's way of teaching geography to Americans.' "
More geography lessons are on the way.
In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon is planning the greatest shake-up in America's overseas military deployments since the end of the second World War.
Gone are the days of massive bases in places like Germany, Japan and South Korea that look like small U.S. towns. Replacing them will be a global network of what Pentagon planners call "lily pads" -- small forward bases in remote, dangerous corners of the world that can act as jumping-off points when crises arise.
Bases like the one at Manas Air Field, Kyrgyzstan.
"This marks a new epoch in American force posturing," said John Pike, director of globalsecurity.org, a Washington clearinghouse for strategic intelligence. "It's one of only a half-dozen similar reposturings since the American Revolution. It's a very significant change."
U.S. military reposturings
The distribution of U.S. military forces around the world has undergone several major "reposturings," especially since World War II. Most have seen the U.S. military presence extend to new regions:
1789-1898 -- U.S. forces extended along America's frontier to defend settlers.
1898-1940 -- Garrisons established to protect colonies acquired in the Spanish American War and kindred annexations.
1941-1945 -- World War II saw the first major buildup of U.S. bases overseas.
1945-1950 -- In one of the few instances of forces pulling back, there was a rapid build down of American bases abroad after World War II.
1950-1960 -- The start of the Cold War saw the rapid expansion of bases to counter the Soviet Union, including medium-range bomber bases around the Soviet periphery.
1960-1975 -- Bases were gradually built in and around Vietnam and subsequently withdrawn after the end of the Vietnam War.
1975-1990 -- The later period of the Cold War was generally stable, although there was a gradual buildup of bases in southwest Asia.
1990-2001 -- The post-Cold War period saw continued buildup in southwest Asia, residual bases in Europe, Korea and Japan and a U.S. withdrawal from the Philippines.
2001 - ?? -- In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon is preparing to reduce the size of U.S. bases abroad while increasing their number and positioning them in more remote and unstable areas of the world.
On July 13, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy, Andy Hoehn, said in Washington that defense officials will present their redeployment proposals to President Bush within several weeks. Hoehn said he expects the changes to start taking effect in late 2005 or early 2006.
The strategy, experts say, is to position U.S. forces along an "arc of instability" that runs through the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia and southern Asia. It is in these parts of the world --generally poor, insular and unstable --that military planners see the major future threats to U.S. interests.
The Pentagon believes that spreading U.S. forces through a large number of small, flexible bases within this arc would better position them to strike faster at remote hot spots. The U.S. military presence in these areas also could act as a stabilizing factor, preventing them from becoming hot spots in the first place.
"We don't know exactly where the next threat will be. It could be Iran, North Korea, China or other parts of the world. This redeployment is designed to allow us to quickly respond to any of those challenges," Pike said.
The U.S. military presence in Kyrgyzstan --a mountainous Muslim country bordering Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and China --provides a glimpse of what is to come.
U.S. bases abroad cannot be named after individuals, but unofficially this facility is known as the Peter J. Ganci base, after a New York fire chief killed when the World Trade Center collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001.
Unlike the big garrison bases that have traditionally housed more than 80 percent of U.S. forces overseas, the Manas air base is small, simple and largely isolated from the surrounding community. There are no families, schools, fast-food chains or department stores.
Contact with local villagers and access to the nearby capital city of Bishkek are strictly limited. Postings rarely last longer than three or four months and accommodations consist of eight-man tents.
Initially set up as a temporary staging ground for incursions into neighboring Afghanistan, today the base serves primarily as a strategic airlift hub and launching area for air refueling missions -- exactly the kind of "lily pad" Pentagon planners envisage for other parts of the world.
About 10 flights a day depart from Manas -- either C-130 Hercules planes ferrying troops and supplies to bases in Afghanistan or KC-135 Stratotankers refueling American planes over Afghan airspace.
Whether the base is having the kind of stabilizing effect military planners are hoping for still isn't clear.
Kyrgyz officials credit the presence of U.S. forces with helping deter attacks from Islamic fundamentalists based in the Ferghana Valley, which straddles Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
One extremist group, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which is believed to be responsible for a string of attacks that left 47 people dead in Uzbekistan in April, launched incursions into Kyrgyzstan in 1999 and 2000 that the Kyrgyz military repelled only after taking heavy casualties.
"There haven't been any incursions since we got here," said Capt. Jason Decker, public affairs officer for the Manas base. "It's not why we're here, but we're happy to make it a more stable world."
Still, radical Islamic groups have condemned the Kyrgyz government for cooperating with the Americans, and in April four men were jailed for plotting to blow up the base. Two other attacks were averted over the past year, Decker said. Earlier this month, the Kyrgyz government also arrested six people, including four government employees, for allegedly spying for Islamic extremists abroad.
The presence of U.S. forces also has increased tensions between Central Asian countries and their former imperial master, Russia. Disliking American troops in its backyard, Moscow has pressured Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan --all of which now host U.S. forces --to ask them to leave.
Last year, the Kremlin convinced the Kyrgyz government to allow the Russian Air Force to set up its own base less than 70 miles from Manas. The Kant base marked the first foreign deployment of Russian forces abroad since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is home to Su-27 fighter planes, Su-25 ground-attack aircraft and Mi-8 helicopters, which conduct training exercises in Kyrgyz airspace. Decker said there has been no contact between American and Russian forces.
For ordinary Kyrgyz, the presence of the American base is less of a political issue than an economic one, said a senior Western official who has spent the past seven years in Bishkek.
In poverty-stricken Kyrgyzstan, the presence of even a relatively small number of American troops can have an enormous impact. The base employs more than 500 locals, paying them up to 10 times the average monthly wage of about $100. The base is pumping about $156,000 a day into the local economy and last year accounted for 5 percent of Kyrgyzstan's entire gross domestic product.
"The general attitude among people here is that they'll take it for what it's worth" the Western official said. "The advent of the American base has actually helped to create something of a middle class in Bishkek."
There are no signs that U.S. forces might abandon Manas any time soon. In fact, the Air Force is spending $60 million this year to replace the base tents with more permanent buildings constructed from shipping containers.
"This is not any kind of indication of moving to a permanent base," Decker insisted. "On the other hand, we're not leaving tomorrow. Our mission is going on until the global war on terrorism is done, until the Kyrgyz government doesn't want us here or until America decides to send us home."
(Michael Mainville is a freelance journalist based in Moscow. He can be reached at michael_mainville@yahoo.ca.)
www.fas.org/man/eprint/story.htm
THIRD WORLD TRAPS AND PITFALLS:
BALLISTIC MISSILES, CRUISE MISSILES, AND LAND-BASED AIR POWER
BY
WILLIAM C. STORY, JR.
A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF
THE SCHOOL OF ADVANCED AIRPOWER STUDIES
FOR COMPLETION OF GRADUATION REQUIREMENTS
SCHOOL OF ADVANCED AIRPOWER STUDIES
AIR UNIVERSITY
MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE, ALABAMA
JUNE 1994
DISCLAIMER
The views of this paper are entirely those of the author expressed under Air University principles of academic freedom and do not reflect official views of the School of Advanced Airpower Studies, Air University, the U. S. Air Force, or the Department of Defense. In accordance with Air Force Regulation 110-8, it is not copyrighted, but it is the property of the United States Government.
5 Nemesis: Conclusion - Theater Offensive Missiles and the Next War 65
Glossary 74
Bibliography 77
Appendix 1 87
Appendix 2 91
Appendix 3 93
Appendix 4 95
Appendix 5 97
List of Illustrations
Figures Page
1 Typical V-1 Fixed Site Plan 93
2 Typical V-2 Launch Site 94
3 Osan Air Base and Representative Scud Ring (1,000m) 97
4 Osan Air Base and Representative Scud Ring (1,000m) 98
Maps
1 Locations of V-1 Ski-Sites in France and Ranges to London 87
2 V-1 Launch Areas in France 88
3 V-2 Launch Areas in Holland 89
4 V-2 Launch Areas Against London and Antwerp 90
5 V-1 Representative Accuracy 91
6 V-2 Representative Accuracy 92
7 Western Iraq 95
8 North Korea 96
Abstract
Two examples from Twentieth Century conflicts demonstrate the potential that missiles possess to disrupt an opponent's land-based air power and achieve significant political consequences. Iraq's use of Scud ballistic missiles in the 1991 Persian Gulf War produced nearly instantaneous political effects. The Scuds did not threaten the Coalition military forces opposing Saddam Hussein, but instead threatened the existence of the Coalition itself by nearly bringing Israel into the war. Negating this threat demanded an urgent response from land-based air power, and large numbers of Coalition aircraft were forced to perform a new mission: Scud hunting. Almost 50 years before Desert Storm, the Allies in World War II had faced a similar threat from the V-1 and V-2. Thousands of sorties were diverted to bomb missiles that were chiefly fired at London and Antwerp. In both conflicts, Coalition and Allied forces possessed enough air power that the diversion did not prevent them from performing other necessary missions. Yet, in the future, as the USAF dwindles in numbers, the ability of land-based air power to deal with the missile threat becomes problematic. In addition, the improved capabilities of ballistic and cruise missiles threaten air power's ability to achieve the staple of modern combat operations, air superiority. The increased range and refined accuracy of missiles offers Third World nations a chance to develop air power on the cheap, and the missile forces created may well stymie America's ability to apply "conventional" air power in a crisis. Because of the lack of success in thwarting the missile threat in the past, combined with the projected capability of future missiles, and the continued "downsizing" of the Air Force, American leaders must carefully consider whether they possess the wherewithal to commit air power on a truly global scale.
About the Author
William C. Story, Jr. graduated from Nebraska Wesleyan University in 1979. He was commissioned a Second Lieutenant from USAF Officer Training School in January 1980. He entered Undergraduate Navigator Training at Mather AFB, California, in February, 1980. Upon graduation, 2d Lt Story attended Electronic Warfare Officer Training, and was assigned to the F-4. He completed Fighter Lead-In Training at Holloman AFB, New Mexico, in June 1981; F-4C Replacement Training Unit at Luke AFB, Arizona, in December 1981; and was assigned to F-4Es at Taegu Air Base, Korea from January 1982 to February 1983. First Lt Story was then assigned to fly F-4G Wild Weasels at George AFB, California, where he served as an Instructor Electronic Warfare Officer, Life Support Officer, and Wild Weasel Academic Instructor. Captain Story was selected to attend USAF Fighter Weapons School in 1987, and upon graduation was assigned to Wild Weasels at Clark Air Base, Philippines, where he served as Chief of Squadron Weapons and Tactics and as a Flight Commander. Major Story was assigned as Chief, Weapons and Tactics Inspection Division, Inspector General's Office, Headquarters Pacific Air Forces, from August 1990 to August 1992. He completed Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell AFB, Alabama, in June 1993. Following ACSC, Major Story attended the School of Advanced Airpower Studies at Maxwell AFB. Afterwards, he will be assigned to Cannon AFB, New Mexico, where he will fly the EF-111. Major Story is a 1986 Distinguished Graduate of Squadron Officers School, and holds a Masters of Arts in National Security Studies from California State University, San Bernardino. He is married to the former Janet Carol Greathouse and has two children, William III and Joshua.
Chapter 1: - hybris
Introduction
"...[W]ar is nothing but the continuation of policy with other means."
Carl von Clausewitz
Today's ballistic missile, with its ability to cause rapid, large-scale destruction, epitomizes this notion of Clausewitz. Even in its "tactical" mode, carrying a "conventional" warhead, the ballistic missile can produce near-instantaneous political effects, as illustrated in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The Iraqi Scud attacks on Israel presented no direct threat to the Coalition military forces, yet drew an intense air response -- an air response intended to placate Israel as much as to destroy Scuds. Political and military objectives meshed on the battlefield: to keep Israel from retaliating against Iraq and disrupting the Coalition against Saddam Hussein, the Coalition air forces flew numerous sorties to destroy Scuds. Preserving the Coalition by keeping Israel out of the war was a political objective accomplished by military forces--specifically land-based air forces. The "Scud Hunt" also had an impact on the Coalition war effort, because it siphoned off air power for these unplanned and unforeseen duties. The political significance of the Scuds elicited a response that had an operational impact on coalition forces by diverting essential resources and aircraft to look for mobile missile launchers whose political effects were disproportionate to their destructive power. All this consternation was caused by a missile with a 330 mile maximum range and a meager degree of accuracy, possessing a circular error probable (CEP) of over 3 nautical miles.
The limited accuracy of Scud missiles is a transient problem for Third World countries that possess them. Technological advances since the 1991 Persian Gulf War have remarkably reduced the Scud's CEP. Correspondingly, the theoretical and tested accuracies of tactical ballistics missiles (TBMs) in general have increased. The changes in technology that so dramatically improve TBM accuracy have come in many forms, several of them being cheap, economical upgrade packages. Of more concern, several Third World countries are supplementing or even supplanting their TBMs with modern cruise missiles.
The most widely known and most accurate cruise missiles in use today are the US Tomahawk and AGM-86C air-launched cruise missile (ALCM). Both of these weapons were used against targets in Iraq with astonishing results televised to the whole world on CNN. As capable as these two missiles are, they are by no means the only such missiles in existence. Several countries, including France, Russia, and Brazil, manufacture, market and sell cruise missiles of various types. The most common cruise missile on the international market has been the anti-ship missile, launchable from ship, shore, or aircraft. The French AM-39 Exocet is undoubtedly the most well known example of the anti-ship missiles, sinking two British ships and seriously damaging a third during the Falklands War in 1982, and seriously damaging the USS Stark in 1987. At least 123 countries have the Exocet in their inventories. The French have recently perfected a cheap modification package that makes it a very accurate ship, shore, or air launched land-attack cruise missile. Had Iraq possessed this modification before Desert Storm, its ability to challenge Coalition air power would have been substantially increased.
The Allies in World War II faced such an enemy armed with both ballistic missile and cruise missile capabilities. One week after the Allies landed at Normandy to open the second front, the Germans launched the first V-1 from France at London. Three months later, they added the V-2 rocket to the bombardment effort. Clausewitz was certainly not lost on the Nazis. The Germans sought both political and operational gains from the missile attacks on England. To blunt those designs, the Allies redirected a notable portion of their tactical and strategic air power to find and destroy mobile cruise missile (V-1) and TBM (V-2) launchers and sites. This diversion of fighters and bombers detracted from the attacks on transportation and oil as well as from the direct support of the Allied ground forces.
The combination of modern tactical ballistic missiles and cruise missiles presents land-based air power with a serious dilemma. First, as will be shown by examining missile operations in World War II and Desert Storm, TBMs and cruise missiles both require the defending air force to expend considerable energy finding and destroying them. Second, an analysis of current and projected missile developments will show that improved TBM and cruise missile accuracy compels land-based air power to deal with a direct threat to its bases and logistics. How the US responds to these challenges will directly affect its ability to obtain and keep air superiority. In short, this paper finds that the increasing capabilities of these weapons permit Third World nations to reduce the effectiveness of American land-based air power in three key ways: first, by siphoning off sorties to hunt them down; second, by forcing aircraft to defend against inbound missiles; and third, by making airfields vulnerable. All of these uses portend a loss in the capacity to secure control of the air.
Tactical ballistic missiles and cruise missiles have proven both politically and operationally significant in the past. Technological advances will make them devastating weapons in the future. The air force that ignores them does so at its own peril.
Chapter 2: anagnorisis I
Operation Crossbow 1943-1945
"In their present form they are a toy, but their development will profoundly affect both war and peace."
RAF Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder
INTRODUCTION
The Western Front in World War II furnished the first example of a dominant air power facing an opponent armed with ballistic and cruise missiles. The V-1 flying bomb -- an early cruise missile -- and the V-2 ballistic missile were recognized as potential threats to England well before the Nazis fielded them and launched them in combat. "Crossbow" sites, the Allies' designation for the V-weapons targets, were bombed as early as the spring of 1943. The Allies continued bombing them right up until D-Day, but halted the effort prematurely, as one week after Overlord began the Germans launched the first of thousands of V-1s at England. The attack shocked the Allied leaders, who earnestly began attacking Crossbow targets once more. The successful invasion of France eliminated England as a possible V-1 target when the Germans retreated out of cruise missile range. The Allies again halted Operation Crossbow as the threat faded. The Germans then surprised them a second time by attacking London with V-2s, and the Allied Crossbow bombing started anew. Detecting the V-weapons and assessing their impact proved difficult for the Allies, who devoted considerable attention to stopping the raids. From the German perspective, the missiles offered the chance to achieve military and political objectives that "conventional" forces had been incapable of accomplishing.
DETECTION AND ASSESSMENT
British intelligence first detected and confirmed the V-weapon threat through a combination of human intelligence sources and photo-reconnaissance. In a September 1939 radio broadcast, Hitler himself alerted the British to the German "long-range weapon program" that would use "secret weapons" to bombard England from the Continent. The British responded quickly with a flurry of intelligence activity. Gradually, they received intelligence information from the underground networks in the occupied countries about German long-range guns, pilotless airplanes, and rockets. The Allies soon concluded that the Germans in fact did have a long-range weapons program -- but where?
Before the Nazis occupied Norway, the British obtained information from an anonymous German scientist who claimed the Germans were working on secret long-range weapons at Peenemunde. Suspecting that the information was deliberately misleading, the British failed for two years to investigate Peenemunde until autumn 1942. Then, new reports from underground sources, dubbed "Pingpong," identified Peenemunde as the primary research facility for German long range weapons. Captured German Generals Wilhelm von Thoma and Ludwig Cruewell inadvertently disclosed the existence of a rocket program in the fall of 1942 when von Thoma told Cruewell he was surprised London was not already in ruins by the V-2. The Allies finally verified these reports with photo reconnaissance in early 1943 when they discovered unusual objects that appeared to be missiles at Peenemunde. By then they had lost valuable time. The Allies used the Pingpong reports to focus their reconnaissance efforts on Crossbow facilities they might otherwise have missed. The reports identified the "large sites" under construction in France at Watten, Siracourt, Mimoyecques, and Wizernes in the summer of 1943. These sites were puzzles until the agents described internal structures that would store and assemble rockets and small airplanes.
The large launch sites were designed to be bomb-proof; the Germans designed them to launch V-1s and V-2s continuously despite Allied air superiority in the West. Several of the sites could launch both V-1s and V-2s simultaneously at a rate of 2 each per hour. Supply sites for the V-1s were located in caves at Nucourt, St. Leu d' Esserent, and Rheims, and all were bombed before they were completed. However, Nucourt continued to store V-1 components, launcher rail parts, service and field assembly equipment.
The Germans began constructing what became known as V-1 "ski-sites" (due to the resemblance of their sloping launch-rails to Olympic ski-jump ramps) in France in September 1943. The Allies detected them in November and quickly determined their purpose by comparing them with a similar structure in a photograph of Peenemunde. The orientation of the ski-site launch rails alarmed the Allies as almost all pointed at one target -- London. The location of the sites indicated the approximate range as well, as all of them were within 150 miles of London. V-1 accuracy was unknown, but assessed to be good enough to have the V-1s fall in London ("a target eighteen miles wide by over twenty miles deep"), the obvious target, and to "produce unpleasant concentrated effects." Intelligence estimated the Germans could launch a full attack in February or a partial attack in January 1944. The Allies started bombing them in December 1943.
A month later, Allied intelligence had identified ninety-six ski-sites. These fixed sites consisted of permanent structures and were relatively easy for aircraft to see and bomb. However, the first "modified sites" were discovered in April 1944. Most of their components were "prefabricated" for simplicity, ease of construction, and concealment. Sixty such sites had been identified by 12 June 1944, when the first V-1 attack occurred. The Allies had ignored the modified sites and deemed them decoys or less capable sites until the first V-1 hit London. They were believed to be decoys because of the apparent comparative lack of effort to construct them. The Germans, Allied intelligence concluded, would not commit so much effort to construct the fixed ski-sites if the less numerous modified sites were more capable and required fewer resources and less time to construct, and were easier to conceal.
As well as identifying the launch sites, Allied intelligence also pinpointed production facilities and assembly plants in Germany. Mittelwerke, Volkswagenwerke, BrunsWerke, and Fallersleben in central and northern Germany were the four principal V-1 production facilities. Nordhausen was the primary V-2 assembly plant. All of them except Fallersleben were bomb-proof. The Allies also knew of several other subassembly plants such as Friedrichshafen and Wiener-Neustadt. Multiple bomb-proof plants assured a steady supply of missiles for the Germans. Based their knowledge of these facilities, the Allies accurately estimated the actual production rates to within 10 to 20 percent. They thought that the Germans, if unimpeded, could produce 3,000 V-1s and 1,000 V-2s per month starting in October 1944 to support a launch rate of 100 V-1s and 30 V-2s per day. One estimate concluded the 96 ski-sites could launch 1,000 V-1s in a single day. While the accuracy of the V-weapons was uncertain, the Allies simply assumed they could hit at least a small city or the Overlord invasion area.
In late 1943, the presence of specially trained V-1 and V-2 regiments and support organizations near the launch sites in France and similar V-2 units in Holland greatly concerned the Allied Supreme Headquarters. The Allies knew of some technical problems delaying the V-2, but became extremely concerned when they received reports of logistical equipment and missiles moving forward. The Germans were obviously about to use the V-1, but the crucial question remained -- how would they use it?
Determining German Intentions & Capabilities
As the Allies theorized about German intentions and V-weapon capabilities, there was one major disagreement over the purpose of the V-weapons. A key concern was whether the V-weapons were really weapons or elaborate decoys to absorb Allied sorties just before D-Day. This fear was especially true regarding the V-2, since there were a handful of scientists who doubted the Germans could overcome all of the technical challenges to produce a rocket. The final consensus was that they posed a real threat, though a few detractors held on until the first V-1 hit London.
The Allies needed to determine the German intentions as well as the weapons' capabilities. They considered the weapons' "V" designation as indicative of their purpose: the original "V" for Versuchmuster, or experimental type, was changed by German propaganda into "V" for Vergeltungswaffe, or vengeance weapons. More than just vengeance, the Allied Supreme Command feared the Germans could achieve three major effects with the V-1 and V-2: 1) delay the Allied invasion of the Continent and disrupt it when it took place; 2) halt the Combined Bomber Offensive against Germany; and 3) produce a stalemate leading to a negotiated truce or permanent settlement.
The rationale for the Allied fears was the possibility that long-range V-weapons could devastate London with biological, chemical, or some new "revolutionary" explosives. The casualties and damage would compel the Allies to halt the Combined Bomber Offensive in exchange for the Nazis stopping the missile attacks. A stalemate would ensue, possibly leading to a truce. Alternately, if the invasion took place as planned, the V-weapons could disrupt it by causing maximum confusion on D-Day, with V-1s and V-2s hitting embarkation and disembarkation points and the beachhead itself. The Allies knew that a successful invasion depended on smooth, intricate coordination and synchronization on a grand scale. The thought of rockets and flying bombs raining down on the assault unsettled even the most senior planners.
The V-weapons also threatened to undermine Allied war aims. Unconditional surrender, opening the second front, and keeping Russia in the war all hung in the balance. Without the air superiority promised by the Combined Bomber Offensive, Overlord was impossible -- without an invasion, unconditional surrender was certainly in doubt. By early 1944, keeping the Russians in the war was less of a concern than the other fears because the Red Army maintained the initiative in the East, but even Russia's ultimate success would be jeopardized by a large movement of German ground forces from the Western Front. In short, the invasion was crucial. Anything that detracted from its success increased the probability something else would go wrong.
OPERATIONS AND RESULTS
The Allies sought very specific results from bombing Crossbow targets. The two effects they wanted to achieve were: 1) to delay, or if possible prevent, V-weapon attacks, and 2) to limit the intensity of the attacks if they did begin. To achieve these objectives, in the autumn of 1943 and the winter of 1943-1944 the Allies bombed research facilities, production plants, large launch sites, and the ski-sites discovered in France. Later, in the spring of 1944, transportation facilities in the launch areas and the modified ski-sites were added. The results, however, were mixed.
The first Crossbow target hit was Peenemunde. The Royal Air Force first attackedPeenemundein August 1943. The primary objective of the raid was to kill as many personnel involved in the V-weapons programs as possible, therefore, the housing area was the main aim point. Two lesser objectives were to destroy as much of the V-weapons related work and documentation as possible, and to render Peenemunde useless as a research facility.
Unfortunately for the Allies, Peenemunde was attacked too late to inflict a mortal blow to the V-weapons, and the experimental work was unaffected. The V-1 was all but complete and ready to be engineered for production. The V-2 program was essentially complete as well, though several technical problems remained and it still lacked sufficient launch and flight testing to enter production. The Germans had duplicated records and stored many at several locations, although the Peenemunde facility retained copies.
Nonetheless, two key scientists were in fact killed in the raid, which also disrupted work on V-2 engineering and technical production problems. As a result, the Germans moved the V-2 program to Nordhausen, a bomb-proof underground facility. They moved the flight testing to Blizna, Poland, out of Allied bomber range. The death of the two scientists and the V-2 program relocation delayed the V-2 attacks on London by two months. The raid did not affect the V-1.
Attacks on the production plants in Germany from December 1943 through August 1944 had marginal impacts on weapon production. The raids caused no reduction in the V-weapon output. The Germans had correctly forecast Allied bomber attacks on production centers, and had adequately prepared for that eventuality by dispersing this industry to three underground production facilities. Unknown to the Allies at the time, they could have achieved better results by persistently bombing hydrogen peroxide and liquid oxygen targets. They could have also hurt production by targeting nearby power transformers instead of the underground factories.
While key V-weapons research and production facilities were located in Germany, all of the storage depots and launch sites were in France or Holland. Accordingly, all of the known large sites in France were bombed in the autumn of 1943 to prevent the Germans from finishing them. The Germans, however, repaired the damage and pressed ahead with site construction. The large sites therefore required several reattacks by heavy bombers. The Germans had designed the sites to be impervious to bomber attacks, much like the famous hardened U-boat pens. They intended to use them to launch both V-1s and V-2s. The various large sites were periodically bombed until July 1944, at which time the Germans abandoned their efforts before the Allied ground advance overran them. None of the large sites were ever completed. Watten was converted to a liquid oxygen plant despite the heavy damage, which served as camouflage to convince the Allies the site was damaged beyond repair.
The numerous ski-sites were of more concern. The potential threat of V-1 attacks in January 1944 prompted the Allies to begin bombing ski-sites in December 1943. On 15 December 1943, 8th Air Force received overriding priority, at the request of the British Chiefs of Staff, to bomb the 96 ski-sites in France when the weather was good enough to permit visual bombing. Selection of the 8th Air Force reflected the need for precision bombing on the relatively small sites. The half-dozen buildings and ski-ramp made even the uncamouflaged sites difficult to find and hit, plus concerns over French casualties meant that British carpet bombing was out of the question.
No small effort was expended on the V-1 ski sites. An average of 237 sorties, dropping an average of 223 tons of ordnance, at an average cost of 2 aircraft, was required to inflict substantial damage to each of the 96 fixed ski-sites. Bombers rendered all but two of those sites useless by April, and only two ever launched V-1s. If the original 96 V-1 ski-sites had not been bombed while under construction, at least 92 of them would have been completed and ready for use by March of 1944. Due to the large number of sites, the Germans were able to keep some repairs underway, and it became apparent to the Allies in April 1944 they would have to persistently bomb the sites to keep them out of commission. The bombing definitely delayed the V-1 launches, but also prodded the Germans to develop and build the modified ski-sites, which then presented a wholly different set of problems.
As indicated, Allied intelligence assessed the modified sites to be either decoys or less capable than the fixed sites. After the fixed ski-sites were destroyed and the large sites rendered useless, the Allied leaders -- Churchill and Eisenhower -- thought the V-1 threat to England and the invasion was over. The absence of V-1 attacks on D-Day seemed to confirm this conclusion. Once the Germans actually began launching V-1s in mid-June, however, the perception of the modified sites changed. As a result of a meeting with the Chiefs of Staff and Churchill, they requested Eisenhower to "'take all possible measures to neutralise the supply and launching sites subject to no interference with the essential requirements of the Battle of France." As a result, Eisenhower, who from mid-April to mid-September 1944 controlled all heavy Allied heavy bombers, decided on 18 June 1944 that Crossbow targets ranked higher than anything for the Allied bomber force "except the urgent requirements of the battle." Of note, this decision caused considerable concern among RAF and USAAF air commanders about the conduct of air operations in support of Overlord. For example, General Carl A. Spaatz, commander of US Strategic Air Forces in Europe, reminded Eisenhower that the strategic air forces had weakened the Luftwaffe to the point it could not seriously interfere with the invasion. In direct support of Overlord, strategic air forces were continuing to keep the Luftwaffe from re-emerging as a threat, and denying the German ground armies supplies and reinforcements to put up an effective defensive. Accordingly, he wanted to return to bombing Germany unless there was an urgent situation involving ground forces, and to ignore the V-1 sites. Eisenhower, however, kept the V-1s as top priority.
An average of 180 sorties, dropping 426 tons of bombs, with an average loss of 1 aircraft, was required to inflict major damage to the modified ski-sites. Although they were heavily bombed in June and July of 1944, they continued to launch missiles at a steady rate. After the attacks began on the modified sites, the number of new sites identified actually grew at a faster rate than the number of those receiving crippling damage. The growth in modified sites should be compared to the fact that by the end of May all 96 fixed ski-sites had been hit, and at any given time through June only 8 fixed sites could be kept under repair due to persistent Allied re-attacks. The Allies underestimated the numbers and capability of the modified sites to launch missiles.
Once the missile attacks began, bombing the modified ski-sites had no impact on launch rates, except for a fortunate strike on the Nucourt supply site that caused rates to decrease dramatically for 2 weeks in mid-July 1944. After the Nucourt attack, the Germans delivered V-1s to the firing regiments in France by rail directly from the factory in Germany, and two weeks later, had regained their previous launch rate. Very heavy bombing of the sites continued throughout July and August 1944. The bombing then decreased as the launch units withdrew in the face of advancing Allied ground forces.
Attacks on the fixed ski-sites were the single most effective method used to delay and reduce V-1 launches. It forced a "workaround" in the form of modified ski-sites that took time to develop and field. Destroying the ski-sites in France caused the Germans to develop and use the modified ski sites for almost all V-1 launches. They recognized an exposed operational weakness and corrected it. Since the Germans had produced an adequate supply of V-1s to begin an attack several months sooner than they actually did, the bombing of the sites and storage depots imposed a 3 or 4 month delay in the attacks on England. One point was very clear -- despite the results from the Nucourt bombing, the destruction of ski-sites had much more of an impact than attempts at bombing missile storage facilities. The bulk of bombing attacks focused on the V-1 associated systems, leaving the V-2 program virtually untouched.
The attacks on the only known V-2 launch sites (the large sites) did not delay that weapon's use against England at all, since the missile still had production and technical problems that were not solved until September 1944. Once those the problems were corrected, the V-2s were launched at England. The Germans actually had time to correct an unrelated operational deficiency with the V-2. They manufactured mobile transporters that served as launchers, negating the need for vulnerable prepared launch sites. The Allies' attempts to find the V-2 sites after they began hitting London failed. The rockets were kept on mobile trailers that also served as erector-launchers, and usually hidden near roads in wooded areas. The only indication of a launch site was a small concrete pad for the launcher, which was virtually impossible to see from the air.
After the launches began, the only measure the Allies took that had an impact on the V-2 campaign was the attack on transportation. "Although there was practically no bombing of V-1 and V-2 launching sites in Holland and Germany, attacks on transportation and other targets probably were indirectly responsible for some reduction in the volume of fire in the early months of 1945." "Against [V-2] firing from Holland, attacks on rail targets by Mosquitos and fighter bombers appear to have had a greater disrupting effect than attacks against launching sites and forward rocket storage dumps." The small launch pads used by the V-2 transporter-erector-launchers (TELs) remained nearly impossible to locate, and the Germans cut out the supply "middleman" by delivering rockets directly from the factory to the launch sites and firing regiments.
GERMAN INTENTIONS AND OBJECTIVES
The Allies were fairly accurate in their assessment of German aims. The Nazis changed their objectives several times, before and after the weapons became operational, but all three of the Allies' main concerns were ultimately reflected by the shifting German plans.
First, Hitler wanted to retaliate against England for the Combined Bomber Offensive. He saw the V-2 as a high-leverage weapon that could relieve pressure on the Reich at a low production cost. He also believed the Allies would be forced to divert a large percentage of their air power to destroying V-weapons targets. The large concrete structures at Watten, Siracourt, Wizernes, and Mimoyecques were kept under construction despite frequent Royal Air Force reattacks and heavy damage. Generals Gerd von Runstedt and Alfred Jodl pointed out the low probability of ever completing the sites while the Allies bombed them, and Hitler agreed, but wanted the sites kept under construction to keep some bombs from falling in Germany. Hitler's diversion idea worked to a certain extent, if that was really the goal behind continuing the construction against long odds.
The Germans also wanted to prevent, or delay, the invasion, but failed because they were unable to launch any weapons until after D-Day. The two main targets for the V-1 and V-2 were London and Antwerp. The rationale for attacking London was twofold. First, the V-1s and V-2s were meant to undermine British civilian will to support the war. London would be under constant attack from an invulnerable, unstoppable, and superior German weapon. The Germans hoped flagging morale would bring about an early termination of the war on the Western Front, and allow them to shift their forces eastward to halt the advancing Red Army. If the Allies continued to fight in the West, the Germans hoped to lure them into a trap by forcing them into a second invasion at Pas de Calais to capture the V-1 launch areas. The Wermacht was prepared to launch a vigorous counter-attack in this area, since that was where the Germans originally thought the Allies would invade. The idea of using annoying V-weapons to provoke an invasion of the launch area was not unlike a similar attempt by Iraq in 1991 to get Israel into the Persian Gulf War.
Attacks on Antwerp had similar objectives. The primary objective in attacking Antwerp was to reduce the port's usefulness to Allies. At best, the objective was only partially achieved. General Carl A. Spaatz, commander of US Strategic Air Forces in Europe, wrote General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold, Chief of the Army Air Force, that missile operations against Antwerp from 13 October 1944 to 26 March 1945, consisting of 5,600 V-1s and 1,440 V-2s that hit in and around the city had produced only slight delays moving supplies and cargo in and out of the port. As a secondary objective, the Germans again wanted to attack civilian morale in Great Britain and force an early termination of war. They hoped that attacks on Antwerp would deny the Allied armies sufficient supplies to sustain operations, and the invasion would grind to a halt. A slowdown or halt in the invasion breakout might make the British public realize Germany still had alot of fight left in her, and that the casualties would be high. Fears that the war might cause a loss of life on a magnitude with the trenches of World War I greatly concerned Churchill. In any case, Antwerp was used despite the V-2 attacks.
Thus, the Germans failed to achieve the desired objectives set for the V-weapons. The Combined Bomber Offensive was diluted, but not stopped. The invasion was neither prevented nor disrupted, and British morale held firm. The gambit to get the Allies to invade Pas de Calais also failed (though this option was actually discussed in Allied meetings). Yet if the V-weapons failed to achieve their goals, it should also be said that air power played a marginal role in finally defeating the V-weapons. Ground occupation, not air power, eventually stopped the launches.
OBSERVATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
The total Crossbow air effort from August 1943 to March 1945 was 68,913 sorties and 122,133 tons of bombs. Those totals represented a sizeable diversion from the Allied air campaign. Crossbow targets accounted for 5.6 percent of the total bombing missions and 6.8 percent of the total bomb tonnage dropped in Europe during World War II. More significantly, this effort was concentrated in the 13 month period from August 1943 to August 1944 (inclusive). During that period, 14.9 percent of combined 8th AF, 9th AF, RAF and Tactical Air Forces sorties attacked missile targets, and 15.0 percent of the bomb tonnage fell on Crossbow targets. The Tactical Air Forces flew 16.7 percent of their sorties against Crossbow targets. Daylight air superiority made the emphasis on V-weapons possible. Allied air power in 1944 was virtually unopposed by the time of the Normandy invasion. What might have happened had the Germans possessed even a few squadrons of fighters to protect their launch areas?
Crossbow began receiving urgent attention after the first V-1 launch, although its high sortie counts did not necessarily indicate diversions from other targets. Forty percent of the RAF sorties from July - August 1944 were directly dedicated to Crossbow. Those sorties were part of the overall bomber effort committed to invasion support. The German night-fighter forces had improved in quality and numbers of aircraft, and after March 1944 were exacting a higher toll on RAF bombers. Additionally, the long summer days meant very short nights at the northern European latitudes. RAF losses might have been higher, and there is some debate as to whether or not they would have flown much more against Germany than they did even without flying Crossbow missions. Additionally, USAAF sorties diverted that could not bomb primary targets. Medium bombers such as the B-25s, B-26s, and A-20s lacked the range to attack targets in Germany from Great Britain, and most Crossbow targets were in France. The shorter distance and longer days allowed a higher sortie rate because the bombers, using different crews, could fly two and sometimes three sorties a day. The shorter distance also allowed a greater trade off of fuel for bomb tonnage, since less fuel was needed by the bombers to get to France. Finally, missions over France needed minimum fighter escort, as daylight air superiority had been achieved because the Germans had pulled back their fighter force for home defense.
In the final analysis, the post-war United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) concluded that the Allied use of air power against the V-weapons in the Crossbow campaign had an "insignificant" effect on the Allied prosecution of the war. A diversion occurred, but not on the scale Hitler had hoped for, because of the vast numbers of aircraft and aircrews the Allies possessed in 1944. However, considering Eisenhower's concern over the impact of V-weapons on the ports and invasion beachhead, the attacks contributed and allowed invasion planning to go forward. If no bombing had taken place, the Germans could have launched V-1s as early as March, and the invasion may have been moved to Pas de Calais as the Germans desired.
The number of Allied bombers doubled from October 1943 to March 1944, and without those large numbers it seems remote that the Allies could have defeated the Luftwaffe, bombed transportation in France, and hit the ski-sites. The Germans, on the other hand, could not react fast enough to overcome Allied invasion planning, and therefore wasted a certain amount of their industrial capacity that might have been better used to produce fighters. "The race was lost and the V-weapon campaign failed - failed to prevent or delay the invasion, failed to shatter Allied morale and failed to change the course of the war." The V-weapons had little or no "military effect."
Several implications for future operations resulted from Crossbow. First, large numbers of mobile missiles are extremely difficult to stop with conventional air power. Allied destruction of fixed sites absorbed sorties that might have been used to attack the Luftwaffe, oil, or transportation, but the diverted effort did not alter final outcome. All of these targets were destroyed. Unquestionably, destruction of the fixed ski-sites and transportation near them detracted from the overall German capability, and, more importantly, the timing of their V-1 attacks. Without the Allied air attacks on the fixed sites, the V-1 assault would have likely begun in March 1944, and possibly affected the Normandy invasion. Eisenhower said the invasion of the continent would have been much more difficult and costly: "I feel sure that if [Hitler] had succeeded in using these weapons over a six-month period, and particularly if he had made the Portsmouth-Southampton area one of his principal targets, Overlord might have been written off." The Germans adapted and managed to launch a sizeable number. And despite the vast number of aircraft available, the Allies were incapable of locating mobile V-2 launchers. As today's air forces shrink in size, the sheer number of launchers may more than offset air power's ability to deal with properly deployed missile threats.
Ground power -- quite literally ground occupation -- may have been the most important factor in stopping the first ballistic and cruise missiles. Not until Allied troops overran the modified V-1 sites and V-2 mobile launchers did the V-weapon threat truly come to an end.
Chapter 3: anagnorisis II
Operation Desert Storm Scud Hunt - 1991
"Mobile missile hunting was difficult and costly; we will need to do better."
Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney
INTRODUCTION
On 17 January 1991 Iraq responded to coalition air attacks by launching the first of eighty-eight Scuds from mobile missile launchers. The missile's impact in Israel dramatically demonstrated the link between politics and war. A missile labeled "militarily insignificant" threatened to undermine the international coalition assembled to eject Saddam Hussein's forces from Kuwait.
The subsequent "Scud Hunt" for Iraqi mobile launchers yielded little fruit. Although coalition aircraft flew with relative impunity by the second night of the war, they could not completely halt the Scud launches. Efforts to eliminate the mobile Scud launchers diverted air power away from other efforts and absorbed three times more aircraft than anticipated, according to U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff General Merrill McPeak. Since the Allies did not earnestly attack the V-2 launchers in World War II, the Scud Hunt marked the first time in history air power had been used to pursue a ballistic missile force. Its lessons may endure for some time.
DETECTION AND ASSESSMENT
Unlike the slowly unfolding picture of V-1 and V-2 development that the Allies witnessed in World War II, the US and coalition commanders knew during Desert Shield that Iraq had ballistic missiles. Iraq had already demonstrated the ability to use missiles in combat. Observations from the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War had provided a useful but limited amount of information about Iraqi Scud operations. The knowledge the US and coalition partners lacked was specific, unambiguous detail about those Scuds, particularly the Iraqi-modified Scud, called the Al-Husayn. The intelligence officers and planners had two major concerns -- the first was the number of Scuds and mobile launchers that Iraq possessed, and the second was how Iraq would employ them against the coalition. Filling in the details and accurately determining Iraqi ballistic missile capabilities proved to be a challenge for the US intelligence community. The planners would use the estimates to help predict Scud targets and how best to attacks the missiles.
The general capabilities of the Soviet-made Scud B did not represent a real intelligence mystery. Planners considered the Scud B's capabilities to be lacking. It could deliver a 2,100 pound warhead 300km (165 miles) with a CEP of 900 meters (2,950 feet). The Scud B was designed to deliver conventional high explosives, nuclear, or chemical warheads. More importantly, the Scud could be launched from fixed sites or mobile launchers. The Soviets designed it to be transported and fired from a reusable mobile launch vehicle -- an eight-wheeled MAZ-543 transporter-erector-launcher (TEL). Iraq had obtained its first few Scuds from the Soviets in the early 1970s, and had acquired 12 MAZ-543 Scud-B TELs by 1980. Iraq also had produced indigenous launchers that used a flatbed tractor trailer truck, called a mobile-erector-launcher (MEL). During the war with Iran, the Soviets had resupplied Iraq with over 1,000 Scud-Bs. Even so, the missile was not considered a significant threat to coalition military forces.
US intelligence knew some of the details of how Iraq had used its Scuds in the past. Iraqi Scuds had struck Iran as early as 1982, and were aimed at Iranian population centers and troop concentrations near the rear of the battlefield. Iran, on the other hand, launched Scuds directly at Baghdad after acquiring them from Libya and North Korea in 1985. Baghdad was easily within range of Iranian Scuds at the Iran-Iraq border, while Teheran remained well outside Iraqi Scud B range. To strike Teheran in retaliation for attacks on Baghdad, the Iraqis (with considerable foreign assistance) modified the Scud B to extend its range. Iraq successfully tested five of these extended range Scuds, called Al-Husayns, in February, 1988. The Al-Husayn possessed a range of 600-650km (330 miles), and was used during the "War of the Cities" from 29 February to 20 April 1988.
One-hundred-eighty-nine al-Husayns were fired at six Iranian cities in the eight week "War of the Cities." Of these, Iraq fired 135 at Teheran. The effects were dramatic. Over two and a half million people -- 25 percent of Teheran's population -- left the city. As a result, the missile bombardment of Teheran is produced a "severe disruption" of Iran's economy. The Al-Husayn did not by itself bring an end to the war, but it did force Iran to stop missile attacks on Iraqi cities.
Despite six years of use by Iraq, the US had almost no detailed information on Iraqi Scud doctrine, organizations, and field deployment operations. Subsequently, US officers built this part of the intelligence profile from scratch. Iraq had used the Scuds and Al Husayns to attack large targets, but there was no indication that they would use them against confined military objectives.
As potential targets for coalition air power, the Scud B and Al-Husayn were considered to be essentially equivalent. Granted, the Al-Husayn was about a meter longer, but the fixed and mobile launchers could launch either missile. Both missiles could hit targets with about the same degree of accuracy, and there was no practical way to distinguish them from the air. Intelligence analysts did not have a firm estimate of Iraqi missile numbers, but believed the Iraqis to have 800-1,000 Scud-Bs and Al-Husayns.
The total number of missiles was not as important as the exact number of launchers, because the missiles were of no value without the launchers. The US national intelligence community underestimated the total number of Scud launchers, partly because Iraq had three different types of launchers when Desert Storm started. About thirty fixed launchers existed in western and southeastern Iraq (they were incapacitated in opening stages of the war); "several dozen" mobile launchers were built on modified Saab-Scania commercial trucks with an unknown number of trailers that could be used as launchers; and 12 MAZ-543 TELs. Analysts estimated the number of mobile launchers of all types to be between 30 and 40. Illustrative of the uncertainty surrounding these numbers, one estimate credited Iraq with 35 to 50 TELs and 30 static launchers at the beginning of Desert Storm. The launchers were known to be positioned in three areas -- Basra, opposing Saudi Arabia; near H-2 airfield in western Iraq, facing Israel; and Baghdad, which probably served as a reserve force.
During the "War of the Cities" Iraq had launched its missiles from presurveyed sites in broken ground or tree groves for cover. The normal setup, calibration, fueling and launch operations during the Iran-Iraq war took about an hour. During these prelaunch operations, the Iraqi Scud crews normally transmitted a more or less standard pattern of radio messages and weather radar. Soviet procedures and times were similar. The US intelligence and air campaign planning officers assumed Iraq would continue the same procedures during Desert Storm, using presurveyed sites, taking the same amount of time, and emitting the same electronic signature. However, during Desert Storm, the Iraqis set up, launched, and were on the move again in as little as 10 minutes, deviating substantially from their previous practices and dispensing with calibration and weather (wind) checks.
Employment doctrine remained a mystery. Iraq had launched Scuds at both military and civilian targets, and retaliation had been the primary motive behind the Al-Husayn attacks on Teheran. Due to the large CEPs, the missiles were best suited to attack large targets. The key question seemed to be whether the missiles could threaten coalition military operations. Uncertainties about the Al-Husayn range and payload, particularly chemical warheads, and questions about missile reliability complicated coalition planning. The inaccuracy of the Al-Husayn led coalition commanders to assess it as militarily insignificant. Leaders in Washington, however, worried that the Scuds could become political weapons, particularly if fired against Israel. President George Bush, Secretary of State James Baker, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell all knew keeping Israel out of the war was going to be tough if Saddam attacked Israel. Lieutenant General Charles Horner predicted air strikes would preclude Scud launches when he briefed Powell, Cheney, and Defense Undesecretary for Policy, Paul D. Wolfowitz.
Besides uncertainties about missile usage, the extent of Iraq's decoy program was a key unknown. "Effective Iraqi use of deception techniques, communications security, and the desert terrain reduced the coalition's ability to detect, and thus target, the Al-Husayn units before missile launch." Nonetheless, the planners did not devote a great deal of attention to the possibilities of camouflage, terrain, and decoys. Their failure to do so led to three erroneous planning assumptions: 1) the Iraqis would launch all of their Scuds from fixed, known sites (translating into a vulnerable target set for air power); 2) any mobile launches the Iraqis might make would follow Soviet Central European procedures, and therefore be detectable through emissions that would allow for enough time to locate and destroy them before launch; 3) decoys would provide little more than nuisance value in anti-Scud operations. The coalition planners did not understand that Iraq -- by design or accident -- had made the Scud impervious to air attack.
The incremental deployment of Iraqi missiles from garrison and cantonment areas started as early as August 1990. The dispersion was detected, but the exact deployment locations were not discovered by US intelligence. For planners and intelligence personnel alike, mobile Scuds proved to be an intractable problem. When war began, this deficiency quickly became apparent.
While possessing only sketchy information on the mobile Scud dispositions, launch procedures and potential targets, the US intelligence community concluded that Iraq had the capability to launch chemical or biological warheads on the Scuds or Al-Husayns, with chemical warheads being the more likely. Iraq and Iran had both used chemical weapons in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, but they used aircraft and artillery, not Scuds, to deliver them. In any case, the Iraqi rhetoric aggravated Israeli World War II holocaust memories and fears about chemicals being used against Tel Aviv. US leaders were very concerned as well.
OPERATIONS AND RESULTS
In the first days of the air campaign, the coalition attacked all 25 known fixed Scud sites. Twelve were destroyed and the other 13 were damaged. Attacks against the mobile launchers also occurred. The intent of the coalition air strikes was to suppress Scud launches at Israel, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf nations. The efforts quickly ran into problems. For example, the presurveyed mobile launch sites and hiding places had not been identified before the air war started on 17 January 1991. In any case, flying against these "scrape" sites was viewed as a hit-or-miss waste of air power. Much like Allied commanders had ignored the modified V-1 ski-sites in World War II, Coalition commanders in the desert war against Iraq similarly ignored mobile launchers until they started launching their Scuds on the first night of the war.
Stopping the Scuds depended on air power accomplishing three tasks: 1) destroying the known fixed launch sites, facilities and storage bunkers, 2) maintaining a 24-hour Scud combat air patrol, or "Scud CAP," in each of the western and eastern launch zones (or Scud boxes) to find and destroy the mobile launchers; and 3) conducting armed reconnaissance to locate and destroy Scud equipment and facilities.
Approximately 1,500 sorties were flown over 43 days against such Scud targets as mobile launchers, suspected hiding places, and production and storage facilities. At least one-third of the more than 2,000 daily strategic air campaign sorties were diverted to the Scud Hunt. This diversion, plus extremely poor weather, caused the first phase of the air campaign take longer than the planned six days, according to General Horner, the Joint Forces Air Component Commander (JFACC). Theater Commander and Army General Norman Schwartzkopf countered that "the bombing was so effective that the delays didn't hurt much."
Fifteen percent of the coalition air campaign was dedicated to finding and destroying Scud launchers, and the overall air campaign took 39 days, nine days longer than planned. The authors of the Gulf War Air Power Survey (GWAPS) considered the Scud Hunt one of two significant diversions from the planned execution of the air campaign. Coalition planners had anticipated that Iraq might attack Israel with Scuds, but planned to bomb only the known fixed sites. The most threatening fixed sites to Israel were near H-2 and H-3 airfields in Western Iraq, which were attacked on the first night of the air campaign. The pressure from Washington to destroy the Scuds was tremendous, as President Bush wanted to keep the Israelis out of the war at all costs. To achieve that objective, anti-Scud operations were continuous against the elusive mobile launchers.
Scud Hunt tactics essentially required aircraft to orbit over the known general area of the mobile Scud launchers, ready to strike when the Scuds were discovered. A variety of aircraft participated in the effort, including AWACS, JSTARS, F-15Es, F-16s, and A-10s. Ideally, the coalition wanted to destroy the mobile Scuds before they launched, but decoys, camouflage, and clever Iraqi tactics thwarted this aim. Aircrews tried to attack the sites immediately after launch (the crux of the Scud Hunt), but time, distance, space and decoys as well as "noise" (objects that could be mistaken for Scuds) all worked against this goal. One F-15E crew visually witnessed a launch at night, and attempted to find the launcher, but could not.
These difficulties should not have come as much of a surprise. An exploitation exercise named "Touted Gleem" had been conducted in late 1990 to discern the problems and level of effort required in Scud Hunting. The test consisted of an MAZ-543 TEL deployed at night in terrain conditions similar to Iraq. F-15E, F-111F, and F-16 aircraft, all equipped with state-of-the-art night-capable systems, tried to find the launcher after being given the precise coordinates. They discovered the MAZ-543 was impossible to find even when its coordinates were known.
Iraq successfully fired 88 Scuds during the war: 38 at Israel, 41 at Saudi Arabia, and 2 at Qatar and Bahrain. (Seven broke up in flight.) Over 40 percent were launched during the first week of the war. The decline in launches lends some credence to Air Force Colonel John Warden's view that the sorties suppressed Scud launches in subsequent weeks even if they did not destroy any TELs. Iraq launched an average of 14.7 Scuds per week, with 29 launches occurring during the first week of Desert Storm at the rate of 4.1 per day; 24 during the second week at a rate of 3.4 per day; and 4 during the third week for a rate of less than 1 per day. Optimistic aircrew claims, combined with a lull in launches, pointed towards Scud Hunt success. The possibility that decoys or other objects that resembled TELs had been hit was disregarded. After the third week of the war, Scud launches increased steadily until the armistice. The recovery belied the faith in the early success of the first 3 weeks of the Scud Hunt. The lull had also given false hope that the mobile launchers were being destroyed at the rate and in the numbers the aircrews had claimed.
The Iraqis launched the majority of their Scuds at night. Only three were launched during daylight, and these occurred in the early daylight hours under heavy cloud conditions. The emphasis on night launches was unquestionably due to the coalition's overwhelming air superiority, and optimism by Iraqi commanders that darkness would protect the launchers from aircraft strikes. Because of the night launches, aircrews employed sophisticated on-board sensors to locate and identify the mobile launchers after they fired. Of 42 visual observations of Scud launches at night, only eight resulted in actual attacks on what aircrews believed were Scud launchers. Weather also aided the Iraqi Scud efforts. Heavy cloud cover "precluded effective identification of Scud locations from space and hampered the subsequent aerial hunt for Scud launchers." The "Touted Gleem" exercise had turned out to be an accurate predictor of Scud Hunt results.
The operational problems caused by the Scud threat were many. Patriot missile batteries were designed to defend against aircraft, not Scuds. The lack of mass Scud attacks made it easier for the coalition's Patriot missiles to target and intercept them. A large attack might easily have overloaded the Patriot system. However, the Iraqis were firing their Scuds without air superiority, and had they attempted to mass launchers in even a large area they would have risked losses. Second, the JFACC had to designate a portion of his air force to hunt and destroy Scuds. These sorties could have been used to speed up preparation of the battlefield and attacks on strategic targets. The inability to stop the attacks also became a source of embarrassment to the United States government.
In the Pentagon daily briefings on the war, Defense Department officials constantly stressed that destroying the SCUDs was a top priority. When asked why the SCUDs continued to function despite this effort, General Kelly admitted, "It's a tough target. The mobile launchers can move and hide....Iraq is about 170,000 square miles...Every day we are trying harder to get those SCUDs, and sooner or later we're going to get them." This task was also complicated by Iraq's use of SCUD mock-ups as decoys for allied attacks.
Excess air power -- in excess of requirements -- allowed General Horner to "bleed" off sorties to hunt for Scuds. Because of the coalition's large air force, the effect of Scud Hunting was mostly to delay attacks on some targets, but it did not alter the outcome of the war -- Iraq was still forced out of Kuwait. However, had Saddam Hussein been more effective in orchestrating a withdrawal from Kuwait or a cease-fire, the time and sorties used to hunt Scuds might have allowed other targets to have escaped unscathed.
The sorties flown against the fixed launchers failed to suppress the Scuds, because the Iraqis used mobile launchers exclusively. The fixed sites actually served as decoys of sorts -- they had to be destroyed (like the V-1 ski sites in World War II) and diverted the planners' attention from the mobile launchers. If the coalition did not bomb the fixed sites, more Scuds might have been launched. Yet Coalition planners did not fully understand ballistic missile capabilities. Iraq made its missiles -- by accident or design -- as elusive and resistant to air attack as possible. Its the mobile Scud decoys were so realistic that they could not be distinguished at 25 yards on the ground, much less in the air.
The difficulty in pinpointing the mobile Scuds made it impossible to confirm the destruction of any mobile launchers by coalition aircraft. Aircrews claimed over 80 were destroyed. A-10 pilots alone claimed 51, and Special Operations Forces (SOF) claimed up to 11. Obviously, many decoys and look-alikes were hit. Additionally, the maximum number of launches per day during the war never exceeded the number of mobile launchers known to have survived the conflict. Most, if not all, of the 100-plus mobile launchers claimed by coalition aircrew and SOF forces were decoys or other vehicles.
Almost 1500 combat sorties flew against the Scud threat. This total includes missions that attacked fixed sites, suspected hiding places (culverts and highway bridges), production and support facilities, and mobile launchers. Half of these were targeted against fixed launch sites and suspected hiding places; 30 percent on support facilities; and 15 percent -- 215 missions -- on mobile launchers. An additional 1,000 Scud patrol sorties attacked other targets. On average, 6 percent of the daily sorties flew against Scuds. Of specific USAF combat aircraft, 20 percent of F-15E sorties, 2 percent of A-10, 4 percent of F-16, and 3 percent of F-111 sorties were dedicated to the Scud hunt. Numerous other coalition -- especially US -- aircraft flew in the hunt.
According to Dr. Thomas A. Keaney, staff member of the GWAPS team and Chief of the GWAPS Summary Report, the Scud threat was underestimated. It was considered militarily unimportant, but strategically it held the key to keeping the coalition united. Keaney asserted that the Coalition had no idea how to hit mobile Scuds, and noted there was no hard evidence that any were destroyed. At best, he thought that coalition aircraft might have suppressed the number of firings and degraded their accuracy.
[T]he actual destruction of any Iraqi mobile launchers by fixed-wing Coalition aircraft remains impossible to confirm. Coalition aircrews reported destroying around eighty mobile launchers; another score or so were claimed by special operations forces. Most of these reports undoubtedly stemmed from attacks that did destroy objects found in the Scud launch areas. But most, if not all, of the objects involved now appear to have been decoys, vehicles such as tanker trucks that had infrared and radar signatures impossible to distinguish from those of mobile launchers and their associated support vehicles, and other objects unfortunate enough to provide "Scud-like" signatures.
The Iraqis adapted to the air strikes and continued launching Scuds until the end of the war. Their greatest success occurred the day before the cease-fire, when a Scud smashed into an American barracks in Dahran and killed 28 soldiers.
At least 62 Scuds, 11 decoys, 6 Soviet made MAZ 543 TELs, 2 Al Nidal and 2 Al Waleed indigenous TELs (based on commercial tractor-trailer rigs) survived the war. Iraq declared that 19 TELs and MELs still remained by the armistice. The number was confirmed destroyed by a UN Special Commission team. Fourteen launchers survived the war, and no more than 14 were launched on any single day, which perhaps confirms that Iraq only had 14 mobile launchers.
IRAQI OBJECTIVES
Iraq fired Scuds at Israel and Tel Aviv to provoke an Israeli retaliation that would undermine the Arab support of the Coalition. Saddam Hussein had made it very clear his first target would be Israel if hostilities broke out. Tariq Aziz, Iraq's Foreign Minister, said "absolutely" Israel would be attacked. Hussein probably had more reasons for attacking Israel than simply widening the war, though certainly that was a fundamental objective. He seemed to be take great pains to frame the conflict in different terms than the coalition, and continually attempted to justify it in terms of an Arab-Israeli conflict. If Israel responded with air power, Israeli aircraft would have to fly through Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria to get to Iraq. Hussein believed that those countries could not risk appearing to aid Israel against an Arab brother. The use of Scuds may also have been an attempt to lure the coalition into an early ground campaign, so that Iraqi prepared defenses could be used before air power demolished them. The GWAPS further notes that Coalition leaders considered a ground offensive in western Iraq to deny Hussein the territory to use to launch against Israel.
Hussein's emphasis on Scuds during the Desert Shield build up may have been designed to deter Coalition military action by creating Coalition fears of extremely bloody operations. Several Scud test flights seemed to underline this idea, while demonstrating Iraq's resolve to use the weapons when war came. The three flights were meant to exhibit the Coalition's difficulty in detecting launches, the fact that the missiles functioned and Saddam would use them, and, due to their orientation, the intent to draw Israel into the war. Saddam also made references to Iraq's chemical and biological weapons, and threatened to use them against any country that let Western troops stage in their borders. In actuality, he targeted only Bahrain and Qatar, and did so with Scuds containing conventional warheads. Qatar received only some debris from one of the launches but nothing more serious.
Although Saddam Hussein may have believed the Scuds were unstoppable, devastatingly effective, and able to cause such public hysteria that the Coalition would disintegrate and agree to peace on his terms. The Scud attacks were also symbolic. Despite their limited damage, the Scuds demonstrated his ability to go on the offensive, the vulnerability of the Israeli and Saudi populations, and his attempt to refocus the war as an Arab-Israeli confrontation. Nonetheless, Saddam refused to employ chemical or biological weapons, believing that the retaliation resulting from such Scuds would more than offset the advantages gained in their use. He feared the retaliation more than the loss of any chemical capability due to coalition air strikes.
Why did Hussein refuse to use chemicals? Besides possible technical limitations, there have been two other reasons forwarded. First, Israel had made veiled threats about its response to a chemical attack. Such threats might have caused Saddam to believe that the Israelis could use nuclear weapons against him. Second, President Bush had hinted if chemical weapons were used, he would widen the war aims to include the removal of Saddam from power. McGeorge Bundy points out that President Bush fairly clearly threatened a nuclear response to Iraqi chemical attacks in his 5 January 1991 letter to Hussein. On the other hand, Saddam had used the Al-Husayn against Iran to stop artillery and rocket attacks on civilians. He had fired his missiles at Iranian cities until Iran agreed to cease all attacks on Iraqi cities. Since the attacks had seemingly worked against Iran, Saddam may have thought that they could produce a halt to the coalition air campaign as well.
Saddam Hussein perhaps put too much faith in his missiles and the notion that the US could not sustain high casualties. His overall strategy may have been deterrence by emphasizing the Scud's destructive potential. If that deterrence failed, the Scuds would inflict very painful blows. "The Iraqi strategy," Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh surmise,
was based on deterring and if necessary rebuffing the central thrust of the enemy campaign, by exacerbating the prospective war's stresses and strains on the political cohesion of the coalition while absorbing the enemy air assault. There was no obvious strategy for war termination other than inflicting such discomfort that the coalition would develop an interest in a cease-fire on terms other than the full implementation of all UN resolutions.
Finally, Saddam may have desired a political, or "moral" victory of sorts in the midst of a military defeat, similar to Egyptian President Gamal Abdal Nasser during the 1956 war against the British, French, and Israelis. Perhaps he achieved a measure of success on that score. When his first Scud hit Tel Aviv, the Egyptians and Syrians in Saudi Arabia cheered.
Yet despite the operational difficulties, the Scud Hunt -- in combination with Patriot missiles -- managed to keep Israel out of the war.
OBSERVATION AND IMPLICATIONS
The Scud missiles were more effective as strategic weapons rather than operational or tactical vehicles. Saddam Hussein used Scuds to try and widen the war, weaken the Coalition, and change the war's outcome. His efforts failed, but just barely. Many troubling questions remain in regards to the way in which Saddam employed his missile force.
The coalition was surprised by the mobile Scuds' impact on the conflict. Scud-B CEP was approximately 1,000 meters, while that of the al Husayn was 2,000 meters. If Scud accuracy had been slightly better (resulting in a reduced CEP), their military and political impact might have dramatically increased. As it was, a Scud nearly hit the USS Tarawa.
Unfortunately, the U.S. Central Command, appreciating the limited military utility of the missiles, appears to have totally underestimated their political utility. The missiles gave Iraq an offensive capability that it otherwise lacked. As a result, it was possible for Baghdad to strike Israeli targets in an effort to involve Israel in the war. If the missiles had caused larger numbers of casualties, it is possible that the Israelis may have felt impelled to retaliate, thus widening the war and complicating the coalition's efforts. As it happens, the missiles caused few casualties. The arrival of the Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries changed the picture substantially, but the danger never went away completely.
Mobile TELs proved elusive and survivable. Fixed targets, however, were vulnerable. The technological race appears to be between the defender's ability to locate and destroy mobile missiles and the attacker's ability to decrease CEPs to airfield boundary size. Hussein's violation of the principles of concentration and objective may not be counted on again. Had he launched 14 missiles simultaneously on Daharan, the potential to inflict significant damage on coalition air operations was great. Improving Scud technology will heighten the missile's ability to deny an enemy command of the air. Should North Korea, for example, in some future war concentrate its Scuds (which are more accurate than those of Saddam Hussein) on Kunsan or Osan air bases, the impact on air operations would likely be tremendous. The disruptive effect of taking cover alone would significantly reduce the tempo of air operations.
Iraq continued to fire Scuds until the last day of the war. Its most devastating strike took place only hours before the war ended. What if that strike had been nuclear? Aside from the civilian loss, the impact on the Coalition's air effort would have been massive. What the Iraqis accomplished with conventional Scuds, with limited accuracy, does not augur well for air forces in the future.
Although Saddam's Scuds failed to achieve his objective of drawing Israel into the war and destroying the coalition, coalition air power failed to destroy the Scud threat. The problems of finding mobile targets with air power may prove very difficult to overcome. First, the prevailing regional weather and open, flat terrain in Iraq actually favored the hunters. Continual overcast and rugged terrain, such as might be encountered in North Korea, would be even more challenging for the Scud hunters. Second, even a slight increase in the number of TELs and MELs would probably require an exponential increase in air power to suppress, much less destroy, all of the launchers. Third, air forces of the future will be smaller, and a higher percentage of sorties for Scud hunting is likely to have a debilitating impact on an air force unless there is a revolutionary breakthrough in technology to locate TELs.
Moreover, a UN inspection team discovered Iraqi chemical weapon warheads for Scuds after the war -- indicating a Coalition intelligence gap. Because Iraq did not use ballistic missiles to deliver chemicals in the war with Iran, some planners assumed that fuzing problems prevented them from doing it at all. Assuming that an enemy cannot accomplish a technologically complex task is a dangerous proposition when considering the highly volatile mixture of Third World nations, Scuds, and warheads of enormous destructive potential.
The Coalition kept Israel out of the war, and, because of the magnitude of the Coalition air effort, the diversion of aircraft had minimal impact on the ability to achieve Coalition objectives. In the next conflict, a "downsized" US Air Force may be incapable of achieving similar results, and the inability to do so may have catastrophic consequences.
Chapter 4: peripeteia
Changes to the Problem
"The whole of the next war was there."
Colonel Peter Beasley, USSBS
Fifty years have passed since the Germans first used the V-1 and V-2 against the Allies. Three have passed since the Iraqis launched Scuds in the Persian Gulf War. The inaccuracies of these missiles did not detract from their strategic utility. Germany and Iraq both attacked strategic targets -- cities -- in the enemy's rear areas. In both cases, had less than cool heads prevailed, the Germans and Iraqis might have achieved their objectives. In the case of Germany, a second invasion at Pas de Calais was urged by Lord Morrison. In the case of Iraq, the Israeli government's restraint overcame a storm of criticism from within the government itself, the Israeli press, and a significant portion of the Israeli population.
The inaccurate V-1s, V-2s and Scuds were much less effective in attacking military targets directly. Even so, the occasional "lucky" hit on the Air Ministry in London and the barracks in Dhahran demonstrated the possible effects of a well-placed missile. Air power was used in both cases to destroy the missiles as part of a strategic air campaign, to satisfy governments and populations that something was being done. In both cases, air power had limited effects on launch rates. On the other hand, the biggest threat these missiles posed to air power was indirect -- a diversion of effort from the main tasks. US air forces may not be as fortunate in the future. Third world countries are acquiring the cruise and ballistic missiles capable of directly assailing airfields that have previously been considered air power sanctuaries.
Significant improvements in Third World missile capabilities are evident in two areas: refinements to the missiles themselves and enhancements in the command structures' ability to wield them effectively against enemy military forces. Third world cruise missiles and ballistic missiles will continue to be a problem for US air power, and their capabilities are growing.
One need only consider the uses of tactical ballistic missiles in the last 21 years to see how important they are becoming to Third World countries and regional powers. Egypt launched several hundred Scud-B and Frog 7 ballistic missiles at Israeli command posts in the Sinai during the opening hours of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The attacks aimed to disrupt Israeli command and control. While few of the missiles struck their exact targets, their effect was almost as good as destroying a command post. One commander could not fly to his command post by helicopter because of the intermittent Scud and Frog attacks. He remained out of his headquarters during the key hours when the Egyptians crossed the Suez Canal and the Israelis organized their defenses and prepared to retreat. (Of interest, this disruption was the exact effect the Nazis had hoped to achieve during the opening hours of the Allied invasion of the Continent, if the V-1s and V-2s had been ready.) As discussed, Iran and Iraq fired over 500 Scuds apiece at one another. Libya fired two Scuds at a US Coast Guard base on the Italian island Lampedusa in 1986 after the El Dorado Canyon raid on Tripoli. Both missiles fell harmlessly into the Mediterranean Sea. Libya President Muammar Qaddafi said if he had possessed a missile that could have reached New York he would have used it. The Afghani government fired over 1,000 Scuds at the Mujahedin since the Soviets removed their troops in 1988. Iraq fired only 88 Scuds during Desert Storm, for whatever reasons, but they still caused tremendous concern for the Coalition.
Alternate missions for ballistic missiles include: symbolic strikes, deterring enemy attacks, spoiling an enemy victory, wrecking his will, achieving surprise, deep strike interdiction, and substituting for the lack of an air force. Probable targets might include cities, large military bases, fixed troop staging areas, surface-to-air missile sites (SAMs), industrial facilities, and oil refineries. One lucrative target mentioned in some literature is the Diego Garcia preposition area. Since Desert Storm, Syria has acquired more Scuds from North Korea because of the missile's survivability and strategic effectiveness in disrupting Coalition air power strategy during the Gulf War. Syria's missiles tend to compensate for loss of its former superpower patron, the Soviet Union. Syria is acquiring cruise missiles also, both for conventional and unconventional warheads. It would likely use recently acquired SS-21s to hit Israeli rear areas, and probably air bases.
Cruise missiles have been used in fewer numbers than ballistic missiles, but three instances demonstrate their potential power. In the Falklands in 1982, Argentine navy pilots flying two Super Etendard aircraft fired four French-made AM-39 Exocet anti-ship missiles. They sank two British ships, the HMS Sheffield and the Atlantic Conveyor. Another Exocet, fired from a modified ship launcher installed on a flat-bed truck, hit the HMS Glamorgan and put it out of action for the better part of two days. Iraqi Super Etendards attacked and hit the USS Stark in 1986, killing 32 sailors and seriously damaging the ship. While these Exocets were not land-attack cruise missiles, they could easily be modified into them, as the French are currently doing. The US Tomahawk cruise missiles in Desert Storm hit numerous targets with great accuracy after flying hundreds of miles. The powerful effects of cruise missiles are not lost on Third World governments, and many are beginning to procure them in numbers. The result is an evolving dual threat -- many Third World countries may eventually have tactical ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. The combination presents a unique -- and serious -- threat to air power.
Third World nations are actively working to improve tactical ballistic missile and cruise missile accuracies. First, they are obtaining newer, modern, more accurate missiles. The SS-21 "Scarab" is a prime example, and the Russians are aggressively marketing it in the Middle East. The missile carries a 1,000 pound warhead, has a normal range of 70-120km (42-72 miles), an extended range of 150km (90 miles) if the warhead is lightened, and a CEP of 160 meters. The Russians have recently upgraded the SS-21, giving it an improved CEP of 15 meters (45 feet). The missile uses mobile TELs that are slightly smaller than the Scud BAZ-543. Trained crews can stop, erect, and launch the SS-21 in 17 minutes. The crew can then reload the TEL and fire again in 40 minutes. Since the 9P129-1 TEL vehicle has a built-in geodetic survey system, so presurveyed launch sites are required. The nose has a radar scene-matching terminally guided warhead, a preprogrammed inertial navigation platform, and a laser altimeter. Alternate guidance packages offered by the Russians include an anti-radar -- specifically, an anti-Patriot -- seeker, and a variety of submunitions. Syria reportedly possesses six 9P129 TELs and 18 SS-21 missiles. Solid rocket fuel will cut lengthy preparation times and thereby significantly reduce launch times of mobile missiles. Warning cues and intercept times will correspondingly decrease, and as they do, the threat to air bases will substantially increase.
Equally ominous are improvements to current operational missiles. One obvious way to eliminate Scud inaccuracies is to change the type of warhead from conventional to chemical, biological, or nuclear. Iran is believed to have four nuclear warheads, acquired form the former Muslim republics of the Soviet Union. Two of them are 40 kiloton Scud C warheads. Secretary of Defense William Perry believes North Korea possesses two nuclear warheads and will attempt to build 12 per year. Iran and North Korea are working together on the Nodong-1 Scud D, which will have a range of 1,000km (600 miles) and possess chemical or nuclear capability. Iran has also obtained 8 supersonic cruise missiles from Ukraine.
The proliferation of cruise missiles allows Third World countries a cheap, relatively accurate, powerful weapon to strike at an enemy target hundreds of miles away. There is currently a shift, or "crossover," occurring place in the buying market, with cruise missiles replacing ballistic missiles because the cruise weapons are less complex, more accurate, and cheaper. Nonetheless, most Third World countries buying cruise missiles are not reducing or eliminating ballistic missiles from their arsenals. Instead, they are creating a dual missile capability in which cruise missiles have become a key component. Cruise missiles are less technologically complicated and demanding than tactical ballistic missiles. They are cheaper, too, and can cost less than $100,000 each, one-tenth of the typical $1,000,000 ballistic missile. The small, aircraft-like unpiloted vehicles are fairly simple, relying on unsophisticated technology. They provide minimum radar cross section, no landing gear, no weapons pylons, no (or small) intake cavities, and they are easy to cover with materials that make them stealthy.
French and Chinese cruise missile development exemplify the emerging threat they pose. The French are actively marketing their new Super Apache, an upgraded version of the Apache land attack cruise missile. The Super Apaches can fly in all weather conditions except heavy rain. Warheads and submunitions (several warheads packed onto a single missile) are optimized for moving, fixed, or hardened targets, and the wide variety of munitions can be adjusted to increase missile range. Current Super Apache maximum range is 500km (300 miles). It may be used against the entire array of targets: cities, airfields, ports, barracks, troop concentrations, armor, ships, power plants, industry, buildings, and possibly even an enemy's ballistic missile infrastructure. These cruise missiles use an inertial navigation system with Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) updates, and a GPS or millimeter radar terminal guidance, which gives them a CEP accurate enough to hit buildings. The Chinese have actively marketed cruise missiles as well, and expect to dominate the "low end" of the market with Russian technical assistance. Chinese cruise missiles are large, but they are accurate, and will have stealthy features by the year 2000, including a reduced infrared heat signature and radar absorbing materials.
French, Russian, Swedish and Chinese companies are converting deployed antiship missiles into land attack cruise missiles. Sweden, for example, is modifying its RBS-15 as an autonomous standoff missile (ASOW) to compete with the US Standoff Land Attack Missile (SLAM), which is derived from the antiship Harpoon. The French are modifying the AM-39 Exocet (30 mile range) into a ground attack missile. At least 120 countries worldwide have the Exocet in their inventories and all could be candidates for such an upgrade. The host of Exocet users includes such potentially volatile states as Egypt, Pakistan, Singapore, South Africa, Libya, India, Iraq, Argentina, and Peru. Similarly, the Russian's KH-35SE "Harpoonski" antiship cruise missile (so named because of its similar performance with the US Harpoon), with a 150 mile range, is being modified into a tactical land attack missile with a 300-360 mile range, and uses an inertial navigation system (INS), terrain correlation, and Glonass (the Russian GPS equivalent) to obtain a 20-30 yard CEP. Pentagon officials expect Syria and China to have stealthy cruise missiles by 2000-2010, while other probable countries include France, Israel, Japan, South Africa, North Korea, Taiwan, Sweden, and Germany. Most, if not all, of these nations will work with other countries to offset research and development costs, so the list may be considerably longer.
During Desert Storm, one Scud fired at Saudi port Jubail on 16 February 1991 hit only 300 meters from a large truck park and a pier where eight ships were offloading military supplies. The ships contained ammunition and all of the provisions for the US Marine Corps air units, while the pier itself held five thousand tons of artillery ammunition. Modest improvements in missile accuracies will almost assuredly mean these targets stand a much higher chance of being hit in the next war. The INS on the Scud could be replaced or augmented by a GPS receiver with minimal re-engineering, which could significantly increase accuracy. Scuds could then be used against targets that are more compatible with their warheads. The number of viable targets increases dramatically, forcing an enemy to deploy and disperse his forces, and reducing his operational flexibility. Fewer weapons would be required to destroy a given target or achieve the desired effect. Precision accuracy to within 5 meters is available through commercial equipment. GPS guided bombs have hit within 15 meters of their targets without terminally-guided warheads, and GPS installed in ballistic and cruise missiles could exhibit similar accuracies. The US GPS and Russian Glonass are both being heavily exploited by friendly nations, neutrals and regional enemies. GPS has become a valuable staple to the civilian and commercial sector, causing the Department of Transportation to take control of it from the Department of Defense. As the US and international business communities become more and more reliant on GPS, it will be less likely that the system will be denied to civilian users in a war not waged for national survival. Therefore, Third World nations might reasonably expect to have at least a degraded GPS capability.
GPS is one reason cruise missiles are becoming the "weapon of choice" over the ballistic missile. In less than five years GPS guidance receivers will be integrated into cruise missiles for less than $2,000 each. GPS can easily be tied directly into the inertial navigation system of both cruise and ballistic missiles. It is also simple and inexpensive to obtain, as purchasing it does not require a US government approved contract or coordination with America's foreign military sales office. Thus, an entire spectrum of GPS equipment is available on the international commercial market. Some of the equipment is so precise it allows airliners to autoland, a capability that translates directly into an ability for cruise missiles to hit a small target.
The US military still controls GPS access. When the GPS satellites' "selective availability" feature is activated, it produces a degrading signal error that reduces positional accuracy for civilian users from 30 to 100 meters. Only the military users have accuracy beyond 16 meters. The US military still retains control over selective availability, and has decided to leave it on since Desert Storm -- meaning civilian and commercial users get the degraded information. As a result, a technique known as Differential GPS (DGPS) is flourishing.
DGPS provides location information that is accurate to five meters or less. The system calculates the GPS error from a known position, and then generates a correction signal. The Norwegian DGPS system is typical of the ones being constructed in several countries, including the US, for civil purposes. It consists of a network of ground based stations called a satellite based reference system. This system determines the GPS error, and then transmits a correction signal on public AM and FM radio frequencies sidebands. It may eventually replace current maritime and aviation navigation aids. Norway, Japan, and Sweden are developing DGPS systems that provide 5-meter accuracy for mobile receivers and "centimeter" accuracy for stationary receivers. NASA and the FAA have used the DGPS to demonstrate auto-landing capabilities with a Boeing 737. The accuracies
