主题：美军数字化部队在伊拉克的挫折 -- georgenine
How Technology Failed in Iraq
原文
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技术如何在伊拉克中失败
伊拉克战争应该是新的美国军队一个preview: 一个轻便, 快速,对感应器,通信网络和重装甲,兵力同样依赖的部队。 但是一旦战斗开始,技术远达不到期待的水准。
By David Talbot
November 2004
在 2003 年四月 3 日的早晨数小时内被展开的伊拉克战争的最大逆袭,在一条主要幼发拉底河的附近以桥连接大约巴格达的西南 30 公里,密码命名的Objective Peach。战争是战车和其他的装甲车之间的非常传统的打架- 几乎对战争战斗的较早时代的重返现象, 尤其当看对抗后来的叛乱血腥大混乱的时候。 它的规模使它成为单一最大的测试五角大厦的开始尝试约会把军队转变成比较小的，比较聪明,感应器-受扶养者,网络了力量。
理论上，伊拉克攻击的大小应该清楚地已经是很好地预先。 美国籍的军队被空前技术配置支援了。在战争的时候,数以百计飞机-而且人造宇宙站装的运动感应器,加热发现者，而且图像和沟通偷听者在伊拉克上面盘旋。 四个装甲部队协调了他们的行动当做从不以前。 美国籍的指挥官在卡塔尔和科威特享受第一个波湾战争的 42 次他们的类似版本能得到的带宽。 高带宽联编在领域中被为智力单位建立。 一个新的追踪车辆的系统作记号了主要美国的位置对抗单位而且甚至允许了本文电子邮件到达前线箱。这数传火力使多数信服在五角大厦战争以一个力量可能是打仗远比那一个小的它期望遇到。
然而在客观的桃子， LT在线末端。 关口。 欧内斯特 " 岩石 " Marcone,有第三步兵区分的第 69 盔甲的一个营指挥官,几乎缺乏关于伊拉克力量或位置的资讯。 " 我会争论，我是我的较高总部的收集情报装置 ",Marcone 说。 他的单位向巴格达向北方在美国籍的陆军最顶端结局刺; 舰队朝平行的前面进攻。客观的桃子提供了直接的达成方式萨达姆国际机场。 ( 自从～以后再度命名的巴格达国际机场) "紧邻秋天的巴格达,"Marcone" 说, 那一座桥是在戏院中最重要地带的块，而且没有人能告诉我什么正在防护它。 不多少军队, 什么单位,储于槽中,任何事。 有到达我的零数据。 某人可能已经知道在我上面，但是数据在地面上没有到达我。"Marcone's 的男人在达成桥的方式上被重复地埋伏突袭。 但是在 Marcone 在四月 2 日轮流桥之后，智力赤字的刻度是清楚的。
就如夜晚跌落的,情形变胁迫。 Marcone 在桥的远边上的一个防御的位置中布署他的营而且陷于泥沼等候抵达-??落增强。 沟通截取确实联络他: 单一伊拉克队正在移动来自飞机场的南方。 但是 Marcone 说没有感应器 , 没有网络,传达了比较危险的真实,在早上 3:00 四月 3 日面对了他。 他面对不队除了三之外:在 25 和 30个战车之间, 加号 70 到 80个披甲的人员运送者，火炮, 和在 5,000 和 10,000 Iraqi 来自三个方向的军人过来之间。 火力和军人的这块攻击了一个 1,000个被只有 30个战车和 14个布拉德利战斗车辆支援的军人美军。 伊拉克配置只是的类型传统的,使最容易发现的力量集合了。 然而 " 我们什么也不得到直到他们猛然地撞进我们", Marcone 取消。
目的战争几十个较小的相会桃子不是不合型。 在整个的伊拉克活动上的一项不久就要来又相当机密的报告部分, 在圣莫尼卡，加州的准备，脑库田边之下而且分享有技术检讨的摘要,在这一个战争中确定那,一个主要节从美国智力网络跌下来: 前线群集。 " 我们在伊拉克大体上揭示的是, 那里似乎是某事，我提到到当‘数传分开,'"沃尔特梨酒说, 一个资深的研究员在田边的阿灵顿，伏-安培，办公室和一队前军队在越南向官员作信号。 "在区分水平或上方，战争空间的视野对他们的需要是适当的。 他们正在从感应器变得好饲养,"梨酒说。 但是在前线军队指挥官之中像 Marcone- 连同美国籍的海军陆战队的他类似版本-"每个人都说了相同的事物。 资讯科技是一个全世界的意见: ‘我们有了可怕的 situational 觉察,'"他增加。 相同的判决在第一个波湾战争的地面战争之后被递送，但是专家已经希望被用于 2003 冲突的比较强健的技术会解决问题。
对网络成功的伊拉克战争的多数五角大厦点。 在持续从三月起的使人眩目的沙暴时候 25 到 28,2003,一个美国雷达飞机发现了一个在美国籍的军队附近调遣的伊拉克共和卫队单位。 轰炸机搬进被贫穷能见攻击使用人造宇宙站指导的不矫揉造作的炸弹。 而且追踪车辆的系统 (知道如蓝色的力量追踪者) 成功地确定指挥官知道友好单位的位置。全部地, 指令总部在卡塔尔和科威特游戏 " 真实地一个非常令人印象深刻的数传连接性 " 那 " 有了我们想要的将来网络战斗的许多特性",双桅横帆船。罗勃特将军圆锥体,然后学习的操作分析的五角大厦的关节中心的指导者和课, 去年说在五角大厦简报。
然而连接性在卡塔尔被伊拉克沙漠的一个数据缺乏相配了。 资讯科技是所有的土地军队遭受的一个问题。 一些单位超过了高带宽沟通接替者的范围。 下载轮流数小时。 软件锁在上面。 而且敌人有时难以首先见到。如舰队的自己 " 课学习 " 报告放它 ", 那 [第一个舰队]区分藉由偶遇他们发现敌人, 很多当军队自从～后战斗的开始已经做。"在客观的桃子，约翰戈登描述军队的战争,在田边以及一个隐退的军官另外的资深研究员,这样放它: "那是它在 1944 年被做的方式。”
数据是盔甲
军事的有知识者打电话给他们 "军事的事件革命。"每几十年, 一种新的技术或一则新的 " 教义 ", 使用军事的专门术语,改变战争的性质。 选出技术, 像火药或核武器, 马刺一些革命。 新的教义,像拿破仑一世的职员组织或纳粹党人闪击战手法,驾驶其它。 而且一些是许多同时的进步结果, 像第一次世界大战的飞机，化学武器和机枪- 达成了残杀的新比率。
最新的革命为五角大厦计划者所知当做 " 力量变形。"主意是那辆机器人的飞机和土地的车辆, 授与权力被一曾经扩张测知的范围,对准,图像,而且沟通能力 (新的技术), 会支援网络的军人 (一则新的教义) 的队。 依照它的最易膨胀的定义, 力量变形预计在 21 世纪内解决 " 不对称战斗 " 的问题,在美军不是被传统军队直接地面对但是宁可一定压制叛乱,破坏恐怖份子细胞, 或镇静地方的不安定的地方。 在其他的事物之中,更敏捷的, 网络军队可以雇用手法喜欢群集-精确的, 立刻协调了来自许多方向的罢工。
技术驱动力变形不能采信复杂。资讯科技将会至少轮流计算机密码的三千一百万条线跑某事叫做未来战斗系统，五角大厦的变形努力的中心装饰品。 一个军队- 奔跑的计画期望值超过一千亿元,它有一组新有人操纵的和无人操纵的机器,全部以最近的感应器装载, 漫游空气和地面。 软件将会处理感应器数据,监定朋友和仇敌，固定的目标 , 议题注意,同等的人物行动 , 和引导者决定。 新类型的无线沟通装置控制的藉着仍然较多的软件而且经由人造宇宙站接替沟通-将会允许在单位之间的天衣无缝的联编。 现在， 23家合伙人公司 , 和转包商的他们自己排的多数,正在建筑系统; 芝加哥的波音和科学申请国际的圣地牙哥与一起绑他们而且 2014 之前飞机一个 " 系统的系统 " 一起收费.
在这个壮观的视觉中，数据不是只力量。 资讯科技也是盔甲。战车秤重 64 公吨可能主要地被逐步淘汰, 轻轻的给路装甲车-起先，新的 17 公吨的 Stryker 群集运送者-如果需要是，那能避免剧烈的敌人火。 这些点火者车辆可以在载货机里骑到战争; 今天，传送大量的最重战车经由土地和海洋需要数个星期的传送。 "在军事的变形后面的基本观念是信息科技允许你以数据代替块。如果你进入那之内买,整个的力量结构改变,"斯图亚特詹森说, 在华盛顿特区的国立防卫大学的技术和国家安全政策的中心一位研究教授。 " 但是视觉所有的这完全地依赖信息科技和网络。 如果相等的那一个部份压倒, 你已经是小的, 更易受伤害的比较不有能力战争月台。”
伊拉克战争表现多少有点像一个中点- 和一早的求证地面 - 在移动中向这网络了力量。 美国攻势确实包括旧的重盔甲，而且它没有游戏所有的电子音乐-被力量变形的促进者想像的身份低微之老妇。 但是它确实假定那一座人造宇宙站-而且飞机装的感应器会支援在地面上的战斗单位。 战争的脊椎是来自科威特的土地侵犯。 在距离巴格达 500 公里处最后，约 10,000辆车辆和 300,000个联盟军队在科威特边缘横过沙的 berm 发隆隆声。荒废的公路以 Abrams 箱，对抗车辆，披甲的人员运送者，战车 haulers ， Humvees 的布拉德利的专栏爬行, 和当然,加燃料油轮熄灭舰队九的- 百万- 公升的燃料每日的要求。
一些沟通联编被设计和彼此和指挥官连接这些车辆。 首先，而且最成功地，至少 2,500辆车辆经由蓝色的力量追踪者被追踪: 每辆车辆广播它的全球定位系统坐标和一个身份证密码。 这瘦的但是数据的紧要关头水流基本上是一个 OnStar 的军事版本。 指挥官在卡塔尔见到它的在一个大的血浆荧屏上被显示的内容。 Marcone,像在领域中的一些其他的指挥官,也有了接触它,在侵犯之前的他战车中谢谢到一个最后的安装。
" 一个紧要关头的易受伤 "
一经侵犯开始,崩溃很快地变成基准。 对于许多数据的运动-像是人造宇宙站或侦察机图像-在高阶层的指挥官和单位之间在领域中，军队为欧洲境内的战争本来雇用了一个以微波为基础的沟通系统想像。 这一个系统仰赖被前进护送的特定单位携带的天线接替者。 批评性地,这些接替者-有时呼叫了 " 军队的文学硕士铃 "-需要是静止动作。 单位必须是在一个视线里面通过数据给彼此。 但是在练习中，护送正在移动太斋戒, 和太远的, 为系统工作。 当他们开始接受在敌人位置上的智力数据的时候，乖张地，在三情况，美国车辆实际上被攻击。" 许多家伙说,对这粪充足的‘,' 而且把它关掉 ",说梨酒, 轻弹他的手腕好像在一个收音机外按。 " ‘我们不能负担等候这。’”
三分之一步兵区分队智力官员报告田边，除了追踪系统的全球定位测量宇宙站以外当他的单位移动的时候,它的沟通联编会失败。 单位会旅行数个小时,停止,在天线上面升起,在智力网络之上向后地伐木, 而且尝试下载它可以下载的任何数据。 但是带宽和软件问题导致它的计算机系统锁在每次达十到 12 小时上面, 翻译它无用的。
同时，指挥官在卡塔尔和科威特有了他们自己的问题。 他们的连接性很好-太好的。 他们收到如此的来自一些他们的空运感应器的很多数据以致于他们无法全部处理它; 在一些点，他们必须停止接受饲养。 当他们试着送数据给前面的时候,当然，他们发现视线事实上被无效的微波- 接替者的系统。在 Marcone's 上面的指令水平- 队而且甚至区分消除-如此的问题是到处存在的。 "我们已经建造通过肖像，等等的网络,没有支援我们。 资讯科技就是没有工作,"关口说。 彼得海湾,然后区分的行动官员 , 官员在四月 2 和 3 日的夜晚是 Marcone's 的营南方。 " 和 V 军团的连结 [军队指令]对区分，多数的时间,没有工作, 通过一个某事的数位影像。”
有时，智力被通过沿着口述地,在 FM 收音机之上。 但是在其他的时代车辆甚至超过了他们的收音机连接。 这左边仅仅一沟通的方法: 电子邮件。 (除了追踪车辆，蓝色的力量追踪者之外，略微古雅地，使唯本文电子邮件能够了)。 有时，电子邮件系统作为发行对以别的方式由于连络的单位基本的次序。 " 资讯科技同样地被想要补充物，但是它结束如控制的主要方法 ", 欧恩棚，麻州理工学院的安全研究计画的副主任说。 " 单位确实跑得更快沟通的他们干线而且以彼此和比较高的指令网络。 但是经由允许了高的指令见到单位在哪里的人造宇宙站沟通有数据的这个非常瘦管。”
网络对在分开的前面上向前地推动的舰队是不更好的。 的确，舰队的课学习的报告说第一的海产区分指挥官不能够当做他们下载决定性的新天线侦察相片接近城市和城镇。 高阶层的指挥官有了他们，但是移动他们进入领域之内的系统故障。 这产生 " 一个紧要关头的易受伤在战斗行动期间",报告说。" 有有带宽，开发和引起了这事态的程序议题，但是底线不 [接触新鲜的间谍照相]在整个的战争期间。”
幸运地对于美军，他们在伊拉克战争期间面对了小的抵抗。 伊拉克人没发射空气攻击或疾风导弹。离开赤足的被使制服和长靴流出而且走的伊拉克军人 , 爱好学问地避免眼睛和美国人连络。 当他们做了打架的时候,他们用了次等的武器和车辆。的确，向前地赛跑的美国单位会偶遇遇见诺言的僵硬-对于一个惊奇的冲突敌人军队的专门术语。 但是如此的会议会结束得很快。 " 他们 [ 美军]会在这些会议中成功诺言",棚说。 "但是我们离总知识的视觉很远。 如果它是较多的强健对手，你能容易地见到我们如何就会支付大的价格了。”
问题在高的水平被承认。 然而，艺术 Cebrowski,副舰队司令和五角大厦的力量变形的办公室的指导者退休, 引证 " 存在证明 " 网络通常成功的在伊拉克。 在早先的冲突中, 战斗飞行员在起飞前的目标上被作摘要; 数小时会在目标确认和一个真实的攻击之间逝去。 在伊拉克战争中，超过一半的空中突击不需要思想的目标就开始,Cebrowski 说。 相反的，目标在飞行上被识别并且对空运的飞行员沟通。 "战斗正在太快移动; 机会太短暂。 你必须是在被网络的环境中"让它工作,Cebrowski 说。
清楚地，在土地的战争期间网络是不如成功的。 "那里确定地人们没有他们需要的数据情形。 这是非常大的操作，因此，你会期待在它里面见好者，坏者和丑陋者,"Cebrowski 承认。 但是出自重的盔甲以这些问题作为对抗定相的一个争论会是一个错误,他说。 大的战车需要不但相当多的时间和能源搬进战争而且较大的补给护航那是他们自己易受影响者攻击。 依照 Cebrowski,藉由保存很重披甲的战车你的防卫干线,"你只是在供应链上移动你的易受伤到另外的一个地方。”
在战争的阿尔发玩家
力量变形的一些防御者争论军队的问题是教义的,不是科技。 依照推论的这一条线，伊拉克战争的网络人是不完全的-因为它在旧式的指令和控制系统之上致命地被接枝。 感应器数据上涨指挥系统。 指挥官解释了它而且作出了决定。 然后他们通过了指令, 而且试着通过有关的数据,??落链。 结果: 计时延迟和个别沟通失败的扩大。
比较好的,一些发言权，那数据和决策应该水平地流动。 事实上，那是如何 2001 阿富汗境内的战争是打仗。特别- 操作军队进入数不超过二个打被漫游在马背方面的巴基斯坦边缘附近的寒冷山,根除塔里班军队而且寻求伊斯兰盖达组织领袖的军人 " 一个队 " 之内组织。 队和个体全部与彼此相连。 没有人人在兵学的指令方面。
但是尽管缺乏指挥作出主要决定,网络的军人每一个这些队有了一个主要节，一只动物曾经限制到企业的资讯科技部门: 阿尔发玩家,处理了在他的队和其余者之间的数据流程。美国籍的特种部队也维护一个兵学的网页,对照所有的数据被收集的队。 而且这页在领域中被一个网络管理员处理了: 所有阿尔发玩家的 metageek。
页如何运行? 尸查体查和关于特种部队操作的报告在阿富汗比来自伊拉克战争的那些秘密。 在主要的特种部队操作上的一项报告,操作 Anaconda- 一种尝试在 2002 年三月环绕而且根除伊斯兰盖达组织-从国立防卫大学很快是应得的东西。 剧照,轶事正在移动离特种部队社区。 而且他们提供战斗比较 Marcone's 的箱级优势的令人吃惊不同视野。 一个帐户,不先前报告,来自约翰 Arquilla,在蒙德勒，加州的海军研究生学校的非传统的战斗一个专家。
现场在 2001 年秋天底是一个寒冷的夜晚。 在纽约市中，世贸中心毁灭仍然正在冒烟。 在巴基斯坦边缘的附近在阿富汗，一位美国籍的空军飞行员从乌兹别克斯坦在途中注意闪烁在下面的山中点燃船搬运。 怀疑闪光可能是来自向前碰撞的卡车罩上的前灯反映,他收音机了对网络管理员的他观察。 网络管理员对在区域中的特种部队接替了横过可接近的一个安心的网络信息。 一个队答复了它在位置的附近而且会调查。 是否任何的轰炸机是在范围中，队识别了一个卡车的护送携带塔里班斗士而且上收音机问。 一个美国籍的海军飞机走开不是远的。 在数分钟内，飞机轰炸了前面和护送的后面,把逃亡的可能性封锁起来。 不是长在一个武装直升飞机到达而且破坏了被损伤的塔里班专栏之后，。
插曲, 如 Arquilla ，可能的表演所详述。 "那正在网络。 那是军事的变形就在那里,"Arquilla 说。 "一些问题在伊拉克戒除一种尝试轮流由先进信息科技提供的数据和尝试的这一个小瀑布而且挤它完成的阶层结构的现有火炉的烟囱, 然而在我们有了较多的液体方式的阿富汗。 这在数分钟之前是战争，而且网络技术允许我们在数分钟之前以成功的很棒可能性宣战。"在这情况, 服务在战场上的成员收集了数据以被分享，数据,作出了决定, 而且命令了罢工。
网络和暴徒比较?
也许五角大厦乐观主义者是正确的。也许蓝色力量追踪者的成功,特种部队在塔里班专栏上袭击, 而且空军操作在伊拉克正确地预言完整的数传战争的变形。 但是对许多观察者, 在主要的土地战斗之间的沟通分裂单位在伊拉克一点也不一个非常有希望的告示。 " 如果有军事的事件这‘革命,' 而且如果这革命以更快对网络感应器和程序允许你数据并且很快地以可消化的形式传布出它的技术为基础,我们仍然正在仅仅擦它的表面",说麻州理工学院的棚。 "如果你在那一个方向中审查许多第一个努力的成份表现,资讯科技是相当缝补的表现。" 然后有恐怖和叛乱的问题。 即使五角大厦转换战争战斗,”战争”那个字的意义是它本身遭受变形。 较多的美国人比后来已经在阿富汗和伊拉克死在九月 11 日攻击中死。 而且伊拉克叛乱向伊拉克的意义军事的胜利挑战。 未来战争将会在不遵从旧的规则低科技狂热的都市地域中被打仗。 他们不可能为美国布署他们自己如方便的目标发现而且破坏。的确，在美国籍的军人之中的死亡领导因素今天是在伊拉克即席而作炸弹对准经过的车辆 , 像是 Humvees 。
Arquilla 说，一些网络技术能是- 而且是存在带来忍受对抗伊拉克叛乱。 真实的策略是秘密的，不过一些一般的手法被知道。 可疑的车辆能被追踪, 和和其他的人和位置的他们关联坚决的。 小的雄蜂飞机也能递送。 感应器能藉由测量子弹的听觉签字帮助找一个狙击兵。 而且挤装置能有时阻塞路傍炸弹的收音机- 受约束爆炸。 但是来自人类的旧式顶端可能打出王牌技术。 "我们的网络不真的有敏感赶上非传统的敌人。 所有的网络做在附近是移动数据,但是数据本身是胜利的关键,"Loren 汤普生，在阿灵顿，伏-安培操作勒克星敦学会的官员 , 一个脑库的领袖说。 "当你正在处理如此谦逊的威胁时候，资讯科技稍微是困难源自来自网络的战争对抗的意义深长的课。”
来自伊拉克的尸查体查的翻滚和阿富汗战争说许多故事。 但是一件事物清楚地: Marcone 从不知道正在客观的桃子受到的影响东西。先进的感应器和沟通- 未来的元素网络了为战斗而设计的困难, 非传统的战争失败的告诉他关于一个非常传统的攻击集合。"资讯科技是隐藏他们的意图或他们的运动我伊拉克共和卫队什么也没做特别的信念。 他们攻击了 N 字使用对第二次世界大战的苏联籍的军队感到更可认识的手法 masse,"Marcone 说。
而且在空间 (一个主要幼发拉底河桥) 和时间 (天美军的早晨取得了巴格达飞机场) 中在一个关键点如此， Marcone 只学习了他当开始正在面对的。 因为美国群集，在四月 3 日的早- 早晨数小时中，它是旧式的训练，较好的火力，上好的仪器，空气支持和导致倾向一方的胜利敌人无能力。" 当太阳发生今天早晨的时候, 人类的生活费用的视力被支付那攻击的费用伊拉克人 , 和烧车辆, 是某事我将会无法忘记",Marcone 说。 "资讯科技是可怕的视力。 你沿通往巴格达的道路向下看,对于一里，里和一半，你无法不需要在一个身体部份上走就走。”
然而只有八个美国籍的军人受伤, 没有人严重地,在桥战斗期间。 然而美国箱可以抵抗来自伊拉克贝壳的一个直接的击中, 当被美国贝壳打的时候伊拉克车辆会 " 像一个圆筒烟火上升 ",Marcone 说。 在田边的一个办公室中坐下,戈登坦率地放事物: "如果在专栏的前面有 Strykers 的有军队 , 许多家伙被杀。"在客观的桃子, 什么保护 Marcone's 的男人不是数据盔甲 , 但是盔甲本身。
大卫塔尔特犬是 TR 资深的编者。
本帖一共被 1 帖 引用 (帖内工具实现)
Note: the original article is from MIT Enterprise Technology Review that only opens to subscribers; even I cannot access it now.
But I find the article from a forum: 外链出处
How Technology Failed in Iraq
« on: October 27, 2004, 12:04:57 »
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Sorry for the long post. This article was emailed to me and I thought it worthy of posting. It is an interesting article that questions the balance of "Sense" capability versus your capability to "Act".
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The Iraq War was supposed to be a preview of the new U.S. military: a light, swift force that relies as much on sensors and communications networks as on heavy armour and huge numbers. But once the shooting started, technology fell far short of expectations.
By David Talbot
November 2004
The largest counterattack of the Iraq War unfolded in the early-morning hours of April 3, 2003, near a key Euphrates River bridge about 30 kilometres southwest of Baghdad, code-named Objective Peach. The battle was a fairly conventional fight between tanks and other armoured vehicles-almost a throwback to an earlier era of war fighting, especially when viewed against the bloody chaos of the subsequent insurgency. Its scale made it the single biggest test to date of the Pentagon's initial attempts to transform the military into a smaller, smarter, sensor-dependent, networked force.
In theory, the size of the Iraqi attack should have been clear well in advance. U.S. troops were supported by unprecedented technology deployment. During the war, hundreds of aircraft- and satellite-mounted motion sensors, heat detectors, and image and communications eavesdroppers hovered above Iraq. The four armed services coordinated their actions as never before. U.S. commanders in Qatar and Kuwait enjoyed 42 times the bandwidth available to their counterparts in the first Gulf War. High-bandwidth links were set up for intelligence units in the field. A new vehicle-tracking system marked the location of key U.S. fighting units and even allowed text e-mails to reach front-line tanks. This digital firepower convinced many in the Pentagon that the war could be fought with a far smaller force than the one it expected to encounter.
Yet at Objective Peach, Lt. Col. Ernest "Rock" Marcone, a battalion commander with the 69th Armour of the Third Infantry Division, was almost devoid of information about Iraqi strength or position. "I would argue that I was the intelligence-gathering device for my higher headquarters," Marcone says. His unit was at the very tip of the U.S. Army's final lunge north toward Baghdad; the marines advanced on a parallel front. Objective Peach offered a direct approach to the Saddam International Airport (since rechristened Baghdad International Airport). "Next to the fall of Baghdad," says Marcone, "that bridge was the most important piece of terrain in the theatre, and no one can tell me what's defending it. Not how many troops, what units, what tanks, anything. There is zero information getting to me. Someone may have known above me, but the information didn't get to me on the ground." Marcone's men were ambushed repeatedly on the approach to the bridge. But the scale of the intelligence deficit was clear after Marcone took the bridge on April 2.
As night fell, the situation grew threatening. Marcone arrayed his battalion in a defensive position on the far side of the bridge and awaited the arrival of bogged-down reinforcements. One communications intercept did reach him: a single Iraqi brigade was moving south from the airport. But Marcone says no sensors, no network, conveyed the far more dangerous reality, which confronted him at 3:00 a.m. April 3. He faced not one brigade but three: between 25 and 30 tanks, plus 70 to 80 armoured personnel carriers, artillery, and between 5,000 and 10,000 Iraqi soldiers coming from three directions. This mass of firepower and soldiers attacked a U.S. force of 1,000 soldiers supported by just 30 tanks and 14 Bradley fighting vehicles. The Iraqi deployment was just the kind of conventional, massed force that's easiest to detect. Yet "We got nothing until they slammed into us," Marcone recalls.
Objective Peach was not atypical of dozens of smaller encounters in the war. Portions of a forthcoming, largely classified report on the entire Iraq campaign, under preparation by the Santa Monica, CA, think tank Rand and shared in summary with Technology Review, confirm that in this war, one key node fell off the U.S. intelligence network: the front-line troops. "What we uncovered in general in Iraq is, there appeared to be something I refer to as a 'digital divide,'" says Walter Perry, a senior researcher at Rand's Arlington, VA, office and a former army signals officer in Vietnam. "At the division level or above, the view of the battle space was adequate to their needs. They were getting good feeds from the sensors," Perry says. But among front-line army commanders like Marcone-as well as his counterparts in the U.S. Marines-"Everybody said the same thing. It was a universal comment: 'We had terrible situational awareness,'" he adds. The same verdict was delivered after the first Gulf War's ground battle, but experts had hoped the more robust technology used in the 2003 conflict would solve the problem.
The Pentagon points to the Iraq War's many networking successes. During the blinding sandstorm that lasted from March 25 to 28, 2003, a U.S. radar plane detected an Iraqi Republican Guard unit manoeuvring near U.S. troops. Bombers moved in to attack using satellite-guided bombs that were unaffected by poor visibility. And the vehicle-tracking system (known as Blue Force Tracker) successfully ensured that commanders knew the locations of friendly units. Overall, command headquarters in Qatar and Kuwait sported "truly a very impressive digital connectivity" that "had many of the characteristics of future network warfare that we want," Brig. Gen. Robert Cone, then director of the Pentagon's Joint Center for Operational Analysis and Lessons Learned, said in a Pentagon briefing last year.
Yet connectivity in Qatar was matched by a data dearth in the Iraqi desert. It was a problem all the ground forces suffered. Some units outran the range of high-bandwidth communications relays. Downloads took hours. Software locked up. And the enemy was sometimes difficult to see in the first place. As the marines' own "lessons learned" report puts it, "The [First Marine] Division found the enemy by running into them, much as forces have done since the beginning of warfare." Describing the army's battle at Objective Peach, John Gordon, another senior researcher at Rand and also a retired army officer, put it this way: "That's the way it was done in 1944."
On April 2, 2003, army lieutenant colonel Ernest "Rock" Marcone led an armoured battalion with about 1,000 U.S. troops to seize "Objective Peach" (inset), a bridge across the Euphrates River, the last natural barrier before Baghdad. That night, the battalion was surprised by the largest counterattack of the war. Sensing and communications technologies failed to warn of the attack's vast scale-between 5,000 and 10,000 Iraqi troops and about 100 tanks or other vehicles. The U.S. success in the battle was the result of superior tactics and equipment.
Military intellectuals call them "revolutions in military affairs." Every few decades, a new technology or a new "doctrine," to use the military jargon, changes the nature of war. Single technologies, like gunpowder or nuclear weapons, spur some of these revolutions. New doctrines, like Napoleonic staff organization or Nazi blitz tactics, drive others. And some are the result of many simultaneous advances, like the airplanes, chemical weapons, and machine guns of World War I-which achieved new rates of slaughter.
The newest revolution is known to Pentagon planners as "force transformation." The idea is that robotic planes and ground vehicles, empowered by an ever expanding range of sensing, targeting, imaging, and communications capabilities (new technologies), would support teams of networked soldiers (a new doctrine). According to its most expansive definition, force transformation is intended to solve the problem of "asymmetric warfare" in the 21st century, where U.S. forces are not directly confronted by conventional militaries but rather must quell insurgencies, destroy terrorist cells, or mitigate regional instability. Among other things, more nimble, networked forces could employ tactics like "swarming"-precise, coordinated strikes from many directions at once.
The technologies driving force transformation are incredibly complicated. It will take at least 31 million lines of computer code to run something called Future Combat Systems, the centerpiece of the Pentagon's transformation effort. An army-run program expected to cost more than $100 billion, it consists of a suite of new manned and unmanned machines, all loaded with the latest sensors, roaming the air and ground. Software will process sensor data, identify friend and foe, set targets, issue alerts, coordinate actions, and guide decisions. New kinds of wireless communications devices-controlled by yet more software and relaying communications via satellites-will allow seamless links between units. Currently, 23 partner companies, many with their own platoons of subcontractors, are building the systems; Boeing of Chicago and Science Applications International of San Diego are charged with tying them all together and crafting a "system of systems" by 2014.
In this grand vision, information isn't merely power. It's armour, too. Tanks weighing 64 metric tons could be largely phased out, giving way to lightly armoured vehicles-at first, the new 17-metric-ton Stryker troop carrier-that can avoid heavy enemy fire if need be. These lighter vehicles could ride to war inside cargo planes; today, transporting large numbers of the heaviest tanks requires weeks of transport via land and sea. "The basic notion behind military transformation is that information technologies allow you to substitute information for mass. If you buy into that, the whole force structure changes," says Stuart Johnson, a research professor at the Center for Technology and National Security Policy at National Defence University in Washington, DC. "But the vision of all this is totally dependent on information technologies and the network. If that part of the equation breaks down, what you have are small, less capable battle platforms that are more vulnerable."
The Iraq War represented something of a midpoint-and an early proving ground-in the move toward this networked force. The U.S. offensive did include the old heavy armour, and it didn't sport all the techno-goodies envisioned by the promoters of force transformation. But it did presume that satellite- and aircraft-mounted sensors would support the fighting units on the ground. The war's backbone was a land invasion from Kuwait. Ultimately, some 10,000 vehicles and 300,000 coalition troops rumbled across the sandy berm at the Kuwaiti border, 500 kilometres from Baghdad. Desert highways crawled with columns of Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, armoured personnel carriers, tank haulers, Humvees, and of course, fuel tankers to slake the fleet's nine-million-litre daily demand for fuel.
Several communications links were designed to connect these vehicles with each other and with commanders. First, and most successfully, at least 2,500 vehicles were tracked via Blue Force Tracker: each vehicle broadcast its Global Positioning System coordinates and an ID code. This thin but critical stream of data was in essence a military version of OnStar. Commanders in Qatar saw its content displayed on a large plasma screen. Marcone, like some other commanders in the field, also had access to it, thanks to a last-minute installation in his tank before the invasion.
"A Critical Vulnerability"
Once the invasion began, breakdowns quickly became the norm. For the movement of lots of data-such as satellite or spy-plane images-between high-level commanders and units in the field, the military employed a microwave-based communications system originally envisioned for war in Europe. This system relied on antenna relays carried by certain units in the advancing convoy. Critically, these relays-sometimes called "Ma Bell for the army"-needed to be stationary to function. Units had to be within a line of sight to pass information to one another. But in practice, the convoys were moving too fast, and too far, for the system to work. Perversely, in three cases, U.S. vehicles were actually attacked while they stopped to receive intelligence data on enemy positions. "A lot of the guys said, 'Enough of this crap,' and turned it off," says Perry, flicking his wrist as if clicking off a radio. "'We can't afford to wait for this.'"
One Third Infantry Division brigade intelligence officer reported to Rand that when his unit moved, its communications links would fail, except for the GPS tracking system. The unit would travel for a few hours, stop, hoist up the antenna, log back onto the intelligence network, and attempt to download whatever information it could. But bandwidth and software problems caused its computer system to lock up for ten to 12 hours at a time, rendering it useless.
Meanwhile, commanders in Qatar and Kuwait had their own problems. Their connectivity was good-too good. They received so much data from some of their airborne sensors that they couldn't process it all; at some points, they had to stop accepting feeds. When they tried to send information to the front, of course, they found the line-of-sight microwave-relay system virtually disabled. At the command levels above Marcone's-the brigade and even the division levels-such problems were ubiquitous. "The network we had built to pass imagery, et cetera, didn't support us. It just didn't work," says Col. Peter Bayer, then the division's operations officer, who was south of Marcone's battalion on the night of April 2 and 3. "The link for V Corps [the army command] to the division, the majority of time, didn't work, to pass a digital image of something."
Sometimes, intelligence was passed along verbally, over FM radio. But at other times vehicles outran even their radio connections. This left just one means of communication: e-mail. (In addition to tracking vehicles, Blue Force Tracker, somewhat quaintly, enabled text-only e-mail.) At times, the e-mail system was used for issuing basic orders to units that were otherwise out of contact. "It was intended as a supplement, but it wound up as the primary method of control," says Owen Cote, associate director of the Security Studies Program at MIT. "The units did outrun their main lines of communications and networking with each other and with higher command. But there was this very thin pipe of information via satellite communications that allowed the high command to see where units were."
The network wasn't much better for the marines pushing forward on a separate front. Indeed, the marines' lessons-learned report says that First Marine Division commanders were unable to download crucial new aerial reconnaissance photographs as they approached cities and towns. High-level commanders had them, but the system for moving them into the field broke down. This created "a critical vulnerability during combat operations," the report says. "There were issues with bandwidth, exploitation, and processes that caused this state of affairs, but the bottom line was no [access to fresh spy photographs] during the entire war."
Fortunately for U.S. forces, they faced little resistance during the Iraq War. The Iraqis launched no air attacks or Scud missiles. Iraqi soldiers shed uniforms and boots and walked away barefoot, studiously avoiding eye contact with the Americans. When they did fight, they used inferior weapons and vehicles. To be sure, U.S. units racing forward would run into stiff "meeting engagements"-jargon for a surprise collision with enemy forces. But such meetings would end quickly. "They [the U.S. forces] would succeed in these meeting engagements," Cote says. "But we were far from the vision of total knowledge. You can easily see how we would have paid a big price if it were a more robust opponent."
The problems are acknowledged at high levels. However, Art Cebrowski, retired vice admiral and director of the Pentagon's Office of Force Transformation, cites "existence proofs" that networking was generally successful in Iraq. In previous conflicts, combat pilots were briefed on targets before takeoff; hours would elapse between target identification and an actual attack. In the Iraq War, more than half of aerial sorties began without targets in mind, Cebrowski says. Instead, targets were identified on the fly and communicated to the airborne pilots. "Combat was moving too fast; opportunities were too fleeting. You had to be in the networked environment" for it to work, says Cebrowski.
Clearly, networking during the ground war was not as successful. "There were certainly cases where people didn't have the information they needed. This was a very large operation, so you would expect to see the good, the bad, and the ugly in it," Cebrowski acknowledges. But it would be a mistake to use these problems as an argument against phasing out heavy armour, he says. Big tanks require not only considerable time and energy to move into battle but also larger supply convoys that are themselves susceptible to attack. According to Cebrowski, by keeping heavily armoured tanks your main line of defence, "you simply move your vulnerability to another place on the supply chain."
Alpha Geeks at War
Some defenders of force transformation argue that the troops' problems were doctrinal, not technological. According to this line of reasoning, the networking of the Iraq War was incomplete-because it was fatally grafted onto old-fashioned command and control systems. Sensor information went up the chain of command. Commanders interpreted it and made decisions. Then they passed commands, and tried to pass relevant data, down the chain. The result: time delays and the magnification of individual communications failures.
Better, some say, that information and decision-making should flow horizontally. In fact, that's how the 2001 war in Afghanistan was fought. Special-operations forces organized into "A teams" numbering no more than two dozen soldiers roamed the chilly mountains near the Pakistan border on horseback, rooting out Taliban forces and seeking al-Qaeda leaders. The teams and individuals were all linked to one another. No one person was in tactical command.
But despite the lack of generals making key decisions, each of these teams of networked soldiers had a key node, an animal once confined to corporate IT departments: the alpha geek, who managed the flow of information between his team and the others. The U.S. special forces also maintained a tactical Web page, collating all the information the teams collected. And this page was managed by a webmaster in the field: the metageek of all alpha geeks.
How did the page perform? Postmortems and reports on special-forces operations in Afghanistan are more secret than those from the Iraq War. A report on one major special-forces operation, Operation Anaconda-an attempt to encircle and root out al-Qaeda in March 2002-is due soon from National Defence University. Still, anecdotes are trickling out of the special-forces community. And they provide a startlingly different view of warfare than Marcone's tank-level vantage. One account, not previously reported, comes from John Arquilla, an expert in unconventional warfare at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA.
The scene was a cold night in the late fall of 2001. In New York City, the World Trade Center ruins were still smouldering. In Afghanistan, a U.S. Air Force pilot en route from Uzbekistan noticed flashing lights in the mountains below, near the Pakistan border. Suspecting that the flashes might be reflections from hooded headlights of trucks bumping along, he radioed his observation to the webmaster. The webmaster relayed the message across a secure network accessible to special forces in the region. One team replied that it was near the position and would investigate. The team identified a convoy of trucks carrying Taliban fighters and got on the radio to ask if any bombers were in range. One U.S. Navy plane was not far off. Within minutes, the plane bombed the front and rear of the convoy, sealing off the possibility of escape. Not long after, a gunship arrived and destroyed the crippled Taliban column.
The episode, as recounted by Arquilla, shows what's possible. "That's networking. That's military transformation right there," Arquilla says. "Some of the problems in Iraq grew out of an attempt to take this cascade of information provided by advanced information technology and try and jam it through the existing stovepipes of the hierarchical structure, whereas in Afghanistan we had a more fluid approach. This is war by minutes, and networking technology allows us to wage war by minutes with a great probability of success." In this case, service members on the battlefield collected data, shared that data, made decisions, and ordered strikes.
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Re: How Technology Failed in Iraq
« Reply #1 on: October 27, 2004, 12:07:31 »
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Network vs. Insurgents?
Perhaps Pentagon optimists are right. Perhaps the success of Blue Force Tracker, of the special-forces assault on the Taliban column, and of air force operations in Iraq accurately foretell the full digital transformation of war. But to many observers, the disruption of communications between the main ground combat units in Iraq was not a very promising sign at all. "If there is this 'revolution in military affairs,' and if this revolution is based on technologies that allow you to network sensors and process information more quickly and spread it out quickly in digestible form, we are still just scratching the surface of it," says Cote of MIT. "If you look at the performance of a lot of the components of the first efforts in that direction, it's a pretty patchy performance." And then there's the question of terror and insurgency. Even if the Pentagon transforms war fighting, the meaning of the word "war" is itself undergoing a transformation. More Americans died in the September 11 attacks than have subsequently died in Afghanistan and Iraq. And the Iraq insurgency challenges the meaning of the Iraq military victory. Future wars will be fought in urban zones by low-tech fanatics who do not follow the old rules. They are unlikely to array themselves as convenient targets for the U.S. to detect and destroy. Indeed, a leading cause of death among U.S. soldiers in Iraq today is improvised bombs targeting passing vehicles such as Humvees.
Arquilla says some networking technology can be-and is being-brought to bear against the Iraq insurgency. While actual strategies are secret, some general tactics are known. Suspicious vehicles can be tracked, and their connections to other people and locations determined. Small drone aircraft can deliver video feeds from urban buildings as well as from desert battlefields. Sensors can help find a sniper by measuring the acoustical signature of a bullet. And jamming devices can sometimes block radio-controlled detonation of roadside bombs. But old-fashioned tips from humans are likely to trump technology. "Our networks don't really have the sensitivity to keep up with unconventional enemies. All the network does is move information around, but the information itself is the key to victory," says Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute, a think tank in Arlington, VA. "It's a little hard to derive meaningful lessons from networked war fighting when you are dealing with such modest threats."
The welter of postmortems from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars tell many stories. But one thing is clear: Marcone never knew what was coming at Objective Peach. Advanced sensors and communications-elements of future networked warfare designed for difficult, unconventional battles-failed to tell him about a very conventional massed attack. "It is my belief that the Iraqi Republican Guard did nothing special to conceal their intentions or their movements. They attacked en masse using tactics that are more recognizable with the Soviet army of World War II," Marcone says.
And so at a critical juncture in space (a key Euphrates bridge) and time (the morning of the day U.S. forces captured the Baghdad airport), Marcone only learned what he was facing when the shooting began. In the early-morning hours of April 3, it was old-fashioned training, better firepower, superior equipment, air support, and enemy incompetence that led to a lopsided victory for the U.S. troops. "When the sun came up that morning, the sight of the cost in human life the Iraqis paid for that assault, and burning vehicles, was something I will never forget," Marcone says. "It was a gruesome sight. You look down the road that led to Baghdad, for a mile, mile and a half, you couldn't walk without stepping on a body part."
Yet just eight U.S. soldiers were wounded, none seriously, during the bridge fighting. Whereas U.S. tanks could withstand a direct hit from Iraqi shells, Iraqi vehicles would "go up like a Roman candle" when struck by U.S. shells, Marcone says. Sitting in an office at Rand, Gordon puts things bluntly: "If the army had had Strykers at the front of the column, lots of guys would have been killed." At Objective Peach, what protected Marcone's men wasn't information armour, but armour itself.