I'm going "organic." And you?

Ahhh, Center for Army Lessons Learned handbooks. Love them. Hate them. It matters not. You should still read them. Sometimes you find gems, lessons that you can use later to build better systems in your own organization. Sometimes you don’t find gems. You find The Army’s “Organic” Unmanned Aircraft Systems: An Unhealthy Choice for the Joint Operational Environment, an AGI article by Major Travis A. Burdine of the US Air Force (originally printed in the Summer 2009 issue of Air & Space Power Journal).  Now, I will admit that is CALL Handbook (11-29) was from June of 2011, but it had Air Ground Integration on the cover. I was a proverbial moth to a flame.

Application for organic UAS as part of Army Aviation concerns me because I have, in the most poetic way possible, drank deep the kool-aid of cooperative employment and teaming between unmanned aircraft systems and rotary wing assets. I believe in organic UAS. I also know that UAS will eventually replace me as a reconnaissance platform, and I’ll be out of job some day. Acceptance is the first step to admitting you have a problem, right? Major Burdine’s article was of particular interest to me as it shares space on my desk at the moment with the notes from the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade’s combat training center rotation. 101 CAB is the first CAB to boast organic ownership of UAS, specifically the RQ-7B Shadow. If the Air Force has good ideas or suggestions for making this process of good integration better, I’m all ears.

Except it didn’t.

Major Travis A. Burdine, a graduate of the Air Force Academy, was both an E-3 AWACS senior pilot and has strapped himself into the control station of a MQ-1B Predator for 750 hours at the time he penned his opus Air & Space Power Journal. He was also the subject matter expert on Predator and Reaper systems on the Air Force Unmanned Aircraft System Task Force, assigned to the Air Staff in Washington DC. He was also a Standardization Pilot for the 432d Wing at Creech AFB, where large Air Force UAS come and go, raining doom down upon the doomed heads of our doomed enemies. It all makes me wanna sing The Doom Song. The man has street cred though; I’ll give him that.

Two themes kept creeping back in my head as I scribbled with a Sharpie marker all over the article: who is the customer for airpower and what happens when we separate the airpower customer and supplier by thousands of miles?

There is little that compares between the RQ-7B and its bigger brothers, the Air Force’s MQ-1 Predator and the Army’s MQ-1C Gray Eagle. They are all UAS, yes, but the Shadow is unarmed, save for a laser designation payload. It’s eyes, without teeth. Yet, it shares the same dilemma as the larger, armed versions owned by both the Air Force and the Army: who asks for it, who gets it, and who controls it. These are things that concern me as a doctrine writer for aerial reconnaissance, and as scout pilot who will work with these systems in combat operations.

It all opens with a scenario… naturally. The Air Force loves f*cking vignettes after all.

Grunt 21, an Army ground unit in the combat zone, replies, “Cyclops 55, this is Grunt 21. Go ahead with check-in.”

The pilot, located in a ground control station in Las Vegas, Nevada, says, “Cyclops 55 is a single MQ-1B Predator, currently overhead at 12,000 feet, armed with two Hellfire missiles, 21 hours of playtime, with infrared-pointer and laser-designator capability. Sensors are on the target house, ready for situation update.”

 “Cyclops 55, Grunt 21 copies all. Situation update is as follows: the ground commander has been waiting two days to get Air Force UAS support over this target house. We plan to execute a raid in two hours. We are looking for a high-level insurgent commander and a weapons cache.”

“Cyclops 55 copies all.”

Direct from Las Vegas, Nevada, folks! It’s your very own low density, high demand unmanned asset, complete with ample playtime for all your mission needs!... focus, Doctrinatrix.

Just prior to the planned raid, the UAS crew hears a call for help from Alpha 6, an Army special forces team located 15 miles away from Grunt 21. “Alpha 6 is being engaged. Multiple friendlies killed in action. Requesting immediate CAS [close air support]!”

Knowing that troops in contact (TIC) are the joint force commander’s (JFC) highest-priority objective, the UAS crew immediately conveys the TIC information to the combined air and space operations center (CAOC) and the special forces operations center. The CAOC informs Cyclops 55 that, at three minutes away, it is the closest asset.

I suppose I should have had my doubts about the article with the opening scenario. By the time I reached the end with CAOC dynamically retasking the UAS, I was justifiably pissed off… on behalf of the fictional commander for Grunt 22.

As the missile destroys the target, the Predator liaison officer in the CAOC receives a message from the original Army unit that was supposed to have Predator coverage all day: “Cyclops 55, there is an Army colonel on the phone with the joint force air component commander [JFACC], screaming about how you botched the entire operation by leaving his unit without his permission. He cancelled his entire ground operation because you failed to support him by departing your orbit . . . again.”

I’ve often said that the quick reaction force (QRF) mentality will get you in trouble, and it did in this scenario. When you have a mission, you have an assigned master. Obey your master until released from your mission or retasked to another mission by your master.

Who really controlled that UAS? The CAOC or the ground force commander to whom coverage and operational control had been given for that time period? Then again, the scenario lacked crucial details too. Was the UAS aircrew briefed on the ground scheme of maneuver for Grunt 22? Had they been part of the mission planning process for the ground scheme of maneuver? What was the established dynamic retasking order? Who was the approval authority for changes to mission? Who was the priority for support? Was everyone briefed on those priorities and authorities? What do you mean by “departing your orbit… again” anyway? Who is in charge of this little canine and equestrian extravaganza?

This is what Army pilots think about all the time. Well, that… and porn.

The first sections to the body of the article felt like fluffity fluff fluff to me, so much Air Force self-pandering and aggrandizing that I found myself scribbling the same question in the margin over and over again: Who works for whom here? I’m dangerous with a Sharpie, people.

“The primary purpose of Army Aviation is to support ground-maneuver commanders and their objectives,” Maj Burdine quoted that from just about every piece of Army Aviation doctrine that has ever been written. With the absence of a need to establish air supremacy in the regions we currently fight in, the customer is the ground force commander to whom the asset has been assigned. After all, who actually clears and holds physical terrain? I’ll give you a hint. It’s not anyone who wears flight suit.

Well, then. Fly to Afghanistan and get it yourself.

I choked through the article, which lacked grist on the cooperation between air and ground forces, favoring instead the Air Force method of asset control via the CAOC, centrally parceling out support from on high. Meh. I gutted through the discussion on rated pilots versus operators as a significant risk factor in the safety of combat airspace. I agreed with Major Burdine about the need to return to a better common operating picture in preparing to face an enemy with a significant air defense threat. I also agreed with him that the constant reliance on the restricted operating zone (ROZ) as an airspace control method is disorganized and inefficient at best. It was also nice to see the admittance that the “CAOC has little situational awareness of air operations below the coordinating altitude” since the “Army’s organic aviation assets such as helicopters and UASs take off, land, and fly at the discretion of the ground-maneuver commander.” Hey, admitting you have a problem is a good start, right?

Finally I got the part I was hoping to find: the zen-like, Big Lebowski-style lesson I was hoping for… kinda!

“Army leaders argue that organic CAPs [combat air patrols] of Sky Warriors [MQ-1C] supporting the division commander will be more effective than RSO [remote split operation] CAPs. An Army publication notes that ‘dedicated UAS at brigade level will increase effectiveness of operations by providing more responsive and more detailed reconnaissance.’ The Army contends that requesting UAS support in the Air Force’s method of centralized control is too slow and carries too much risk of having the asset diverted to other priorities. It also believes that RSOs negatively impact effectiveness due to the communication degradation caused by the 8,000 miles between crews and ground commanders. Finally, the Army argues that in order to fight as a cohesive unit, the aircrew needs to deploy with the units it supports, so as to ‘feel’ the intensity and tempo of the day-to-day fight.

These concerns are warranted; however, it is unlikely that the ground commander will be colocated with the UAS crews due to Sky Warrior’s runway-length requirements. The Army will use UAS communication methods similar to those the Air Force uses today, such as radio, chat, phone, and e-mail.”

The Army argues that it wants to fight as a cohesive unit? The aircrew needs to deploy with the units they support? Aircrews should ‘feel’ the intensity and tempo of the day-to-day fight? Okay, the last question is a little too touchy-feely, we-all-fight-this-war-and-suffer-together-ish. I’ll admit to that.

Anyway, there are more important questions to retort with anyway. Shouldn’t aircrews and ground forces be capable of constant and daily interaction to ensure that missions and battle drills are commonly understood and shared? Shouldn’t air and ground staffs be cooperatively involved in the planning process, from mission conception through the rehearsal and execution?

More importantly, what happens when the 30K generator that supports the command post takes a big ol’ dump in the middle of planning or executing your operation, and all your precious digital systems are gone in one nasty power surge? So much for air ground integration, I guess. 

So, now what?

Admittedly, the Army has not cracked the nut on dealing with airspace. We’re a disaster. Dropping restricted operating zones (ROZ) on the battlefield is a band-aid to a larger problem: the need for comprehensive airspace tracking and management, especially when crossing brigade boundaries. The ROZ is an inefficient method, especially when altitude and time separation can create a more seamless airspace if used properly. While a snap, or immediate, ROZ is ideal for company-controlled UAS, a Gray Eagle is a little hefty for such things. This is not to say that we should run back to the arms of the CAOC to solve this problem, but perhaps we should be looking to improving our communications with the Brigade Aviation Element and the Air Defense and Airspace Management cell of the brigade combat team. Just sayin’…

The reason Army Aviation was taken out of corps-level of control and placed down at the division-level of command is to increase access for the tactical commander, specifically the brigade commander. If the tactical units at brigade and below cannot get access to their aviation support due to dynamic retasking at higher, we have bigger issues… something Major Burdine’s opening scenario depicted. The decision to place large armed UAS at the combat aviation brigade and the smaller RQ-7B in the cavalry squadron was to increase the access and integration, just like we do for our rotary wing assets.

There is no right solution to the problem, but the problem continues to exist. Perhaps Major Burdine closed it the best way possible.

“Airmen and soldiers alike must put service rivalries aside, think creatively, and work together to solve today’s problems.”

Just like in anyone else’s private kitchen, the choice of organic or nonorganic assets is personal preference, but it’s the user who ultimately makes the choice, not the supplier.