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| At Odds With Air Force, Army Adds Its Own Aviation Unit |
| 2008-06-25 |
| WASHINGTON — Ever since the Army lost its warplanes to a newly independent Air Force after World War II, soldiers have depended on the sister service for help from the sky, from bombing and strafing to transport and surveillance. But the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have frayed the relationship, with Army officers making increasingly vocal complaints that the Air Force is not pulling its weight. In Afghanistan, Army officers have complained about bombing missions gone awry that have killed innocent civilians. In Iraq, Army officers say the Air Force has often been out of touch, fulfilling only half of their requests for the sophisticated surveillance aircraft that ground commanders say are needed to find roadside bombs and track down insurgents. The Air Force responds that it has only a limited number of those remotely piloted Predators and other advanced surveillance aircraft, so priorities for assigning them must be set by senior commanders at the headquarters in Baghdad working with counterparts at the Air Force’s regional command in Qatar. There are more than 14,000 airmen performing tasks on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, including Air Force civil engineers replacing Army construction engineers. But now in Iraq, the Army has quietly decided to try going it alone for the important surveillance mission, organizing an all-Army surveillance unit that represents a new move by the service toward self-sufficiency, and away from joint operations. Senior aides to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates say that he has shown keen interest in the Army initiative — much to the frustration of embattled Air Force leaders — as a potential way to improve battlefield surveillance. The work of the new aviation battalion was initially kept secret, but Army officials involved in its planning say it has been exceptionally active, using remotely piloted surveillance aircraft to call in Apache helicopter strikes with missiles and heavy machine gun fire that have killed more than 3,000 adversaries in the last year and led to the capture of almost 150 insurgent leaders. The Army aviation task force became fully operational last July with headquarters at Camp Speicher, in the north-central city of Tikrit, and focuses its efforts on insurgents planting roadside bombs. But it also has located and attacked insurgents in battles with American and Iraqi troops, and has supported missions of the top-secret Special Operations units assigned to capture or kill the most high-value targets in Iraq. The battalion is called Task Force Odin — the name is that of the chief god of Norse mythology, but it also is an acronym for “observe, detect, identify and neutralize.” The task force of about 300 people and 25 aircraft is a Rube Goldberg collection of surveillance and communications and attack systems, a mash-up of manned and remotely piloted vehicles, commercial aircraft with high-tech infrared sensors strapped to the fuselage, along with attack helicopters and infantry. The Army cobbled together small civilian aircraft, including the Beech C-12, and placed advanced reconnaissance sensors on board. Also assigned to the task force are small, medium and larger remotely piloted Army surveillance vehicles, including the Warrior and Shadow, with infrared cameras for night operations and full-motion video cameras. All are linked by radio to Apache attack helicopters, with Hellfire missiles and 30-millimeter guns, and to infantry units in armored vehicles. Civilian casualties are always a risk in air raids, particularly those attacking bomb-placing teams that operate in cities and villages. Army officials declined to say whether they believed the casualties from the new Army raids included innocent civilians, but they sought to pre-empt some criticism by screening an aerial surveillance video that they said showed the precise nature of the raids. The video showed an insurgent who had escaped attack and hid in a courtyard a few feet from a grazing mule. It then showed Apache helicopter fire killing the insurgent, while the mule was left grazing beside the corpse. In contrast to Predators, which are assigned by the top headquarters for missions all across Iraq, Task Force Odin is on call for commanders at the level of brigade and below, an effort by the Army to be responsive to the needs of smaller combat units in direct contact with adversaries — and a clear sign of rivaling concepts with the Air Force. Balance at the link. |
| Posted by:Barak |
| #5 The greatest issue is the LT, POST-WOT, OWG-NWO missions-scopes of the various US Armed/ Uniformed Services. DITTO FOR BOTH US ALLIES + FOES + NEUTRALS/MODERATES. US + RADICAL ISLAM > WOT = WAR FOR POST/ANTI-COLD WAR "STATUS QUO" + OWG-NWO, hence NO SIDE GENER DESIRES ANY FORM OF MUTUAL "STALEMATE" REGARDLESS OF PC DIPLOM RHETORIC TO THE CONTRARY. No US-Allied Pol wants to be blamed for NUCLEAR TERRORISM, as symbolized in a NUCLEAR IRAN + "SUITCASE/MINI-NUKES"; while Islam = Radical Islam desires to modernize + expand, and prelude any USSR-style event of self-obsolescence and implosion [dynamic self-extinction]. DARE COLD WAR "REVOLT OF THE GENERALS/ADMIRALS" now devol 2008-2012 into "REVOLT OF THE POLITICIANS/NEW ORDER", ala PRO-WAR "ANTI-STATUS QUO/NEW ORDER"??? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2008-06-25 19:07 |
| #4 Nobody stops the Army Air Corps! |
| Posted by: Mike 2008-06-25 12:20 |
| #3 And what a lot of taxpayers don't understand that craft like the Apache are responses to not having an A-10 in the inventory and those that the AF controlled constantly on the chopping block. So we end up with funding both for their dysfunctional institutional behaviors. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-06-25 08:25 |
| #2 And the Army has more hulls than the Navy. The difference is the Navy is helping the Army increase its lead. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2008-06-25 07:06 |
| #1 C-12 and a lot of the fixed wing Army aviation stuff is ELINT/SIGINT birds (liek the Guardrail mission equiment). I guess a lot of people don't realize that the Army has had its own aviation for a while - and the UAVs are just the latest addition. USAF inability to be responsive to tactical needs is why the Army attack helicopter was born. It is a hell of a quicker response when you call on air support from 4th squadron of the same regiment instead of some zoom that may or may not show and if he does, he flies too high to hit things accurately as often as integral (rotary) assets can. The major exceptions to this are the A-10's: those guys run with the ground forces and work hand-in-glove with the ground and heli units, always have been down in the weeds. They know how talk and work the Army way on ground targets, and are hella responsive compared to fast movers. Simple as that - the USAF is too busy with its other missions - air superiority, strategic strikes, strategic/theater level recon, and air transport. The Army falls lower on the USAF priority list - the USAF wants to do its own recon first, and will not task assets to Army requests until it believes it has filled what it needs. Unfortunately this means the Army gets starved out - because what the Army needs is not what thte USAF thinks the Army needs. So I cannot blame the Intel unit for putting that together. We put together Tactical Exploitation units way back when, when the TO&E of standard MI/CAV had nothing for our unique needs. So we hammered them together out of LRRP, Interrogation, EW/SIGINT, GSRs, Tac Jammers and some mobility assets. This is more of the same. A good addiiton to the Army Aviaiton stable. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2008-06-25 01:51 |