Cleared to Engage: Improving Joint Close Air Support Effectiveness - CAS Mission Most Difficult for Air Platform in Today's Battlefield, High Levels of Integration with Ground Force and Indirect Fires

This report has been professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction. The importance of close air support (CAS) has markedly increased over the last five years in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. Ground forces have increasingly relied on the effects that airpower provides and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. This has occurred while CAS doctrine and execution has undergone radical changes. While the fundamentals of a serviceman with a radio calling in air support have remained relatively constant since World War II, the level of mission complexity has steadily increased. Digital communications, precision guided munitions, collateral damage considerations, effects based operations and a "joint" battlefield have placed increased requirements on terminal attack controllers and CAS aircrew.

Close air support has been a heavily debated topic within the services for decades. CAS doctrine and training issues have affected aircraft procurement, inter-service relationships and the application and effectiveness of airpower on the battlefield. This has produced numerous Congressional inquiries and service introspection on how to "get it right". While much progress has been made since 2001, the services must continue to make close air support more effective. On the modern battlefield, the joint application of firepower is a reality, not a concept. It is time to "engage" the doctrinal and training challenges facing our services in order to increase the effectiveness of our aviation forces in the close air support arena.

Close air support- the term evokes scenes from the movie Platoon where a ground commander is exhorting aircraft to "drop all remaining on my pos" to avoid being overrun by enemy forces. In the current context, CAS has evolved into much more. This seemingly simple yet complex mission has been at the heart of airpower debates for decades. CAS, it can be argued, is the most difficult mission flown by an air platform on today's battlefield. CAS requires the highest level of integration with ground forces, indirect fires, and other assets. It also, in most cases, requires the greatest precision due to proximity to friendly forces. Finally, it has the highest potential for negative ramifications if something goes wrong, such as fratricide, civilian deaths, or ground forces being overrun.

The importance of close air support (CAS) has markedly increased over the last five years in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. Ground forces have increasingly relied on the effects that airpower provides and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. The percentage of missions classified as CAS during Operation Desert Storm was small (six percent) and in Operation Allied Force was zero (due to no terminal attack controllers on the ground in Kosovo).

In Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom this increased drastically. During Operation Anaconda, nearly all of the missions flown were close air support of ground forces in the Shah-e-Kot Valley. During the push to Baghdad in 2003, 75% of Navy and Marine air involvement consisted of CAS missions. In the CENTAF report OIF: By the Numbers, 79% of targets struck during the campaign fell under the Killbox Interdiction / Close Air Support (KI/CAS) category. In current operations in OIF, almost all air missions require positive control to engage ground targets.

Dettagli