21 March 2003
Air Force Operations Concept Aims at Success, Not Destruction
("Effects-based operations" a new but ancient military concept) (3220)
The U.S. Air Force, in every military conflict since the 1991 Gulf
War, has been functioning under an operating concept that emphasizes
not destruction of targets so much as accomplishing strategic and
tactical goals.
Called effects-based operations, one of its chief exponents is Major
General David Deptula, director of plans and programs for Air Combat
Command Headquarters, Langley Air Force Base, Hampton, Virginia. A man
who has practiced what he preaches, Deptula was the principal
offensive air campaign planner in operation Desert Storm. More
recently, in 2001 Deptula directed combined air operations for
Operation Enduring Freedom, which liberated Afghanistan from Taliban
rule. And during the 1990s Deptula commanded Operation Northern Watch
Combined/Joint Task Force and flew 82 combat missions over Iraq.
The essence of effects-based operations, according to Deptula, is to
make the enemy conform to your strategic plan without your even having
to act. In this, he said, it is merely another version of the
teachings of Chinese military strategist and philosopher Sun Szu,
author of "The Art of War" more than a thousand years ago, who -- to
paraphrase -- said the epitome of skill is to overthrow a city without
throwing a rock.
In an interview with the Washington File March 7 at his office in
Langley Air Force Base, General Deptula sought to give an overview of
what constitutes effects-based operations, and then provided specific
examples from his experiences in the Gulf War and while commanding the
patrolling of northern Iraq in support of U.N. Security Council
sanctions during 1998 and 1999.
As an example, Deptula noted that in planning for the Gulf War, he
found that, as air campaign planner, he needed to devise a strategy to
make inoperable nearly half a dozen regional operation centers for
Iraqi air defenses. The traditional approach would have meant using
his entire fleet (16 planes) of stealth F-117s just to destroy two of
the command centers. But, taking advantage of the precision possible
because the F-117s used guided bombs, Deptula decided that it would
only be necessary to use one munition per command center. This ensured
that all command centers could be attacked at once, and even if a
center wasn't completely destroyed, it was sufficient for Deptula's
purposes that it was no longer usable.
"I'm not interested in destroying a facility; I'm just interested in
accomplishing the effect of them not operating the facility," Deptula
said.
After the initial attacks on the command centers, Deptula said his
electronic intelligence people would brief him nightly on whether any
of the command centers had been detected transmitting any electronic
signals.
"If they weren't emitting, I wouldn't target them. If they were
emitting, they'd get a visit that night from a 117. And we never put
at the end of the war more than four weapons on those facilities,"
Deptula said.
Following is an edited transcript of the interview conducted by
Washington File Staff writer David Anthony Denny:
(begin transcript)
GENERAL DEPTULA: We can talk about whatever you'd like. I was going to
give you a little bit of a spiel on the whole notion of effects-based
operations.
WASHINGTON FILE: OK.
GENERAL DEPTULA: Then we can get down to it and I can give you some
very specific examples that we used during Gulf War I, that not many
people are aware of.
Effects-based operations, which many people are writing about and hear
about nowadays, but folks are a little bit confused about, well, "what
is it?" In fact, effects-based operations is not a process, not a
system; it's not a methodology. It's more of a way of thinking, in the
broadest sense.
Ultimately, my definition of the goal of warfare is to be able to have
an adversary act in accordance with U.S. strategic interests. In a
perfect world, I'd like to be able to get that adversary to act in
accordance with our strategic interests without [him or her] even
knowing that they've been acted upon.
Now, that's a pretty lofty goal, if you will, or end game. But if you
couch the definition of warfare in that context, then you begin to
think about ways other than simple destruction of an adversary's
forces to coerce or convince them to act the way we want. So in the
broad sense, effects-based operations is a springboard for better
linking our nation's security pillars -- military, economic,
diplomatic -- together in an integrated, unified fashion to accomplish
our security goals and objectives....
Is this anything new? No, it's not really new. It's essentially
following the teachings of Sun Szu. That's the guy who invented
effects-based operations, if you will. If I could paraphrase him, the
epitome of skill is to be able to overthrow a city without throwing a
rock. That's what was to a large degree the premise of how the Gulf
War air campaign in 1991 was planned and orchestrated. Not many folks
are aware of that.
Let me give you an example: ... when we were first developing the
attack plan for the first Gulf War, one of the most important,
right-up-front issues was, 'How do you deal with the integrated air
defenses?' The intelligence folks told us that there were essentially
two key and critical command centers in Iraq: the air defense
operations center in Baghdad, and then a sector operation center down
at Talil.
And so, the planners and the weapons planners using the F-117s
[stealth jet fighter planes] teams got to work to determine, well,
what's necessary to take these things out?
These facilities were built by the Germans and the French -- very big,
hardened facilities, 37 feet of aggregate steel-and-concrete on the
top, two command bunkers on the bottom of each. So weaponeers and the
117 folks came to the conclusion that it would take a combination of
eight GBU-27s and GBU-10s -- these are penetrating, 2,000-pound
munitions -- delivered one right after another to go down to destroy
the bunker on each side of the facility.
At the time we only had 16 F-117s available for planning -- this is in
the August of 1990 timeframe, which was very early on. ... If you do
the math really quickly, what you find out is that: two facilities, I
need eight weapons on each command bunker, 16 weapons per facility, 32
total "aim points." I use up my entire F-117 fleet to go do this, but
that's OK, because what we're trying to do is achieve a covert entry,
blind them, and then pave the way for the rest of the forces.
Fast-forward one month into theater, my boss and I go down to Manama,
Bahrain, to brief Admiral Mauz, who is the NAVCENT [U.S. Naval Forces
Central] commander, on the offensive air campaign plan. I took along
with me a document that went into detail about the integrated air
defenses in Iraq -- there wasn't a whole lot of time for reading in
Riyadh when we were doing the planning because there was so much
activity going on.
When we went down there I took a look at this document and I came to
find out -- on this trip -- that there aren't just two sector
operation centers, there are actually four, with a potential fifth one
in Kuwait. Associated with each one of these sector operation centers
are three-to-five interceptor operation centers -- any one of which
could pick up the load, because it all networked. ... That vastly
complicates the targeting problem.
We go back to Riyadh, and we're talking with the intelligence folks
there on how to "crack this nut," and it strikes me that a 2,000-pound
weapon could go off on the other side of this headquarters building
that we're working in -- just like this. You know, one could go off
over there [points to an adjacent wing of the building], but you and I
wouldn't get killed. But we sure are not going to hang around
continuing the conversation. We're going to leave.
"So I went to the F-117 wing commander who happened to be there -- and
at the time it was a brand-new weapons system, just come out of the
"black world." Not many people knew what its capabilities were."
Deptula asked what the real capabilities of the F-117 were. "He said,
'Well, Dave, out of 36 live drops to date, 35 of them have been direct
hits.' I said, 'Well, that's all I need.' So I went back and
redesigned the master attack plan and only put one weapon on each one
of these facilities. Which now frees up the remainder of the weapons
which can be used against other high-priority targets. The point being
that the notion is that I'm not interested in destroying a facility;
I'm just interested in accomplishing the effect of them not operating
the facility.
WASHINGTON FILE: Right.
GENERAL DEPTULA: So what we were able to do by that -- and then that
was the philosophy that we used in targeting for the rest of the war
planning effort and then during the war -- what we were able to do by
that is greatly amplify the amount of coverage that you can have an
impact over the entire country. So in a period of 24 hours at the
beginning of the Gulf War we were able to target over 150 separate and
discrete targets -- now targets are not aim points; there are many,
many more aim points than targets -- which was more targets than were
hit in the years 1942 and '43 combined in the combined [U.S.-British]
bomber offensive over central Europe [during World War II].
WASHINGTON FILE: Over 150 you said?
GENERAL DEPTULA: Right. Over 150 separate discrete targets. So, that
gives you a little bit of insight into what effects-based operations
is all about.
Let me give you a specific: the electric target set. In the middle of
-- oh, by the way, just as a rejoinder on that, at the end of the
conflict, I went back and took a look at and summarized the number of
weapons that we'd put in any sector operations center; it was never
more than four. Because what would happen -- what we would use as
feedback -- here's another insight into the notion of effects-based
operations: It's not damage. This is not about destruction; it's about
accomplishing the effect that you want to achieve.
So I would have someone come in to the planning cell every night from
electronic systems security command and they would tell me whether
either the interceptor operations centers or the sector operations
centers were emitting [electronic transmission signals]. If they
weren't emitting, I wouldn't target them. If they were emitting,
they'd get a visit that night from a 117. And we never put at the end
of the war any more than four weapons on those facilities. So you can
see the leverage that accrues from taking that approach from a
military perspective, because it frees up all those weapons which you
can now use somewhere else, and it reduces exposure of air crews that
wouldn't have to face the threat to go deliver the weapon.
With electricity, to show you the difference in mindset, in the middle
of February of '91, some of the intelligence folks were analyzing how
we were doing in each one of the target set categories. In the
electric target set category, their analysis had come to the
conclusion that we had not achieved our objectives in that target set
because we had not accomplished X-level-percent of damage or
destruction against every one of the targets -- the 26 electric
targets in the set -- sites.
WASHINGTON FILE: We're talking about the power grid for the country?
GENERAL DEPTULA: Right. These are different power sites that were on
the electric target list. Then again, you may or may not want to use
this specific (example), but I'm trying to get across the concept
here.
Their point was: You haven't achieved this level of destruction
against each one of these sites. Well guess what: That's right. I'd
stopped targeting or putting [electricity sites] on the target master
attack plan 10 days prior because there weren't any electrons flowing
in the Iraqi power grid. The issue is not destruction of the site; the
issue is, making sure the electricity wasn't flowing. In some cases,
we had communications intelligence that let us know that some of the
power plant directors figured out, early on, the way to avoid getting
hit was simply to shut down their plants. Which from a planner's
perspective is wonderful! That's exactly what I want to have happen!
WASHINGTON FILE: Just like soldiers saying, lay down your guns; nobody
will shoot me if I don't pick up my weapon.
GENERAL DEPTULA: Right! Which also goes back to -- now, the other part
of this, which isn't new, when we did the attack plans at the power
sites, we wanted to do minimal damage. At the time we made the
assumption -- there's difference in philosophy; this goes into a long
dissertation about how the war was concluded -- but at the time many
of us believed that ultimately we're going to have to go back in and
rebuild. So we want to do minimum damage. So we do targeting to use
non-lethal weapons to shut down some of these facilities. And if you
do have to use high explosives, you target things that are easily
replaceable, like transformer grids as opposed to generator halls.
Which all gets down now into the specifics of how we do target
planning for air campaigns. Contrary to popular belief, we'd like to
use the minimum amount of force, and/or non-lethal force, to
accomplish our objectives. Because in the overall scheme of achieving
the president and senior government leaders' objectives, accomplishing
our military goals with a minimum of force allows us to secure those
objectives much more easily than might otherwise (be the case).
So in a nutshell, that's sort of the concept of effects-based
operations. Now I can go into -- it's tough, because there's a whole
issue of sensitivity of what's actually going on now. But I think that
should get the point across. I'd be happy to get into any other
detailed questions you want to.
WASHINGTON FILE: Well, I only know what I read in the Washington Post
article about this.
UNIDENTIFIED AIR FORCE OFFICER: You brought up earlier the number of
civilian casualties in warfare. And Colonel Crowder had talked about
that, sir, about how we've done as far as reducing (civilian)
casualties. Can you talk a little bit about that?
WASHINGTON FILE: The Washington Post article mentions 500 to 800
civilian casualties in Afghanistan. I know there was some groups just
picking their number out of the air.
GENERAL DEPTULA: Right. And those were astronomical, and I would like
to tell you that there's -- We don't know. We do not know. We still
don't know from the Gulf War, although estimates from folks that have
gone in there -- human rights groups and others -- are on the order of
less than 3,000: 1,000-to-3,000. This is the Gulf War. Now as far as
Afghanistan is concerned, it would be an educated [guess] -- we don't
know.
WASHINGTON FILE: The Post story used 500 to 800.
GENERAL DEPTULA: Five hundred to 800, as an educated [guess] -- I'd
just hate to say, "sounds about right." Because everything that we are
doing -- or that we did, at least with respect to delivering air
ordnance, was done to minimize civilian casualties and collateral
damage. I would tell you that that number sounds high to me. And I was
the director of the air operations center for the first three months
of Enduring Freedom. We went through excruciating steps to minimize
civilian casualties.
Clearly, back to the Gulf War, reducing the Iraqis' loss of life is a
key objective -- that's a key objective nowadays in any campaign that
the U.S. military executes. So much so that some of it -- I was also
the commander of Operation Northern Watch in 1998-99, and one of the
things that we used to counter the Iraqis parking of surface-to-air
missile systems next to or in close proximity to civilian sites, was I
began using inert weapons -- cement bombs. Five hundred pounds of
concrete going 500 knots will ruin your whole day if it hits you. This
gets to the point that the maturity of our precision capability allows
us to reduce the lethality of the weapons. I can't use a 500-pound
high-explosive bomb against a small, mobile surface-to-air missile
launcher if it's parked within X-thousand feet of any civilian
facility. But, if I've got good enough precision, and I can hit it
with 500 pounds of concrete, that does the trick. So we began doing
that. Now there are different schools of thought on that, but it goes
back to the effect that you want to achieve. And that is what should
drive our targeting -- and what does to a large degree.
I think that gives you kind of a good overview: minimizing damage,
minimizing loss of life, effects using precision allows us to do what
large explosives allowed us to compensate for large errors in accuracy
in the past.
Let me give you another good statistic: In World War II, it took us
approximately a thousand aircraft -- bombers, B-17s -- carrying
approximately 9,000 bombs to achieve the effect that in the Gulf War
one airplane and one bomb could do. An F-117 with a laser-guided bomb
[LGB] could do what a thousand-plane raid could do in World War II.
And the reason is: precision. The circular error probability [CEP] of
a weapon in World War II was on the order of half a mile -- 3,000
feet. And the CEP of an LGB is on the order of 10 feet. So you can see
what you can do with precision, which dramatically increased our
capability of minimized damage and destruction. And now --
WASHINGTON FILE: How many pieces of ordnance does an F-117 carry?
GENERAL DEPTULA: Two. Now what we have today that we didn't have then
are B-2s, which can carry 16, and shortly will be able to carry 80
independently targetable 500-pound weapons. That will be an enormous
capability.
WASHINGTON FILE: Is this like a cylinder, with MIRVs (multiple
independently-targetable re-entry vehicles)? Just open the cylinder up
in mid-air and out come these little MIRVed (missiles)?
GENERAL DEPTULA: Except that you can target each one. This isn't all
released at one time. I can fly all over the country and drop wherever
-- 80 weapons.
WASHINGTON FILE: I see: controlled release of them, too.
GENERAL DEPTULA: Right, right. So that's an enormous increase in
capability. The combination of stealth and precision allow us to do
these things.
Lethal application of force is always going to be a piece of it, but
we'd like to reduce it to the absolute minimum.
(end transcript)
(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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