Dispensing with the need for special personnel embedded with ground units, long pre-request and decision times for air surveillance, or additional layers of approval up and down both Army and Air Force commands, is another major contributor to Task Force ODIN's success. Minutes matter during the kinds of operations Task Force ODIN carries out. These lower integration requirements both expand the number and type of forces that can both call on ODIN's assets, and expand the forces that can and will be called on in response to the task force's efforts.

This is the key reason I refer to this as "Federal Air Power." Success in modern combat shows the fewer people involved, the closer to the point of contact, with the authority and capability to get the job done, the faster things get done and the more rapid the pace of combat. If the pace of combat is fast enough, the enemy falls apart and casualties on both sides fall to nothing.

(The working pilots of USAF understand this concept via "30 Second Boyd's" observe, orient, decide, act cycle, AKA "The OODA loop." The Generals of the USAF seem to have forgotten this.)

Technology has changed and so has the meaning of air power. A very fast industrial industrial age 24 hour air tasking order by a centralized theater air commander is 23 hours, 59 minutes and 30 seconds too slow for an information age American infantry platoon in a hot contact with an elusive enemy.

Local air superiority for that platoon is defined as dedicated and organic overhead air cover providing live over head video images of the enemy they are fighting.

In Iraq, technology and urgent need to limit American troop casualties from improvised explosive devices (IED) allowed that to happen. In short, air power as we know it has entered the era of the PC and Internet revolution, enabling every ground unit to have its own dedicated combat air power.

As a geologist friend of mine put it:

Changes in information technology since 1982, when the PC was released, have amounted to a revolution. The Internet made the revolution personal, urgent, and worldwide and required everyone to change and adapt. Those who won't adapt are dinosaurs who are going rapidly extinct and follow dinosaurs into the grave.

The PC and the Internet have revolutionized the world. It's a far faster world, and one where anything can be looked up in real time. I can get satellite imagery, offshore buoy data, and oil well telemetry data in real time - and not just at my desk, but on my phone, while driving my car. It's an all-new world. The old ways are dead. The world has changed, and as in every case where it changes, evolution comes into play and so does the oldest principle: adapt or die.

Modern jet fighter based air power controlled by a distant and remote theater air commander -- who by definition won't be integrated into the local ground force's change by the minute scheme of maneuver -- cannot play by the air power rules of "Blackberry combat."

The emerging concept of "Federal Air Power" is what is replacing it.

I said the following in March 2004 here on Winds regards the importance of the digital networks that make "Federal Air Power" a reality.

"...the key variable in future American military operations aren't platforms or precision guided munitions, but network bandwidth connecting intelligent people. The bigger and faster the sensor/shooter/C3I network, the nastier and deadlier it becomes."

and

"The reason we are light-years ahead the rest of the world in conventional military power is that we have invested enough in people and technology that we have gotten past an inflection point on the military effectiveness curve for the use of modern information systems. It is going to take very little more marginal investment on our part to obtain vastly increased and selective killing power.

As can be seen in the latest US Military operations in the Afghan/Pakistan border areas, some of that additional investment has been made."

"Task Force Odin" was the moving of the strategic level Special Forces UAV/digital network/precision guided munitions capability developed in Afghanistan to hunt Osama Bin Ladin and other "high value targets" to the regular Army at the operational level in Iraq.

It is what hunted down and killed Al-Qaeda's Iraqi "Emir" Al-Zarkawi and most of his successors.

According to the article above by Joe Katzman, now the Army is trying to replicate "Task Force Odin" capabilities across it's entire combat force in Afghanistan.

Consider that in light of the following comments posted here on Winds of Change in 2004 regards digital networks and what they mean for future American military power, of which the evolving "Federal Air Power" paradigm is just a part:

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#34 from Tom Roberts at 6:13 pm on Mar 20, 2004

rkb- Non US forces don't even have digital communications for the most part. In many cases the Coalition forces have to be lent commo gear so that their HQs can talk with US forces. This creates a dichotomous pace of operations in any NATO command as well. Without heavy US liaison elements, the NATO forces don't know what is going on. To a certain extent the Canadian friendly fire deaths by Kandahar two years ago were due to such issues (along with two US pilot's very poor judgments), but you might notice that when US forces swing into an offensive situation either allies get totally integrated into the US force structure (like the Canadian snipers were at Tora Bora or the Aussie SAS is with us Spec Forces) or they get totally out of the way.

What this means for the future is that Euro/Canadian armies will shrink dramatically if they want to technically keep up. Even the Russians see this. There is no reason to have a draft army if 95% of your forces can't talk with each other and are useless. That has been one of the leading causes of Russian casualties in Chechnya as well. But when you consider how US and allied forces need to be integratable into composite forces, you start getting answers like what the Canadians and Brits are considering now.

What this means for Afghan and Iraq ops is that coalition forces increasingly get the infrastructure improvement/minesweeping roles while the US forces get to play the heavy "peace keepers". That being said, if you read the Canadian press carefully, you'll still read of national consternation that their troops get killed in jeeps that make our Hummers look like tanks.

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#35 from Trent Telenko at 1:44 am on Mar 21, 2004

Tom,

Yep, this development was something I talked about on Winds of Change before:

http://windsofchange.net/archives/003631.php

June 20, 2003
U.S. Military -- Back to the Future!
Trent Telenko

Please note two things in this article clip: First, the digital data link is the key to air-ground cooperation. That is why it is the first thing the USAF cuts, and also why 95% of Marine AV-8B Harriers have digital data link.

Second, the key variable in future American military operations aren't platforms or precision guided munitions, but network bandwidth connecting intelligent people. The bigger and faster the sensor/shooter/C3I network, the nastier and deadlier it becomes. The really interesting thing to see is what happens when the 4th Mechanized (Mech.) Infantry Division's land combat data system comes into use and we then add "Land Warrior" infantry to it. We are talking a half an order of magnitude increase in combat network size compared to the heavily touted theater air power networks of the Iraq war from the 4th Mech's combat vehicles alone. Combat infantry added to that bumps it up to a full order of magnitude larger.

The American Army's love affair with vehicle-mounted .50 Caliber M2-HB machine guns has made for very unfair close combat firefights between Americans and everyone else since 1944. Ask the Wehrmacht what the fifties mounted on 3rd Army M-8 Greyhound armored cars did during the pursuit after Falaise. The "Ma-Deuce" has been the U.S. Cavalry's version of the mounted lance for several generations now. Yet that was nothing compared to the kill ratios the 3rd Mech had in Iraq. The 3rd Mech went through the Iraqis like the Martians went though the British Army in H.G. Wells "The War of the Worlds."

There are some good organizational reasons for this. Yet those reasons can be applied to every combat division. This begs the question just what is the fully networked 4th Mech going to be like in combat?

In aerial combat, "situational awareness" is a great combat multiplier until you have to close the range to engage. AMRAAM missiles kill lots of bad guys at range but closing with Sidewinders is the only way to be decisive, especially in a politically/tactically constrained rules of engagement fight. Then it gets down to who has the initial advantage, with the best trained and experienced pilots, and with adequate equipment.

What will these networked land combat units be like before they "go into the merge" of close combat firefights? Robotic micro-UAV "point men" 300 yards ahead and 50 yards above human point men are going to make for very "situationally aware" line platoons and extremely "unfair" close combat firefights. Add this to GPS-based fire support, loitering drones, airborne sensors, JDAMS, and modern body armor and our infantry is "...going to make Caesar's legions look like combat-ineffective girly-men," to use a quote from a friend of mine.

He also said, "We will literally be able to fight at ludicrous odds - not just outrageous odds - and triumph nearly bloodlessly," to which I have to agree.

I am of the opinion that this phenomenon is a logarithmic progression that the American military is only just beginning to climb. The reason we are light-years ahead the rest of the world in conventional military power is that we have invested enough in people and technology that we have gotten past an inflection point on the military effectiveness curve for the use of modern information systems. It is going to take very little more marginal investment on our part to obtain vastly increased and selective killing power.

As can be seen in the latest US Military operations in the Afghan/Pakistan border areas, some of that additional investment has been made.

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#36 from Richard Heddleson at 5:01 am on Mar 21, 2004

Trent,

You make one small point that deserves to be much more heavily emphasized:

"we have invested enough in people and technology"

The investment in people is of immense importance as your placement in this phrase indicates. The unintended consequence of the All Volunteer Force was to allow the military increase the qualifications for recruits so much that this outweighed the reduction in total headcount. Higher quality personnel are more able to take advantage of the power of the new technologies and maintain them properly.

At the same time, fewer troops made more realistic training in the use of these sophisticated systems affordable.

The downside of these developments is that the republican ideal of a citizen soldier is even further from the experience of the typical American than ever before. When we were an isolated nation without nearby enemies, this was not critical. Now that we have responsibility for global security, it could, repeat, could create problems for the polity as it fails to understand this resource.

The technology is great gee whiz stuff and in the right hands, with sufficient training, irresistable, but when combat starts, quality of personnel and training will be more important. Consider how the Iraq War II would have ended had the sides traded systems but kept the quality and training levels the same. It might have taken longer and we might have taken more casualties, but the ultimate result would have been the same.

Given that we now have the quality personnel, properly trained with the finest equipment, it is unlikely that our military dominance will erode relative to any other country before our economic.

Joe,

The numbers are in, at Strategypage.com, from Afghanistan on the affect of US Army Air Corps "Federal Air Power" on the amount of combat airpower requested from the USAF .

It does not look good for "Team Air Force."

Doing Less With More

January 22, 2009: The U.S. Air Force is flying more over Afghanistan, and doing less. That's because they no longer have a monopoly on GPS guided weapons. In 2007, coalition (mostly U.S. Air Force) warplanes flew 13,965 ground support missions, and dropped bombs or missiles 3,572 times. Last year, there were 19,603 missions, and guided munitions were dropped 3,369 times. More missions, but fewer munitions used. The main reason is the growing availability of GPS guided artillery shells (Excalibur) and rockets (MLRS) that are fired from army vehicles. There are also more helicopter gunships, which the ground troops prefer to fast moving jets.

In 2007, about 4,000 Taliban were killed, and last year that rose to 5,000. Early on, the Taliban tried to figure out a way to neutralize the smart bombs. At first, they thought they could calculate how long it took for the bombers to arrive, and attempt to flee before that time. But the time was variable, and often not much at all (if the jets happened to be overhead, or within 50 kilometers at the time the Taliban attacked, or were spotted). But with the artillery (Excalibur and MLRS), GPS guided fire can be on the way in minutes. It's tough being a Taliban commander, when you're most important decision is to calculate how soon you should order your guys to run away from the enemy.

The saying I got from my ex-Army NCO applies in spades:

"When seconds count, the USAF is minutes away."