Computer-Aided Force Management System — a computer setup that is used to build and execute the Air Tasking Order.
38
Called “AB triple C”—a C-130 carrying a joint army/air force team, and lots of radios. It served as the means for the FAC to talk with people who could talk to many aircraft.
39
Now (in Bosnia, for example), the FAC uses a GPS Receiver and Laser Range Finder (that has a keypad and a radio). The FAC looks at the target with an optical device aligned with the laser. This both tells him the exact range to the target from his position and gives him the target’s location in terms of GPS coordinates. Once he has the target’s location, he types in other information, such as target description and the other elements in the nine-line format. Then he data-compresses the information and data-bursts it to an F-16 equipped with an improved data modem (IDM) that receives the transmission and displays the information on the pilot’s heads-up display. When the pilot flies toward the target, and it is within the HUD’s field of view, the target designator box overlays the target on the HUD. In all of this operation, there are no verbal transmissions, which are easily garbled (and the enemy cannot intercept what is going on).
40
Warden argued that fielded military forces were merely the shell that protected the fragile nation. He then argued that the aim of air attack was to wage war from the “inside out.” That is, in his view, air should attack not the shell but the center of the state. He fleshed out this idea in what he called his “Five Strategic Rings” theory, according to which air would attack violently and simultaneously an enemy nation’s leadership (the central ring: the bull’s-eye), its key production centers (the next ring: power, oil refineries, etc.), infrastructure (the next ring: transportation, roads, rail, etc.), a population’s support for the government (the next ring: hearts and minds), and finally the outer shell, the military. All of this, of course, was premised on attaining air superiority.
41
The six-days plan was predicated on a force of thirty-five squadrons, roughly double the strength then available to CENTCOM.
42
The system was designed and produced by French aerospace firms.
43
At the start of the war, hundreds of Westerners in Iraq and Kuwait were rounded up and placed in detention. Many of these were kept at strategic sites, as human shields. When the war started, Saddam Hussein removed the human shields — an act that, paradoxically, ensured the destruction of the strategic sites.
44
The great mistake among military planners is not so much planning to fight the last war as planning to fight an enemy who is one’s own mirror image. The enemy almost always has agendas planners are not aware of. Thus the need for superior intelligence collection. Sadly, Intel people tend to avoid these areas. They are fuzzy, mistakes are always possible, and Intel people don’t like to risk being wrong.
45
Afterward, Horner got to know Caruana, and when the chance came to pick a major general to be his three- star deputy at the U.S. Space Command, he was Horner’s first choice. But in August of 1990, he had little knowledge of Caruana’s tremendous talents.
46
Before his exile to Bahrain, he was the Air Force’s chief legislative liaison with Congress, a job he handled superbly.
47
The BCE was a hundred-person element that represented the ground effort in the air effort headquarters (TACC). Their team kept the air commander up to speed about what was happening on the ground, about what the ground commanders thought needed to be done, and about intelligence the ground forces were generating about enemy ground forces. Also, the BCE gave feedback to the ground forces about what the air was doing, how they were progressing, and any problems the air was having with the ground forces.
48
The nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council formed a military pact like NATO, but less formal. An expression of this alliance was a Coalition land force with elements from each GCC nation that was stationed at the huge military base at King Khalid Military City near the Saudi-Iraq border.
