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"The great military victory we achieved in DESERT STORM and
the minimal losses sustained by US and Coalition forces can
be directly attributed to the excellent intelligence
picture we had on the Iraqis."
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General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, USA, Commander in Chief, US Central Command, 1991 |
The role intelligence (including CI) plays in full-dimensional operations cannot be overstated. Intelligence provides insights concerning exploitable opportunities to defeat the adversary and helps JFCs clearly define the desired end state and when that end state has been achieved. "Exploiting the information differential," as called for in Joint Pub 1, "Joint Warfare of the Armed Forces of the United States," occurs throughout the joint force as fused and tailored intelligence helps synchronize multiple efforts and contributes to the success of the joint team. Exploiting the information differential can be key to avoiding unnecessary and expensive operations in terms of lives and national resources. Actions that JFCs are able to take prior to the initiation of hostilities can assist in determining the shape and character of future operations. Most inclusive is "preparing the theater," which involves intelligence and CI operations to understand clearly the capabilities, intentions, and possible actions of potential opponents, as well as the geography, weather, demographics, and culture of the operational area. Intelligence identifies and nominates relevant and attainable military objectives through assessments of adversary capabilities, intent, and exploitable vulnerabilities. Once military objectives are determined, they become the guidelines for defining intelligence requirements to support subsequent operational decisionmaking.
2. Intelligence Is the Basis of Operations
Intelligence is fundamental to effective planning, security, and deception. Intelligence operations are the organized efforts of a commander to gather and analyze information on the environment of operations and the adversary. Obtaining and synthesizing intelligence prior to beginning operations is a vital task. Assembling an accurate picture of the battlespace requires centralized direction, simultaneous action a all levels of command, and timely distribution of information throughout the command. Intelligence operations may employ any of the joint force's resources and may access collateral force, theater, and national resources. Joint force resources include units in contact with the adversary, patrols, air defense elements, intelligence units, reconnaissance units, and attached liaison officers. Collection and production of SIGINT, HUMINT, IMINT, MASINT, TECHINT, OSINT, along with CI services, provide JFCs at all levels with the intelligence they need to apply their available forces wisely, efficiently, and effectively. Intelligence also provides more specialized and detailed data to operators and staffs across the range of intelligence disciplines to enable them to fulfill the JFC's intent.
Intelligence provided to the commander must be clear, brief, relevant, and timely. Wartime support to the commander must be anticipatory and precise. The intelligence system should maximize and synchronize the support offered to the JFC while minimizing the demands it makes on the JFC. Figure III-1 illustrates aspects of intelligence efforts across the range of military operations.
a. Intelligence Efforts During Peacetime Operations. During peacetime operations, intelligence helps commanders make acquisition choices, protect technological advances, shape organizations, and design training to ready the joint force. Intelligence assets monitor foreign states and volatile regions to identify threats to US interests in time for the National Command Authorities (NCA) to respond effectively, efficiently, and in a manner consistent with US values. Information shortfalls are identified and eliminated. Intelligence units are employed or deployed as early as directed to support US initiatives and assist allies. Forces not deployed train for operations other than war and war.
b. Intelligence Efforts During Operations Other Than War. During operations other than war, intelligence helps the JFC decide which forces to deploy; when, how, and where to deploy them; and how to employ them in a manner that accomplishes the mission at the lowest human and political cost. The often subtle, complex, and occasionally insoluble problems associated with operations other than war make this an extremely demanding sphere for intelligence. Profound area expertise and an understanding of the limits of military power in unique environments are essential. Although supporting the effort to reduce or eliminate sources of conflict, intelligence constantly prepares for escalation to war.
Figure III-1. Intelligence Efforts
c. Intelligence Efforts During War. At the strategic level, wartime intelligence efforts intensify. The efforts of strategic intelligence operations should be focused in wartime to make intelligence available to the operational and tactical levels. The strategic level provides continuity and depth of coverage even while units are deploying. Exchange of intelligence among all echelons and components of the joint force is essential. Intelligence identifies decisive points for the optimum application of combat power, and when properly disseminated to the JFC, reduces uncertainty about the enemy and the environment. Intelligence allows the JFC to focus and leverage combat power and to determine acceptable risk to achieve powerful, dynamic concentrations where the enemy is vulnerable. Intelligence allows the JFC to see to the maximum range of his organic weapon systems and beyond. By helping the commander form the most authentic possible vision of future event across the battlespace, intelligence makes time an ally instead of an enemy. Normally, the greatest challenge for JFCs is to focus the intelligence effort and to gain dissemination of intelligence to the right place in time for key decisions.
Niccolo Machiavelli,
"Nothing is more worthy of the attention of a good general
than the endeavour to penetrate the designs of the enemy."
3. Supporting the Campaign
Discourses, 1517
As stated in Joint Pub 3-0, "Doctrine for Joint Operations," a campaign is a series of related joint major operations that arrange tactical, operational, and strategic actions to accomplish strategic and operational objectives. A campaign plan describes how these operations are connected in time, space, and purpose. JFCs plan and conduct campaigns. Campaigns are joint and serve as the focus for the conduct of war and often in operations other than war. A wartime campaign is the synchronization of air, land, sea, space, and special operations--as well as interagency and multinational operations--inharmony with diplomatic, economic, and informational efforts toattain national and multinational objectives. Intelligencesupports all aspects of the campaign. J-2s at all command levelsfocus on identifying adversary centers of gravity and providing timely, accurate intelligence to the JFC necessary to execute the plan.
a. Supporting the Commander. The J-2 directly supports the JFC's responsibilities for determining objectives, directing operations, and evaluating the effects of those operations. This J-2 function is coincident with, but separate from, responsibilities to support the mission planning and direction functions of the commander's staff, and responsibilities to lateral and subordinate commands. The J-2 analyzes the potential threat situation and provides assessments for friendly opportunities.
b. Identifying and Determining Objectives. "Objective" is the first principle of war to be supported by intelligence. All other aspects of military operations are dependent on the determination of clearly defined, decisive, and attainable objectives. In the process of identifying and nominating military objectives, the J-2 should understand the command's responsibilities; the JFC's mission and intent; means available, including multinational forces; opposing forces; weather; and characteristics of the operating area. Intelligence should provide the commander with an understanding of the adversary in terms of the adversary's intent, objectives, strengths, weaknesses, values, and critical vulnerabilities. The J-2 then nominates attacking those adversary capabilities and exploiting those adversary vulnerabilities critical to both the JFC's and the adversary's likely courses of action as friendly objectives. Once objectives are determined by the commander, intelligence must continuously review them with respect to the adversary and the changing situation to see whether they remain relevant to the commander's intent.
c. Planning and Conducting Operations. Intelligence should be provided at all command levels for planning, directing, and conducting operations once the objectives, nature, and scope of military operations have been determined by the JFC. This intelligence will be critical to commanders and staffs in identifying and selecting specific objectives and targets and in determining the means, operations, and tactics to be used in achieving the JFC's overall mission. The J-2 then supports the execution of the plan with the combat intelligence needed to sustain the operations, attain joint force objectives, and achieve force protection. To maintain the initiative, the JFC will seek to get inside the adversary's decisionmaking cycle; i.e., the JFC will seek to develop procedure and an organization in order to receive new and accurate intelligence and respond to the new situation faster than the adversary. The J-2 must help in identifying the adversary's decisionmaking cycle and identifying weaknesses that may be exploited.
Figure III-2 Intelligence Purposes
PICTURE: The U-2 reconnaissance aircraft provides tactical intelligence to commanders at all levels.
d. Security of Operations--Avoiding Deception and Surprise. The way J-2s and supporting intelligence organizations approach collection, analysis, and dissemination will determine, to a large extent, friendly force vulnerability to adversary deception efforts. A focused, all-source analysis effort (e.g., What should be happening? How can we determine if it is or is not happening?) can test the viability of competing analytical hypotheses. Despite the apparent weight of evidence and decisionmaker predispositions, intelligence analysts should remain sensitive to the possibility they are being deceived and should keep alive any hypothesis that could prove viable. Similarly, analytical approaches that attend to negative intelligence (e.g., activity that should be taking place but apparently is not) are particularly valuable. JFCs deserve an up-front dialogue in which uncertainties are acknowledged and possible alternative explanations are discussed along with an assessment of currently assigned probabilities.
e. Security of Operations Through Military Deception
The Chinese classical writer Sun Tzu maintains that all warfare is based on deception. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf exemplified this premise in leading the campaign to drive the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait in Operation DESERT STORM. Schwarzkopf's planners, mindful of Saddam Hussein's army being accustomed to fighting set-piece battles employing massed head on assaults against Iranian forces, observed that the Iraqis would probably be disposed to expect and prepare for such fighting against the coalition forces. Thus, CENTCOM strategists encouraged Saddam to expect a frontal attack by arraying the coalition forces during Operation DESERT SHIELD in a heavy double line where he was strongest, along the Kuwaiti-Saudi Arabian border.
Schwarzkopf's planners also took advantage of the limited observation capabilities of the Iraqis by applying the coalition's superior air power early in the conflict to systematcally destroy the capabilities of the Iraqi Air Force, thus making it almost impossible for the Iraqis to observe the disposition of U.S. and coalition forces. After the Iraqi Air Force was neutralized, the redeployment of coalition assets began and the deception trump cards were played.
Several hours after the air operation had commenced, Schwarzkopf inaugurated a colossal movement of forces north-westward, away from the Kuwaiti border and along the Iraqi border. Some 100,000 troops and 1,200 tanks, in short, the whole second line of massed troops along the Kuwaiti border, including the U.S. XVIII Airborne Corps and VII Corps, moved 200 miles to the northwest. This movement began with the redeployment, by air and on the ground, of the XVIII Airborne Corps from the far right of the coalition line a distance of some 360 miles to fill the new western-most position. To elude Iraqi intelligence, the corps was held south of Tapline Road. Planners also feared that Bedouins in the area might report troop movements. To minimize this possibility, Saudi Arabian light units had been sent in beforehand to clear the area of as many Bedouins as possible.
The VII Corps likewise moved deftly from its old position to its new one, an average distance of 140 miles, placing its 1st Cavalry Division (transferred from XVIII Corps to VII Corps), the 1st Infantry Division, and the British 1st Armored Division conspicuously on line. The VII Corps deliberately left a gap on its left between itself and the XVIII Airborne Corps to encourage the Iraqis to believe that the coalition line ended with the VII Corps' position. The VII Corps' other armored elements, the 1st and 3d Armored Divisions and the 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment, were moved into line only later in the deployment where their presence intentionally surprised the Iraqis.
The VII Corps also achieved surprise through deceptive measures, leaving behind an entire decoy military base south of the Wadi al-Batin, with mock missiles, fuel dumps, radio traffic, trucks, and tanks, while at the same time making abundant use of multispectral close combat decoys. This deception made it harder for the Iraqis to realize that all of VII Corps' forces were being evacuated to the west. U.S. planners also fielded special teams along the Kuwaiti border to set up mock headquarters in the rear of would-be assault axes. These headquarters aired a high volume of encrypted radio messages so that Iraqi listeners would have the impression that major forces were operating in the area. In fact, the headquarters consisted of only a few troops using portable equipment at otherwise deserted sites.
Meanwhile, coalition air bombardments continued to be directed at targets in Kuwait--not targets to the west--to suggest that Kuwait would be the object of the main ground attack. Skirmishing along the Kuwaiti border was also maintained to draw the Iraqi planners' attention. Similarly, just west of the Kuwaiti border in the VII Corps' sector, the 1st Cavalry Division and the 1st Infantry Division conducted counter-reconnaissance raids after 9 February.
An additional dimension of deception activity, besides masking the stealthy relocation of the coalition line was the demonstration of amphibious assault capabilities. As part of this ruse, an impressive amphibious assault task force was stationed conspicuously off the coast of Kuwait. This fleet was comprised of forty amphibious landing craft, the largest such force to be assembled since Inchon. The force contained the most up-to-date, equipment-laden amphibious ships, as well as aircraft carriers to provide preparatory air bombardments, close combat support, and helicopter airlift. Battleships provided offshore artillery support. For movement to the beach, these forces were equipped with new LVTP-7s (landing, vehicle, track, personnel), LCAC (landing craft air cushion) hovercraft, and CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters, among other things. In short, this was a powerful and credible force stationed threateningly close to the Iraqi defenses along the coast.
To solidify what must have been Saddam's prediction of the axis of attack, CENTCOM regularly made references to the press concerning the training capabilities, and presence of the amphibious force n the Persian Gulf and, later, off the coast of Kuwait. On 1 February, Newsweek magazine carried a feature article on the planned amphibious invasion. To keep the idea of a beach assault in the news, large-scale amphibious rehearsals were conducted, including, notably, the one held during the last 10 days of January in which 8,000 U.S. Marines landed on the coast of Oman. Moreover, during this period, Navy SEALs (sea-air-land teams) carried out numerous missions along the Kuwaiti coast to gather information on the beach gradients and firmness of the sand, the nature and location of minefields, and the disposition of enemy forces. Carrier air and naval artillery missions were also executed throughout the period to support suspicions of a major coalition amphibious assault.
So that Iraqi commanders would continue to anticipate an amphibious attack, U.S. amphibious support vessels along the coast remained positioned as if threatening to attack, and the battleships Missouri and Wisconsin and carrier-based aircraft continued bombardments. The object was to fix the six Iraqi infantry divisions deployed along the shoreline, and this was achieved. Iraqi strategists made no early effort to withdraw their forces from the coastal defense works, with the consequence that those forces were rapidly pinned against the coast by the 1st and 2d Marine Divisions, which had broken through the lines in the south.
Meanwhile, to the northwest, airmobile forces of the XVIII Airborne Corps air assaulted deep into Iraq, establishing forward staging areas. The French 6th Light Armored Division secured the Salmon airstrip. On the following day, the 101st Airborne Division blocked Highway 8. According to the original plan, the VII Corps was supposed to delay its advance for a day while the Iraqi forces were drawn into battle in the vicinity of Kuwait. Coalition forces, however, were so successful that the delay was unnecessary and Schwarzkopf ordered the VII Corps to advance earlier than planned, on the afternoon of 24 February. When Iraqi strategists finally realized that the major assault sector was in the northwest, they could do little in defense.
After the ground operation began Iraqi forces remained in their positions, crammed into a 200-mile-long wedge along the southern border and eastward shoreline of Kuwait. The thousands of men and guns arrayed along the Kuwaiti coast were wasted once the coalition attack began. At the same time, the XVIII Airborne Corps and VII Corps, attacking across a 200-mile front on the Iraqi-Saudi border, were almost unopposed. In short, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi troops were enveloped in the trap sprung by the VII Corps.
Source: Huber, Thomas M., Deception: Deceiving the Enemy in Operation Desert Storm, published in Combined Arms Battle Since 1939, Roger J. Spiller, ed., Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas: US Army Command and General Staff College Press, 1992, 59-65.
