Danger Close

Prologue

Two Clear Days On  March  the dawn brought a beautiful clear sky to Kuwait. The weather report called for good visibility and comfortable temperatures, both of which were important because there was a major daylong exercise scheduled for air and ground units from around the theater. Known as CASEX, for close air support exercise, the event brought together aircraft from several nations and services to work with ground personnel in various locations around northern Kuwait to practice close air support— the use of airstrikes against enemy forces in close proximity to friendly ground forces. Most of the ground portion of the exercise involved air force tactical air controllers, who are responsible for controlling air attacks by identifying ground targets to be attacked, helping pilots locate those targets, and then clearing pilots to attack when conditions look reasonably safe. Most of this day’s training would be “dry”; that is, the aircraft would have no weapons and all training would involve merely practicing procedures and techniques. The highlight of the exercise, though, would take place on Kuwait’s Udairi Range, a large complex used by several nations for live-fire training of all sorts. At Udairi a group had set up to work with aircraft carrying live ordnance, both bombs and guns, and many people were looking forward to a day of very realistic, and therefore very effective, CAS training. In the closing hours of the exercise, disaster struck: a navy F/A- dropped its bombs directly on the group controlling the strike, killing six and wounding five others. Among the dead was a New Zealand army officer , and this, along with the fact that the accident had taken place in a foreign country, made this a high-profile international affair. The news was flashing around the world on CNN before rescue operations were even complete, and the aftermath brought the small but tight-knit community of air force CAS controllers to one of its lowest points. U.S. military leaders moved swiftly to investigate—a board was Prologue 2 Prologue appointed the very next day—but that didn’t stop public speculation and finger-pointing. Consternation within the TACP community began almost immediately when CNN reported within hours that a navy spokesperson claimed the air force TACP, a staff sergeant, had cleared the navy pilot to release his bombs. This not only focused blame on the air force ground controller but also brought several other issues—sensitive issues involving differing service cultures and long-standing service animosities —into the picture. As a result, the TACP community found itself in the crosshairs of an international crisis, and some even felt their profession was suddenly on the chopping block. One reason for concern involved the air force’s approach to controlling close air support. For decades the air force, like the marines, had relied strictly on pilots on the ground to control air attacks. From at least the Vietnam War, however, enlisted members working alongside these pilots assumed greater and greater responsibility. By the eve of Desert Storm they were authorized to independently control airstrikes. Collectively known as ROMADs (an acronym dating to the Vietnam War that supposedly stood for radio operator, maintainer, and driver), today they control most CAS missions, but as late as the Udairi accident this was still quite controversial. One marine officer, in a message posted to an online ROMAD bulletin board, spoke to this controversy directly: the fault lay clearly with the air force for allowing enlisted men to control CAS; had the air force stuck with pilots as the marines had, this would never have happened. ROMADs knew this sentiment was widespread within the army as well as the Marine Corps. Another area of great interservice sensitivity stemmed from the fact that in many ways the air force had never fully embraced the role of close air support. This is a lightning rod issue among the services. Air force leaders and spokespeople will strenuously deny the charge and point to the great progress made in improving CAS capability after Vietnam, particularly in hardware and doctrine, and these were true advances that set the stage for current capabilities. But just about anyone in the other services, as well as most military historians, will point out that much of the air force’s CAS improvements came at army insistence and that low budget priorities and the constant refrain that CAS was the least efficient use of air power prove that CAS was not where the air force’s...