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Buzzing Iraq Deputy Commander Says UAVs Helping Win the War
Huntsville Times
November 18, 2007
By Patricia C. McCarter
BAGHDAD, Iraq - All those hours of playing video games and hanging out in chat rooms have paid off.
According to Maj. Gen. Jim Simmons, deputy commander of the Multi-National Corps in Iraq, the youngest of America's soldiers are making the War on Terror less deadly. Surveillance provided by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles - also called drones or robot planes - is creating a surprisingly "safer" war zone, he said, evidenced by October being the lowest casualty month in two years.
By flying the aircraft, which range from the hand-launched, battery-operated Raven to the hulking 3,600-pound Sky Warrior, on reconnaissance missions over Iraq and sending real-time video back to data analysts on the ground, battle leaders are able to snoop on roadside bomb-planters and track enemy troop movement.
And it all ties back to Huntsville and the UAV Program Office at Redstone Arsenal.
"The number of (improvised explosive devices) is going down significantly, and the lethality of the IEDs is also decreasing," Simmons said earlier this month from his office in the Al-Faw Palace in Baghdad.
And there hasn't been one death associated with the unmanned aircraft.
Simmons said the best UAV operators are the 19- and 20-year-olds who have never known life without video games or the Internet.
"They don't communicate in English," the seasoned major general said about the computer-chatting young soldiers, adding that if he was either a UAV operator or analyst, "I wouldn't be a successful warrior."
With UAVs, regardless of their size, a controller flies the plane over terrain at the request of a battalion. Another soldier views the images and "chats" with a battle captain about what he's seeing. If there's activity that needs to be addressed, such as somebody digging a hole to plant an IED, the captain determines the best method of dealing with it, Simmons said.
That might be an Apache helicopter or ground troops.
"The big breakthrough ... is how rapidly we mastered the manned-unmanned teaming aspect of UAVs and manned aerial platforms," he said.
Simmons said sometimes UAVs survey known terrorist hot spots for up to 14 hours, "and the bad guy on the ground has no idea he's been spotted." His movements can be spotted for days, and possibly back to the head of the insurgent's network.
Then they must determine if they want to kill him or capture him.
"But you want to make sure you're killing the right person," he said.
Simmons said that through August, UAV surveillance has helped soldiers kill 232 enemies, wound 48 and detain 260.
Those deaths have figured into the economics of the insurgents' battle plan. Because it's becoming more dangerous to plant roadside bombs, the planters are charging more.
"The price goes up," he said, so the number of IEDs that the enemy can afford goes down.
'Soldiers love them'
The Unmanned Aircraft Project Office, led by Col. Donald Hazelwood at Redstone Arsenal, oversees the development, testing, production and soldier training for the Army's UAV fleet. Included in that fleet are Raven, Shadow, Hunter, Warrior, MAV and Firescout systems.
Of the 250-plus personnel working at the project office here, 170 are contractors from local companies.
"UAVs have become an addiction in the field," said Tarah Hollingsworth, who handles public affairs for the project office. "The soldiers love them. Any time they can send aircraft up to see what's over the hill instead of a soldier, that's what they want to do.
"We're just trying to keep up with the demand."
Simmons agrees.
"Talk to the brigade commanders," said the major general, who is third in command over the Army in Iraq. "They all want more UAVs."
Lt. Col. Mark Hirschinger, commander of the 615th Aviation Support Battalion in Taji just north of Baghdad, has 25 Shadow aircraft that he sends to scour the countryside. The Shadow is a catapult-launched vehicle that can fly five hours at a time.
Hirschinger said its daylight and infrared cameras have yielded the kind of valuable information that's saving lives.
"Consistent, constant observation is the key," he said. "(The enemy) can stick a mortar round on a truck and move into place in a hurry."
What goes up must come down, and sometimes the Shadow comes down before its operator tells it to. Shortly after this interview with Hirschinger, a Shadow lost engine power on its return to the Taji base, and its emergency parachute was deployed.
It was located by friendly Iraqis who returned it to American soldiers.
If they hadn't given it back, an already airborne Shadow monitoring the downed aircraft would've followed the Iraqis and recovered it, whatever it took, Hirschinger said.
Maj. Patrick Michaelis said "just the other day," a Warrior Alpha shot a Hellfire missile to "kill a bad guy" who was planting a bomb. It was a remote site, and he said his men probably wouldn't have spotted the man on their own.
"I can't cover 375 square miles with my troops," he said. "(UAVs) are having a direct impact on eliminating terrorist networks."
'We're winning'
Maj. Randall Baucom's body language was like someone who is about to tell a big secret.
"I don't know if you've heard it or not," the Taji-based major said, "but we're winning the war. Violence is down 75 percent. I don't know what else you'd call that but winning."
In a courtyard-like area outside the headquarters of the First Brigade Combat Team of the First Cavalry, he pointed to a display of confiscated IEDs. They looked like what anyone would expect to see on the side of the road in Iraq.
Rock chunks. Wads of trash. Discarded vegetable oil box.
But he said fewer and fewer of them are exploding because of (a) UAV surveillance and (b) friendly Iraqis spotting them and telling soldiers.
"The Sunnis have really come on board with us, and some of the Shias have, too," Baucom said of two of Iraq's main civil war factions. "In some communities, I have tribesmen from both sects working checkpoints together. They're standing watch, saying, 'We've had enough.'
"And some of these are people who were once affiliated with al Qaeda. But they've put their hand on the Koran and sworn to commit no more violence against us."
Col. Paul Funk, commander of the First Brigade in Taji, said the security volunteers are critical to victory, and the wearier they grow of the chaos in their country, the safer the country will be.
He referred to the movement of the Sunnis driving out al Qaeda as the "Anbar Awakening."
"We don't have to give them weapons," Funk said. "They have their own."
The Anbar Province is an agricultural area, but Funk said farmers haven't been able to plant crops for five years because of war. This year, they'll be able to plant, he said.
In villages where he couldn't have visited six months ago "without getting blown up," he can now walk through with no problem.
"I'm absolutely thrilled with what's happening," he said. "Don't get me wrong, it's still dangerous when you go outside of these gates ... but the people want al Qaeda gone