In Parts 1-7 I covered a lot of ground about a lot of stuff. Much of it focused on how seemingly slow on the uptake and shocked our government was to embrace and assimilate the changes that came with computers and the digital capability being built into many systems.
Those can be somewhat subtle challenges for many who did not pay much attention or were not involved in the transition-I personally think of it every time I change the channel on my theater room setup, when hitting the “back” or return button takes almost 3 seconds to execute by the time the stereo, cable box and projector all “settle:” and it feels like much longer (the screen is actually the wall-so there is no television or monitor delay.) Now if “somebody” wasn’t so cheap-they could have invested in all digital stuff and eliminated the delay much like updating an old computer.
The separate technologies and advances in digital signal processing and analog to digital conversion can be balanced to make it instantaneous: but I can wait-it’s not going to kill me, although dumping 10K into the theater room would…. Analog has not gone away and likely won’t in our lifetimes-and in many applications-that’s a good thing: electro-magnetic pulse comes to mind.
The digital age has spawned a lot of capability in the military world that is just staggering. I was talking to a friend the other day about the power of the active electronically steerable array (AESA) radar that represents a huge capability improvement in military fighters for air-to-air and target discrimination, while helping work through interference, jamming, and natural clutter: the technology is decades old by now.
During one of the All-Services Combat Identification Evaluation Team (ASCIET ~1999) efforts where the team was working aspects of combat identification (friend or foe,) it was not unusual for the F/A-18E Super Hornet or the F-15 strike eagles to detect, engage, and kill targets way beyond visual range out to nearly 200 miles, well before the enemy force had any idea they were detected, and well before they could do anything about it.
During the last ASCIET I participated in there was a system test and demonstration of the United States Navy (USN) AEGIS SPY Radar equipped Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC,) Single Integrated Air Picture (SIAP) with a Joint Composite Tracking Network (JCTN) software application running in line that would use a “best athlete” approach to produce tracks reported into the integrated air picture/Common Operational Picture (COP.)
Called the PATRIOT-CEC Advance Capability Technology Demonstration (ACTD,) the objective was to prove the technology works and to buy down risk for cruise missile defense applications. I was a skeptic-not quite sure everything would work as advertised, but I was proven wrong when I saw the first synthetic JCTN track that had (elements like) (1) AEGIS combat identification and speed vector, (2) an AWACS altitude estimate, (3) a PATRIOT distance calculation and was eventually engaged at a high probability of kill by an Army Forward Area Air Defense (FAAD) System that never did establish or reflect the track in its system, and yet reported something like an ~97% probability for a one shot kill optimized broadside at less than 2 Kms!
That was amazing, but in a demonstration sponsored by the Joint Staff J-8 at the time (Lt Gen Bruce Carlson) the SIAP/JCTN was able to maintain near continuous track of an AN-2 Colt throughout the exercise area, jokingly referred to as a “balsa wood and canvas,” mainline North Korean small paratrooper (12) platform for their special operations forces: a tough target for radar!
In concert with one of the not so subtle points I am making in this series, coming out of the 1980s with the Eldorado Canyon Libyan strike and the Iranian Air Bus shootdown (and also an RF-4C from Zweibruecken AFB by our Navy,) and incidents during the Gulf War, the US came to the conclusion that we had a problem with our Joint Integrated Air Defense System (JIADS,) with myriad problems that prevented it from operating at anywhere near peak efficiency.
It’s not my story for today, but US Navy Lcdr/Capt Jeff Wilson stood up the JIADS Engineering Working Group (JIADSEWG) to address systemic problems across the enterprise and if it wasn’t for his passion and the expertise of the group representing myriad JIADS elements, hell-bent on getting it right, the above SIAP/JCTN advances would not have been possible: subject matter expertise and passion still matters.
But you probably didn’t sign up on this trip to hear me blather about arcanery and triviosity over the years. I’m going to cut to the point of this story which has been building somewhat in the background, a bit obscured by my not-so-subtle attempt to build a case that we should have known better: that we are who we thought we were…..and I will get back to that later.
After my last article it struck me that it is time to focus on my main storyline before I lose dear reader by babbling on about stuff I think is interesting, while somewhat burying the lede on how the death of Security Guard Tina Ricca started a cascade of events that resulted in the firing of two great leaders, Jeff Harris and Jimmie Hill, and how that resulted in what I’ve already referred to as a disturbance in Doc’s time-space continuum.
The NRO was well underway on the Future Imagery Architecture (FIA) procurement to bring the US government satellite constellation into the 21st century, with the promise of tremendous capability at significant cost in providing persistence through some type of composite constellation that would have radar, electro-optic and variants of infrared, SWIIR and whatever other “goodness” was prioritized in the vendor proposals and approved in the final contract award.
What made FIA such a Lesko big deal was this was going to be a deliberately planned, robust architecture that would initially fly out as somewhat of a hybrid architecture with the idea of obviating-except in absolute emergencies-flying any more of the legacy missions.
What was lost on many but the absolute “insiders” who had been following technical developments for nearly two decades at this point-was how advanced the thinking was on what would constitute the envisioned constellation. At a time when we weren’t that far removed from black and white television, calculators the size of books with big bright numbers (in the military) that seemed to be made for old people, where we still had very simplistic, analog capability that predominated in the force equipment, satellite design and the Tasking Processing Exploitation and Dissemination that supported it, as well as the ground infrastructure necessary to optimize it, the NRO in particular had quietly pursued an absolute revolution in capability that emerged very quietly in just a few small corners of the government.
The experiments came with a steep price tag and the promise of a totally different experience and capability that much of the military and government beyond those producing the science and technology and following the emerging trends remained blissfully unaware of-and more importantly-those involved were not only cleared for the efforts but were participating in the concepts as they were fleshed out-many of whom were simply unaware of and not in the right thinking space to make these changes work.
One of the first times I became aware of some of the nuances of these emerging techniques was when I was exposed to a system where the image was back projected on a screen that was manipulated by a computer to achieve stereo and to do tasks that formerly had to be done through a stereo macroscope and mensuration rulers, reticles, and various devices. Many of us who have spent some time on a light table and can get stereo with the slightest prod of properly spaced pictures, and the notion of exploiting such imagery without having to be cloistered over a stereoscope was an exciting idea with tremendous potential for applications in command posts.
I earlier used an analogy of a Sony eight-track player I purchased in the late 60s when I was not savvy enough to recognize what a game changer cassette players were going to be, but more importantly Dolby Noise Reduction and what a difference it would make when signal-to-noise ratio above 92DB and up to 96DB would become the standard (although in my defense, I was 12 and a skeptic after Popular Science big coverage of the infamous Jet Pack as a commute option: how did that turn out?) I think the best you could do at the time was the TEAC reel to reel which reputedly had over 100DB separation-but you had to be scrupulously careful with the tape-not my cup of tea (and too expensive.) Emerson, Lake and Palmer started pushing quadrophonic sound during their concerts and digital sampling was off and running (although it (quad sound) never really caught on.)
I well remember in 1984 when our unit in Germany-since it was technically a brigade level unit from an Army organizational construct-was only allowed one or two security allocations for the emerging classification systems that governed the management “compartment” for a lot of these new developments. Now that is wonderful from a security perspective, but at that level of unit in the Army you don’t typically have officers-nor enlisted, in many cases in those days-who are trained in the right type of “black arts” cognizant of these issues. So, the allocation goes to the commanding general and perhaps the G-2, neither of whom will likely spend any time involved in any program activity other than reading administrivia about program progress.
When I in-processed in Jan 1984 the G-2 spent about 15 minutes talking all manner of detail and blather about our unit mission and his expectations-which was wonderful-but when I had a chance to talk and ask him “What type of mission requirements do you need me to work that involve tactical surveillance, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR,) and National Technical Means (NTM) support of our War Plans?” He was gob smacked: he thought I was the run of the mill tactical intelligence officer that were ubiquitous in those days-Ft. Huachuca was pumping them out like Skittles-and asked me what my specialty was-and was astounded to hear I was a tactical surveillance officer-a “squint” or Image Interpreter-with an additional skill identifier for satellite imagery exploitation. He had added the job specialty to his manning document but had been told by Department of the Army that such a short skillset was not authorized at brigade level: but the Germany based Forward Brigades from 2d Armored Div and 1st Inf Div were heavy, special category units.
The Army somewhat did a good thing keeping those developments so secretive, but the net result was way too much of an insular group cobbling together what needed to be force-wide plans by folks steeped in the business. At the time I discovered this activity was going on-I told my bosses that I was the right guy to be cleared for this-but we are talking a combat arms unit where even the crypto keys were treated like uranium or something, folks that simply did not deal beyond collateral secret very often and were extremely uncomfortable with anything above that classification.
To show how closely guarded these developments were, I came out of nearly 5 years working in this field at echelons above corps, and after Officer Candidate School went through an 18 week Imagery Interpretation course at Fort Huachuca, Az-the Military Intelligence Center and School, and yet it took a side visit to a friend of mine on the way to Germany and a few beers to get the gist of how revolutionary these developments were going to be as the effort at Fort Bragg with the DITB DEMONS went mainstream within the Army.
Not to digress too much, but the Army had actually taken significant steps to get ahead of this emerging capability represented by the transition of satellite imagery to a real-or near real time system and had conducted data gathering and experiments with specific analysts being selected to work on soft copy or digital exploitation via computer interaction, providing feedback on what worked best in the development phase that was conducted by the Engineer Topographic Laboratory at Ft. Belvoir, circa 1977.
These experiments (Witchcraft, Cauldron and others) and user input and feedback sessions would lead to the Army fielding the Digital Imagery Test Bed-Demonstration System (DITB-DEMONS) to 18th Airborne Corps, Ft. Bragg, NC in ~1978 or so. This first softcopy or digital exploitation system was accompanied by a magical device called the Hard Copy Reconstruction Unit or Electron-Beam recorder; a laser housed in a vacuum that was capable of producing hard copy imagery from digital imagery pixels/data downloaded from the experimental satellite and airborne systems.
Why was this relevant to the later FIA issues? Well, the Army developed the prototype risk reduction DITB-DEMONS into a procurement program called the Tactical Imagery Exploitation System or TACIES, building a program that called for the deployment of such a system to each of the Army Corps level echelons, starting with Vth Corps in Europe. The first article was scheduled for delivery in 1984.
The Army had identified 46 image interpreter slots for the unit once it was fielded, with other specialties filled in from the gaining unit, and all manner of fielding actions-material fielding plans, training materiel, allocations to train interpreters at the Offutt AFB 3428th, Technical Training Squadron’s Defense Sensor Interpretation and Applications Training Program (DSAITP-) and thousands of little details that were underway as I reported to Germany in 1984: the Army was well on the way to meeting the challenge of this new, revolutionary capability for the community, one US Army Corps at a time.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the play. The other services were-I assume-catching up to these developments and imagery related costs were soon creeping into the Pentagon budget as plans, ideas, and projections matured into actual funded programs. Like any other budget minded enterprise, the Pentagon tracks categories of expenditures and projected budget items, and as Richard Armitage assumed his newly appointed position as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Affairs, there was apparently enough military intelligence coded imagery related “stuff” to stand out in a crowd and draw attention from Pentagon leaders: even in a big crowd.
To keep this story within length, Armitage was asked to look into some of these developments by Secretary of Defense Casper Wienberger, and the perhaps apocryphal story is that Armitage was none too pleased by the disparate and seemingly ill-to not coordinated service plans. Which culminated in a briefing one day where he asked what he thought was a reasonable and straightforward question: What is the difference between imagery distribution and imagery dissemination? The officer from the Army Space Program Office, G-3 staff, DAMO FD, was reportedly an engineer and not a military intelligence soldier and he simply whiffed the question. Armitage did what he thought was a reasonable response: he canceled TACIES and many of the Secondary Imagery Devices in the 1984 program budget.
This was a cataclysmic and ill-considered decision that would not only result in terrible deficiencies in the United States military to master and develop subject matter expertise with these new systems but would result in significant combat battlefield operational system deficiencies in the Gulf War (1991) that would linger and have to be addressed anew during the aforementioned FIA procurement.
End of Part 8
16 November 2022
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