The Foggiest of Wars
WES BRYANT
Running the BIAP Strike Cell by night, my existence quickly became a blur. My sense of day and night was distorted—the strike cell became a twilight zone in many ways. Time was a relative term, only kept up-to-date in my mind by the necessity to remember which operation we were covering at any given point. My entire being became wholly consumed with one objective: hunting and killing ISIS.
I’d wake up in the late afternoon in my single-room CHU, set among the old mobile units situated off the airfield about 500 meters from the strike cell. It was modest living. My most prized possessions were an electric water heater, a small French Press, and a fresh supply of my favorite local coffee that my wife had sent from the States. We always bought the coffee from the local grocery store in the little North Carolina town where she and I called home.
The local coffee was not only my staple—my morning vitamin—but it was a daily reminder of the life back home I sacrificed for. I got in a routine of waking up to a couple of cups of steaming pressed coffee while standing on my small, weathered wood porch in the early evening and watching the setting Baghdad sun. I’d try shaking the grogginess out of my head, usually to no avail until my second or third cup. Scenes of the previous night’s strikes always streamed through my mind. I’d play the events over and over—thinking about what went well and what we could have done better. I’d fall asleep with a mind saturated with scenes from the night’s strikes, and I’d wake up to more of the same.
As a JTAC, there was always a psychological and emotional toll—no matter how the killing was done. Even though this time I was killing remotely from a strike cell physically removed from the battlefield, the mission still had an impact. I was in a state of constant aggression—consumed with the hunt.
My wife knew when I’d had a busy night hunting ISIS. If she couldn’t already tell from my demeanor over the phone, years back I’d established a code word that only she and I knew. When I slipped it into casual conversation, she knew I’d been doing my job—controlling airstrikes against our nation’s enemies.
She was my rock. Through all my deployments over the years I would talk to her about everything I could—operational security permitting. By then, everyone knew America was slaying ISIS with airstrikes. That was no secret. My wife was just privy to the fact that I was one of the men doing it.
I’d found that the more she knew about what I was involved in while I was gone, the better she could handle my inevitable maladjusted quirkiness and generally aggressive mindset every time I came home. Keeping her in the dark about where I was and what I was doing never helped. I preferred her to at least have some understanding of my world across the ocean.
And in my world, we were soon killing nearly 300 ISIS fighters a week—just a little more than they could effectively recruit.
But it wasn’t easy. The war against ISIS took place in a thick fog caused by language and cultural barriers, strict rules of engagement, the challenges of discerning friend from foe, and many other difficult factors. Our job in the strike cell was to cut through the fog—or at least rise above it.
Our requirements for targeting ISIS were strict, and our processes to meet those requirements were sometimes encumbered by the methods we had to utilize. Far from being on the battlefield and in the fight like we were used to as JTACs—with our own eyes on enemy targets as we destroyed them—strike cell operations were a whole different animal. But the fundamentals of close air support never changed, and the doctrinal requirements for authorizing air-to-surface fires onto a given target had to be met just the same.
Our two most vital precursors to any airstrike were valid targeting information and friendly force locations. And they came from a variety of sources. If we weren’t actively supporting a ground battle between Iraqi forces and ISIS, where we could observe enemy positions and easily correlate information the Iraqis were passing to us, our targeting was difficult. We’d receive intelligence reporting from various military and government entities in Iraq on a near-constant basis. Part of our struggle was sifting through that steady flow of reported intelligence to find the viable reports that would lead us to enemy targets, while also ensuring we knew where our friendly forces were and where civilians were not. We had to screen the reporting in real-time, to rule out what was good and what was bogus.
Too often, intelligence just didn’t pan out. Other times, reports from separate entities conflicted. It was not uncommon for one entity to tell us that a certain location was an ISIS position while another said it was a friendly force or civilians. At times, our reporting was so inconclusive and conflicting that we just disregarded all of it and went on the hunt ourselves without assistance from any so-called “intelligence.” We’d simply direct our aircraft via our own intuition built from years of experience hunting insurgencies on the ground—and we’d do it with great success.
When we supported our Iraqi forces on ground offensives, targeting was easier in some ways but more difficult in others. Our special operations team liaisons were vital in maintaining direct communications with the Iraqi commanders in charge of the forward ground units, but there was still a very lengthy communications chain ridden with language and cultural barriers.
The communications flow had to go from a forward Iraqi field commander on the ground to his commander at one of the Iraqi operations centers—sometimes via multiple intermediary commanders—then to an interpreter with our embedded Special Forces team. From there, the communication would finally be relayed to our liaison at the strike cell and to us. Likewise, any amplifying clarification or guidance from our strike cell back to the Iraqi ground force commander had to take the reverse route.
Sometimes the chain of communication to and from Iraqi ground commanders went well, and others it surely did not. Those variables were based largely on the nature, competency, and aggressiveness of a given Iraqi commander, communications reliability between field commanders and their superiors at the operations centers, and the translation capabilities of interpreters. The communication delays were a huge challenge.
Adding to those challenges, a myriad of combat entities populated the battlefields of Iraq—and not all of them were Iraqi Security Forces. Some were neither our allies nor our enemies. Those included Shia and Sunni militias not associated directly with Iraqi Security Forces as well as Iraqi police units. With those entities, we often had spotty communication at best.
One night during the initial few days of the south Baghdad operation, we’d identified a suspected ISIS stronghold forward of our advancing Iraqi forces. It was a fairly large compound comprised of two adjacent, one-story buildings. We used a Predator drone to scan the area and counted roughly thirty armed fighters. The compound had machine gun positions reinforced with sandbags up on the corners of the rooftops. There was a mortar team in the main entranceway to the larger building, and a couple dozen fighters actively patrolled the grounds of the compound. Both the rooftop gun positions and the mortar tube were oriented toward our advancing Iraqi forces who, though a long way off, were to the north. Our ISF had slowly but steadily been making their way into the area and were still about two or three kilometers away—but that was well within range of the enemy mortar tube.
We needed to get verification that we were looking at an ISIS position. We asked the commander of the ISF unit to the north, but he couldn’t confirm if the compound was ISIS. He knew it was not any of his own forces, at least, but nothing beyond that. We contacted the Baghdad Operations Center and the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. Those entities were responsible for verifying the identification and locations of Iraqi ground units in lieu of real-time information from our forward Iraqi commanders. They were our last stop for identifying friend or foe.
While we waited for word back, the commander of the forward Iraqi unit radioed again to assure us that none of his forces were near the compound. He was convinced it was an ISIS compound and wanted us to go ahead and strike it.
We were observing a large number of armed fighters, embedded machine gun positions, and a mortar tube, all oriented toward our Iraqi forces. We’d had a forward Iraqi commander verify that his forces were not at the compound. At that point, we held right in our laps what was legally termed “reasonable certainty” under our rules of engagement that the position was an ISIS stronghold.
Still, we couldn’t always think in black-and-white terms. Things just didn’t feel right quite yet. Prudence dictated that we shouldn’t act, because the situation remained a little too ambiguous. Sure, we were looking at a large compound with a lot of armed personnel and heavy weapons, and it would be a really lucrative ISIS target. But we had to be far surer of the target before we struck.
It would have been really simple for us if the Iraqi forces just closed-in on the compound. That way, we could see if the fighters at the compound opened fire on our Iraqi unit. If they did, we’d have our answer and would have the authority to strike immediately in defense of the Iraqi forces. The Iraqi unit had no plan to do that, though; it was too risky for them. Most of the regular Iraqi forces were not equipped with night vision equipment like our soldiers in the U.S. military, so nighttime firefights were a little more perilous. Plus, they were still a few kilometers away and the movement at night would be long and difficult.
We needed either trusted intelligence or ground verification that the force at the compound was enemy in order to request and prosecute a strike. We kept watching…and waiting. Finally, word came back from the Iraqi MoD.
A senior Iraqi general from the MoD called our strike cell and said that they’d determined the location contained neither friendly forces nor neutral militia units. They concluded it was an ISIS position, and requested we strike.
It was exactly what we’d been waiting for. The target was as lucrative as they got. It was well-fortified, and the enemy force there would no-doubt inflict large casualties on our advancing Iraqi forces if we didn’t take them out first. General Pittard had been waiting patiently along with the rest of us for word back from the MoD. He quickly approved the strike.
It was a clear-cut target.
Emotions in the strike cell ran high. We were all anticipating destroying the large ISIS compound. As JTACs, though, it was our job to temper emotions—that eagerness to “get the kill”—with professional objectivity. When emotions ran rampant, judgment could be clouded and mistakes made. Mistakes with airstrikes could be devastating to our mission and to the very people we were striving to protect.
Adam and I were tandem controlling with multiple strike assets that night. In the time that we’d been waiting on the MoD to come back with verification on the target, he and I had already coordinated the attack in advance so that we could execute as soon as we got the word. Adam had control of a drone crew over secure phone and I had our fixed-wing strike aircraft on the radio. We were inwardly salivating to kill the huge ISIS target, yet outwardly calm and level.
Overhead the ISIS compound, concealed by the night sky, an AC-130 “Whiskey” gunship orbited, armed with a 30mm cannon and a slew of 45-pound Griffin missiles. Above it, a Predator drone circled with a compliment of 100-pound Hellfire missiles. Both were ready to unleash fury on the fighters in the compound on our call.
Our plan was to hit the fighters in the open first with a slew of Griffin missiles from the AC-130 gunship, followed by 30mm, then destroy the mortar tube and machine gun positions with a second attack in sequence. Meanwhile, the Predator would be standing by to hit any squirters with its Hellfire missiles. It was the quickest way to pull off the attack—and it was going to be a beautiful strike.
I was just about to give final strike clearance to the gunship when Colonel Kehoe interjected with a change in plans. He wanted us to alter our strike plan to attack the mortar tube and gun positions first. I was a little irked at the demand—Adam and I knew from experience that the enemy typically couldn’t move an established mortar tube and well-emplaced machine gun positions within the time it would take between strikes, especially when they’d be scrambling from the first one. Hitting the fighters in the open first was our best bet to round up as many kills as we could before they had a chance to maneuver and take cover. Then we could take our relative time destroying the heavy weapons positions that would, most likely, be abandoned at that point.
Colonel Kehoe was adamant. That was his prerogative as the strike cell director. I knew it wouldn’t cause too much of a delay to re-brief the crews anyway, so I was fine with it in the end. I could see benefits from either game plan. The compound and the fighters in it weren’t going anywhere any time soon. We had time.
It took a couple more minutes for us to brief the new strike plan to our gunship and Predator crews. The new game plan would be that our Predator would launch a single Hellfire missile at the mortar tube while the gunship simultaneously threw Griffin missiles onto the machine gun positions on the rooftops. Then the gunship would pull into a tighter orbit and rain down 30mm on any fighters in the open.
It turned out those couple of minutes we took re-briefing our aircrews were an incredible stroke of luck. We’d just finished relaying the new game plan, and had directed our strike assets to set up in position to execute the strikes, when we received an urgent phone call from the MoD.
“Don’t strike! The compound is a Shia militia headquarters!”
Adam and I wasted no time. “All players—Abort, Abort, Abort!” we relayed to the Predator and gunship almost in unison. Both crews acknowledged.
I sat quietly for a few moments, a bit stunned that I had just come about yay close to having a strike on “friendly” forces under my belt. Aside from the moral issue of killing the wrong people with an airstrike, it was a huge mar on the reputation and professional pride of any JTAC. In all the strikes I’d controlled both in Iraq and Afghanistan throughout the years, I was proud to say that I didn’t have a single bad strike—and I wasn’t interested in changing that trend. Adam and I exchanged solemn, knowing looks and shook our heads at the close call, sighing relief.
From his very first moments upon hitting the ground, General Pittard had worked tirelessly to unite the tribal elements of Iraq in a common fight against ISIS. Thus far, he’d been pretty successful. During the operation to liberate the city of Amerli only a few weeks earlier, Shia militias had fought alongside Iraqis and Kurds in a near-miraculous multifaction coalition against ISIS. And after Amerli, senior leadership of the major Shia militia forces openly proclaimed that the militias did not intend on fighting the U.S. or its coalition, and that our common enemy was ISIS.
A strike on a fortified compound of Shia militia that night would have been detrimental in the effort toward uniting Iraqi tribal elements in the fight against ISIS. It could possibly have turned the Shia militias against us. That was the heavy fog we dealt with in the new kind of war we waged. And in the weeks and months to follow, we’d use that near-fratricide on the Shia militia force as a solemn lesson-learned in the campaign against ISIS.