Renaissance of the attack helicopter in the close fight

Military Review,  July-August, 2003  by Robert M. Cassidy

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Americans define war as being waged against a uniformed, disciplined, opposing state's armed forces, the sort who will fight fairly, the way the Americans do.

--Daniel P. Bolger (1)

THE FACT THAT I am writing this article at an Iraqi airfield north of Tikrit testifies to the success of the United States and its coalition partners in their endeavor to remove Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime and to liberate the Iraqi people. Although this second Persian Gulf war witnessed conventional and symmetrical battles in its opening phases, some Iraqi forces employed asymmetric techniques to undermine U.S. campaign plans and to test America's resolve.

Subsequent to the capture of Baghdad, Task Force (TF) Iron Horse, comprising the 4th Infantry Division (ID) and attached units, was charged with clearing the area north of Baghdad (centered on Tikrit, the former hub of Saddam's political support) of noncompliant forces (NCF) and interdicting the proliferation of the many remaining weapons systems in that area. Both the employment of asymmetric techniques against U.S. forces moving against Baghdad and the subsequent intransigence of NCF in northern Iraq, employing hit-and-run, guerrilla-style tactics to acquire weapons and disrupt U.S. lines of communications (LOC), were anathema to the U.S. definition of war.

During the first Persian Gulf war in 1991, Iraqi forces confronted the United States and its coalition partners according to the dominant Western (conventional and symmetric) paradigm of war. It is hardly surprising that the Iraqi forces were defeated. It is also not surprising that in 2003, some Iraqi forces adopted asymmetric approaches to try to mitigate U.S. overmatch in technology and conventional military prowess. The most glaring and disquieting Iraqi employment of asymmetric techniques occurred during the approach to Baghdad on 23 March 2003. Highly dispersed small Iraqi units set ambushes, using a cell phone and observer network in the cities south of Baghdad. These ambushes damaged a number of AH-64s that were conducting a corps-level, deep-shaping attack against Republican Guard divisions surrounding Baghdad.

The Iraqi enemy never presented a massed target for AH-64 attacks and quickly dispersed into the cities rather than remain in conventional and predictable defensive battle positions. During this Iraqi ambush, small-arms and antiaircraft fire damaged more than 90 percent of a U.S. regiment's helicopters, and one helicopter crew was captured. The damage to one attack helicopter battalion's aircraft was so severe that the battalion did not see any major action for the rest of the war. (2)

Not long after the fall of Baghdad, and before coalition forces had finished subduing a host of NCF in northern Iraq, the media began to report that the days of the Apache Longbow were numbered. These negative media comments echoed the death knell of deep-attack shaping operations and postulated that the Apache was obsolescent. This opinion seemed to be based on one highly visible but unsuccessful large-scale deep attack. Actually, the Apache had proven its worth and effectiveness during the first Persian Gulf war and the war in Afghanistan.

Hoping to gain an advantage in the zero-sum defense appropriations game, self-proclaimed attack helicopter and air-power experts said it was time to eliminate the Apache and supplant its ground support role with the U.S. Air Force's A-10 Warthog. Others argued that the Apache was designed for a deep-attack role in the context of a conventional war between organized, combined-arms formations. Therefore, adversaries who embraced asymmetric approaches saw the Apache as a dinosaur, just another Cold War relic.

The armchair experts were wrong. After 23 March 2003, Army attack aviation adapted tactics to counter the asymmetric threat. With close air support (CAS) A-10 attacks, Apache helicopters conducted effective armed reconnaissance and close shaping missions that were integrated with ground maneuver to defeat Republican Guard divisions surrounding Baghdad. After Iraq's organized formations dissolved, Iraqi Ba'ath party guerrillas confronted effective and lethal small AH-64 armed weapons teams integrated with ground scouts and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) sensors. This phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom was characterized by decentralized, combined arms, small units operating in nonlinear, noncontiguous areas of operations (AOs). U.S. Army Field Manual 3-0, Operations, provides a perceptive description and codification of this operational milieu where combat and stability operations intersect. (3)

The Apache Longbow remains an effective instrument in armed reconnaissance operations throughout a nonlinear, noncontiguous battlespace against an enemy that uses symmetric and asymmetric tactics. After Baghdad was seized, the attack helicopter integrated with ground maneuver in a close fires role. Coalition forces were operating against paramilitary and noncompliant forces in nonlinear AOs that were highly distributed in time and space.