JTACs, training at MacDill, guide fighter jets to enemy targets
AVON PARK — As the Navy F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet roars 11,000 feet overhead awaiting instructions for dropping a 500-pound bomb on an enemy anti-aircraft battery, Dutch army Capt. Nico Schoone scans the target then consults “the bible.”
Schoone is a joint terminal attack controller, or JTAC in military parlance. He is the pilot’s eyes and ears on the ground, responsible for making sure where the enemy, as well as civilians and friendly forces are, knowing the weather, physical layout and topographic conditions, then guiding the U.S. fighter jet’s munitions on target.
“The bible,” as he calls it, is a U.S. military manual, called “JFIRE,” that gives JTACs the information they need to communicate with personnel from all branches of the armed forces.
If this were a battlefield, lives would depend on the decisions made by Schoone and the pilot.
But this is a training mission, both for the new Navy pilots who were bedded down at MacDill Air Force Base, and the Dutch JTACs. The “target” is a building surrounded by antenna towers at the Avon Park Municipal Airport and the staging area is a patch of grass in between the airport and the Avon Park Mower-Plex, a lawn mower race track.
The training scenario is typical of what took place in Afghanistan, where Schoone served several tours calling in airstrikes as part of the international coalition and where pilots have the luxury of relying on JTACs on the battlefield, as they did in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
That’s not the case right now in Syria and Iraq. As of Thursday, there have been 1,973 airstrikes against Islamic State targets like buildings, vehicles, weapons and personnel in both nations since the campaign began Aug. 8 in Iraq and Sept. 23 in Syria, including attacks by aircraft from the Netherlands, according to Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, which runs the day-to-day operations on behalf of U.S. Central Command, headquartered at MacDill. None of those airstrikes, however, have been with the aid of a JTAC-qualified service member on the battlefield, according to Centcom. Those who perform JTAC missions in the fight against Islamic State are in Iraq, but away from the front lines, relying on two-dimensional video feeds and sensor readings from drones and piloted aircraft flying overhead.
The United Kingdom-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claims that as of late last year, nearly 1,200 people were killed and more than 800 others were wounded and seriously wounded in Syria as the result of Operation Inherent Resolve airstrikes. Centcom personnel are investigating two cases of whether civilians were killed during the operations.
There is no way of knowing at this point whether JTACs would have made a difference, said Centcom spokesman, Army Maj. Curt Kellogg. And while it is likely that an operational review at some point will look at whether JTAC qualified personnel might have, their presence on the ground is no panacea, says Robert Holmes, a retired Air Force brigadier general who oversaw Air Force special tactics forces in southern Afghanistan who, among other tasks, called in airstrikes. Nor is it impossible, say Holmes and others, to run an air campaign with no one on the ground providing JTAC functions.
But Holmes, the Dutch JTACs, a Navy F-18 instructor pilot and a retired Air Force A-10 pilot who runs the Avon Park range all say airstrikes are more efficient and safer for friendly forces and civilians with JTACs on the ground. That’s because they provide a more accurate picture of the battlefield and allow commanders to make quicker, better-informed decisions about where and when to strike.
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Satisfied that the simulated target — a Russian-made ZSU-23 mobile anti-aircraft battery — is where he says it is, and that friendly forces are far enough away and no civilians are anywhere near the target, Schoone radios his instructions to the pilot.
“Two and three fully overhead,” he says, clearly and succinctly in his thick Dutch accent. “Elevation 1-3-2 feet. Target Zed-S-U-23-4. Location one-seven Romeo, Mike, Lima. Ten digits to follow. Four. Seven. Three. Two. Five. One. Niner. Niner. Mark null. Friendlies four-two-zero meters. Egress, after the attack, overhead the target area. Final attack heading of zero-nine-zero degrees magnetic, plus or minus three-zero or reciprocal. And I request a system readback.”
Just under a minute later, the pilot radios back the coordinates, an important step ensuring that he is on the same page as the JTAC.
Several minutes later, after some back and forth conversation about how to arm the bomb and when to drop it, the pilot, call sign Banshee Five-Three, simulates releasing the weapon where Schoone told him to and radios back.
“Banshee Five-Three,” he says. “Impact.”
“Standby for BDA,” says Schoone, using the jargon for bomb damage assessment.
Standing at the back of a black Ford sport utility vehicle, he looks at his watch and counts off 10 seconds.
“BDA target confirmed destroyed,” says Schoone. “Mission successful.”
There were several other “targets” that day, and the Dutch threw in a few twists by driving their SUVs through streets near the airport, simulating an armored personnel carrier. A man in a green sedan driving past the parked SUVs, who likely has no idea that there is an F/A-18 overhead talking to the man in the SUV, adds another layer of complexity to the exercise.
“Banshee Five-Three,” says the pilot, who was preparing a simulated attack on the simulated armored personnel carriers and wanted more information about the sedan. “A car just passed west of the vehicle.”
After hearing that the sedan is not a target, Banshee Five-Three follows the JTAC’s instructions on how to bomb the simulated armored personnel carriers.
“Copy,” says the pilot after hearing from the JTACs that his bomb hit the target. “Vehicle destroyed.”
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The exchange about the vehicles between pilot and JTACs is another example of how having people on the ground helps, says Buck MacLaughlin, a retired Air Force A-10 pilot who now runs the Avon Park Air Force Range,
“These guys are really concerned about collateral damage,” says MacLaughlin, observing the training exercise from the back seat of the SUV.
For pilots, MacLaughlin says having a JTAC on the ground “is very important. It definitely increases the efficiency of the combat team. Even with the sensors we have today, there’s a limited amount of information you can get from a screen, particularly when we have an enemy that may not wear uniforms, may not operate in standard military-looking vehicles.”
Dutch Army Maj. Rob Neggers, the officer in charge of the visiting JTACs, says that forward presence can help reduce civilian and friendly casualties.
“When you have troops really close, I think it works out better if you have a guy on the ground actually seeing what is happening over there,” says Neggers. “It is very difficult with a (drone). You can scan a certain area, so you know where the target is, but it is very difficult to monitor all the different troops in such an area, especially when they’re not all wearing uniforms.”
Navy Lt. Nate Miller, who was one of the trainers who recently came to MacDill to help teach new pilots how to fly, says that JTACs “give us the best situational awareness of what’s going on on the ground, so we able to work and coordinate with them and get the best precision.”
Schoone, the Dutch JTAC, agrees.
“You need to have situational understanding, situational awareness,” he says. “Otherwise, it is almost impossible to have accurate and real-time targeting info, For instance, are there civilians coming toward the target? Then I would observe that, and then I can abort the attack. If there’s nobody on the ground, you don’t know if there are friendly forces close to the target, or civilians.”
The ideal situation, says Schoone, is to have both JTACs and the overwatch capabilities provided by drones, but in a situation like what exists in Syria in Iraq, where having no U.S. troops on the battlefield is a policy decision directed by the White House, accurate targeting is still possible, says Schoone.
But when there is a complete reliance on remote video and sensors, it takes longer to relay the information from the battlefield to the pilot releasing the weapons, say Miller and others.
“It takes more time,” says Miller. “You have to go through different redundancies to make sure everything is situated.”
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Having JTAC-qualified personnel on the ground in Afghanistan was a “game-changer,” says Air Force Maj. Craig Savage, a spokesman for Air Force Special Operations Command. But they are not a panacea. Sometimes, JTACs may not have a complete picture. And other times, they make mistakes.
“If civilian casualties are caused because ISIS or al-Qaida or the Taliban are actually shielding themselves with civilians, that’s a different story says Holmes, the retired Air Force brigadier general who lives in Tampa.
Last August, Centcom released its findings of an investigation into the deaths of six troops — five U.S. and one Afghan — who died in June when a B-1 bomber dropped two bombs on their location in Zabul province, Afghanistan. The investigation found that poor communications, including erroneous information from a JTAC, contributed to those deaths.
Centcom spokesman Kellogg says there have been 18 allegations of civilian deaths caused by Operation Inherent Resolve airstrikes. Of those, 13 were deemed not credible, two are being investigated and three more cases are under review.
Centcom has no timeline for when the investigations will be completed and the findings released, Kellogg says.
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