Firing
Leaflets and Electrons,
By
THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT
loose
bullets and bombs on
assault
using a growing arsenal of electronic and psychological weapons on
the
information battlefield.
American
cyber-warfare experts recently waged an e-mail assault, directed at
with
Saddam Hussein's government. A wave of calls has gone to the private
cellphone
numbers of specially selected officials inside
leaders
at the Pentagon and in the regional Central Command.
As of
last week, more than eight million leaflets had been dropped over
antiaircraft
missile operators that their bunkers will be destroyed if they
track
or fire at allied warplanes. In the same way, a blunt offer has gone
to
Iraqi ground troops: surrender, and live.
But
the leaflets are old-fashioned instruments compared with some of the
others
that are being applied already or are likely to be used soon.
Radio
transmitters hauled aloft by Air Force Special Operations EC-130E
planes
are broadcasting directly to the Iraqi public in Arabic with programs
that
mimic the program styles of local radio stations and are more
sophisticated
than the clumsy preachings of previous wartime propaganda
efforts.
"Do
not let Saddam tarnish the reputation of soldiers any longer," one
recent
broadcast said. "Saddam uses the military to persecute those who
don't
agree with his unjust agenda. Make the decision."
Military
planners at the United States Central Command expect to rely on
many
kinds of information warfare — including electronic attacks on power
grids,
communications systems and computer networks, as well as deception
and
psychological operations — to break the Iraqi military's will to fight
and
sway Iraqi public opinion.
Commanders
may use supersecret weapons that could flash millions of watts of
electricity
to cripple Iraqi computers and equipment, and literally turn off
the
lights in
"The
goal of information warfare is to win without ever firing a shot," said
James
R. Wilkinson, a spokesman for the Central Command in
action
does begin, information warfare is used to make the conflict as short
as
possible."
Senior
military officials say, for example, that the American radio shows
broadcast
from the EC-130E "Commando Solo" planes follow the format of a
popular
Iraqi station, "Voice of the Youth," managed by President Hussein's
older
son, Uday.
The
American programs open with greetings in Arabic, followed by Euro-pop
and
1980's American rock music — intended to appeal to younger Iraqi troops,
perceived
by officials as the ones most likely to lay down their arms. The
broadcasts
include traditional Iraqi folk music, so as not to alienate other
listeners,
and a news program in Arabic prepared by Army psychological
operations
experts at
Then
comes the official message: Any war is not against the Iraqi people,
but
is to disarm Mr. Hussein and end his government.
American
commanders say they believe that these psychological salvos have,
to
some degree, influenced Iraqi forces to move their defenses or curtail
their
antiaircraft fire.
"It
pays to drop the leaflets," Lt. Gen. T. Michael Moseley, commander of
allied
air forces in the
headquarters
in
the
gun. It sends a direct message to the chain of command."
Deception
and psychological operations have been a part of warfare for
centuries,
and American commanders carried out limited information attacks —
both
psychological operations, or "psyops," and more traditional
electronic
warfare
like jamming or crippling the enemy's equipment — in the Persian
Gulf
war in 1991 and the air campaign over Kosovo in 1999, as well as in
current
planning is much broader and more tightly integrated into the main
war
plan than ever before.
"What
we're seeing now is the weaving of electronic warfare, psyops and
other
information warfare through every facet of the plan from our peacetime
preparations
through execution," said Maj. Gen. Paul J. Lebras, chief of the
info-warfare
team for the
As
modern combat relies increasingly on precision strikes at targets carried
out
over long distances, the military is likewise increasingly aware that
there
are many ways to disable the operations at those targets.
An
adversary's antiaircraft radar site, for example, can be destroyed by a
bomb
or missile launched by a warplane; it can be captured or blown up by
ground
forces; or the enemy soldiers running the radar can be persuaded to
shut
down the system and just go home.
"We
are trying very hard to be empathetic with the Iraqi military," said a
senior
American information warfare official. "We understand their
situation.
The same for the Iraqi population. We wish them no harm. We will
take
great pains to make those people understand that they should stay away
from
military equipment."
Even
so, the military's most ardent advocates of information warfare
acknowledge
that American pilots ordered into enemy airspace would rather be
told
that antiaircraft sites were struck first by ordnance, rather than by
leaflets.
Aerial
pictures help the military assess bomb damage to a target. The softer
kind
of strike is harder to assess.
Information
warfare experts look for what they call "the voilà moment."
"In
operations
— the radio and TV broadcasts — was the importance in explaining,
`Why
are we here?' " a senior American military officer said. "The
majority
of
Afghanis did not know that Sept. 11 occurred. They didn't even know of
our
great tragedy."
During
the war in
when
we saw that the population understood why coalition forces were
fighting
the Taliban and Al Qaeda."
In
Delivering
radios to the people of
problem.
About 500 were air-dropped over the country, and all of them were
destroyed
on impact. The military and aid groups passed out more than 6,500,
and
millions of leaflets were dropped telling the Afghan people of
frequencies
used for the American broadcasts.
The
American military also took over one important frequency, 8.7 megahertz,
used
by the Taliban for its official radio broadcasts. That became possible
once
the towers used by the Taliban for relaying their military commands
were
blown up as part of the war effort. As in most totalitarian
governments,
the military and government used the same system for their
radio
broadcasts. The American military continues to broadcast to the Afghan
people
over that channel.
Improvisation
remains a hallmark of the emerging information war, said Brig.
Gen.
Thomas P. Maney, of the Army's Civil Affairs and Psychological
Operations
Command.
In
get
its radio and television messages out to many villages that had access
to
neither. So Special Forces troops made contact with local coffee-house
managers,
and offered them the same radio programs being broadcast from
Commando
Solo planes, but on compact discs to be played over a boom box for
the
patrons.
The
program gave birth to a new icon on the military's maps of
a
tiny picture of a coffee mug to indicate the location of village
businesses
that agreed to play CD copies of the American radio programming.
If
Mr. Bush orders an attack against
expand
to a fierce but invisible war of electrons. Air commanders will rely
on a
small but essential fleet of surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft,
including
the radar-jamming EC-130H Compass Call and
electronic-eavesdropping
RC-135 Rivet Joint. There are just over a dozen of
each
aircraft in the American arsenal.
Flying
from Prince Sultan Air Base, outside
Joint
is already playing an important role in collecting Iraqi radio and
radar
emissions, which are jammed when American and British planes in the
no-flight
zones periodically attack targets on the ground. The RC-135, a
military
version of a Boeing 707 jet with a bulbous nose filled with
sensors,
is essentially a flying listening post, orbiting at the edge of the
battlefield
above 30,000 feet.
In
the rear of the planes, filled with high-powered computers and other
sensors,
intelligence specialists, many of whom speak Arabic or Farsi,
monitor
the airwaves, intercepting conversations from military
communications
links or other networks. Much of this information is passed
to
the National Security Agency for analysis.
At
the front of the plane, which has a 32-member crew, electronic warfare
specialists
sit at a separate bank of computers, gathering up radar signals
of
all kinds, including Iraqi air defenses. Rivet Joints have the ability to
scan
automatically across an array of communications frequencies, allowing
an
operator to home in on individual frequencies and pass that information
on to
the Awacs radar or J-Stars ground-surveillance planes, which have
better
ability to pinpoint the locations of the transmissions.
The
Compass Call is a modified C-130 cargo plane, also filled with
high-powered
computers and sensors. Usually flying at above 20,000 feet and,
ideally,
about 80 to 100 miles from the target to be jammed, the Compass
Calls
are directed to their targets by the Rivet Joints, other aircraft or
targets
identified in their pre-mission planning. The 13-member crews
include
linguists, cryptologists, other analysts and the flight personnel.
Metal
antenna cables hang down from the plane's tail in a distinctive
pattern
that looks like a metal trapeze or cheese-cutter. Electronic signals
are
collected from sensors in the blunt nose of the airplane; antennae in
the
rear of the aircraft blast electrons that jam enemy radar and other
communications.
Flying
perpendicular to the target to maximize the jamming, on-board
specialists
lock on to the frequencies to be disrupted. The plane can jam
multiple
targets at once. When it comes time to carry out a mission, a
flight
officer pushes a little red button on a computer keyboard, "JAM," and
up to
800 watts of power is zapped at the target. If the target switches
frequency,
the Compass Call operators are ready to jam that in a constant
cat-and-mouse
game.
In a
war against Iraq, military commanders say, new technology will probably
allow
those electronic combat planes to plant false targets in Iraqi radars
and
spoof the air defense systems.
In an
interview, Gen. John P. Jumper, the Air Force chief of staff, declined
to
discuss the highly classified technical advances, except to say, "We're
approaching
the point where we can tell the SA-10 radar it is a Maytag
washer
and not a radar, and put it in the rinse cycle instead of the firing
cycle."