More Than Courage (43 page)

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cators hired by twenty-four-hour news networks to fill dead airtime by rendering their views on what the administration would most likely do. Even when the more responsible journalists and editors refused to use this information, Syrian agents and people sympathetic to that nation who worked within the various news agencies passed these golden nuggets on.

Gathered by agents, this carefully seeded disinformation was lumped in with real data culled from other sources. When intelligence officers in Damascus drafted their assessment of possible and probable American military actions against their nation, the disinformation that had made its way into the mix skewed their assessments. In this way, limited air strikes rather than a full-scale rescue effort became the major concern against which the Syrian military girded itself. Rather than preparing itself to repel boarders the Syrian military dispatched its troops to key facilities where they were ordered to cast their gaze skyward and wait for an opportunity to shoot down airplanes.

Having to launch and recover aircraft from allied nations required commands supporting Fanfare from foreign soil to exercise a different and more careful blended form of deception as well as operational security. Every nation that permits American forces to operate within its borders does so under negotiated status-of-forces agreements that govern and limit American military operations and the conduct of its personnel. Without exception these status-of-forces agreements include provisions for the assignment of liaison officers from the host nation to every major American command in that nation. This makes planning and implementing U.S.-only operations such as Fanfare difficult but not impossible. To counter the threat to the security of Fanfare that foreign liaison officers posed, American counterintelligence officers waged their own disinformation campaign. The commanders and staff officers charged with preparing for Fanfare took care to ensure that those briefings that addressed Fanfare were conducted at times when the liaison officers were not around. It was not much of a stretch to claim that Fanfare's first 334

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skirmishes took place in the headquarters of Syria's pro-Western neighbors. These bloodless battles were waged between liaison officers who used every maneuver and trick in the book to sneak a peek at the documents that were sandwiched between the bright red "Secret, No Foreign Dissemination" covers, and the American counterintelligence officers charged with keeping that from happening.

The Pentagon was not immune to the need to be vigilant. In a place where handling secrets is routine, security tends to become lax. To counter this, extraordinary measures have to be taken to protect operations like Fanfare for as long as possible without alerting anyone to the notion that something out of the ordinary was amiss. This feat was accomplished by maintaining a tight control on who knew about Fanfare. Of those privy to some or all of the plan, only personnel who truly had a need to know were informed of Fanfare's actual H-hour. In being given access to this information they accepted the responsibility of doing everything within their power to keep from varying either their daily routine or that of their staff, a task that is far easier said tham done.

To monitor how well the operational security plan designed to safeguard Fanfare was going at the Pentagon, a key indicator used by the counterintelligence folks there was the number of pizza deliveries made to the Puzzle Palace on the Potomac. As silly as it may sound, a seemingly mundane activity that would not cause a stir anywhere else in America is watched by both journalists and foreign agents. When the number of pizza deliveries shows a sudden spike, deductive reasoning leads those monitoring pizza deliveries to conclude that an inordinate number of Pentagon staffers are working late. During a period of crisis, this can only mean that an operation linked to that crisis is being planned or about to be initiated. Just how the counterintelligence officers go about making sure that the number of pizza deliveries is maintained at appropriate levels is a closely guarded secret that no one has yet sorted out, though it is rumored that a number of Arlington pizzeria managers are working hard to discover it.

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In addition to the galley slaves manning the oars at the Pentagon, other key members in the chain of command were required to do their part to keep from tipping off the Syrians that the American military was about to pay them a visit. The Commander in Chief is no exception. To preserve the atmosphere of normalcy, the president found himself enduring a political fund-raising event that had been scheduled months in advance. Maintaining an even keel in public while hundreds of young men are about to be placed in harm's way as the result of an order that he has issued is perhaps one of the most difficult things a chief executive can be asked to do. On this night, just about the time when the president was taking his place behind a podium in preparation to deliver a political speech, Lieutenant Colonel Harry Shaddock would be standing in the door of a C-17, staring intently at a pair of warning lights waiting for the green one to illuminate. Tightly stacked up behind Shaddock would be his men, burdened by the equipment they carried and the awesome task they were about to undertake.

Syria

16:15 PACIFIC, 19:15 EASTERN,

03:15 LOCAL (23:15 ZULU)

In Washington, D.C., the president was looking out at a room of well-heeled contributors. At the Pentagon the Chief of Staff of the Army sat slumped in his seat, watching the tactical and operational displays in the Army War Room. At MacDill Air Force Base in Florida the commander of CENTCOM was alone in his office, nervously pacing back and forth like an expectant father. In Turkey, a wing commander sipped his coffee in silence as he watched the computer-generated plots track the progress of his aircraft. Over the Mediterranean the senior controller aboard an E-3A Sentinel slowly made his way along the narrow aisle of the converted Boeing jet, pausing here and there to study a display before moving on to the next. Aboard the USS Ronald Reagan the air group commander twisted in his chair while nervously tap

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ping away on the armrest, an act that threatened to drive the seaman seated before him crazy. In the cockpits of strike aircraft thundering in on targets scattered throughout Syria, pilots kept their eyes glued to their sensors and instruments, praying that the next sound they heard over their headsets would not be the high pitched tone that warned them that they had been acquired and targeted by Syrian air-defense radar. Within the transport carrying his company, First Lieutenant Emmett J. DeWitt glanced down at the photo of his wife and son one last time before slipping it back into his wallet.

If nervous anticipation was the dominant theme within the American military at the moment, panic and pandemonium were the order of the day on the ground in Syria. Throughout the Syrian countryside the men responsible for coordinating their nation's air defense were madly scrambling to assess a situation that defied their every effort to grasp while others in the military chain of command became irate when they discovered that they were unable to make a simple phone call.

This electronic onslaught did not totally paralyse the Syrian military establishment or cast its leadership into utter disarray.

The Syrian military is not completely inept. It is still an organization run by a core of professionals who use the same methods the American military does to assess possible threats and prepare contingencies to deal with them. Through the employment of various alternative means of communications, including messengers dispatched on motorcycles and manual land-line systems that Alexander Graham Bell would have recognized, senior commanders began issuing orders to execute contingency plans to their far flung subordinates. In some cases the harried dispatch rider arrived at his destination only to find that the actions he had been sent to initiate were already being implemented by officers who had correctly assessed the situation and had taken the initiative.

Such occasions proved to be the exception since initiative is not a watchword within modern Syria. For the most part the bulk of the midlevel Syrian leadership restricted their actions to rousting MORE THAN COURAGE

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their men out of their bunks and hounding them until they were at their assigned duty stations. Once this feat was accomplished, officers who owed their success to being cautious and operating within the accepted bounds of their military system held fast to their published orders and awaited developments. For some developments they did not have long to wait.

Informational and electronic warfare is an important element of modern war, sometimes referred to as a force multiplier. It is capable of disrupting and disorienting a foe's command-and control system. In some cases it can even result in physical calamities.

It does not, however, possess an inherent ability to kill men or physically smash things. To achieve this it is still necessary to apply copious amounts of well-directed munitions containing good old-fashioned high explosives. Over the years both the United States Air Force and Navy have raised this ancient form of warfare to a fine art. Through the employment of cruise missiles, unmanned bombers, and conventional strike aircraft these two services had the responsibility of neutralizing and suppressing those enemy units and assets that had been identified as a threat to the inbound Rangers.

Like many words in today's vocabulary, the terms neutralize and suppress have very specific meanings that sometimes conjure

up an image in the mind of a layperson that does not always reflect what those words mean when used by the military. Neutralize, for example, is defined by the military as the act of rendering

enemy personnel or materiel incapable of interfering with a particular operation. Both the word arid its definition make it seem as if the actions necessary to achieve this goal can be rather innocuous. Nothing could be further from the truth. To truly neutralize an enemy unit a sufficient number of its personnel must be killed or wounded. In general terms, a unit that suffers 25 to 50 percent casualties in a short space of time is no longer able to function effectively. While some of the more humane or politically correct military types try to argue that neutralization can be achieved by destroying a foe's equipment or weapons, no one can 338

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deny that death is the ultimate form of neutralization. For a company of a hundred fifty men, this translates as thirty-seven to seventy-five dead and wounded. In a battalion with four companies, it is one hundred fifty to three hundred KIAs and WIAs. And so on, and so on, and so on.

As ambiguous as the term neutralization can sometimes be, suppression is even less exact and more difficult to quantify. One

definition states that suppression is the denial of an enemy's ability to effectively move, shoot, and/or communicate. Another conception holds that suppression occurs when direct and indirect fires, electronic means, or obscurants are brought to bear upon enemy troops, weapons, or equipment for the purpose of preventing the enemy from bringing effective fire against friendly troops. However it is defined, suppressive fire does not have to actually hit and kill the enemy or smash equipment in order to be effective. It simply has to screen friendly activities or encourage the enemy to seek cover rather than fight. In reality, suppression is a means of economy. Fewer weapons and munitions are required to suppress a target than destroy it. A singe burst o"£ machine gun fire can send an entire platoon scurrying in search of cover. One or two bombs dropped within a military compound will cause a goodly number of soldiers to run to their bunkers rather than man their stations or weapons. Even the mere approach of aircraft can set off air raid sirens that will create a period of confusion and panic within a city that can be exploited by an attacker.

Regardless of the means used, once the method of suppression has been lifted or shifted to engage another target, the enemy is left relatively untouched and free to continue as before.

This has led some commanders and trainers to unofficially advocate the notion that death is the ultimate form of suppression, a truism if ever there was one. Of course this point of view ultimately leads to the use of more assets and munitions than the original plan called for, and thus defeats the effort to economize, which the technique known as suppression was meant to provide.

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the United States did not possess the means or have the time to kill every Syrian soldier who could potentially interfere with the efforts of the 3rd of the 75th Rangers. Therefore orders generated by subordinate headquarters supporting Fanfare included the liberal use of both terms. Besides, the stated purpose of the Rangers'

mission didn't justify a wholesale slaughter. Planners like Robert Delmont had to determine which elements of the Syrian military had to be completely eliminated--a term that requires no special military definition--those targets that needed to be neutralized, and those that simply had to be suppressed during the course of the operation. It was only when one finally reaches the bottom links of the chain of command that terminology begins to become a little less important and the actual means of doing the job becomes more concrete and strangely familiar. While the means of delivery vary and the amount offeree used differs from service to service, high explosives in all their modern incarnations are the principal means of eliminating, neutralizing, and suppressing.

In the end it goes back to simply dumping copious amounts of high explosives onto an enemy unit with the ultimate aim of killing its soldiers and destroying their equipment. No matter how sophisticated the means of delivery or whether the platform is manned or unmanned, upon detonation the explosives in the warhead are almost instantly transformed into heat and energy.