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Howard Altman Columns
Shortly before 10:30 p.m., June 9, 2014, on a ridgeline near the Gaza Valley in southern Afghanistan, five U.S. soldiers and an Afghan National Army soldier were killed when two 500-pound bombs were dropped on their position.
I think of that incident as Russian aircraft have begun hitting targets in Syria.
That’s because Army Staff Sgts. Jason McDonald and Scott Studenmund, Spc. Just Helton, Cpl. Justin Clouse, Pvt. Aaron Toppen and Sgt. Gulbuddin Ghulam Sakhi weren’t killed by the enemy.
They were killed by a U.S. Air Force B1-B bomber.
They were killed even though the air crews, troops on the ground and those in the command centers were all on the same side and in constant contact.
They were killed because even in the best of circumstances, mistakes are made and bad things happen in a time of war.
What’s going on now in Syria couldn’t be further from the best of circumstances. And now that the Russians are hitting targets in the same country as the U.S. and its coalition partners, things are even worse.
If a bad thing happens now, in Syria, with the Russians in the game, the end result could be much worse than hearing an Air Force two-star blast key members of the mission for “collectively failing to execute the fundamentals.” Which is exactly what happened after the friendly fire incident in the Gaza Valley more than a year ago.
As I write this, on Friday afternoon, there are already signs of trouble.
There are differences of opinion on who should hit what.
The U.S. is only targeting the so-called Islamic State, and certain elements of al-Qaida, while the Russians, despite strong words about Islamic State, appear to be intent on propping up the government of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad and hitting Syrian rebels in the process.
There are difference of opinion on even who is hitting what, with the Pentagon saying the Russians are not hitting Islamic State, while the Russians say the opposite.
Taking a page out of U.S. Central Command’s Information Operations playbook, the Russians are using cameras on their aircraft to show bad-guys-go-boom videos.
There are accusations that Russians have hit CIA-supported Syrian rebels, which raises serious questions about how and if the U.S. will respond, begetting more serious questions about what happens next if it does.
Red flags abound.
As of Friday afternoon, there was one call — one — between U.S. and Russian military leaders to discuss what those in uniform like to call “deconfliction,” which in English means talking things out to make sure accidents don’t happen.
It’s rather important when bombs are dropping and both sides can take each other out in the air, either from the air or via advanced ground-based air defense systems.
The Russians began hitting targets in Syria on Wednesday.
Speaking shortly after the call took place, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told reporters that the secure video conference, which he described as “cordial and professional,” lasted “little over an hour.”
Bob Holmes knows a whole lot about deconfliction.
A retired Air Force brigadier general now living in Tampa, Holmes served as deputy commander of Joint Special Operations Task-Force South. He was in charge of directing and conducting joint combat operations in southern Afghanistan, where spent a good deal of time deconflicting battlespaces.
In the best of circumstances, he says, constant coordination is needed to stave off unintended disaster.
It was difficult enough in Afghanistan, he says, to avoid friendly fire and civilian casualties even when the air attacks were ordered at the headquarters level, in this case U.S. Central Command, and coordinated through a combined air operations center in country.
In Syria?
“It is a huge problem if the U.S. and Russia are not talking to each other,” says Holmes, speaking in general terms based on open-source information.
There are deconfliction rules, he says, spelling out how, who and when forces can attack from the air or ground.
“Any time the battlespace lacks proper coordination, there are problems. And even when we had a willing coalition, and those rules are in place, there was still ineffective targeting, we still had civilian casualties, and we still had blue-on-blue fratricide.”
In the absence of those rules and that coordination, as appears to be the current situation in Syria between the U.S.-led coalition and the Russians, “you are just asking for — I don’t want to say doomsday — but you are asking for a problem.”
Holmes lays out a number of potential problems.
Say the Russians have hit one of the coalition’s intelligence assets or supported forces, which may have already happened, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Or Russian bombs hit any U.S. forces that might be on the ground. While there is no sustained presence, there have been widely reported hostage rescue efforts by U.S. commandos in Syria.
Or a Russian air defense system or aircraft takes out a coalition aircraft. Or vice versa.
“It can create an incident that will have consequences we are not prepared to deal with,” says Holmes.
During our conversation, I tell Holmes that watching events unfold in Syria, I am reminded of the old Warner Brothers cartoons, with Vladimir Putin as Bugs Bunny and President Obama a cross between Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam.
Elmer and Sam were armed to the teeth, yet Bugs always managed to get the upper hand, making a mockery of their efforts. The half-billion-dollar, U.S.-led train and equip mission in Syria has fizzled like something from Acme, with but a few-score trained and vetted Syrians now in the fight. And now the Russians are there in force, with planes and tanks and air defenses and troops. He is making the U.S. play his game.
I can picture Putin chewing a carrot and tweaking Obama with a heavily Russian-accented, “Eh, what’s up, Barack?”
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe, for the Russians, this will all turn into Afghanistan Part Deux. I hope so, but I was pretty spot-on warning about what would happen in Iraq six months before George W. Bush ordered his ill-fated invasion. So quipping about Bugs is a light moment in an otherwise serious discussion about a place where so many have already suffered horribly and the potential for even more far-reaching devastation is unfortunately real.
“If I were still in uniform and the owner of the battlespace, it would keep me up at night,” Holmes says, speaking of Russia’s advances. “The bottom line is this: Is it helping? No, it is not.”
The problem is compounded, Holmes says, by the fact there seems to be no real reason for Putin to play by the rules.
“What would make him care?” Holmes asks. “Our policies toward Syria are 180 degrees out from his. Why would he care to play by the rules? What’s in it for him?”
His message to the White House is blunt.
“What I am inclined to say is, ‘OK, White House, what are you going to do about it?’” he says. “‘You’ve had the rhetoric. You’ve had your chance. For three years now, your scorecard has been miserable. So now Russia wants to play. What are you going to do?’”
For his part, the president told reporters on Friday that, in essence, Putin is no Bugs Bunny.
“As a consequence of these brilliant moves, their economy is contracting 4 percent this year. They’re isolated in the world community,” Obama said, noting, according to the Associated Press, that Russia is under international sanctions for its military intervention in Ukraine.
“Russia’s not strong as a consequence of what they’ve been doing. They get attention,” he said. “Mr. Putin’s action have been successful only insofar as it’s boosted his poll ratings inside Russia, which may be why the Beltway is so impressed because that tends to be the measure of the success.”
Meanwhile, I will have spent this past weekend watching the news, and hoping this all doesn’t lead to the old Warner Brothers sign-off.
“That’s All Folks!”
The Pentagon announced the deaths of seven troops in the U.S. Central Command region last week.
Capt. Jonathan J. Golden, 33, of Camarillo, California, Capt. Jordan B. Pierson, 28, of Abilene, Texas, Staff Sgt. Ryan D. Hammond, 26, of Moundsville, West Virginia, Senior Airman Quinn L. Johnson-Harris, 21, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin of the 39th Airlift Squadron, Dyess Air Force Base, and Senior Airman Nathan C. Sartain, 29, of Pensacola, Florida and Airman 1st Class Kcey E. Ruiz, 21, of McDonough, Georgia, of the 66th Security Forces Squadron, Hanscom Air Force Base, Massachusetts died Oct. 2 in the crash of a C-130J Super Hercules aircraft at Jalalabad Airfield, Afghanistan.
The cause of the accident is currently under investigation.
Seaman Philip Frazier Manes, 21, of Fairfax, Virginia, died Sept. 27, in Manama, Bahrain, of a non-combat related incident.
The incident is under investigation.
He was assigned to USS Gladiator (MCM 11), forward deployed to Bahrain.
There have been 2,347 U.S. troop deaths in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, eight in support of the anti-ISIS campaign Operation Inherent Resolve, and 12 U.S. troop deaths and one civilian Department of Defense employee death in support of the follow-up Operation Freedom’s Sentinel in Afghanistan.
Original URL: http://www.tbo.com/list/military-news/altman/putin-makes-us-play-his-game-20151004/
