In December 2009 intelligence revealed that insurgents in Afghanistan were intercepting video from Predator (and presumably other) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Not long afterward it was admitted that as early as 2004 insurgents in Iraq had been doing the same thing. In both cases the stated problem was that the video down-links had not been encrypted; there was no question of the insurgents actually controlling the UAV. Nor was there any question of their having developed advanced technology. They had merely bought inexpensive ($29.95) Sky Grabber software intended for civilians who wanted access to satellite television down-links. If indeed the problem was experienced in Iraq as early as 2004, the absence of a fix and the surprise that it was being done in Afghanistan suggest undue underestimation of our enemies and their possible technical sophistication. That seems odd, considering that the war against improvised explosive devices both in Iraq and in Afghanistan has generally been described as difficult and technology intensive.
It is easy to imagine that those we face in Afghanistan are primitive warriors with little understanding of technology or tactics, although it's possible they have some slightly more sophisticated friends. They may not have a Western understanding of technology, but that does not mean that they cannot use what they get. For example, the search for Osama bin Laden has been frustrated by his use of cut-outs and more or less untraceable electronic media. Whenever we have revealed some clever exploitation of enemy communications, it has quickly been shut down and some alternative found. Enemy interception of our UAV video broadcasts was surprising only because we assumed that they could not deal with anything that complicated. Our enemies may well be incapable of creating something like a PC, but that does not mean they cannot imagine the implications of easily-available software.
How important video interception was from a tactical point of view depends on how valuable the down-linked images were, either as indicators of the intent of U.S. forces or as a source of situational awareness. Perhaps the key problem is that we don't understand the significance of tactical data. We constantly talk about network-centric warfare, one implication being that the feed from any one sensor means little because what counts is whatever is distributed by the network. If instead we talk about picture-centric warfare, which may be a better way of describing what we are creating, then it becomes clearer that a single picture can matter a great deal over a limited area
and war in places like Afghanistan is about limited areas. Even the fact that we are making an effort to obtain that particular picture reveals something interesting.Remember that for centuries reconnaissance effort concentrated on some particular place was a reliable indication of a coming attack, because there was only so much such effort to go around. Reconnaissance has long been a valuable threat indicator in naval warfare. Surely many readers remember that, in some fleets, the word was "Bears in the morning, missiles in the afternoon," meaning that the presence of Soviet Tu-95Ts radar aircraft (to confirm target force configuration) was a good sign of impending attack.
Conversely, a wide-area tracking system, like that the U.S. Navy developed to support the use of Tomahawk antiship missiles probably imposed a crushing psychological stress because it did not require any sort of last-minute reconnaissance before attacks began. The U.S. Navy's Cold War SOSUS underwater surveillance system did require last-minute target confirmation (using sonobuoys), but it still imposed enormous pressure, because Soviet submarine commanders could never know whether they were being tracked.
If we could cover the operational areas of Afghanistan with continuous surveillance, the Taliban would be unable to derive information about our intentions from what it could download. Such coverage would support, among other things, tactical surprise, which is probably the greatest advantage offered by network- or picture-centric operation. Unfortunately, although thousands of UAVs are currently in service in both Iraq and in Afghanistan, they by no means blanket those countries. They are assigned specific tasks, such as scouting ahead of moving columns of vehicles or hunting for enemy leaders expected in particular places. We still have to look in specific places before we can act.
Deceive the Enemy
If the enemy treats our reconnaissance as a source of intelligence, and if our reconnaissance operations cannot be concealed (which is certainly the case if the enemy can exploit the video generated), then we can make the most of the situation by using the enemy's knowledge against him. We can deceive him as to our intentions, to force him to dissipate his efforts, or even to come out into the open where he can be engaged more effectively. A man in a bunker in Afghanistan who can receive UAV video is seeing, in effect, where U.S. reconnaissance effort is being concentrated. It is not clear (and it would not be clear, in public) to what extent any effort is being made to deceive such individuals by running surveillance of non-target areas in parallel with surveillance of real targets.
Anyone with access to current UAV down-links gains tactical intelligence of considerable value in forecasting our actions unless there are enough UAVs to mount frequent deception operations. Note that we, but not our allies, may be in this position. Our allies have found their own UAVs to be invaluable sources of information, but they have deployed small numbers, so presumably they have no margin at all for deception.
The other side of the coin is the situational awareness inherent in UAV imagery of the battle area. We imagine that an enemy commander knows exactly where his own troops are, although he may not know where ours are. In fact that is unlikely. We have certainly discovered as much about our own forces, to the extent that blue tracking systems are highly valued. We also should have learned that merely to track our own forces, to create blue tracks, requires considerable resources. An enemy commander probably cannot form an effective and dynamic picture of what is happening without access to something like UAV video. Even then his advantage is limited. The same measures which make it difficult for us to see his troops make it difficult for him to see them on the same video. He may be able to spot our troops more easily, but without being sure of where his own are he cannot easily exploit that information. Nor can he make much use of a fast-changing picture without using some form of radio, which in turn opens him up to detection and destruction. These arguments explain why the UAV video in itself offers relatively little usable situational awareness to enemy commanders. Its main value to the enemy in that role may be in revealing the failure of his own attempts at camouflage. That is hardly trivial, but is not devastating.
News of enemy exploitation of U.S. UAV imagery was treated as an embarrassment. The explanation for our failure to cover these circuits was that the UAVs had been hurriedly deployed, and that deployment had taken priority over any sort of protection. Naturally the reality is not public knowledge, but the impression is that few understand exactly what the network- (or, better, picture-) centric revolution actually means. We may or may not be able to distribute sufficient resources to encrypt video that has to go to hundreds of users on the ground. Encryption must be effective for very large volumes of data, and it must be effective in spite of enemy attempts to obtain our ground terminals. Given the questionable loyalty of some Afghans (such as those who have killed U.S. troops), it seems almost inevitable that terminals will fall into enemy hands from time to time.
Perhaps this reality has already been recognized, and the talk about better encryption is just that. In that case, we are probably already trying to use enemy access to UAV video against him, by providing deception video like the deceptive reconnaissance of the past.
We are, in effect, teetering between two very different ways of looking at battle zone information. One is to use it in traditional ways, to support ground forces that do the fighting. The other is to use our reconnaissance assets not only to reduce the number of ground troops we need (e.g., by detecting enemy forces well before they reach ours), but also to use reconnaissance as a weapon. Deception would exemplify the latter approach. Network- or picture-centric warfare really means putting more resources into reconnaissance and intelligence than into troops and their weapons. We may be pushed in that direction by the reality of Afghanistan. Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan has no easy access. The main land routes lie through Russia, Iran, and Pakistan and all present enormous problems. The only really friendly country of the three is Pakistan, but the land route passes through Waziristan, the "tribal area" of Pakistan dominated by the Taliban and their friends.
Whatever the view in the United States and in NATO countries, however much we may be willing to spend, there is probably no way to increase the number of troops much above what we currently have in Afghanistan. That makes intelligence and reconnaissance our main sources of leverage
and it makes the deception or channeling potential of UAV video worth thinking through.