February - Fort Sill - U.S. Army

Coordination was conducted at each of
the corps and I MEF to inform the
command and staff elements of what they
could expect from the system and to
arrange for the integration of the GSMs.
Each combat headquarters chose a slightly
different approach to employing its GSM,
but this didn't seem to affect Joint STARS'
ability to support the unit. Its overall
utility tended to be a function of the unit's
mission, its area of responsibility and,
naturally, the amount of coverage the unit
received.
Because the Joint STARS' operational
capabilities were not fully known, the
initial concept for support of the air
component called for it to validate the
preplanned targets of attack aircraft just
before their final penetration. This type of
operation would use the synthetic aperture
radar (SAR) imaging mode for fixed targets
intensively. Its purpose was to preclude
attack aircraft from attempting to engage
target areas that had lost their value.
Because of the length of the
preplanning and air tasking order (ATO)
processes, this concept held great promise
for increasing the efficiency of air attacks.
However, it didn't exploit Joint STARS
tremendous offensive capability against
moving targets. Luckily, we rapidly
evolved concepts and procedures and, by
the final phases of the campaign, much
more fully exploited the system. During
the time of priority support for the air
component, the land components also
were receiving all the radar data as they
were being produced and were able
A Joint STARS ground station module (GSM) in a travel configuration.
to exploit it for targeting and intelligence
purposes.
Execution
Joint STARS performed its first
mission on 14 January 1991. It began as
an engineering test flight to determine
what the system could produce. After
establishing connectivity with the GSM
at Riyadh (the other GSMs were still in
transit), the system began surveillance of
friendly occupied areas inside Saudi
Arabia. After a short time, the product
looked like what was expected, and we
shifted coverage to Kuwait and Iraq.
Again, a very clear picture of what the
system could do began to emerge, and
this flight turned into an eight-hour
intelligence-gathering mission. This was
to be the first of 49 consecutive,
successful missions.
Because of the availability of other
daylight monitoring systems, Joint
STARS was to fly missions primarily at
night. This was done in the belief the
enemy would use the hours of darkness
for the majority of his moves. During the
night and early morning hours of 15 to 16
January and again on 16 to 17 January,
Joint STARS went airborne and produced
a variety of moving target indicator
Motorola Inc., Government and Electronics Group
(MTI) and SAR imagery products for
situation and target development.
Although the offensive began during the
early hours of 17 January, Joint STARS
didn't play an active role in it as the
targets were primarily strategic; they
tended to be (semi-) fixed.
After the first night of the war, Joint
STARS began validating targets in the
Kuwaiti Theater of Operations (KTO)
and also began developing real-time
targets through a combination of MTI
and SAR products. This occurred in both
the E8 aircraft and those GSMs receiving
data.
Initially, these real-time targets were
handed off to the TACC, airborne
warning and control system (AWACS),
airborne battlefield command and control
center (ABCCC) or, in the case of the I
MEF, through its targeting channels. In
several instances, these targeting efforts
weren't successful because attack aircraft
were unable to respond to real-time data
and because Joint STARS was unable to
maintain continuous surveillance of those
targets. Quite often, because of the
tactical situation or standing requests,
Joint STARS shifted its coverage from
one area of the battlefield to another.
Also, because the systems are
engineering prototypes, there were
frequent periods of down or "reboot"
time. (The airborne portion of the system
always flew with a complement of
civilian contractors on board, including
the Phds who developed the hardware
and software.)
Often Joint STARS developed a
moving target, say a convoy, reported at
a certain grid coordinate with a given
velocity (i.e., southwest bound at 25
kilometers per hour). In some instances,
the target was passed to alert aircraft,
which responded within one to two
hours. But because there was no
procedure for the aircraft to contact Joint
STARS for an update and Joint STARS
might not have been covering the target
recently, they flew to the original grid
and found nothing. It was obvious we
needed to develop more responsive
procedures.
At about this time, Saddam Hussein
launched his Scud campaign against
Israel, and Joint STARS was sent to the
west to help target fixed and mobile Scud
launchers. These targets were important
and could be of fleeting value (a launch
could occur at any time), so strike
aircraft were placed on combat air patrol
February 1992 27