On Point: the United States Army in Operation Iraqi ... - Boekje Pienter

However, employing LRS is not a Long-Range Surveillance Team Insertionshaphazard decision. Helicopter infiltration,extraction, and emergency recovery soWe never knew where 3rd ID would end up on anygiven day. The speed of the advance complicateddeep in enemy territory require a staggeringthe collection management process. I think weamount of planning and preparation. A should have gone into Iraq before G-day to collecttypical planning cycle is 48-72 hours and [far enough ahead of the division’s advance].includes coordination with the Air Force, theSergeant First Class Kevin Rickscorps aviation units, and the entire targetingoperations sergeant, E (LRS)/165th MI BNcommunity. Even more challenging, oncethe team is on the ground, it is not mobile. A vehicle would be nearly impossible to hide, andany foot movement is necessarily slow and meticulous to prevent detection. Once the team isat the site, the terrain must support digging ideally undetectable hide sites. A typical hide siteis large enough for four soldiers to live in for a week at a time without ever breaking cover. Ifthey are compromised, the lightly armed soldiers have a redundant evasion and extraction planto reach safety.For these reasons, the LRS Team Compromise—10 Feet AwayV Corps intelligence collectionmanager, Major Mat-Despite all of the planning, not all insertions go as planned. StaffSergeant Peter D. Armstrong’s team, Team 1-2, E/165th MI BN,thew Littlejohn, needed to was one of three teams inserted for the campaign. Bedouin dogsselect the LRS objectives compromised the team soon after its insertion into central Iraq. Afterwith great care. The collec­ the dogs followed the team to its secondary site, the team quicklytion manager, responsible moved to its tertiary site and went to ground. As an example of howfor coordinating the corps’ disciplined the soldiers are and how effective their hide techniquesarray of intelligence collec- are, Armstrong’s team spent over 48 hours in an 18-inch-deep holetion capabilities to answer with a sheet covering six soldiers. Iraqis, actively searching for them,the corps commander’s key came within 10 feet of the team hide site. Staff Sergeant Armstrongquestions, recommends the lay flat on his back, peering through a small hole in the camouflagedproposed sites with an eye sheet with his weapon tracking the Iraqi leader who was looking forthem. Once the Iraqis moved off, the team exfiltrated to an alternateto where the corps would extraction site and was picked up safely.need to look three to fourLieutenant Colonel Robert P. Walters, Jr.days out. 36Commander, 165th Military Intelligence Battalion1 June 2003Because of therapid pace of the corps’ advance, site selection proved to be difficult. The corps startedthe fight with 27 potential LRS sites, of which 17 were specifically to support the 3rdID; however, the corps only inserted three teams. Indeed, the LRS teams’ relative inabilityto contribute was due to the speed of the maneuver units’ advance. After the initialthree insertions, the pace was too fast to make an educated guess on where the corpswould be—and what it would need to know—three to four days out. 37 Moreover, the 11thAHR’s experiences on 23 March in going deep, along with the sandstorm, cast a pall onaviation’s percieved ability to support and made planning and execution more difficult.Despite the inability to employ LRS after crossing the border, two of the three teamsinserted provided some basic intelligence. Since the corps planned to use RAMS as a majorLSA, it had to know what was there before the first combat troops approached. LRS Team163