THE NEW YORK TIMES
February 24, 2003
Firing Leaflets and Electrons, U.S. Wages Information War
By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/24/international/middleeast/24MILI.html?th

WASHINGTON, Feb. 23 - Even before President Bush orders American forces to
loose bullets and bombs on Iraq, the military is starting an ambitious
assault using a growing arsenal of electronic and psychological weapons on
the information battlefield.
American cyber-warfare experts recently waged an e-mail assault, directed at
Iraq's political, military and economic leadership, urging them to break
with Saddam Hussein's government. A wave of calls has gone to the private
cellphone numbers of specially selected officials inside Iraq, according to
leaders at the Pentagon and in the regional Central Command.
As of last week, more than eight million leaflets had been dropped over Iraq
- including towns 65 miles south of Baghdad - warning Iraqi antiaircraft
missile operators that their bunkers will be destroyed if they track or fire
at allied warplanes. In the same way, a blunt offer has gone to Iraqi ground
troops: surrender, and live.
But the leaflets are old-fashioned instruments compared with some of the
others that are being applied already or are likely to be used soon.
Radio transmitters hauled aloft by Air Force Special Operations EC-130E
planes are broadcasting directly to the Iraqi public in Arabic with programs
that mimic the program styles of local radio stations and are more
sophisticated than the clumsy preachings of previous wartime propaganda
efforts.
"Do not let Saddam tarnish the reputation of soldiers any longer," one
recent broadcast said. "Saddam uses the military to persecute those who
don't agree with his unjust agenda. Make the decision."
Military planners at the United States Central Command expect to rely on
many kinds of information warfare - including electronic attacks on power
grids, communications systems and computer networks, as well as deception
and psychological operations - to break the Iraqi military's will to fight
and sway Iraqi public opinion.
Commanders may use supersecret weapons that could flash millions of watts of
electricity to cripple Iraqi computers and equipment, and literally turn off
the lights in Baghdad if the campaign escalates to full-fledged combat.
"The goal of information warfare is to win without ever firing a shot," said
James R. Wilkinson, a spokesman for the Central Command in Tampa, Fla. "If
action does begin, information warfare is used to make the conflict as short
as possible."
Senior military officials say, for example, that the American radio shows
broadcast from the EC-130E "Commando Solo" planes follow the format of a
popular Iraqi station, "Voice of the Youth," managed by President Hussein's
older son, Uday.
The American programs open with greetings in Arabic, followed by Euro-pop
and 1980's American rock music - intended to appeal to younger Iraqi troops,
perceived by officials as the ones most likely to lay down their arms. The
broadcasts include traditional Iraqi folk music, so as not to alienate other
listeners, and a news program in Arabic prepared by Army psychological
operations experts at Fort Bragg, N.C.
Then comes the official message: Any war is not against the Iraqi people,
but is to disarm Mr. Hussein and end his government.
American commanders say they believe that these psychological salvos have,
to some degree, influenced Iraqi forces to move their defenses or curtail
their antiaircraft fire.
"It pays to drop the leaflets," Lt. Gen. T. Michael Moseley, commander of
allied air forces in the Persian Gulf, said by telephone from his
headquarters in Saudi Arabia. "It sends a direct message to the operator on
the gun. It sends a direct message to the chain of command."
Deception and psychological operations have been a part of warfare for
centuries, and American commanders carried out limited information attacks -
both psychological operations, or "psyops," and more traditional electronic
warfare like jamming or crippling the enemy's equipment - in the Persian
Gulf war in 1991 and the air campaign over Kosovo in 1999, as well as in
Afghanistan. But commanders looking back on those campaigns say their
current planning is much broader and more tightly integrated into the main
war plan than ever before.
"What we're seeing now is the weaving of electronic warfare, psyops and
other information warfare through every facet of the plan from our peacetime
preparations through execution," said Maj. Gen. Paul J. Lebras, chief of the
Joint Information Operations Center, a secretive military agency based in
Texas that has sent a team of experts to join the Central Command
info-warfare team for the Iraq campaign.
As modern combat relies increasingly on precision strikes at targets carried
out over long distances, the military is likewise increasingly aware that
there are many ways to disable the operations at those targets.
An adversary's antiaircraft radar site, for example, can be destroyed by a
bomb or missile launched by a warplane; it can be captured or blown up by
ground forces; or the enemy soldiers running the radar can be persuaded to
shut down the system and just go home.
"We are trying very hard to be empathetic with the Iraqi military," said a
senior American information warfare official. "We understand their
situation. The same for the Iraqi population. We wish them no harm. We will
take great pains to make those people understand that they should stay away
from military equipment."
Even so, the military's most ardent advocates of information warfare
acknowledge that American pilots ordered into enemy airspace would rather be
told that antiaircraft sites were struck first by ordnance, rather than by
leaflets.
Aerial pictures help the military assess bomb damage to a target. The softer
kind of strike is harder to assess.
Information warfare experts look for what they call "the voil` moment."
"In Afghanistan, the biggest lesson we learned in our tactical information
operations - the radio and TV broadcasts - was the importance in explaining,
`Why are we here?' " a senior American military officer said. "The majority
of Afghanis did not know that Sept. 11 occurred. They didn't even know of
our great tragedy."
During the war in Afghanistan, this officer said, "The voil` moment came
when we saw that the population understood why coalition forces were
fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda."
In Iraq, he said, "it will be when we see a break with the leadership."
Delivering radios to the people of Afghanistan presented a particular
problem. About 500 were air-dropped over the country, and all of them were
destroyed on impact. The military and aid groups passed out more than 6,500,
and millions of leaflets were dropped telling the Afghan people of
frequencies used for the American broadcasts.
The American military also took over one important frequency, 8.7 megahertz,
used by the Taliban for its official radio broadcasts. That became possible
once the towers used by the Taliban for relaying their military commands
were blown up as part of the war effort. As in most totalitarian
governments, the military and government used the same system for their
radio broadcasts. The American military continues to broadcast to the Afghan
people over that channel.
Improvisation remains a hallmark of the emerging information war, said Brig.
Gen. Thomas P. Maney, of the Army's Civil Affairs and Psychological
Operations Command.
In Afghanistan, General Maney said, the American military found it hard to
get its radio and television messages out to many villages that had access
to neither. So Special Forces troops made contact with local coffee-house
managers, and offered them the same radio programs being broadcast from
Commando Solo planes, but on compact discs to be played over a boom box for
the patrons.
The program gave birth to a new icon on the military's maps of Afghanistan:
a tiny picture of a coffee mug to indicate the location of village
businesses that agreed to play CD copies of the American radio programming.
If Mr. Bush orders an attack against Iraq, the information offensive will
expand to a fierce but invisible war of electrons. Air commanders will rely
on a small but essential fleet of surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft,
including the radar-jamming EC-130H Compass Call and
electronic-eavesdropping RC-135 Rivet Joint. There are just over a dozen of
each aircraft in the American arsenal.
Flying from Prince Sultan Air Base, outside Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the Rivet
Joint is already playing an important role in collecting Iraqi radio and
radar emissions, which are jammed when American and British planes in the
no-flight zones periodically attack targets on the ground. The RC-135, a
military version of a Boeing 707 jet with a bulbous nose filled with
sensors, is essentially a flying listening post, orbiting at the edge of the
battlefield above 30,000 feet.
In the rear of the planes, filled with high-powered computers and other
sensors, intelligence specialists, many of whom speak Arabic or Farsi,
monitor the airwaves, intercepting conversations from military
communications links or other networks. Much of this information is passed
to the National Security Agency for analysis.
At the front of the plane, which has a 32-member crew, electronic warfare
specialists sit at a separate bank of computers, gathering up radar signals
of all kinds, including Iraqi air defenses. Rivet Joints have the ability to
scan automatically across an array of communications frequencies, allowing
an operator to home in on individual frequencies and pass that information
on to the Awacs radar or J-Stars ground-surveillance planes, which have
better ability to pinpoint the locations of the transmissions.
The Compass Call is a modified C-130 cargo plane, also filled with
high-powered computers and sensors. Usually flying at above 20,000 feet and,
ideally, about 80 to 100 miles from the target to be jammed, the Compass
Calls are directed to their targets by the Rivet Joints, other aircraft or
targets identified in their pre-mission planning. The 13-member crews
include linguists, cryptologists, other analysts and the flight personnel.
Metal antenna cables hang down from the plane's tail in a distinctive
pattern that looks like a metal trapeze or cheese-cutter. Electronic signals
are collected from sensors in the blunt nose of the airplane; antennae in
the rear of the aircraft blast electrons that jam enemy radar and other
communications.
Flying perpendicular to the target to maximize the jamming, on-board
specialists lock on to the frequencies to be disrupted. The plane can jam
multiple targets at once. When it comes time to carry out a mission, a
flight officer pushes a little red button on a computer keyboard, "JAM," and
up to 800 watts of power is zapped at the target. If the target switches
frequency, the Compass Call operators are ready to jam that in a constant
cat-and-mouse game.
In a war against Iraq, military commanders say, new technology will probably
allow those electronic combat planes to plant false targets in Iraqi radars
and spoof the air defense systems.
In an interview, Gen. John P. Jumper, the Air Force chief of staff, declined
to discuss the highly classified technical advances, except to say, "We're
approaching the point where we can tell the SA-10 radar it is a Maytag
washer and not a radar, and put it in the rinse cycle instead of the firing
cycle."

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