Kosovo air operations: Army resolving lessons learned regarding the Apache helicopter: report to the Chairman, Committee on Armed Services

Original publisher: Washington, D.C. : The Office, [2001]. OCLC Number: (OCoLC)46621901 Subject: Apache (Attack helicopter) Excerpt: ... A second area that the Army had difficulty with during its mission training was including its aircraft in the overall planning document that controls air attack assets. The plan, called an air tasking order, assigns daily targets or missions to subordinate units or forces. Air Force officials in Europe told us that they had difficulty integrating the Army's attack helicopters into the air tasking order. According to U.S. Army Europe officials, there were no formalized procedures for how to include Army aviation into this planning document and they had little or no training on how to perform this function. The Army and the Air Force in Europe are developing joint tactics, techniques, and procedures for integrating Army assets into the air tasking order and are beginning to include this process in their joint exercises. A third area that the Army and the Air Force had difficulty with was targeting. As previously discussed, once the decision was made that Task Force Hawk would not conduct deep attacks, its resources were used to locate targets for the Air Force. According to U.S. Army Europe documentation, Army analysts in Europe had little or no training in joint targeting and analyzing targets in a limited air campaign. As a result, in the early days of the Army targeting role, mobile targets nominated by the Army did not meet Operation Allied Force criteria being used by the Air Force for verifying that targets were legitimate and, therefore, were not attacked. As the operation progressed, the two services learned each other's procedures and criteria and worked together better. The Army and the Air Force in Europe are now formalizing the process used and are developing tactics, techniques, and procedures for attacking such targets and sharing intelligence. They are including these new processes in their joint exercises. The s...