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Discussing the Iraq war risks a quick descent into rigid political beliefs or even a rapid loss of interest. As Major General Fox Connor (bio) once stated, large democracies tend to tire of war quickly.  The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been going on for a long time, longer even than World War II, and there is a strong desire to be done with them, to even stop thinking about them.  Yet it is worth considering what is happening in Iraq, because there are changes occurring there that are reshaping the world forever.  While many are aware that how Iraq turns out will have tremendous effects on the world, there’s far less attention on how new techniques learned in Iraq by the military could have a profound impact on the nature of power on the battlefield and off of it.

Here’s what has happened in Iraq: Iraqi civilian deaths have declined significantly:

As have American casualties in Iraq:

These happy results are because attacks by the enemy have declined significantly:

Why? There appear to be a number of reasons, working in concert:

1. In January 2007, President George W. Bush decided to add an additional 30,000 troops to Iraq.  (Interestingly, McCain had urged an increase in troops since late 2003).  This was a reversal of an earlier strategy to train the Iraqi military, hand over responsibility to them, and withdraw American forces swiftly.
2. General Petraeus was put in charge of American military forces in Iraq.  He instituted new counter insurgency methods.  Petraeus moved American forces out of large secluded military bases, and into smaller joint security stations in Baghdad neighborhoods where there was more direct and continuous relationships with the Iraqi people.  He improved security along Iran and Syrian borders.  He set up groups of armed neighborhood Iraqi watch groups that patroled their communities and provided intelligence to U.S. and Iraqi forces.
3. After a gun fight with Iraqi forces in the holy city of Karbala, Moqtada al-Sadr decided to rein in his Mahdi Army, which had grown in unpopularity due to its criminality.
4. Iraqi forces continued to be trained and deployed in large numbers.
5. The Sunni minority grew to hate al-Qaeda’s brutal tactics and rules, and up in the “Awakening.”  Tens of thousands of Sunnis, many of whom had been insurgents, decided to sign up with the U.S. forces.
6. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki removed 1,400 Shia from the ministry of interior for sectarian actions, showing to some Sunnis that a Shia prime minister could act in their interest.
7. Covert operations gained considerably in lethality.  Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) responsible for hunting al-Qaeda in Iraq, employed what he
   called “collaborative warfare,” using every tool available simultaneously, from signal intercepts to human intelligence and other methods, that allowed lightning-quick and sometimes concurrent
   operations.

This last item, the increased lethality of covert operations, requires further explanation. The investigative reporter Bob Woodward (wikipedia) states (google news) that America has developed secret capabilities “to locate, target and kill key individuals in groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni insurgency and renegade Shia militias, or so-called special groups.  The operations incorporated some of the most highly classified techniques and information in the U.S. government.”

Woodward further states that new technology came online in the spring of 2007, states “It is a wonderful example of American ingenuity solving a problem in war, as we often have,” says it accounted “for a good portion” in the drop in violence, and says “I would compare it to the Manhattan Project in World War II.  It’s a ski slope right down in a matter of months, cutting the violence in half.  This isn’t going to happen with the bunch of joint security stations or surge.”

He refused to divulge more about the covert operations, stating just that “The enemy has a heads up because they’ve been getting wiped out and a lot of them have been killed.  It’s not news to them.  If you were a member of al-Qaeda or the resistance or some extremist militia, you would be wise to get your rear end out of town.  It is very dangerous.”

National security adviser Stephen Hadley responded to Woodward’s reporting by stating “It was the surge that provided more resources and security context to support newly developed techniques and operations.”

Woodward appears to be referring to fusion cells, an American team of intelligence and forensic professionals, political analysts, mapping experts, unmanned aircraft pilots and Special Operations troops collect and analyze intelligence and strike out against multiple targets simultaneously based on available intelligence (see the WPost).  But he also appears to be referring to advances in unmanned drone technology.

The LA Times now reports, “As part of an escalating offensive against extremist targets in Pakistan, the United States is deploying Predator aircraft equipped with sophisticated new surveillance systems that were instrumental in crippling the insurgency in Iraq, according to U.S. military and intelligence officials.”

The Bush administration, as of September 9, 2008, has started to deploy the specially equipped drones into Pakistan and has started unilateral American military operations in the border areas of Pakistan.  As the article states:

American officials requested that details of the new technology not be disclosed out of concern that doing so might enable militants to evade U.S. detection. But officials said the previously unacknowledged devices have become a powerful part of the American arsenal, allowing the tracking of human targets even when they are inside buildings or otherwise hidden from Predator surveillance cameras.

Equally important, officials said, the systems have significantly speeded up decisions on when to strike. The technology gives remote pilots a means beyond images from the Predator’s lens of confirming a target’s identity and precise location.

A military official familiar with the systems said they had a profound effect, both militarily and psychologically, on the Sunni Arab insurgency in Iraq.

“It is like they are living with a red dot on their head,” said a former U.S. military official familiar with the technology who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity because it has been secret. “With the quietness of the Predator, you never knew when a Hellfire [missile] would come through your window.”

The new Predator capabilities are a key ingredient in an emerging U.S. military offensive against Taliban strongholds and Al Qaeda havens in Pakistan.

Previously, the United States’ main focus in Pakistan’s tribal territory was gathering intelligence that could be used to direct raids by the Pakistani military, or occasional missile strikes from CIA-operated Predator planes.

Intelligence activities will increasingly be geared now toward enabling U.S. Special Forces units — backed by AC-130 gunships and other aircraft — to carry out operations against Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, officials said.

(see article)

What technology has been developed? A flying unmanned drone, controled remotely, can carry weapons and sensors.  Historically those sensors may have been a camera.  Combining more advanced sensors, sophisticated computing, and flying weapons platforms has profound implications.

Human beings are unique creatures.  Google’s picture management software Picasa allows for automatic facial recognition of photographs, by using criteria about the distance between eyes and the shape of the face.  It is certainly possible to create a signature about a person from a wide variety of sensor data, and some sensor data could certainly be available even through walls.

Combined with the proper software, it could allow continuous tracking of a person through multiple environments, out of doors or in doors.  Surveillance from a distance, from the sky, and then the deploying of weapons against the surveilled targets.  Lock onto a person and the computer keeps them locked on.

What does it say for civil liberties when your government can continuously track you from a distance in the air wherever you are? And what if that government isn’t the American government, with at least some limitations on its power, but is instead a dictator?

Warfare for a very long time has had staggering new advances that require new tactics to fully utilize on the battlefield.  Will American military supremacy continue?  Or will countries like China and Russia decide to adopt these new technologies faster?

If Bob Woodward is right, this is an innovation in lethality and power as significant as the Manhattan Project.  In fact it is much more targeted than the undiscriminating atomic bomb.  It is not just a change in the nature of warfare, it is a change in the potential power of government.

This entry has been filed under political, tech.