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Journalism of Courage
C J CHIVERS
Cmdr. Layne McDowell glanced over his left shoulder,through the canopy of a Navy F/A-18,to an Afghan canyon 9,000 feet below. An American infantry company was down there. The soldiers had been inserted by helicopter. Now a ground controller wanted the three strike fighters circling overhead to send a signboth to the grunts and to any Taliban fighters shadowing them as they walked. Commander McDowell dived,pulled level at 5,000 feet and accelerated down the canyons axis at 620 miles per hour,broadcasting his proximity with an extended engine roar.
The use of air power has changed markedly during the long Afghan conflict,reflecting the political costs and sensitivities of civilian casualties caused by errant or indiscriminate strikes and the increasing use of aerial drones,which can watch over potential targets for extended periods with no risk to pilots or more expensive aircraft.
Fighter jets with pilots,however,remain an essential component of the war,in part because little else in the allied arsenal is considered as versatile or imposing,and because of improvements in the aircrafts sensors.
Commander McDowells career has followed the arc of this changing role. At the outset of the war in 2001,American aircraft often attacked in ways that maximised violence,including carpet bombing,dropping cluster munitions and conducting weeks of strikes with precision-guided munitions.
Flying in an F-14 squadron from the aircraft carrier Enterprise,then-Lieutenant McDowell dropped 6,000 pounds of munitions in the wars first week,destroying Taliban aircraft and vehicles at Herat airfield and striking training camps and barracks in Kandahar Province.
Our culture is a kill-kill-kill culture, he said. Thats how we train. And back then,the mind-set was: maximum number of enemy killed,maximum number of bombs on deck,to achieve a maximum psychological effect.
That was then. A little more than a decade on,his most common mission is what is called an overwatch,scanning the ground via infrared sensors and radioing what he sees to troops below.
In 953 close-air support sorties by the 44 F/A-18 Super Hornets aboard the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis,from where Commander McDowell flies now,aircraft struck only 17 times. They flew low- or mid-elevation passes 115 times.
The shifts in missions and tactics partly reflect adaptations by the Taliban. But guided by complex rules of engagement and by doctrine emphasising proportionality and restraint,they also reflect what Commander McDowell calls a different mentality.
So much has changed from when I was here the first time, he said,looking down at Afghanistan on a six-hour flight early last week. Now I prefer not droppingif I can accomplish the mission other ways.
Commander McDowell is scheduled to assume command of an F/A-18 squadron in May. He is 38,a graduate of the Naval Academy and a former test pilot. His call-signKeeblerreflects what he calls his elfin stature he is 5 feet 7 inches tall and insatiable sweet tooth.
For a combat flight into Afghanistan,McDowell would conserve energy and fuel. He flew level at 500 feet for seven miles,banked left and climbed to 25,000 feet,where he was joined by two other Super Hornets. The trio headed north for their first mission,to support the company freshly landed in the valley in Kandahar.
After refueling a second time,the jets checked in with a ground controller near the Arghandab River,the area that in late 2010 was a high-profile part of the offensive to displace the Taliban.
Before that offensive,the American presence along the river had been light. Now,from the air,the military footprint was clear. The river was a network of outposts and bases with high walls,many watched over by cameras mounted on tethered blimp-like balloons.
If one place might suggest the way Commander McDowells role on the battlefield had changed over his career,this was it. He flew a slow left turn,pointing to an area where several days before an infantry patrol had skirmished with Afghan gunmen.
What happened next framed the contrast between the old practices and the new.
The infantrymen talked him toward the building. Then they marked it by firing a smoke grenade at its walls. Above the river,Commander McDowell fixed his infrared sensor on the compound,sharing the video feed with a ground controller,who confirmed he was looking at the right place. What to do?
In 1999,late in the war in Kosovo,Commander McDowell said pilots routinely killed. On one sortie,in the rush to stop Serbs from killing ethnic Albanians,Commander McDowell dropped a 1,000-pound,laser-guided bomb at the mouth of a tunnel that five trucks carrying Serbian soldiers had just entered. The shrapnel and pressure wave from the blast probably killed every man.
Back then,the rules of engagement allowed pilots to track suspected military vehicles.
And if a military vehicle stopped at a house,we would get a reading of where the driver went, he said. If we were able to identify that the truck was Serbian military,and it stopped for a long period of time at the house,we made the assumption that they were stopping for resupply and within a couple days that house was taken out.
A little more than a dozen years later,he was above a home in which at least two Taliban fighters had taken shelter after firing on an American patrol. But he did not know who else might be inside. Neither he nor the soldiers requested clearance for an airstrike.
What if we hit that house and two guys inside had guns and we get eight kids,too? he said.
I would say that in my younger days I would have been frustrated,because we have ordnance and we know where the enemy is,and I would have wanted permission to strike that building, he said. Did I feel frustrated this time? Not in the slightest. It is a different mission. It calls for a different mentality.
