ISR and the Gulf

An Assessment

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000191042
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: National Security
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) is today a core capability for the modern military, in peacetime and in war. ISR is and will remain a key enabler in the Gulf region in ongoing conflicts. There is still a reliance on the United States, and its ISR systems deployed in the Gulf, to facilitate ongoing operations and to provide situational awareness at the tactical, operational and strategic levels. However, even US ISR is finite, and there is growing demand for its resources in other regions. The Gulf Cooperation Council states have some ISR capacity, but this needs further development and improved exploitation to better address regional needs.

Written by a team of IISS specialists, ISR & the Gulf: An Assessment considers the meaning of and requirement for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance in the context of the region. It examines the military needs and industrial aspirations of the Gulf Arab states regarding ISR, and the opportunities and risks these present. The report is a companion work to the Institute's Missile-Defence Cooperation in the Gulf, and is similarly intended to help provide the basis for informed decision-making to support improved security in the region.

Chapter One

ISR: An Overview

Next best to knowing what your military rivals are thinking is knowing where they are and perhaps even what they are saying. The attraction of such understanding spans from the tactical to the strategic, from the immediate to the long term, and across all domains: land, sea, air, space and, increasingly, cyber. The infrastructure and systems intended to provide such insight are often referred to collectively as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR).

The phrase ‘forewarned is forearmed’ can be traced back at least 600 years and reflects the essential importance of knowing your enemy. ‘Taking the high ground’ originally meant exactly that: the high ground offered commanders better situational awareness than that of the enemy. Attacking up hill was more demanding, not just physically. The quest for ‘higher ground’ – for a better view – is the enduring element of ISR. What is now called ISR is the mechanism that enables the military to cope with and at least partially see through what nineteenth-century military theorist Carl von Clausewitz labelled the ‘fog of war’ (Nebel des Krieges in German).

Balloons were being used for observation by the end of the 1700s. It was, however, with the arrival of powered flight and access to yet higher ‘ground’, and the adoption and exploitation of aircraft by the countries ensnared in the First World War, that the progenitor of what is now commonly known as ISR began to emerge. The Second World War served to fuel and accelerate the development of technologies for the reconnaissance and surveillance roles, as well as the intelligence structures to support the exploitation of what was gathered.

The military was exploring the use of cameras for reconnaissance to complement visual observation from fixed-wing aircraft by the 1900s. Handheld cameras were carried aloft for photo missions from the outset of the First World War in 1914. By the advent of the Second World War, wet-film cameras were fitted internally to military aircraft. The British Spitfire PR Mk III entered operation in 1940. This was the first photo-reconnaissance version of the Spitfire to be fielded in operationally relevant numbers. Interest in exploiting the radio-frequency element of the magnetic spectrum was also growing by the 1940s with advances in radar technology. A dedicated photo-reconnaissance variant of the US P-38 Lightning, the F-4, entered service in 1942.

Observation balloons, like this one in France, were in widespread use by the First World War

Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty

Mechanical and analogue systems, however, only allowed for limited reconnaissance and surveillance. Image production and analysis was time-consuming, and cameras were comparatively large and limited by the amount of wet film they required. The film had to be returned to the ground for development, where a photograph interpreter analysed each frame.

The full impact of semiconductors and digital processors in the 1980s and 1990s offered a step change in performance and the ability to more rapidly acquire, analyse and exploit imagery or other data captured by increasingly capable sensors. As such, ISR is now a manifestation of what is often called the ‘information age’ – the digital infrastructure that underpins communication in modern societies. It is also increasingly central to how the United States, its allies and peer and near-peer rivals plan to fight wars.

Understanding the ISR acronym

While the words intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance have long belonged in the military vocabulary, the three only came together as ‘ISR’ in the mid-1990s. The adoption of ISR into the military lexicon coincided with the language of the Revolution in Military Affairs. This phrase was an attempt to capture the impact of the ‘information age’ in the military realm.¹ As with much of the vocabulary associated with the military sphere, there are both narrow definitions and broader understandings of what ISR is. It has become shorthand for a range of capabilities and platforms that are growing in importance.

The US Department of Defense (DoD) Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms defines ISR as:

1. An integrated operations and intelligence activity that synchronizes and integrates the planning and operation of sensors, assets, and processing, exploitation, and dissemination systems in direct support of current and future operations. 2. The organizations or assets conducting such activities.²

The NATO definition is similar, though it replaces the word ‘activity’ with ‘set of capabilities’:

an integrated intelligence and operations set of capabilities, which synchronizes and integrates the planning and operations of all collection capabilities with processing, exploitation, and dissemination of the resulting information in direct support of planning, preparation, and execution of operations.³

In grappling with a definition of ISR, some have gone even further, arguing that implicit in the NATO definition is the assumption that ISR has become ‘a word rather than an acronym’.⁴ This dossier will adopt a wider and more flexible view of what ISR encompasses. It will consider ISR to cover the capability to collect data in one or more of the land, sea, air, space and cyber domains; the platforms and sensors used for these tasks; and the capacity to analyse the data captured to produce and disseminate intelligence in a timely fashion, be it at the tactical, operational or strategic levels of activity.

ISR and modern warfare

Since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US and its allies have been involved in a range of limited wars against states and, more often, non-state actors. Two wars have been waged against Iraq (in 1991 and 2003); an air campaign was waged against the Yugoslav government of Slobodan Milošević in 1999; military action removed the Taliban from power in Afghanistan in 2001; and an air operation indirectly led to the collapse of the Libyan regime of Muammar Gadhafi in 2011. Although the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq brought about regime change, the aftermath of both embroiled Washington and its allies in prolonged counterinsurgency campaigns with unsatisfactory outcomes. The emergence of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, forced the US and its allies to re-engage in Iraq and to become involved in the Syrian theatre, though only with the aim of destroying the caliphate.

From an air perspective, what was notable in all these wars was the ever-increasing use of air-launched precision-guided munitions, and the associated increase in accuracy. ISR is the less heralded but nonetheless critical enabler in this development.

Despite the rhetoric surrounding the Allies’ strategic bombing campaign against Nazi Germany and imperial Japan during the Second World War, area attacks were required to have a realistic chance of having even a limited desired effect. In some missions in 1944, US bomber units were achieving a circular error probable (CEP – the radius of a circle within which half the weapons released will fall) of just over 1,000 metres.⁵ By the time of the Kosovo War (1998–99), a CEP of less than 10 m was being achieved with the like of the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM). Accuracy requirements for the present and next generation of guided munitions have moved beyond a simple CEP, to a far higher percentage measurement of ‘precision’.

By the time of the Iraq War, more than two-thirds of the air-dropped weapons were guided, including these GBU-31 Joint Direct Attack Munitions

U.S. Navy/Michael W. Pendergrass/Getty

Less than 10% of the air weaponry expended during the 1991 Gulf War was precision-guided;⁶ by the Kosovo War that had risen to around 35%.⁷ By 2003, the percentage of guided air-launched weaponry used in the Iraq War was 68%,⁸ and in the 2011 intervention in Libya, effectively all the air-launched weapons used one or more forms of guidance.⁹

The age of the free-fall iron bomb, the staple of offensive air power for almost all of the twentieth century, appeared to be drawing to a close, at least for the West. Mass had been superseded by accuracy. The development of guided munitions obviated the need to drop large numbers of unguided bombs, the accuracy of which depended on the aircraft’s navigational systems and, later, analogue computers to calculate the weapon-release point.

The success of an engagement, however, is dependent on the targeting information on which it is based, and ISR has a central role to play across all levels of campaign planning.

Permissive or otherwise

The US-led campaigns of the past three decades have mainly been carried out in what is termed a permissive air environment. While Iraq in 1991 had an integrated air-defence ground environment and a large number of Soviet-era surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), US and allied tactics rendered these mostly ineffective. Over the course of the war, the US and its allies lost 38 aircraft in combat, of which 13 were lost because of infrared-guided SAMs, ten as a result of radar-guided SAMs and nine due to antiaircraft fire. Four were lost to unknown causes, one was shot down by an Iraqi Air Force MiG-25 Foxbat, and one further loss was ascribed to other ‘direct enemy action’.¹⁰

Until the start of the US-led Operation Inherent Resolve against ISIS in Iraq and Syria in October 2014, the 1991 Gulf War had provided notionally the most capable air defences the US and its allies had faced. The US and its allies had to be cognisant of the Russian presence in Syria, and what was left of Syria’s air defences, in their fight against ISIS. For the most part, the US and its partners were able to operate in relatively benign air environments, particularly where the focus was counter-insurgency activity. Here the threat was restricted to a very low altitude, coming from small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades; shoulder-fired infrared SAMs could also not be ignored. Airborne ISR was able to flourish in such a permissive environment, with little need to be overly concerned with the risk of being engaged. UAVs were increasingly exploited to provide persistent coverage of areas and individuals of interest. In this permissive environment, ISR UAV losses were more likely to be the result of operator or mechanical error than opponent activity.

The world is changing, however, and a permissive air environment can no longer be assumed. Washington’s 2018 National Security Strategy says: ‘Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in US national security.’¹¹ It adds:

The central challenge to U.S. prosperity and security is the re-emergence of long-term, strategic competition by what the National Security Strategy classifies as revisionist powers. It is increasingly clear that China and Russia want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model – gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions.¹²

Similar language can be found in the United Kingdom’s 2018 defence review, the Modernising Defence Programme: ‘After almost three decades of relative international stability, the world has now re-entered a period of persistent and intense state competition.’¹³

The threat of peer-on-peer or near-peer conflict, while still remote, is no longer unthinkable. In the context of ISR this has several drivers. One is the consideration that some ISR platforms will need to be able to operate and survive in a contested environment. This is true not only of crewed platforms but also of any highly capable multi-sensor UAVs where a low loss rate is required simply because of a lack of numbers driven by the cost of acquisition. Complementing the increasing requirement for survivable ISR air platforms, crewed and uninhabited, will be the greater exploration of low-cost UAVs that can be acquired in large numbers and fitted with comparatively inexpensive sensors. Here survivability will be based on mass, where a high loss rate will be accepted to provide mission-critical data. Longer-range sensors, which allow an ISR platform to be operated at greater stand-off range from the object or area of interest, also confer greater survivability.

The other driver is a renewed emphasis on ‘strategic’ ISR – redoubling efforts to build up an accurate intelligence picture of an adversary’s current and potential capabilities in the medium and long term.

Conflict in the grey zone

ISR also has a role to play in what is sometimes called hybrid, grey-zone or tolerance warfare. This is where a rival state – or non-state actor – undertakes or is suspected of undertaking activities to undermine or destabilise a country, but the actions fall short of traditional military aggression. This raises issues of intent and attribution. Is the behaviour the precursor to a conventional attack? Is it probing activity? Is it intended only to keep the target state off balance? Is it some form of b...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter One ISR: An Overview
• Chapter Two Regional Security Drivers
• Chapter Three Defence-industrial Aspirations and Challenges
• Chapter Four The Role of ISR in the Gulf
• Chapter Five Maritime ISR
• Conclusion
• Index