Quote Originally Posted by Cole View Post
Guess my point is from news reports, even this informed civilian who has never been to Afghanistan, knew back when this happened that if the vehicles were coming out of Daikundi province (4th paragraph from end of article), they were probably Hazaras.

Oruzgan/Urozgan troops on the ground like the Dutch previously, and Marines now would know that as well. Shorter term SOF and those not semi- permanently occupying that ground would be less likely to know that. A Predator pilot separated from ground tactical MI and stateside DCGS would be less likely to know that, as well, particularly if he is National Guard. The assumption that a stateside NG officer Predator pilot is superior to an Army enlisted Gray Eagle operator who is actually in theater next to local tactical MI and operations staff/leaders, is possibly flawed.

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/0...ystal_030910w/

With an Army ground control station in theater near the SOF command post, the unit would not have needed to rely exclusively on the absent or short-numbered ROVER system and missing JTAC.
I guess I should comment since I'm one of those NG guys working with Predator.

The problem with that incident wasn't that the personnel involved were National Guard - rather it demonstrates a problem with how the DCGS system works. DCGS is a distributed system, meaning that the people flying the plane are in one location, the analysts exploiting the video feed are in another location, and the aircraft and supported unit are in a third location. This distributed system brings a lot of advantages, but some downsides as well. One of the biggest downsides is that communication becomes critical in order to ensure there are no screwups since the various players are not co-located. In this particular case, the guys flying the plane had comms with the guys on the ground, but the imagery analysts at the DGS did not. The imagery analysts correctly identified women and children in the vehicles, but the crew failed to pass that information along.

This incident prompted several changes in within the DCGS community.

Secondly, most of the NG people who do this mission are very experienced. At my unit (which is on the exploitation side of the system) most of the people working these missions have been doing it for the last 2-3 years nonstop on title 10 orders.

Third, DGS analysts aren't supposed to be local area experts - in fact, they can't be given the reality that we have to support missions anywhere in Iraq and Afghanistan. We literally could be supporting a mission in Afghanistan for a few hours and then support a mission in Iraq immediately afterward. Therefore, what the analysts do is pretty much limited to interpreting what is happening on the video feed and providing any products the supported unit requires. Most people working at a DGS are imagery analysts and would not be expected to be area experts regardless. The units we support on the ground do not expect us to be experts on their AO and they realize that we can't be such experts though we do endeavor to provide any information we can as well as coordinate cross-cuing of other intelligence assets. Mainly we are a reconnaissance asset and are treated as such, though we do have the capability to do higher-level and longer-term analysis if required.