Sleepers in the Middle East

The U.S. Air Force’s Task Force 99 is a showcase unit to which Pentagon officials refer as a “model of how to make the most of existing resources in the Middle East.” Expressed less floridly, Task Force 99 is a tactically understated means by which to assert American presence in the Middle East without engaging in open hostilities.

U.S. Air Forces Central (AFCENT)—the air component of United States Central Command—reported in February 2023 that Task Force 99 had concluded its first operational experiment, a successful test using small drones for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) purposes.

After decades as the U.S. military’s highest-priority theater, the Middle East has been superseded by the Pacific and Europe, which have waxed exigent in the faces of Chinese and Russian belligerence respectively. Ergo, AFCENT brass—as part of a new drive to experiment throughout U.S. Central Command—seeks to maintain a latent U.S. force-projection capability in the Middle East by adopting a “culture of innovation,” of which Task Force 99 is a precursor.

To the subject of his unit’s inaugural operation, Task Force 99 commander Colonel Robert Smoker somewhat cryptically stated: “Depending on the systems we’re bringing in, that will always be an ongoing process. But we are at the point now where we have actually done our first operational evaluation in theater.”

Colonel Smoker explained his team had tested a small commercial drone with a “mapping capability.” Referring to the drone as “promising,” Smoker added: “It performed admirably and as advertised, so it looks like it could be good for potential use in the future for folks at AFCENT.”

An Air National Guardsman who holds a civilian defense industry job, Colonel Smoker took command of Task Force 99 on 23 February 2023, relieving Lieutenant Colonel Erin Brilla at the end of her CENTCOM tour.

Speaking at a 13 February 2023 Air Force function, AFCENT commander Lieutenant General Alexus G. Grynkewich set forth that the test performed by Task Force 99 was part of a broader effort to “fill some of the gaps that we have as our other more traditional ISR platforms have gone to other regions or other priorities for the Air Force.”

General Grynkewich added: “So we’re trying to solve our own problems, and we’re trying to do it in a way that’s less expensive and that is, frankly, in many cases more effective than we might have been able to do [before].”

Task Force 99 will commence jointly testing long-range Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) with the U.S. Navy’s Task Force 59 in March 2023.

“The Navy problem was maritime domain awareness,” General Gynkewich remarked. “Our problem was air domain awareness—and air domain awareness not just for tracking objects in the air, but maybe finding things on the ground that launch into the air, and how those could be a threat to us.”

Established in October 2022 with a focus on testing products costing anywhere from a few hundred dollars to $75,000, Task Force 99 comprises a scant nine Airmen—including Smoker. The outfit’s personnel were hand-picked from a variety of specialties encompassing in part: cyber operations, civil engineering, intelligence analysis, and metallurgy.

“These Airmen are the very embodiment of the Chief of Staff of the Air Force’s Accelerate, Change, or Lose mantra,” former Task Force 99 commander Lieutenant Colonel Brilla opined. “Every member of our small, highly skilled, agile team is a subject matter expert in their field. We’ve empowered and encouraged them to experiment, tinker, and wonder ‘what if?’ Given a few resources and high-risk tolerance, there’s no limit to what they can deliver."

General Grynkewich intends to afford Task Force 99 significant latitude to grow into a tight-knit group of “super-empowered” Airmen. CENTCOM envisions the entirety of U.S. military services collaborating on experiments the likes of that recently conducted by Task Force 99 with the common goal of increasing awareness of all threats in a given region or operational theater. The U.S. Navy currently employs a deployed network of surveillance vessels as part of its Task Force 59. While the U.S. Army stood up its Task Force 39 in November 2022. The latter outfit’s foci include counter-UAS solutions.

Of the Middle East, General Grynkewich stated: “It’s a dangerous region, and there are people attacking us every day.” Both Iran and ISIS have carried out drone attacks on American assets and partners in the Middle East. Iran’s drone threat has repeatedly prompted USAF commanders to deploy F-22 Raptors to the region for purpose of rattling America’s formidable saber. U.S. troops in Syria are at particularly acute risk of drone attack, and are currently augmenting their defenses with newly-developed counter-UAS systems.

“We’ve got the best operators on the ground intercepting these threats,” Grynkewich averred. “But we can’t always rely on that, which is why we need to be able to provide new technologies and new approaches in new ways that increase the length of time we have to engage.”

FMI: www.af.mil