Mapping Enemy Activity for U.S. Convoys in Iraq

March 1, 2006 By: Kevin P. Corbley

U.S. Marines are using map visualization and Global Positioning System technologies to document and analyze the enemy dangers that threaten convoys delivering supplies and fuel to bases located throughout Iraq.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but to troops in an active combat zone, the right picture can be worth infinitely more, including a soldier's life.

A helicopter escorts a CLB-2 convoy as it travels on a supply route in Al Anbar.

The U.S. Marine Corps Combat Logistics Battalion-2 (CLB-2), based out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, realized this fact while providing logistical support to Coalition Forces engaged in combat missions in the Al Anbar province of Iraq. This province is home to Ramadi, Fallujah, Husaybah, and Al Qa'im, cities that have seen someof the heaviest combat and insurgent activity since the beginning of the war.

One of CLB-2's primary roles is to transport food, water, ammunition, and fuel via combat logistic patrols (CLPs, which are often referred to as convoys) from the operations base at Al Asad — a former Iraqi airfield — to troops located at other bases and positions throughout the Al Anbar province. These convoy missions are conducted on an almost daily basis, and they involve convoys of 20 to 50 tactical vehicles traveling as far as 200 miles.

The threat of danger is relentless and requires constant vigilance by the troops taking part in the missions and those planning them. Throughout the course of these operations, the CLB-2 battalion has encountered approximately 200 enemy incidents, mostly roadside bombs (known as IEDs, improvised explosive devices) and mines. The battalion has also experienced its share of casualties from these incidents.

As the CLB-2 Intelligence Officer for seven months in Iraq, 1st Lt Ben Hodgins' job was to gain a thorough knowledge of enemy activities within the battalion's area of operations. Supported by a staff of two Marine intelligence analysts (collectively known as the Intelligence Section), his objective was to report, understand, and analyze enemy activity and ensure that information was disseminated to the right people within the battalion as well as to supported, adjacent, and higher units. Typically, this process involved sorting through hundreds of e-mail and verbal reports that came in from a variety of information sources. The most up-to-date data resulted from mission debriefs from subordinate units and their own troops, while higher headquarters supplied information from other sources.

The Intelligence Section condensed this information into situational awareness briefings for the battalion commander and premission briefs for convoy commanders and the security element. The briefs detailed enemy activity along the convoys' intended routes and analyzed possible enemy action.

CLB-2 did not use a full-fledged geographic information system (GIS), but the Intelligence Section did use laptop computers that ran two military software packages: a map visualization application and a situational awareness tool. These packages enabled the section to display and overlay various maps, imagery, and geographic information to identify and analyze enemy activity along convoy routes.

For intelligence purposes, the software plotted the locations of known enemy activity on a map, allowing the Intelligence Section to visualize geographically how and where the enemy might affect proposed operations on any given day.

The Value of Photos

Lt Hodgins gained familiarity with mapping software through involvement in specific research projects before joining the Marine Corps. He attended a briefing on Global Positioning System (GPS)-based digital photography and mapping at Camp Lejeune before deploying to Iraq.

Already aware of the important role photography could play in intelligence gathering, analysis, and convoy protection in Iraq, Hodgins submitted a purchase requisition for two standard digital cameras with GPS cards. The cameras came bundled with a commercially available software package that could automatically stamp each digital photo with GPS coordinates and integrate the photos as a data layer in the geospatial mapping package (see Figure 1). The software also georeferenced the photos' acquisition locations to precise points on a map or image layer.