ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY                                            93

Proceedings: You touched briefly on establishing Marine aviation in the region.
In light of the joint air-tasking setup and the use of the Air Tasking Order
[ATO], do you feel that Marine air got to support you in the way you'd hoped?

Boomer: Yes--there is no question about the quality or quantity of Marine air
support. It worked exactly as we had planned, over the years. General Homer
adhered to the Omnibus Agreement, with respect to allocation of sorties, and the
ATO served a useful purpose and generally worked--although it's still a bit too
large, too complicated, and too slow.    We provided excess sorties to the Air
Force, as promised, and the Air Force made no attempt to assume operational
control of Marine aviation.    The air support picture was not entirely problem--
free, but all in all it worked pretty damned well.

Proceedings: In your new role at Quantico [Commanding General, Marine Corps
Combat Development Command), you will be in a position to orchestrate the
lessons-learned analysis effort and possibly correct some shortcomings.       Two
deficiencies that seem to come up during every war are tactical communications
and intelligence

Boomer: In the area of communications, we still are not equipped to conduct a
joint campaign of that size.       We have been giving some thought to the
equipment we need to ensure interoperability, so we know what we need; it's
just a matter of getting it.  Frankly, it took some outside assistance to keep us
plugged into the j0int setup in the desert, so we need to fix that shortfall. That
doesn't mean buying a billion dollars worth of gear, but selective buying of
equipment, including the new SINCGARS [Single Channel Ground and Airborne
Radio System] family of radios now coming on line.
   The    1st Marine Division was particularly resourceful in using PLARS
[Position Locating and Reporting System], which came into its own during this
operation.  We're just beginning to see its potential and must be innovative in
its use.  Of course, the GPS [Global Positioning System] is an absolute must,
and we need to acquire more of that capability. If we get some money, we can
make some rather dramatic improvements.
   In terms of intelligence, we probably have put too many eggs in the satellite
basket.   In a campaign the size of Desert Storm, the satellites get overworked,
and fail to meet the expectations of the commanders, especially at lower levels.
We've led them to believe that they're going to get some marvelous stuff-and
what they do get is pretty good-but it never quite measures up to their
expectations, and they want to know why.    We need to do some fine-tuning.
   We desperately missed the tactical reconnaissance capability that the RF-4C,
which left the inventory just as this campaign started, would have provided. It's
got to be one of our top priorities to get that capability back into the Corps. We
simply can't place total reliance on satellites for real-time surveillance, battle-
damage assessment, and the like.