US Army’s Intelligence Network Down During Afghan Hospital Attack

Pentagon Reiterates Confidence in Ongoing Probe

A decade and about $5 billion in, the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS), the Pentagon is still struggling with the all-purpose intelligence network that’s supposed to share all the latest data on all the latest wars in real time. Today, officials revealed the DCGS was down during the recent attack on the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospital in Kunduz.

This would seem to explain a lot of the questions surrounding the strike, like why attacks continued against the hospital for nearly an hour after MSF contacted the Pentagon about the strikes. It could well be this is the sort of thing DCGS was supposed to handle if it worked at all.

Despite the revelation potentially being the latest in a series of excuses for the attack, the Pentagon is downplaying the incident, refusing to discuss any impact it might have had on the bombing, and reiterating their confidence in the ongoing internal investigation into the attack.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R – CA) was particularly critical of the revelation, having been a long-time opponent of the DCGS system, and criticized its repeated failures. The Pentagon refused to comment on his criticism, however.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.