by Scott McEwen
The Air Force defines the job of the Thirty-First as “expeditionary air combat in support of the Global War on Terrorism.” Arguably, exactly the mission necessary for the job at hand: saving American lives under attack in Benghazi.
These fighter jets could easily have made it to Benghazi, with a single fuel stop at Naval Air Station Sigonella hours before the final battle that killed Glen Doherty and Ty Woods. The fighters would have arrived hours before Doherty and Woods died.
At a minimum, scrambling these jets toward Benghazi would have been consistent with the imperative expressed by SEAL Team Six assault leader Ryan Zinke: “immediately move assets forward to the theatre where needed.”
In reality, assets were not ordered forward until six hours after the ambassador was killed. Secretary of Defense Panetta later testified before Congress that he did not have any direct conversations with President Obama after 6:00 p.m. (Washington time) on the night of the atrocities that killed the ambassador and three other Americans. This means that the president had either disconnected from the discussion or he had simply moved on after the news of the ambassador’s death had reached him. Either way, Panetta was very clear on his timeline of discussions.
While these jets can be configured to hold a vast array of precision bombing ordnance—from Hellfire missiles to grenade bomblets—it is likely that flying them “naked” with only their 20 mm cannons loaded would have been more than sufficient to disperse or dispatch the mob outside the CIA compound being defended by Glen Doherty and Ty Woods and others in Benghazi.
The effective range of an F-16C, with external fuel tanks, is over 1,700 nautical miles. However, even assuming less range was possible here, due to the “need for speed” to the target (faster travel burns more fuel); the jets stationed at Aviano Air Base had plenty of range to get there, with a single hot refueling at any base en route, including Naval Air Station Sigonella, located on the island of Sicily 845 nautical miles south.
Dan Hampton is a recently retired Air Force pilot, a decorated veteran of both Gulf wars with over 4,500 hours of flight time in an F-16, and he is familiar with the flight wings based in Aviano. He has flown out of Aviano many times. He has more than seven hundred combat hours in the F-16 alone and author of the New York Times bestseller Viper Pilot. “The Air Force could have done the job from there, if they had been called upon,” Hampton said. The problem is that the Air Force, and all other branches of the Department of Defense, were never called upon to mount a rescue. The president did not speak to the Secretary of Defense to order or allow military action.
The distance between Aviano Air Base and Benghazi is 1,050 nautical miles. F-16s have a range-fuel supply for approximately 1,700 nautical miles.
Based upon our discussions with current and former military officers, including Commander Zinke and Dan Hampton, the following basic plan could have and, more important, should have been put in place.
All times noted herein are local (Benghazi).
9:40 P.M.
Ambassador Stevens makes the initial call reporting the attack was taking place at 9:40 p.m. Stevens reports to Hicks in Tripoli: “Greg, we are under attack.”
All other agencies, both local to Libya and worldwide, were then immediately informed that a U.S. ambassador was under attack in one of the most dangerous places on Earth. This call should have prompted the immediate initiation of an Emergency Response Plan.
9:40 P.M.–10:00 P.M.
General Ham (commander at Africa Command, or AFRICOM) is given notice that a U.S. diplomatic outpost facility in Benghazi is under attack and needs help. He is also informed that the U.S. ambassador to Libya and his related staff are at risk of capture or death, and that a U.S. facility is in danger of being overrun, or has already been overrun, by enemy militants. Instead of being told to “stand down,”5 along with others in Tripoli, the order is given for him to immediately mount and execute a rescue operation.
General Ham and his commanders are aware that the closest permanently stationed air fighter assets in the theater are located at Aviano Air Base in Italy. It is very possible, if not likely, that other assets were also located in the Mediterranean (including the entire Sixth Fleet carrier group, a flotilla of more than a dozen ships and a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with over seventy-five planes) that were even closer than the permanent assets at Aviano.
10:00 P.M., Aviano Air Base
The jets stationed in Italy should have immediately been called in to action no later than 10 p.m. Had the F-16s scrambled from Aviano, then hot-refueled at Naval Air Station Sigonella, they could have easily been on-site in time to save Woods and Doherty. While there may not have been fighter jets already at Sigonella, there were certainly fighters located at Aviano, which could have been at Sigonella in approximately one hour and fifteen minutes.
The distance between Aviano and Sigonella is 845 nautical miles. A commercial flight between Aviano and Sigonella can cover the distance in approximately two hours, including takeoff and approach time. Hence, to estimate that an advanced fighter jet travelling at just under Mach 1 can cover the same distance in 1.25 hours is conservative.
According to Dan Hampton, who has flown into both Aviano and Sigonella on multiple occasions, 1.5 hours from Aviano to Sigonella is imminently achievable, even with a wide array of ground attack ordnance hanging from the fighter. Different ordnance packages dictate different flight speeds and fuel consumptions. While the speed achievable by the fighter, and gas consumption used is a factor, it certainly would have been achievable here, he said.
The American jets could have arrived in time to save the encircled diplomats and contractors. In fact, given the undisputed fact that Glen and Ty were alive until at least 5:15 a.m., at least four hours after help could have and should have been there.
11 30 P.M., Arrive NAS Sigonella, Hot Refuel F-16
12:30 A.M., Wheels up en route to Benghazi
Allowing the F-16 pilots one hour at Sigonella to refuel and replenish is more than sufficient time, according to veteran pilots, including Dan Hampton. A hot refuel of an F-16 can be done in 30 minutes or less. Essentially, a hot refuel is similar to refueling a NASCAR car during a race. The aircraft’s engine is not shut off, and the fuel pump is attached to the aircraft. This allows the refilling procedure to begin immediately after the aircraft is wheeled off the runway. Practiced refueling crews have been known to accomplish the procedure in ten minutes.6
Given that the Navy personnel on the ground at Sigonella would have nearly certainly known what was taking place in Benghazi, and that there were two former Navy SEALs in a firefight with more than one hundred terrorist attackers, you can bet your last United States dollar the refueling crew at Sigonella would have been working like a NASCAR team at Daytona getting those birds fueled and ready to bring the fight to the enemy. Allowing one hour to achieve this task is more than reasonable.
Sigonella to Benghazi
Distance: 468 miles
Time to Target: (Speed 0.9 Mach) 45 minutes
Arrival Time: 1:15–1:30 A.M.
With refueled jets and less than five hundred miles to the fight, the F-16s would have had a variety of options upon arrival in Benghazi. One thing is certain: while it is difficult, even by the U.S. State Department’s timeline, Glen Doherty and Ty Woods were alive and fighting until at least 5:15 a.m.
Benghazi is located on the Mediterranean shore and would have been easily visible on the night of September 11, which was clear with no overcast conditions.
On their approach, the F-16 pilots would have had two distinct advantages in accessing and planning their attack. The first was that they would have been in constant contact with the Air Force personnel operating the drone over the battle since 11:10 p.m., according to the Department of Defense timeline. The cockpit of the F-16C has the capability to get real-time images from the drone shown on their equipment, not dissimilar to watching a live TV report on one’s television in your living room.
From these imag
es, the pilots would have had the capability to assess the number of attackers, potential antiaircraft capability, and the correct approach. The second advantage the pilots had was two battle-trained and hardened Navy SEALs on the ground who had experience with forward air controlling of aircraft, and also had working laser designators to highlight the targets at night.
According to Dan Hampton, he could have deposited ordnance on board the F-16s within feet of the target: “Especially with two ex-SEALs, because they’re all qualified in forward controlling of aircraft. And they had laser pointers, which kind of takes all the error out of it. Normal weapons aside, we’ve always got the cannons, which I’ve used in a pinch myself, and in an absolute environment, the cannon might have been the best.”
Even if the Rules of Engagement (ROE) allowed by the Defense Department for the pilots did not include use of missiles or cannons, still the effect of a low-altitude afterburner “blast” of two F-16s would have bought the Americans valuable time.
When asked whether he had an opinion as to what effect a low-altitude pass over the scene with afterburners engaged might have had on the attackers in Benghazi, Dan Hampton responded: “Well, the same effect it has on most people. These weren’t trained soldiers. These were just basically insurgents. I think it would definitely make them pause. I think they might rethink their attack if they thought there was heavy overhead support from the Air Force or Navy.”
The roar of deep-diving American jets literally might have scattered the enemy permanently without firing a shot.
The former top diplomat in Libya, Greg Hicks, told congressional investigators that more could have been done by the military on the night of September 11 and morning of September 12 to spare the lives of those being attacked in Benghazi. He wondered why the military did not send a plane as a show of force into Libyan airspace: “The Libyans that I talked to, and the Libyans and other Americans who were involved in the war, have told me also that Libyan revolutionaries were very cognizant of the impact that American and NATO airpower had with respect to their victory,” in the war against Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
Hicks, then the U.S. deputy chief of mission in Libya, told investigators on April 11, 2013: “They are under no illusions that American and NATO airpower won that war for them. And so, in my personal opinion, a fast mover flying over Benghazi at some point, you know, as soon as possible might very well have prevented some of the bad things that happened that night.” Hicks went on to say he believed “if we had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced”—after being reported around 9:40 p.m. that night—“I believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the Annex in the morning because I believe the Libyans would have split. They would have been scared to death that we would have gotten a laser on them and killed them.”
Hicks also suggested that he believed the Libyan government would have granted the U.S. permission to fly the planes. “I believe that the Libyans were hoping that we were going to come bail them out of this mess,” Hicks said. “And, you know, they were as surprised as we were that American—the military forces that did arrive only arrived on the evening of September 12.”
Hicks said at approximately 10 p.m. in Tripoli on the night of the first attack, he was at the U.S. embassy in Tripoli talking to State Department officials in Washington, D.C., regional security officer John Martinec at the U.S. Embassy, defense attaché Lt. Col. Keith Phillips, and others. Phillips was reaching out to officials with the Libyan Ministry of Defense and to the chief of staff of the Libyan Armed Forces, as well as officials with the Joint Staff and the United States Africa Command.
Hicks recalled asking Phillips, “Is there anything coming?”
Phillips told Hicks that the nearest fighter planes were at Aviano Air Base, in Italy—“that he had been told that it would take two to three hours to get them airborne, but that there were no tanker assets near enough to support a flight from Aviano.” The preflight checks can be time-consuming, but three hours is probably an exaggeration meant to let Hicks know that no one in Washington wanted to take the perceived political risk of mounting a rescue. The refueling issue is, likewise, a nonissue. If the jets didn’t have enough fuel to return to Italy, they could land on a nearby carrier or at an allied landing strip in Libya itself.
In February 2013, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was also asked why F-16s at Aviano Air Base in Italy were not deployed to Benghazi that night. “This is the middle of the night now, these are not aircraft on strip alert,” Dempsey said. “They’re there as part of our commitment to NATO and Europe. And so, as we looked at the timeline, it was pretty clear that it would take up to twenty hours or so to get them there.” Again, it could take several hours to put jets in the air and several more to put them in the skies over Benghazi—but twenty hours is an outrageous political exaggeration. It is even more outrageous when coming from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. A man who should know better and expect better from the men and women he commands.
“Twenty hours?” Why twenty hours? Possibly of greater importance, given the array of issues that had been going on in Benghazi for the last several weeks, why were the planes not on alert, as was suggested should have been the case by Dan Hampton and others? Officials from the Obama administration have testified that the military assets were not in place to conduct a rescue of the besieged U.S. officials in Benghazi.
“This is not 9/11,” Panetta said in a February interview on CNN’s State of the Union. “You cannot just simply call and expect within two minutes to have a team in place. It takes time. That’s the nature of it. Our people are there, they’re in position to move, but we’ve got to have good intelligence that gives us a heads-up that something’s going to happen.”7
Excuse us, Mr. Panetta—it was 9/11, just a different year and a different group of terrorists killing Americans. The United States spends more money on its military than the next ten largest militaries in the world. It is hard to believe that a fighter response couldn’t be managed within six hours.
Rescue Scenario Two
Date: September 11, 2012
10:00 P.M.
Gaeta, Italy
As the call came in from the commander-in-chief of AFRICOM, the U.S. Navy pilots in Gaeta knew the situation was dire. They didn’t wait for orders but were already getting ready as the orders came in. They immediately jumped into their G-suits and headed for the planes being readied for takeoff. America’s diplomatic outpost in Benghazi was under attack.
Knowing the powder keg where the call was made from, it caught none of the pilots by surprise that a 911 call could be made from this part of Africa on 9/11.
The pilots knew that the closest facility that could potentially have any firepower ready was Sigonella. Although Sigonella was a Naval Air Station, it had no permanently stationed attack aircraft based there. There might have been helicopters in Sigonella, but not the type needed for an armed assault. The wing commanders were already debating options for what might be needed in the newly formed Republic of Libya, when the flight crews were told to “light the fires” on the FA-18E Super Hornets. Takeoff was imminent.
As chance would have it, all but one of the four flight crews selected had already been involved in battles in the skies over Libya, during the overthrow of Col. Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. The U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy were instrumental in driving the Arab world’s longest-serving dictator from power through strategic air strikes and close air support of the Libyan rebels, usually with the help of SEALs on the ground acting as forward air controllers.
The flight leaders knew what ordnance to load on the fighters. They chose the new stealth, air-to-ground missiles, primarily for their precision and ability to cause the least amount of collateral damage in the concrete-walled neighborhood where snipers hid and mortar crews worked. Collateral damage was clearly not in the “game plan” for the brass setting the mission parameters. No one wante
d another Stalingrad or Dresden; they wanted a carefully calibrated attack that spared civilians.
As was generally the case, even in war zones, the Rules of Engagement (ROEs) could change on an hourly basis. Given the political sensitivity—the U.S. was less than eight weeks from a presidential election—the pilots knew that the ROEs might change several times while they were en route to the target. What they did know was that Americans were trapped, that some Americans were already dead, and that the survivors desperately needed close air support to save the diplomats, spies, and contractors caught on the ground. That was enough for them. After a very brief rundown of the limited information available, the orders were then given: “Go!”
Here was what they knew for sure: the U.S. ambassador’s last words were: “Greg, we’re under attack.” They were also aware that as many as forty-two other American lives hung in the balance.
Of equal importance, there were an unknown number of attackers. Some estimates put the number of attackers in the hundreds. Further, the pilots had no idea of what type of antiaircraft capability the attackers may have. Enemy rockets that could threaten aircraft, such as the Soviet-made SA-7, were as common as camels in Libya. Did the attackers also have captured antiaircraft artillery from the Gadhafi days? It was unlikely, but the sobering possibility could not be ruled out.
Gaeta is a sprawling U.S. Navy base on Italy’s west coast, south of Rome and north of Naples—near the ankle of Italy’s boot. It is just under six hundred nautical miles from Gaeta to Benghazi. In fact, enforcement of the no-fly zone (Operation Odyssey Dawn) was routinely done from Gaeta during the overthrow of Gadhafi.8
Given their strategic location in Gaeta, the FA-18 jets on the deck of a carrier were launch ready. The amount of time to takeoff depended on command orders to light the fires and stretch the catapults. The twin General Electric F414 turbofan engines were “lit” and ready for takeoff on the deck of the nuclear-powered carrier.