A-10s over Kosovo

by Christopher E. Haave Kimos

  “Two come south, my Maverick just went ‘stupid,’” I warned. Things were bad enough; I certainly didn’t want Smokey in the same piece of sky as my missile. We watched and waited for what seemed an eternity. A thousand horrifying scenarios flashed through my brain in a matter of seconds. Maybe I would be on the next plane to the CAOC after all. Luckily the Maverick splashed down on the eastern bank of a river just to our north. Crisis averted!

  Smokey wasn’t exactly sure where the target was, and by this time we were well north of it. No problem, I thought. I’ve got another missile, so I’ll set up for a pass from the north. I found the truck again and pickled off my second Maverick. This one came off the rail and did a direct nosedive underneath my aircraft. I had never had a Maverick missile go stupid on me before, and here I was at 10,000 feet praying that my second stupid missile of the day would not find an inappropriate impact point. Performing a classic posthole maneuver, this missile hit much quicker than the first, coming down in a field just outside a small village. I searched the area for any signs that something other than dirt had been disturbed and found nothing.

  Since Smokey had seen where my nose had been pointed, he now attacked the target. I covered our flight while he rolled in with one of his Mavericks. Shack! We had now expended three Mavericks for one truck, not a very good ratio, but I was glad I had my lucky wingman with me (luck doesn’t always come in the form of targets). While Smokey was setting up for his Maverick pass, two Belgian F-16s checked in, with each aircraft carrying one Mk-84 2,000 lb bomb. I gave them our coordinates and cleared them into the area at high altitude. Once they were overhead, I marked the artillery pieces with three white phosphorous marking rockets. The Vipers could still not acquire the target. Since my third rocket had landed directly on the southern artillery piece, I finally got to say the only three words that a FAC in any war has ever wanted to say: “Hit my smoke!”

  An Mk-84 exploding is one of the most violent things I have ever witnessed. I can’t imagine what it is like to be near its detonation on the ground, but I never tire of being safely overhead and watching one explode. The entire hillside erupted as the F-16s dropped one after the other on the two artillery pieces. We thanked each other for the work, and Smokey and I headed back to the tanker.

  It had been a successful morning so far. We got our fuel, and I was excited to get back in the fight. After being back in the area for no more than 10 minutes, I received a call from Magic, the ABCCC C-130. He said that the KEZ would be closing to facilitate the search for a priority target—a radar somewhere on the coast of Montenegro. I argued with Magic to allow at least one section of the KEZ to stay open. “Stand by; checking,” came the reply. Simultaneously we could hear what seemed like hounds being turned loose, as every Hog driver in the area jockeyed for position to get a crack at this target. It was no great mystery what we were going after. I had been in this situation twice before. The first was a night CSAR alert period that turned into a low-altitude, below-the-weather sortie searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack. The second occurred about a week later—a day sortie in which they had also closed the KEZ down and turned the Hogs loose. That one ended with Capt Ron Stuewe suffering a gun malfunction with the target in his crosshairs. We were “zero for two,” and the CAOC wanted this radar badly. It was being used as the eyes of the enemy’s early warning system and covered the approaches over the Adriatic that funneled jets into Kosovo. They knew when we were coming and how many of us there were. Someone at the CAOC had the destruction of this radar on the top of his “to do” list.

  Magic came back, “Swine 91, you are directed to leave the area. The KEZ will be closing in five minutes.”

  “Magic, Swine 91. I’m requesting to leave the western half of the KEZ open.” There were already three flights headed in search of the radar, and I now had the entire western half of the country to myself. I didn’t want to go anywhere.

  A new voice came across the radio, this one much older and much more perturbed at my request: “Swine 91, you are ordered to exit the AO. The KEZ will be closing in five minutes.” Good thing they were broadcasting this to the world over an open frequency. That was good enough for me and I started outbound. But I realized we were right near the target we had identified during our mission planning that morning—the one that was too good to be true. I altered my course outbound to the west slightly and spotted it—exactly like the picture and it certainly did look too good to be true. Somebody had to pay for those decoys though, and if I’m getting kicked out I may as well take the decoys with me. I relayed my plan to Smokey and we were in 30 seconds apart on the two, what appeared to be, tank decoys. Both passes were good and we rippled four Mk-82 500 lb bombs on each of the tanks. They weren’t very tactically significant targets, but those decoys had to cost at least 10 grand apiece. I thought it was a fair trade on that day, and I think Smokey agreed. Information in a subsequent Kosovo after-action report revealed that two tanks had indeed been found destroyed at those coordinates.

  We headed south and came up on the frequency being used for the priority target. This was the same one that the two majors were going after when they got into trouble. They were diverted to go find and attack this radar and then got the free ride up to the CAOC for their efforts. After that happened, I swore to myself that I would never go after that radar again—yet here I was, headed for the coast, flying towards the unlocated SA-6 and SAN-4 missile systems. That radar had become a monkey on the back of the 81st FS. We checked in just in time to hear the talkon from Magic. To say it was confusing would be a gross understatement. In fact, we could hear the confusion from the other flights even though they weren’t saying a word. I don’t remember exactly what Magic said, but I do recall that it was one long sentence without punctuation—something like, “There are two castles one is in the water one is on the land with the distance between the two shores one unit go one unit south from the castle you come to a road go south on this road which puts you in between two roads that form a V which is open to the target area south along the road.”

  The first time I heard Magic’s talk-on, I couldn’t follow it close enough to understand what the controller was trying to say. The flights already in the target area asked Magic to “say again.” I was a bit apprehensive, to say the least. I had coordinates inputted into my inertial navigation system (INS) to get us close, but the target radar was so far north this time that it was off all the maps I carried with me (we usually didn’t launch with the intention of attacking Montenegro). In summary: I had no map, my INS had drifted at least three miles when I compared it to known ground references on the way out of the KEZ, there were still two flights left looking for the radar, and we had a target-location description that seemed to make matters worse. What I did have on my side was time. We still had about 15 minutes en route to the target area. The next time Magic gave the talk-on, I wrote the entire thing down on my canopy with grease pencil. If someone reads a paragraph without using punctuation, or using the wrong punctuation, it can change the meaning completely—or even make it incomprehensible. I broke the talk-on into what I thought were reasonable sections. It was still confusing without having my eyes on the target. Nevertheless, it seemed to give me a much better mental picture of what I was looking for.

  Map and photo of area containing suspected Serb radars (NASA Photo)

  We arrived at the target area just in time for the flight on station to give us an orientation. We could definitely see the ruins of two castles. One was indeed on a tiny island in the middle of a small bay. The other was about a kilometer away on the shore to the south of the first one. The departing flight talked me onto the area they had been searching. They were using the distance between the far shore on the north side of the castle in the water and the shore to the south as one unit. This seemed reasonable enough and is what I would have thought. Next they were going one unit south along a road running away from the castle on the shore. At that point another road branched off from the main road
; together they formed a “V.” It seemed perfectly logical that the target was in this area, and I took over the search. Ten minutes later I wasn’t so sure. I decided to start over. I ran through it one more time and ended up in the same location. The possibility that it wasn’t even out there crossed my mind.

  Satellite photo of Giraffe radar area (NASA Photo)

  It then occurred to me that we had to be trolling around in some pretty unfriendly territory and that the radios had been quiet for some time. With the KEZ closed, surely this effort would have had all the available support dedicated to it. I queried Magic for the status of any SEAD and jamming assets. We had no jamming assets, and our SEAD was on a different frequency, headed for the tanker. I requested that Magic have all players come up on a common victor (VHF-AM) radio threat frequency. A quick check-in revealed that we actually did have two F-16 CJs covering the area and one EA-6B about five minutes out to provide jamming. It felt good to know the CJs were above us, holding in their SEAD orbit while the Hogs were taking care of the destruction of enemy air defenses (DEAD) (with destruction being the key word). Things seemed to be in order, so I went back to the beginning of my talk-on.

  Nowhere did it say to go one unit from the southern castle. I decided I would try going one unit south from the castle in the water. That put me just on shore, a little south of the southern castle. There I noticed a small road that ran out from the other side of the castle that I had not seen before. This road formed a V with the larger dirtball, and going one unit south put me right smack dab in the middle of that V. There was also a small road that ran from the larger dirtball into a large grove of trees that was covering the entire inside portion of the V. I put my binoculars up to the point where that small road disappeared in the trees and saw… nothing. However, there was a small concrete pad with what looked like a small hardened shelter close by. I swung my aircraft back around, refocused my binos, and got a closer look. There it was—sticking out of the tops of the trees—the upper half of a Giraffe radar. Not believing it, I checked at least two more times. It was definitely the Giraffe. Smokey did not have the target in sight—there was no way he could have. I directed him to continue to cover us, and I quickly set up for a gun pass on the Giraffe.

  Giraffe air-defense-system radar (Photo courtesy of FAS)

  “Magic, Swine 91. Confirm we are cleared to engage this target,” I queried, almost wishing I hadn’t asked and fully expecting him to deny me.

  “Swine 91, you are cleared to expend 30 mm on that target,” Magic quickly replied.

  I found myself about 10 seconds later hanging in the straps on about a 70-degree diving delivery. In my excitement I had failed to do the most important thing—fly the jet! I was able to shoot only about 50 bullets, not anything close to what I wanted to put down. They did impact the immediate target area, however. I asked Smokey if he had seen my bullets hit so that I could clear him in on a pass of his own. He came back with a negative, so I climbed back to altitude. This time I made sure that I was in a good position to roll in, and with two bursts—about 300 rounds—from the mighty GAU-8 the Giraffe slumped over, smoldering and resting on the same trees that had just provided it cover. The 81st had stuck its finger in Milosevic’s eye, and the monkey was finally off our back. It was nothing new for the A-10. As it has done in every war in which it has been involved, the Hog proved it had the ability to adapt to nearly any mission at a moment’s notice and have success, leaving some other high-tech jets stuck in orbit.

  Crew chief cleaning the canopy after the GAU-8 cannon had been used on a mission (USAF Photo by TSgt Blake Borsic)

  Chapter 7

  TACTICAL INNOVATION

  Introduction

  Lt Col Chris “Kimos” Haave

  The A-10 was a ridiculously simple fighter aircraft in its 1999 configuration, as well as the one used in OAF. When measured by twenty-first-century standards, its avionics suite lacked the gadgets that are standard in most modern fighters. There is a long list of what it did not have: GPS for precision navigation; a targeting pod for target identification or laser designation; a data link for receiving or passing target coordinates; a high-speed data bus for a moving map display; precision survival-radio-finding equipment for CSAR; and radar to provide precise target elevations for medium-altitude attacks or to find a tanker at night or in the weather. Its engines, not having been updated, continued to limit the Hog’s maximum airspeed to less than 225 knots at 20,000 feet. Even with this long list of have-nots, the A-10 retained some distinct advantages.

  The Hog had abundant cockpit space for stacks of maps, mission materials, and gyrostabilized binoculars. It also had a big canopy on which to write, with grease pencil, the target area and striker information. We had a great mix of weapons, particularly the 30 mm gun and the Maverick missile, both optimized for our targets. We had great logisticians and maintainers to keep the jets in top shape and fully loaded. We had pilots who trained daily in a European environment and learned to capitalize on the A-10’s strengths, compensate for its shortcomings, and skillfully evaluate the ground situation. Notwithstanding these strengths, we still had to refine and develop a few new tactics and techniques during the course of our OAF operations.

  Efficient cockpit organization was critical to expeditious target identification and attack. Each pilot had his own techniques and habits that worked best for him. These evolved as we compared and adopted each other’s tricks. For example, we needed a faster method to determine and pass target information critical to incoming fighters. After an A-10 AFAC located a lucrative target, he had to develop the data necessary for the FAC-to-fighter brief. To do so, while flying the aircraft, he would have to use a sequence similar to the following:

  1. Find the general target area on a large-scale map (1:250) that had markings for each of the smaller-scale maps (1:50).

  2. Determine which 1:50 to use.

  3. Find the correct 1:50 among the stack of 16 such maps.

  4. Study the terrain, roads, forests, power lines, and houses marked on the map to match the target area on the ground.

  5. Read the coordinates, in Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) format, from the scale on the map.

  6. Write these coordinates on the inside of the A-10’s canopy in grease pencil.

  7. Go back to the 1:50, follow the contour lines to determine the target elevation in meters, and write that on the canopy.

  8. Use the Inertial Navigation System to convert the UTM coordinates to latitude and longitude, and write those on the canopy.

  9. Use the HUD to convert the elevation from meters to feet, and write that on the canopy.

  10. Finally, read the target information to the incoming fighters over the radio.

  By contrast, F-16CG and F-14 FACs with targeting pods could simply point their laser designators at a target to determine its relative range, direction, and elevation. The aircraft’s avionics automatically integrate that information with its GPS information and instantly display target coordinates and elevation in the desired format. If the incoming fighters are equipped with a compatible data link, they could pass the information without even using the radio.

  We could often get around the need to “pull” coordinates off the map by directing strikers to rendezvous at a known point and then talking the striker’s eyes onto the target, usually with the aid of a mark. Generally, the striker would still need the target elevation.

  Several of our Allied Force innovations were genuine “Air Force firsts.” For instance, Lt Col Coke Koechle described the first cooperative employment of an A-10 with a USAF Predator drone. When we understood what had happened and what was possible, we asked for more interactive targeting. Sometimes it seemed rather comical when CAOC personnel, without FAC expertise, tried to use the Predator’s camera feed to describe a tank hiding in the woods. The Predator camera has a very narrow field of view (FOV), similar to looking through a soda straw. The discrepancy between that narrow FOV and the wide FOV an AFAC has when looking out of
an A-10 canopy flying at 20,000 feet often resulted in lengthy and frustrating talk-ons. The CAOC transmission would sound something like “the tank is in the woods near a dirt road,” reflecting the only tank, woods, and dirt road the Predator feed displayed. However, the AFAC saw dozens of woods and dirt roads from 20,000 feet and was still no closer to finding the tank. The problem was amplified further when the target descriptions were passed through the ABCCC to the AFAC.

  The CAOC recognized the problem, and talk-ons improved when it tasked a pilot with FAC experience to man the microphone. In an attempt to further improve the speed and accuracy of passing target locations, the CAOC directed that a Predator be modified to carry a laser designator. Late in the campaign Capt Larry “LD” Card, one of our weapons officers, flew a test sortie on the Albanian coast to validate the concept. The Predator marked a simulated target using its onboard laser. That spot was visible to LD using his Hog’s laser-spottracking pod, which proved that Predators and Hogs could operate efficiently together. The Predator’s laser could nail down a target location very quickly and avoid the lengthy talk-ons. We were eager to use this new tactic to locate and schwack hidden Serb tanks. However, we were never able to record a successful combat mission with Laser Predator due to the combination of poor target-area weather, limited Laser Predator availability, and—thankfully—the end of the conflict.

  Hog success in CSAR included leading two immediate night rescues—the first in US combat history. Our CSAR experts were visionaries and had laid the right foundation to prepare us, and our allies, for this particularly tough mission. Our success reflected those efforts, the participants’ stupendous seat-of-the-pants flying, and their ingenuity. Goldie exemplified that ingenuity when he shut down Serb radars by making “Magnum” calls—those that normally accompany the launch of a high-speed antiradiation missile (HARM)—during rescue of the pilot of Vega 31.