We headed south for gas and passed to ABCCC the information about the SAM launch and our subsequent attack. We had just pulled up behind the tanker when a two-ship of Turkish TF-16s pulled up, declared emergency fuel, and jumped on the tanker in front of me during my scheduled air-refueling time. I was angry because I was really in a hurry to get back and look for whatever had shot at me. We refueled, and as we were about to go back in country, Scrape noticed that he had expended all of his chaff. We couldn’t go in country without it, so we had to head home early. As I recalled this sortie and put the details down on paper, I realized that I had never said thanks for that “break” call—thanks, Scrape!
I was again flying as an AFAC on another unusual mission, but this time with Col Alan Thompson, the 40th EOG commander, on my wing. This is not the most exciting story, but for me it is representative of the entire conflict; it was always interesting, if seldom extraordinary.
On this day the weather was fairly poor. An F-14 was working the western half of the country, coordinating through-theweather deliveries for strike aircraft with compatible capabilities. Most of the other strikers had been sent home, but ABCCC was kind enough to let us stay and look for holes in the weather. We were using call sign Cobra 41 and working the eastern half of the KEZ. We were operating above a low undercast and had spent a great deal of time just looking for holes. I set up an east-west, zigzag search pattern starting in the south and working north. We had little success; every hole I found would close up before I could get the binos up to look through it. We worked further north, and I found a larger hole over Serbia proper, about 15 miles north of the Kosovo border. It was nicely aligned and situated directly over our fixed target—an ammunition-storage facility. As I positioned our flight for an attack, I thought it would be great not to have to land with our Mk-82s, especially since I had dragged us so deep into bad-guy land.
I set up an attack from the west with the sun and wind at our back. I rolled in, pickled my bombs, pulled off, and started working south so I could monitor the boss’s attack. He rolled in; as he dove down the chute, I saw what looked like flashbulbs at the Super Bowl. The entire side of a large hill lit up with muzzle flashes for what seemed to be 30 to 40 seconds.
I called, “Cobra Four-Two, work south, jink! Triple-A north!”
I saw his aircraft roll and turn south as the muzzle flashes continued. Shortly after his bombs hit, the muzzle flashes stopped, but I had a great bead on their position. Once we were back together I rolled in with the Maverick. I planned on locking up any hot spot on the side of that hill and firing. When I found a hot spot, I cross-checked my HUD to confirm that the Maverick was looking at the hill and not the town just to the south. The Maverick symbology indicated that the hot spot was on the border of the hill and the town. I thought for a second and came off dry. In the time it took to reposition and take another look, the clouds had covered the target area, and we were low on fuel.
Like I said, this was not the most exciting story but one that best reflects my experiences during OAF. Most of my tactical decisions erred on the conservative side. Late at night I sometimes second-guess myself when I think about the conflict. I wonder if I should have been more aggressive, shot more rounds, or dropped more bombs. Then I remember three things: (1) We all made it home alive, (2) I did my best to avoid civilian losses, and (3)—well, I guess there were only two things. Nevertheless, those two were important because, as Stanley Kubrick wrote in Full Metal Jacket, “The dead know only one thing—that it is better to be alive.”
Big Brother
Lt Col Mark “Coke” Koechle
I initially expected the air war over Kosovo to be similar to the one in Desert Storm, and that it would have similar results. As a veteran of 43 of the latter’s actual combat sorties—which involved dropping bombs and getting shot at—I could see some similarities. However, it was much more difficult to find targets in Kosovo; often the ones we did find were given sanctuary by our restrictive ROEs. The political constraints were much more stringent in and around the villages of Kosovo than they had been in the Iraqi and Kuwaiti desert. The Serbs used the media at every opportunity to discredit the NATO coalition by claiming that our allied pilots committed war crimes. Such claims, if substantiated, could have easily turned world opinion against the coalition and forced NATO to halt its air campaign against fielded Serbian forces. That would have allowed the Serbs to continue their genocide and atrocities against the Kosovar Albanians. Strict ROEs, the (not-so) real-time target-approval process, and the denials for strikes on valid targets caused our pilots to become disgruntled with the whole command and control process—often causing us to wonder whose side the guy making those decisions was actually on. The 81st FS Panthers had adopted the tactic of having all AFACs fly with a wingman, which we dubbed a “tethered fighter.” Capt Slobee O’Brien and I had been paired during that portion of the war and had flown several very successful missions together. None was more unusual than the sortie on 11 May, during which Slobee was the AFAC and flight lead of Uzi 11, and I was his tethered fighter and overall KEZ mission commander. The AFAC’s job was to find valid targets and then control the fighters while they attacked those targets. The wingman’s responsibilities were to provide visual lookout for the flight, communication backup, and firepower support, as well as assist the AFAC in any other way necessary. The tethered fighter could immediately attack targets if the planned strikers were either not available or too far away.
Lt Col Coke Koechle, 81st EFS/DO, getting ready for a combat mission at Aviano AB (USAF Photo by SrA Jeffery Allen)
We flew an uneventful 45-minute vul period over Kosovo and then headed southwest for the tanker orbiting in Albania. After topping off, Moonbeam (ABCCC) told us to head to a certain village north of Pristina to search for targets that had been reported earlier. Once in the area, Moonbeam gave us a talk-on to a specific L-shaped building that had a bus parked alongside it and directed us to strike the building. This was highly unusual, since most ROEs prohibited us from hitting permanent structures for fear of harming innocent people and causing collateral damage. The idea of a talk-on from Moonbeam was also unusual, but I didn’t think much about it since other fighters could have passed on the target description earlier in the day. We surveyed the area with our binoculars and, while we saw no movement, we were convinced that this was the correct target. We each dropped three Mk-82 500 lb bombs on, or in the immediate vicinity of, the building and saw it and the bus begin to smolder. We reported the effects of our attack to Moonbeam and moved on to look for other valid targets in the area.
Location of L-shaped building north of Pristina
I had been near this area several days earlier and wanted to check some potential targets that I had seen, so we proceeded about 15 miles north of the smoking building. We found what looked like tracked vehicles in a tree line and mortar pits along a road, and were just about to employ our remaining ordnance when Moonbeam called again.
“Uzi One-One, do you still have contact with the L-shaped building?”
“No,” Slobee replied, “We have another potential target and are just about to strike it.”
“Well, we’d like you to go back to the L-shaped building. There are enemy soldiers walking around outside of it now, and we want you to strike it again.”
After several seconds of silence, Slobee said “Uzi copies.”
I don’t know what was going through my flight lead’s mind, but it was plainly obvious to me that someone had that building in sight and was providing real-time intelligence to the CAOC. I had an eerie feeling and pictured special forces on the ground near the target, or a Mr. Clark type from a Tom Clancy book. Then I thought that maybe it could be some KLA/UCK ground troops with a satellite-communications link to our forces. It really bothered me that, potentially, there were good guys down there and we didn’t know where they were.
We flew back to the building, which was just barely burning, and each dropped our last Mk-82 and fired a Maveri
ck missile into it. It quickly erupted into a raging inferno, and the bus was completely destroyed.
Moonbeam then said, “That looks like it’ll do the trick. Now we want you to proceed northeast by about 10 miles to these coordinates [UTM coordinates provided], and there should be at least 20 pieces of armor in a field.”
By this time we were sure there was someone on the ground directing our attacks, but for some reason we weren’t talking directly to him. Incompatible radios? Fear of compromise? We didn’t know.
We flew directly to the coordinates and spent 10 minutes looking for armor. All we could see were open fields with some barns located in and around them. We asked Moonbeam to repeat the coordinates, and when it did so, they confirmed that we were in the right place. Then Moonbeam said that there should be a large, U-shaped pole barn at the end of an eastwest dirt road. We already had that in sight—since it was the largest reference in the area.
Moonbeam then said, “The tanks and APCs are inside that barn; you are cleared to strike it.”
Well, thanks for telling us. We now had to rush the attack because gas was getting low and becoming a factor. We each shot our remaining Maverick into separate corners of the “U,” made three high-angle strafe passes using two to three trigger pulls per pass. I shot about 700 rounds into the barn, and Slobee shot about 400. We did not see any large explosions as the barn began to burn, but I did see what appeared to be smaller secondary explosions from inside and yellow-green smoke rising from the burning barn. Moonbeam told us that we had direct hits and had destroyed many of the armored vehicles; we still couldn’t figure out how he knew that. We then egressed the target area for the tanker air-refueling track about 100 NM to the south. All in all, it had been a very successful day—much more satisfying than others, since we had found and destroyed or damaged tasked targets. We cautiously discussed our information “source,” vaguely speculating about who or what it could be and hoping that it wouldn’t be compromised. We did not learn the real story until later that evening.
That day Col Alan Thompson, 40th EOG commander, and two of our fellow Panthers had been in CAOC’s battle-staff room when our strikes occurred. The battle-staff room resembles a Dr. Strangelove movie set—a “room with the big boards.” They said that a USAF Predator drone had been orbiting in our area and had picked out, fixed, and identified potential targets. The CAOC then passed coordinates, instructions, and attack clearance to us through Moonbeam.
Through Predator, and possibly other intelligence sources, the CAOC had identified the L-shaped building as a makeshift Serb army command post. Our first attack had seriously damaged the building, but the Predator operators had still seen activity in and around the building, so we were directed to strike it again. During the second strike, the Predator had been in position to allow its operator to witness the impacts and assess the damage. The operator passed the BDA to the CAOC, who in turn immediately passed it to us. The Predator operators had also determined that armored vehicles were stored in the U-shaped barn. So as soon as the CAOC was convinced the command post had been destroyed, we were directed to find and strike that barn. Our pilots at the CAOC watched real-time transmissions from the Predator as Slobee and I attacked the barn. They said the Maverick impacts were devastating but were really surprised to see CBU bomblets exploding on and very near the buildings. We were also confused by what they had seen—we not only had not dropped any CBUs, but we weren’t even carrying CBUs. We finally figured out from the sequence of attacks that they had actually seen our high-explosive incendiary 30 mm cannon rounds exploding on impact. While we were strafing the building, they watched as one whole side of the barn was blown away, exposing many burning hulks.
The evolution of airpower has brought our tactics a long way—from the days of flying bailing-wire and fabric airplanes and hand-dropping 10 lb bombs into enemy trenches to using UAVs to provide air-strike coordination to a pair of fighters. While this concept had been discussed on many occasions, to the best of my knowledge this was the first time that it was actually attempted in combat. On this occasion it was unplanned “pickup CAS,” which probably contributed to its success and made the results seem even more impressive. From that day forward, we tasked our squadron intel to brief when and where Predator would be flying. We were unable to repeat that real-time coordination but still tried to use its information to find fielded forces on future sorties. Unfortunately, information was usually hours old, and it often turned out that the targets had moved or had inaccurate coordinates. None of the Predator’s efforts during the rest of our OAF missions were as successful as that first “trial mission.” With some dedicated work, the concept of using UAVs for target search and talk-ons could become a viable tactic in future conflicts in which AFAC assets are too limited to cover all required areas. Even so, there is no substitute for putting a set of Mk-1 eyeballs on a potential target before unleashing lethal airpower against it.
Fear, Luck, and Divine Intervention
Capt Rip “Rubble” Woodard
The operation had entered its third week, but having to wake up in the middle of the night had not yet become routine. Today’s operation would be our third in daylight, and everyone was optimistic because yesterday afternoon’s forecast had projected good weather. Weather in the KEZ had frustrated our attempts during the first two days, preventing us from finding any targets. We hoped that today we would finally get to do our job.
At a 6,000-foot elevation in the mountains north of Aviano, we found that our hotel was covered with a wet snow that continued to fall as we stepped out the hotel door in the middle of the night. We looked at each other with a sinking feeling as our expectation for good weather evaporated. We had driven halfway down the mountain before the snow turned to rain and fog. During the past two months, determining the weather while driving down the road had evolved into a “fighter-pilot science.” Noting the elevation on the mountain at which we could see Aviano AB gave us a better estimate of ceiling and visibility than the weatherman could. Today seemed to be the worst yet—since we didn’t see the base until we drove through the gate.
We went through the standard preflight planning and briefings hoping that conditions would improve. I was scheduled to fly with Buster, a squadron flight commander and a no-nonsense pilot who had total concentration on the job at hand. He was especially focused this morning since the latest weather brief said the weather in Kosovo was breaking up. We were briefed and ready to go an hour before sunrise, but the weather still had not lifted. Low ceilings forced the whole package at Aviano to sit on the ground and remain on standby. The weather was the same down the whole length of the Italian coast—everyone was on standby.
About 30 minutes after our scheduled takeoff time, the weather finally improved to the required 500-foot ceiling and one-mile visibility; we then got approval to launch. Taking off in poor weather puts additional demands on Hog drivers. Most fighters use their air-to-air radar to maintain positive separation between members of their formation when taking off and flying into the weather. Since we did not have air-to-air radar, we had to fly with our instruments and perform a procedural trail departure to ensure that we had safe separation between our aircraft. We took off 20 seconds apart, flew set airspeeds, maintained the same ground track, and climbed at a specific power setting. We kept the variables constant and relied on the differences between our departure times to keep us safely separated during the climb out. As Two, I waited 20 seconds after Buster started his roll before I released my brakes. I watched Buster disappear into the weather, and 20 seconds later so did I. If the instrument departure were executed properly, I would break out on top of the clouds with Buster slightly above and about a mile and a half in front of me—the distance he would cover in 20 seconds at climb speed. That was the theory but not what happened. I did not realize it at the time, but the moment Buster entered the weather would be the last I would see of him until we were both back on the ground at Aviano—almost two hours later.
Our
two-ship was the third A-10 flight to launch that morning. We monitored the common VHF radio frequency and could hear the members of other flights describe the weather they were experiencing. Those descriptions became the best forecast of what lay ahead of us. The weather had become a real problem. Passing 6,000 feet, I noticed that ice had formed on the nose of the Maverick missiles, the rocket pods, and the leading edge of the wings. I told Buster, and he acknowledged having the same problem. We continued to climb in an attempt to find an altitude where the icing would stop, but it only seemed to get worse until we passed 17,000 feet. The A-10 flights ahead of us had also reported icing, and all aircraft were still in the weather when they leveled off at 25,000 feet, our final altitude for the track down south. Fortunately, a flight of two F-16s, which had taken off behind us and had climbed steeper and flown above us on departure, had just broken out at 30,000 feet and said that the weather above was clear. We decided to continue our climb to find clear weather and help the ice sublime. Unfortunately, our Hogs were loaded for combat with four Mk-82 bombs, two Maverick missiles, two rocket pods, an ALQ-131 jamming pod, and two AIM-9 missiles. That load made us extremely heavy, increased our drag, and precluded a quick climb.
We remained in the weather during our climb and flight down the Adriatic. After about 45 minutes, we finally reached 30,000 feet and could see sunlight above us. Leveling off approximately two miles in trail behind Buster, I was still in the weather and unable to see him. While doing an ops check to see how much fuel was remaining, I saw the master caution light begin to flash and looked to investigate. The right-generator caution light was illuminated, and the number-two (right) engine tachometer was wildly fluctuating between 30 and 90 percent. At this point, I was flying the aircraft about five degrees nose high to maintain level flight at 170 knots indicated airspeed (KIAS).
A-10s over Kosovo Page 27