Secretary Rumsfeld wielded an aggressive hand in seeking to bolster these anemic response options, which CENTCOM had inherited from the previous eight years of the Clinton administration. “Iraq’s repeated efforts to shoot down our aircraft weighed heavily on my mind,” he wrote in his memoirs. “ . . . I was concerned, as were the CENTCOM commander and the Joint Chiefs, that one of our aircraft would soon be shot down and its crew killed or captured. . . . The plan code-named Desert Badger was seriously limited. Its goal was to rescue the crew of a downed aircraft—but it had no component to inflict any damage or to send any kind of message to Saddam Hussein that such provocations were unacceptable.” Rumsfeld went on to recall: “Our friends in the region had criticized previous American responses to Iraqi aggression as weak and indecisive and had advised us that our enemies had taken comfort from America’s timidity. The Desert Badger plan was clear evidence of that problem. . . . If an aircraft was downed, I wanted to be sure we had ideas for the president that would enable him to inflict a memorable cost. The new proposals I ordered included attacks on Iraq’s air defense systems and their command and control facilities to enable us to cripple the regime’s abilities to attack our planes.”10
In a precursor to Operation Southern Focus, two dozen American and RAF aircraft had struck some twenty radar and command and control nodes throughout Iraq on February 16, 2001, some as close to the country’s heartland as the suburbs of Baghdad, in prompt response to intelligence reports that Iraq’s IADS was nearing a point of interconnecting some critical command and control sites with underground fiber-optic cables that were very difficult to locate. The intent of that attack, the most massive in two years, and conducted under the aegis of enforcing the southern no-fly zone, was to negate or at least hinder any such development before the installation could be completed.11 This effort by Hussein’s regime to enhance its IADS with a fiber-optic network was in part the result of an earlier loosening of economic sanctions against Iraq that had allowed French and Chinese commercial firms to provide Hussein with $133 million of telecommunications improvements, including fiber-optic cable installations and other digital enhancements to telecommunications that could be leveraged to increase the lethality of Iraq’s radar-guided SAMs.12
Indeed, well before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, CENTAF’s commander at the time, then Lt. Gen. Charles Wald, had fought to gain approval for more appropriate coalition responses to increasingly aggressive attempts by Iraq’s IADS to fire on coalition aircraft patrolling the no-fly zones in an apparent effort to shoot one down. With respect to his growing concern regarding the need for more forceful strike options, General Wald commented in an interview: “When I became the commander at CENTAF, I was not interested in just doing the status quo. My feeling was that we needed to do something different. . . . So we built a briefing and gave it to the CINC [commander in chief of CENTCOM] and the [Air Force] chief of staff, and in that briefing we recommended a change in how we did business—either we push it up, or we do the status quo, or we do hardly anything, we quit. We needed to get out of this middle road that was really dangerous . . . this cynical status quo approach to the no-fly zones and to Iraq. You can’t do this tit-for-tat thing. Our recommendation was that we do something more aggressive.”13 Rather than risk coalition aircraft in such small-scale retaliations, General Wald sought to establish restricted operating zones and gun-engagement zones that coalition aircraft were to avoid due to the concentration of Iraqi defenses, a measure that, in effect, ceded parts of the southern no-fly zone back to the Iraqis.
All of that changed dramatically with the onset in June 2002 of Operation Southern Focus, a substantially escalated initiative that allowed the coalition to reclaim the entire southern no-fly zone while at the same time drawing down Iraq’s command and control network in the southern half of the country by systematically going after enemy systems that allowed Iraq’s IADS to acquire and threaten coalition aircraft. Lt. Col. David Hathaway, General Moseley’s chief of strategy, explained how targets were chosen.
After I pitched the Southern Focus plan at CENTCOM, General Franks asked all the other component commanders for their proposed lists of desired Southern Focus targets. Both the land and maritime component commanders proposed targets in the vicinity of the Al Faw peninsula and the city of Basra, ranging from long-range artillery to Seersucker missile, naval command and control, and mine storage locations. Initially, those target nominations were deemed by CENTCOM to be insufficiently related to hostile Iraqi actions taken against coalition aircraft operating in the southern no-fly zone. It was not until the execution of OPLAN 1003V drew closer that such targets were considered and ultimately approved by General Franks.14
A pair of B-1s, for example, attacked and destroyed a Soviet-built P-15 Flat Face SAM acquisition radar near the H-3 airfield and an Italian-built Selena Pluto low-altitude surveillance radar near the Saudi and Jordanian borders.15
In a follow-up to this initiative, staff planners at CENTAF, in conjunction with those assigned to Joint Task Force Southwest Asia operating out of Saudi Arabia, generated an “RO-4” response option aimed at systematically taking down Iraq’s increasingly interconnected IADS by attacking the static surveillance radar and fiber-optic cable nodes inside the southern no-fly zone that had been providing enhanced early-warning information to Iraq’s southern air defenses. Iraq had directed AAA fire at allied aircraft at least fifty-one times since January 1, 2001, and had launched SAMs with hostile intent fourteen times. In light of this, General Franks, who had replaced Gen. Anthony Zinni as CENTCOM’s commander in chief in July 2000, approved sending the RO-4 option on to the Joint Staff for approval by the new civilian leadership of the recently inaugurated administration of President George W. Bush.16
A report of slightly more than one hundred Iraqi SAM launches against U.S. and RAF aircraft between February 16 and May 9, 2001, that were characterized as “an unusually determined effort to shoot down an [allied] aircraft” added incentive for the new administration to approve this ramped-up effort against Iraq’s air defenses.17 Furthermore, there had been a significant spike in recent incursions into the no-fly zones by Iraqi MiG-25 interceptors flying at speeds of up to Mach 2.4 at times when patrolling allied aircraft were either leaving the zones or were known to be low on fuel. By the summer of 2001 the Iraqi IADS had also begun targeting U.S. Navy E-2C Hawkeye surveillance aircraft. One Hawkeye crew reported observing the smoke trail of what its pilot thought at the time was an Iraqi SA-3 SAM that had been fired into Kuwaiti airspace (where the Hawkeye was orbiting) in an attempt to shoot it down.18
It was in light of this increasingly aggressive Iraqi activity that General Franks suggested during his briefing to President Bush on December 28, 2001, that the no-fly zones might be leveraged as a convenient framework within which to conduct the initial preparation of the battlespace for any future allied campaign against Hussein’s regime. Shortly thereafter, at the March 2002 CENTCOM component commanders’ conference at Ramstein, General Moseley formally suggested that CENTAF’s planners begin thinking about how they might take advantage of a stepped-up pace of operations in the no-fly zones to help shorten the time between A-day and G-day. By this time it had become clear that only Operation Southern Watch would be involved because the Turkish government was unlikely ever again to authorize an expanded Operation Northern Watch out of Incirlik to include major offensive strikes.19
Once this idea gained the blessing of CENTCOM and the Bush administration in principle, a more detailed concept of operations for the stepped-up patrolling of the southern no-fly zone was considered and refined at a meeting of air operations planners from CENTAF, USAFE, and Joint Task Force Southwest Asia at Camp Doha, Kuwait, on April 24, 2002. Those planners proposed that allied sorties return to patrolling north of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in aggressive pursuit of opportunities to impart real combat effectiveness to Southern Watch by using the operation as a means for both tactical intelligence collection and g
radual kinetic preparation of the battlefield for what might eventually become a major offensive to liberate Iraq. CENTCOM’s director of operations, Major General Renuart, recalled in an interview with respect to this changed planning focus: “If the Iraqis keep giving us ROE [rules-of-engagement] triggers, we’ll keep degrading them.”20
The standing ROE for Southern Watch were restructured to meet a new set of operational goals in an expanded effort, now formally code-named Operation Southern Focus, that was scheduled to get under way in June 2002. Those goals included gaining and maintaining air superiority, degrading Iraqi tactical communications, using information operations to achieve strategic and tactical surprise, and eliminating surface-to-surface and antiship missiles.21 A comprehensive new target list was built at a meeting at CENTCOM headquarters in Florida between May 8 and May 10, 2002, characterized by Lieutenant Colonel Hathaway as a “systems approach to targeting” that concentrated on command and control targets associated with Iraq’s IADS in the southern no-fly area. Hathaway noted that “the list was put together using nodal analysis, fused from two separate efforts, one done by the CENTAF information operations flight and the other built at [the Joint Warfare Analysis Center]. It aimed to achieve the most effect with the least damage. It also had ‘revisit’ windows built in, allowing restrikes to be regularly undertaken if our leaflets hadn’t persuaded the Iraqis to desist from repairing the sites.”22
Accordingly, with Operation Southern Focus now shaped by this new planning emphasis and slowly ramping up as the summer of 2002 approached, a de facto undeclared allied air war against Iraq was under way aimed at taking advantage of every opportunity to neutralize key components of Iraq’s IADS and command and control network south of Baghdad piece by piece.23 By that time, even American fighter pilots still at their home bases had begun memorizing mission-specific details of the Iraqi threat environment. One F-16 squadron operations officer recalled efforts by squadron pilots who were preparing to deploy forward in the coming months to “learn everything possible about Iraq’s air defense structure and, more importantly, about their ground forces. Pilots would understand the Iraqi ground order of battle as well as be able to identify doctrinal Iraqi defensive formations from the air.”24 In connection with this expanded effort, General Franks indicated his determination to continue using CENTCOM’s standing response options in prompt reaction to any and all Iraqi provocations, with a view toward rendering Iraq’s IADS “as weak as possible.”25
As the intensity of Southern Focus strike operations mounted, CENTAF planners placed some air-to-air fighters on “Apollo alert” to provide a quick-turn hedge in case the Iraqi air force tried to use the twice-daily Baghdad-to-Basra shuttle flown by an Iraqi Airlines Airbus A320 to mask the movement of its fighters southward into the no-fly zone.26 Evidently undaunted by the escalated allied strikes, an Iraqi SA-2 crew on July 25, 2002, fired at a U-2 flying over southern Iraq at 70,000 feet. The missile’s warhead detonated close enough for its shock wave to reach the aircraft.27
Operation Southern Focus reached full swing in September when General Moseley received approval from Secretary Rumsfeld to begin attacking Iraqi command and control targets routinely.28 This escalated effort was spearheaded by a major strike on September 5, 2002, against the nerve center of Iraq’s western air defenses, the sector operations center at the H-3 airfield in western Iraq. That attack represented the leading edge of a rolling minicampaign to grind down the Iraqi IADS. Not long thereafter, every other sector and interceptor operations center south of the 33rd parallel was successfully attacked and neutralized by precision hard-structure munitions. Concurrently with this expanded effort to chip away at Iraq’s air defense communications network, CENTAF dropped more than four million propaganda leaflets instructing Iraqi IADS operators to refrain from firing on coalition aircraft and warning Iraqi civilians to remain clear of already destroyed IADS fiber-optic nodes.29
During the last week before the formal start of Iraqi Freedom, Southern Watch operations surged to nearly eight hundred sorties a day.30 Halfway through February 2003, reflecting an evident change in the rules of engagement as the formal start of the campaign approached, CENTAF struck identified Iraqi SAM launchers in response to repeated Iraqi AAA firing at coalition aircraft, instances of which had totaled more than 170 since the beginning of 2003.31 Two days before the commencement of the campaign, CENTAF also struck Iraqi long-range artillery positions along the Kuwaiti border and on the Al Faw Peninsula. Several days before that, allied aircraft had begun attacking Iraqi early-warning radars along the Kuwaiti and Jordanian borders, as well as the air traffic control radar at Basra airport, which CENTCOM had determined to be a dual-use facility but had hitherto kept on its no-strike list.32
Allied aircrews operating within the southern no-fly zone were instructed to keep meticulous track of observed enemy tanks, artillery, and other military assets. Some missions were devoted exclusively to such reconnaissance. These so-called nontraditional ISR sorties flown by allied strike aircraft using their Low-Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infrared for Night (LANTIRN) and Litening II targeting pods, radar, fighter data link, and ZSW-1 data link pods for intelligence collection were supplemented by high-flying U-2 reconnaissance aircraft to gather signals intelligence from central Iraq, as well as by a multitude of multispectral imaging satellites. The one RQ-4 Global Hawk high-altitude UAV that was dedicated to Iraqi Freedom began flying long-duration sorties to observe changing patterns in the Iraqi order of battle and monitor movements of Iraqi SAMs and surface-to-surface missiles.33 Fine-grained mapping of the Iraqi early-warning radar system was one critical goal of these sorties. Another was scanning for any signs that Hussein and other top Ba’athist leaders might attempt a dash to political sanctuary in Syria.
Some F-16 pilots initially misunderstood this pioneering use of nontraditional ISR. Maj. Anthony Roberson, an F-16 weapons officer who had been recruited from USAFE’s 32nd Air Operations Group, where he had been serving as head of the combat plans division, to join General Moseley’s CAOC team during the workups for Iraqi Freedom, explained that the tactic required “a different mindset. For a Block 52 [the SEAD version of the F-16 called F-16CJ] guy to be told, ‘I just want you to fly to this destination and take a picture of this, then come back and show it to me,’ would seem to most fighter pilots as a total waste of time. They don’t think it’s an effect, and . . . the value of this mission was misunderstood.”34 Major Roberson went on to point out that such mission applications provided General Moseley with a much-needed picture of Iraq’s most current electronic order of battle. He added: “It is critical for an F-16CJ to be able to swing to that role and use its array of pods to get our pre-strike reconnaissance, thus providing coherent change detection—something that was there yesterday is not there today. We needed to get that information back into the analysts’ hands so that they could tell us what the adversary was doing. The Viper [its pilots’ term of endearment for the F-16] is a good platform for this tasking.”35 The various collection platforms CENTAF employed toward this end revealed the Iraqis to be repositioning high-value military equipment nearly every day, but always in ones and twos or small groups, hoping to avoid the merciless gaze of the E-8 JSTARS.36
During the first week of March 2003, the number of allied CAPs flown over southern Iraq was doubled to give aircrews more experience at operating in a high-threat environment.37 From March 1 until the start of major combat on March 19, allied aircrews flew four thousand sorties into the no-fly zones, in the process acquainting themselves with various procedures that had been established for the impending campaign and further familiarizing themselves with mission-related details of southern Iraq. Of this heightened operating tempo, a Pentagon spokesman noted that “we also want to establish different looks, different flight patterns, in order to preserve some element of tactical surprise.”38 The carrier air wings embarked in Kitty Hawk, Constellation, and Abraham Lincoln took turns participating in these patrols, with F-14s and F/A
-18s armed with LGBs and supported by E-2Cs launching on combat sorties day and night. The heightened sortie rate in such a small and congested block of airspace made mission management particularly demanding.
The assistant director of operations of the 77th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron at the time, Lt. Col. Scott Manning, described a harrowing near-miss during the night of March 5, 2003, while he was leading the SEAD escort force in support of a U-2 as the latter skirted the Baghdad-area Super MEZ:
During the second refueling between tanker operations and NVG [night-vision goggles] transition, I had a very close call with [my wingman,] Rowdy. We pulled off the tanker in a right-hand climbing turn, and it was pitch black. Rowdy rotated his light switch to “off.” Having been watching him in the right turn, I could not see that he had stopped his turn. I, however, stayed in my right turn while perceiving him to still be in his. In retrospect, I should have rolled out and called for his lights. Instead, I stayed in the turn and reached up to pull my goggles down. I heard the blast of the mighty GE-129 [jet engine] pass right over my canopy, at which point I looked up to the left (keep in mind I am still in my right turn) only to see Rowdy now out on my left side and only about 20 feet away. I was fortunate that Rowdy had looked at me during this and pulled back on his stick to let my aircraft pass underneath him.39
The minicampaign against the Iraqi IADS that unfolded under the aegis of Southern Watch during the months immediately preceding the war significantly degraded Iraq’s air defense capabilities within the southern no-fly zone. That ramped-up effort had no effect in the least, however, against Iraqi IADS assets fielded in and around Baghdad, which General Leaf characterized as more robust than the defenses that had been in place there on the eve of Desert Storm more than a decade before. Iraq, Leaf said, had marshaled all of its assets for a vigorous defense of its capital city: “Countrywide, they are weaker. In Baghdad, they are stronger because they have brought everything in.” Iraq’s echeloned defenses around the capital included SA-2, SA-3, and SA-6 radar-guided SAMs; man-portable infrared SAMs; and AAA.40 Furthermore, Iraqi air defense technicians had met with their Serbian counterparts after Operation Allied Force in 1999 and had carefully studied the unique tactics Serb air defenders had applied against NATO’s combat aircraft.41
The Unseen War Page 11