The Unseen War

by Lambeth, Benjamin S.

  Although it could not be immediately determined how many Ba’ath regime leaders, if any, were caught by surprise and killed in these attacks against headquarters buildings, command centers, and official residences—some fifty-nine buildings in all—the impact of the attacks was broadly reflected in the failure of the leadership to attempt to rally the Iraqi people, the limited scope and impact of Iraqi information operations, the slowness of the Iraqi army to react, the absence of any observed enemy ground maneuver above the battalion level, the slowness of Iraqi forces to reinforce Baghdad, and the complete failure of the Iraqi air force to defend Iraqi airspace. The general absence of hard and reliable intelligence on Iraqi WMD sites precluded a robust attempt against that target set, although such WMD delivery systems as surface-to-surface missiles, artillery, and UAVs were struck whenever they were located and positively identified. CENTCOM made a high-level decision not to focus attacks on WMD infrastructure unless there were indications of an imminent threat to coalition forces.108

  Initial SEAD Operations

  The defense-suppression portion of the A-hour offensive unleashed on the night of March 21 was led by a barrage of allied sea- and air-launched cruise missiles that were targeted against the eyes, ears, and lifeblood of Iraq’s still-intact and highly distributed IADS. In this initial assault wave, more than one hundred TLAMs took down the ring of high-power, low-frequency acquisition and tracking radars that surrounded Baghdad. The capital city’s main defense node was its air defense operations center, which fed threat information to subordinate sector operations centers that, in turn, fed that information to interceptor operations centers. All of these nodes were attacked, as were microwave landlines and fiber-optic cables that relayed air defense information and key long-range early-warning radars.109

  These initial counter-IADS attacks struck the most critical fire control and communications nodes of the many SAM batteries aggregated in the Super MEZ around Baghdad and Tikrit, as well as leadership and other regime facilities in central Iraq. The Super MEZ, which appeared on aircrew navigational charts as a racetrack with extensions on the opposite sides of each end (see map 2.2), consisted of a profusion of SA-2, SA-3, and SA-6 missile launchers, as well as some French-made Roland SAMs and at least one American-produced I-Hawk SAM complex that had been captured when Iraq occupied Kuwait in late 1990 and early 1991. Each radar-guided SAM site was also accompanied by a profusion of AAA guns of calibers ranging up to 100 mm.110 Many of these sites had never been precisely geolocated by U.S. intelligence.111

  Concurrently, all major airfields of the Iraqi air force were rendered unusable by JDAM attacks that cratered the main runways and taxiways (see map 2.3). CENTAF planners had intended to use TLAMs against the SA-2 and SA-3 sites defending fighter airfields, but the absence of good real-time intelligence confirming their locations most likely precluded those attacks.112 These cruise missile strikes were followed at 2146 by the first attacks by stealthy B-2s and F-117s. Eight of the twelve F-117s scheduled in this initial attack wave had to abort without expending their munitions because of their inability, in the confusion of the opening hours, to make their scheduled tanker connections. By 2300, nonstealthy Air Force and Navy strike aircraft had entered the fray in large numbers, bringing the total number of target aim points attacked to about a thousand by the end of the first night of air attacks. As a result of the assessed effectiveness of these attacks, General Moseley deemed it safe to push the first E-3 AWACS aircraft into Iraqi airspace to support joint and combined air and SOF operations in northern Iraq.113 As a testament to the extent of air dominance achieved by the coalition at that point, B-1s operated in the heart of the most heavily defended Iraqi airspace, including night missions on the campaign’s second day and daylight missions beginning on the third.114

  Source: Adaptation by Charles Grear based on CENTAF map

  Source: Adaptation by Charles Grear based on CENTAF map

  During the course of these initial counter-IADS attacks, allied strike aircraft, supported by SEAD assets armed with AGM-88B/C high-speed antiradiation missiles (HARMs), used penetrating hard-structure munitions to attack underground command centers and overwhelm Iraq’s IADS operators, who thereafter elected to launch all of their SAM shots ballistically (i.e., without radar guidance). The cutting edge of the air component’s SEAD capability during these initial forays into still heavily defended Iraqi airspace was the Air Force’s F-16CJ, which had been expressly configured to perform this demanding mission.115

  The SEAD escort mission required the F-16CJs fly in close coordination with strike aircraft en route to their targets, remaining alert to Iraqi IADS radar activity and specific pop-up SAM threats, and firing HARMs periodically from standoff ranges in a preemptive effort to suppress the Iraqis’ ability to engage the strikers with radar-guided SAMs. One account explained that this preplanned HARM operating mode, called preemptive targeting (PET),

  allows [the missile] to be fired at a suspected [SAM] site regardless of whether [the site] is emitting or not. Based on precise and thorough preflight planning, the timings are calculated so that the HARM will be in the air as the strikers are over the target, or at their most vulnerable point. If the threat radar comes on line during the missile’s time of flight, the HARM’s seeker will detect the radar energy and issue corresponding guidance commands to steer it toward the source. The main priority . . . was to get threat emitters off the air as soon as possible, or to dissuade them from coming on line at all.116

  A related tasking for the F-16CJs came in the form of so-called lane SEAD, in which the aircraft patrolled the ingress and egress lanes used by coalition strike aircraft. Because seeking out enemy IADS targets of opportunity required flexibility, aircraft assigned to lane SEAD missions typically carried, in addition to their standard HARMs, GBU-31 JDAMs and CBU-103 wind-corrected munitions dispenser (or WCMD, pronounced “wick-mid”) canisters for potential pop-up hard-kill opportunities. During the campaign’s first five days, the HARM was used almost exclusively in its preemptive targeting mode because pilots flying the SEAD missions had no way of knowing what tactics the Iraqi SAM operators might attempt or which enemy threat systems might suddenly come up and start emitting—although, as one F-16CJ pilot noted, “the Iraqis knew for sure that if they came on the air, they were going to get a face full of HARM.”117 SEAD sorties typically lasted six to nine hours, with the longest ones continuing up to twelve hours, during which time the pilot could anticipate as many as nine tanker hookups.

  Allied strike aircraft kept up the pressure on Iraq’s IADS in the Super MEZ for three days. During that time General Moseley continued to limit offensive air operations to night missions flown solely by stealthy B-2s and F-117s (only twelve of the latter had deployed forward for the war) or to standoff missile attacks either from high altitude, such as conventional air-launched cruise missiles carried by B-52s, or from ship-launched TLAMs.118 He directed a “staggering” of alternating waves of TLAM and manned aircraft attacks so that the enemy’s air raid alarms would be going off constantly.119 Only when Iraq’s air defenses in the Baghdad area were assessed without question to be down for the count did the CAOC begin operating nonstealthy aircraft throughout Iraqi airspace during daylight hours.120 It was only during the first week of the campaign that allied fighter aircrews operating in the relatively safe altitude regime above 20,000 feet repeatedly encountered heavy, if ineffective, Iraqi AAA fire.121 The commander of CVW-14, who led the opening-night strike package, recalled that “the Iraqi defenses were spectacular but ineffective. None of the SAMs were guiding, no one had any indication of being illuminated by fire control or target track radars, and the vast majority of the fireworks were in front of and mostly below us. Still, co-altitude AAA bursts and SAM trajectories rising through our altitude kept our jets in constant maneuver and our eyes out of the cockpit for the entire attack.”122

  An F-16CJ pilot who was supporting a night F-117 strike near the heart of the Super MEZ recounted his tense exper
ience while conducting such operations:

  It was my first ride in country, and I had no idea. We had the Navy guys, who also wanted to go downtown, on our assigned tanker, and they wouldn’t let us get gas. . . . We all had HARMs, eight in total, and we didn’t know if the Iraqis were going to turn on their radars or not, so we were going to be firing preemptive shots. [W]e only got about 2,000 lb of gas each [from the tanker], meaning that our external tanks were still dry and that we had only our internal fuel to rely on. We turned off all our lights and pressed downtown in an offset container [box formation] in full afterburner. I was on NVGs, and all I could see were three big afterburner plumes racing downtown. Flying at 30,000 feet and Mach 1.2, I wanted to know what the guys in the AWACS must have been thinking. It was full on. I was a little light on gas, so I kept creeping up on everyone else, trying to find the right afterburner setting to keep in position. We got to about two minutes from Baghdad, and we knew that the F-117s should be just about to reach downtown. In plain English, we worked our target sorting—“I’ll take this one, you take that one”—and I was ready to shoot. I didn’t want to shoot first, though, as I wasn’t keen to be the one who screwed everything up! I was waiting and waiting, and nothing happened. Then there was this big freakin’ freight train of a missile whooshing right next to my canopy. You could smell the burnt powder of the rocket motor. What I didn’t realize was that it wouldn’t go high straight away. Instead, it was heading straight for [my flight leader and his wingman]. I was scared stiff until the missile eventually climbed and did its thing. . . .

  We were still over the Mach [the speed of sound], and there was all this stuff coming up from the city. I was thinking to myself, “It’s going to be the one you don’t see that gets you.” My head was now literally looking everywhere in the sky and on the ground. In fact, I don’t think I was actually looking at anything, because my head was moving so fast. We finally shot our second missiles, and then we realized we had used up a lot of gas. We were right over the Super MEZ, and we turned around nice and slowly and went looking for a tanker. At this time, the tankers were still over Saudi Arabia, but we eventually found a guy who flew into Iraq with all his lights on, blinking away. Everyone else in Iraq must also have seen him, and then [my wingman] overshot him! We asked if he’d make another turn north, and he told us that he’d do it, but that it would be better for him if he headed south, as he was already over Iraq! I [finally] hooked up with only 800 lb of gas remaining. That’s about five minutes’ flying time, and we were still about an hour away from [our home base].123

  The four F-16CJs took turns taking fuel from the tanker until each had enough to make it home.

  Also in connection with the counter-IADS effort, several BQM-34 Firebee drones equipped with chaff dispensers and launched from airborne DC-130s were used as decoys to draw Iraqi SAM and AAA fire. Two Predator UAVs at the end of their service life (characterized by their operators as “chum”) were likewise pressed into service. These Predators, the oldest in the Air Force’s inventory, were stripped of their sensors and weapons and launched on missions that lasted between twenty-four and thirty-six hours to try to provoke a response from Iraqi air defenses and expose any remaining pockets of potential threats. The fact that the Predators survived as long as they did in the still-defended Super MEZ before running out of fuel was yet another testament to the intimidation effect that the coalition’s SEAD capabilities had on Iraq’s SAM operators in the Baghdad region.124

  Leadership and Other Strategic Attacks

  Some strikes against leadership targets were largely symbolic, aimed at projecting a recognizable pattern of avoiding collateral damage within walled compounds and at targeting Hussein’s regime rather than the Iraqi rank and file.125 Others sought to achieve highly functional effects, making the most of fused imagery, human intelligence, and signals intelligence to attack specific nodes in or underneath government structures based on their actual known usage, such as forcing the regime to abandon the use of fiber-optic communications early on during the campaign.126

  Just the day before this initial night of sustained air attacks, the Turkish parliament finally relented and voted to allow coalition aircraft to transit Turkish airspace en route to their operating areas in Iraq.127 At the same time, however, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan decided to forgo further efforts to seek parliamentary approval for the allied use of Turkish air bases as well, which meant that Air Force tankers initially slated to operate from those bases had to operate instead out of Bulgaria, some five hundred miles farther away. But the overflight approval did at least allow the carrier-based strike aircraft operating from the eastern Mediterranean to use an air transit corridor over Turkey rather than flying a far more circuitous route.128

  At 0600 local time on March 21 (now both G-day and A-day), I MEF pressed northward from Kuwait into Iraq, followed shortly thereafter by the Army’s 3rd ID to the west. On that first day, the 3rd ID advanced more than eighty miles into Iraq. In the face of this coordinated land onslaught, Iraqi army troops by the thousands simply took off their uniforms and melted away into the civilian population, with only scant individual or unit defections or surrenders.129 At that point, President Bush informed Prime Minister Blair that coalition ground forces already had 85 percent of Iraq’s oil fields and 40 percent of the entire country secured. Thanks to that prompt and coordinated ground offensive, only eight Iraqi oil wells were set on fire, and no other significant Iraqi oil infrastructure was destroyed.130

  Both the Army’s V Corps and the Marine Corps’ I MEF were well into Iraq when CENTCOM’s main air offensive finally began. An important subsidiary goal of the overall air effort was ensuring that the five main Iraqi military airfields remained incapable of supporting enemy air operations. That objective was achieved during the first night of Iraqi Freedom. Air Marshal Torpy, the United Kingdom’s air contingent commander, later recalled that there also had been “a very robust defensive counterair plan, with fighters deployed 24 hours of the day to ensure that if an [enemy] aircraft did fly, we would be able to make sure it did not fly for very long.”131

  In a CENTCOM briefing to reporters on March 22, General Franks declared, “This will be a campaign unlike any other in history, a campaign characterized by shock, by surprise, by the employment of precise munitions on a scale never seen, and by the application of overwhelming force.”132 Yet despite that extravagant characterization, and for all the early media anticipation of an impending “shock and awe” air campaign, coalition attacks against Iraq once the full air offensive was under way were actually quite measured. CENTCOM removed hundreds of initially planned strikes from its target list in an effort to limit noncombatant casualties and unintended damage to Iraqi infrastructure.133 Thanks in part to the unexpectedly rapid advance of the allied ground offensive, all leadership and command and control targets within the land component’s battlespace (including 301 target aim points and 124 planned TLAM launches) were withdrawn from the ATO almost literally at the last minute as the CAOC re-roled many sorties initially scheduled against infrastructure targets to support the land component instead.134 For example, allied aircraft struck none of the bridges across the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers that had been dropped during the Desert Storm air war, because such attacks would not serve any tactical objective that was tied to any of General Franks’ broader operational goals. On the contrary, CENTCOM intended to use those bridges to move allied ground troops who would be advancing northward toward Baghdad. As Michael Knights later observed, “although the opening strike had a sense of occasion, it could never match the suspense of the initial strikes of Desert Storm. The opening of air operations in 1991 had been a thunderclap, the first shots in anger between the United States and Iraq, but the commencement of the strategic air campaign in Operation Iraqi Freedom felt like an afterthought, coming days after the beginning of hostilities when coalition ground forces were lodged scores, even hundreds of kilometers in Iraq.”135 To be sure, the actual damage inflicted
on Baghdad during the first three weeks of Iraqi Freedom far exceeded that of the earlier Desert Storm campaign because of the extensive use of GPS-aided munitions that did not require clear weather for conducting precision target attacks. To this extent, the loss of the anticipated “thunderclap” in no way diminished the well-thought-out, highly accurate, and effective strikes that occurred. One air campaign planner recalled that “the original first strike was very, very thorough. There wasn’t a target we hadn’t accounted for.”136 At the heart of the planned operation lay the innermost elements of the Ba’ath regime’s security apparatus, including government command and control facilities, the Republican Guard, the Special Republican Guard, and Hussein’s family and bodyguards. To support this targeting plan, CENTCOM and its national intelligence providers had spent the last nine months of 2002 profiling the Iraqi military and civilian communications network, during the course of which the Joint Warfare Analysis Center singled out thirty-five critical nodes that would be exceptionally lucrative targets.137

  At the same time, CENTCOM’s planners bent every effort to minimize unintended civilian fatalities. An informed report noted that “of the 4,000 targets and 11,000 [more specific target aim points] the military reviewed at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, advanced weaponeering and tactical solutions (including axis and angle, timing variation, fusing and size-of-weapon tweaks) were able to reduce the collateral damage risk until merely 24 carried a collateral damage estimate of 30 or more probable civilian deaths.”138 CENTCOM compiled a no-target list of several thousand clearly identified civilian entities that was, according to Maj. Gen. Glenn Shaffer, a senior Air Force intelligence official, many times longer than the target list itself: “We had people looking at Iraq every day of every year, constantly generating new no-strike locations that they had identified as cultural, religious, or archaeological sites, schools or hospitals, or foreign embassies and nongovernmental organizations.”139