The Unseen War

by Lambeth, Benjamin S.

  Operation Iraqi Freedom saw the first combat use of the RAF’s Storm Shadow precision standoff ground-attack cruise missile. This weapon, designed to penetrate and disable hardened structures, is powered by a turbojet engine, cruises at Mach 0.8, and has a range of more than 130 miles.66 It is guided by GPS and digital terrain profile matching, with a terminal seeker for maximum accuracy and collateral damage avoidance, and was delivered by Tornado GR4s against such exceptionally fortified enemy installations as communications bunkers. It was used both day and night and in all weather conditions to attack a variety of high-value targets. The missile was almost invariably accurate, offering what the MoD’s initial after-action look called the promise of a “step change” in the RAF’s precision standoff attack capability.67 On March 21, 2003, for example, four GR4s each armed with two Storm Shadow missiles launched from their base in Kuwait against Iraqi IADS command and control centers housed within bunkers at Taji and Tikrit. Battle damage assessment the following day showed that all four targets had been successfully struck.

  Storm Shadow was one of a number of weapons and other systems that were made available for Operation Telic under the UOR arrangement. The missile had only just begun coming off the production line, so the RAF had a limited supply. It proved adequate, however, for the targets that General Moseley designated. Indeed, apart from the B-2 stealth bomber armed with GBU-37 hard-structure munitions, Storm Shadow provided General Moseley with the only significant deep-penetration target attack capability available to CENTAF. Twenty-seven Storm Shadow missiles were fired during the course of the campaign, mostly during the first few days against especially hardened enemy command and control facilities. Storm Shadow was able to disable four such key targets in the opening seconds of the air war. Its hard-target penetration features made it uniquely qualified to fill a critical niche.68 The MoD’s after-action synopsis reported that Storm Shadow had been the most effective weapon in the coalition’s inventory to penetrate these hardened targets. Storm Shadow was attractive to CENTCOM’s weaponeers because it offered a better hard-target penetration capability than anything in the American standoff munitions inventory.

  The tactical reconnaissance capability offered by the RAF’s Tornados, Harriers, and Jaguars was likewise in short supply among U.S. forces; only the Navy’s F-14s configured with TARPS offered a similar capability. Tornado GR4s equipped with RAPTOR imaging pods and Canberra PR9s provided high-quality, near-real-time imagery in the tactical reconnaissance role. The Nimrod MR2, normally employed as a maritime surveillance platform, supported coalition operations in the Iraqi western desert, providing both surveillance and reconnaissance support and also serving as an airborne radio relay platform. RAF Harriers and Tornados had thirty thermal imaging airborne laser designator (TIALD) pods on hand and used some of them in a nontraditional way as a surveillance and reconnaissance asset for monitoring enemy tank positions and potential Scud launching sites. That novel use prompted subsequent efforts to determine the utility and practicality of data-linking TIALD imagery to ground stations and other airborne aircraft.

  The RAF had just completed a major midlife upgrade of its Tornados to GR4 standard, adding a wide-field-of-view head-up display, new avionics and forward-looking infrared systems, GPS navigation, cockpit lighting modifications to allow the use of NVGs, and additional modifications that enabled the aircraft to carry the new Storm Shadow missile and the RAPTOR reconnaissance pod, first employed in Operation Resinate. Operating the RAPTOR system required the Tornado pilot to fly straight and level for a significant period of time to record target images, which made for a predictable flight path. Accordingly, Tornado GR4s conducting reconnaissance missions were typically escorted by U.S. Air Force Block 50 F-16CJs armed with HARMs.69 Although successfully used in the CAS role, the Tornado GR4 was not the best-suited aircraft for that mission because of its limited maneuvering performance at high altitude. Target-area searches often require a bank angle of 30 degrees or more at 20,000 feet, while the GR4 was designed for high-speed, low-level operations. Offsetting this liability in some mission profiles, however, was the GR4’s range capability, which exceeded even that of the USAF’s F-15E. A CAOC planner recalled that the GR4 “was the only aircraft that could make it up to Kirkuk on Night One.”70

  In another important contribution, the RAF deployed four E-3D Sentries to provide continuous coverage of one of the four AWACS tracks that were constantly manned adjacent to and, eventually, over Iraq. In Operation Veritas in the Afghan air war, RAF E-3Ds had flown 473 missions between October 9, 2001, and January 29, 2002, with 97 percent mission accomplishment. In Operation Telic they flew 127 missions from March 12 through May 27, 2003, with a 100 percent mission success rate.71 Initially, nine crews were made available for the four aircraft, but available billeting at Prince Sultan Air Base, from which the aircraft operated, could accommodate only six AWACS crews. Each crew flew a twelve-hour mission every other day to maintain three daily eight-hour on-station periods with only a fraction of the equipment and spare parts that would normally be available at the aircraft’s home station of RAF Waddington.72 Because the E-3D can refuel with both probe-and-drogue and boom systems, it was refueled by U.S. Air Force and Air National Guard KC-135s and U.S. Air Force KC-10s in addition to RAF Tristar and VC-10 tankers. (By the end of major combat, the 6 VC-10s deployed from RAF Brize Norton to Prince Sultan Air Base had flown 223 missions, with an average sortie length of 4.5 hours, no mission aborts, and a consequent operational success rate of 100 percent. A quarter of the 3,700 tons of fuel they offloaded were transferred to U.S. combat aircraft.)73

  Although the United Kingdom’s Phoenix UAV offered less capability than the U.S. Air Force’s RQ-1 Predator, it nonetheless played a key role in supporting coalition land forces, primarily by geolocating ground targets. Initially, it was used around the clock. As the campaign progressed, however, it flew mostly at night to extract the greatest resolution from its thermal-imaging sensor. In all, Phoenix UAVs flew 138 sorties; 23 ended with the platform being lost or damaged beyond repair, and another 13 sustained repairable damage. Most of the losses were due to technical difficulties associated with operating in Iraq’s unforgiving spring weather.

  Helicopters from the United Kingdom’s Joint Helicopter Command provided combat support to ground forces from land and sea bases. At the time, the British armed forces did not possess a full-fledged attack helicopter, although the AH-64 Apache was on order. Royal Navy Lynx and Gazelle helicopters, however, fired forty-nine TOW (tube-launched, optically tracked, wire-guided) missiles in successful attacks against enemy tanks, APCs, and bunkers.

  The RAF Tornado and Harrier squadrons that were a part of General Moseley’s air order of battle maintained a crew ratio of two to one throughout the three-week campaign. The only notable limiting factor associated with personnel tempo that caused even momentary concern had to do with the E-3D, since the four deployed AWACS aircraft were constantly operated at an exceptionally high utilization rate. At one point the British contingent’s leadership considered bringing more AWACS aircrew members into the theater to relieve the heavy workload.

  Allied air involvement over the Iraqi western desert in support of Scud missile hunting and related SOF activities on the ground were later portrayed by an RAF Harrier GR7 squadron commander who took part in them as having been “possibly the best-integrated air-land operation since World War II” and “a good role model for future operations involving SOF and air.” He further noted that the associated tactics, techniques, and procedures had all been carefully rehearsed by all participants; that they were aided by ample support assets and suffered no shortage of needed communications; that the troops on the ground were some of the best soldiers in the world and they fully understood how to make the most of modern air power; and that the operations resulted in a persistent air presence that effectively countered outdated criticisms alleging the impermanence of air power.74

  The United Kingdom’s contribution to Operation Iraqi
Freedom bore out the vision of the nation’s 1998 Strategic Defence Review that the British armed forces should develop an expeditionary-based strategy aimed at maximizing maneuver warfare and seeking decisive effects. The RAF’s accomplishments showed the extent to which it had embraced and captured the new expeditionary culture. Much of that success was the result of more than a decade of close operational proximity to U.S. forces. As a measure of the effectiveness of the overall British contribution to the campaign, as of April 19, 2003, of some 46,000 British military participants, only 27 were killed in action and 55 were wounded, with the majority of the fatalities having resulted from noncombat-related accidents.75

  In reflecting on the many reasons that accounted for the RAF’s strong showing in the three-week campaign, Air Chief Marshal Burridge noted that the technology gap between American and British air power had for years been quite small, and was narrowed further by the RAF’s experience at working almost in lockstep with U.S. forces in enforcing the northern and southern no-fly zones over Iraq and in training together with American combat air forces in joint and combined exercises such as Red Flag.76 An informed and thoughtful RAF observer remarked that the various challenges the British encountered during the lead-up to and execution of Operation Iraqi Freedom were overcome by a combination of mutual dependence, good fortune (in everyone’s having had the comparative luxury of a fairly unrushed planning period); ready willingness by both sides to engage in burden sharing; deep mutual trust at all levels, especially deep and strong interpersonal relations at the most senior levels; and “a motivation to find common ground and to engineer solutions to any problems that threatened the coalition’s integrity.”77

  From the very start of CENTCOM’s planning for Operation Iraqi Freedom, the British contingent was brought into the division of labor between the two main coalition partners in a way aimed at leveraging British assets that might best complement and enhance American forces. “We very definitely were not there for the ride,” Air Chief Marshal Burridge recalled. “On the air side, we flew [only] seven percent of the sorties, but we provided a larger proportion of precision-guided munitions than did the Americans,” as well as “niche capabilities . . . that the U.S. was lacking in, particularly tactical reconnaissance.”78 After the period of major combat ended, both Burridge and Torpy confirmed that in contrast to the experience of Operation Allied Force in 1999, final target approval delegations in Iraqi Freedom had been far more flexible. An informed account noted that use of Britain’s red card “was avoided, on more than one occasion, because the trust that existed at all levels of command allowed informal dialogue to preempt any potential formal action. This approach was absolutely pivotal in minimizing friction.”79 In a related vein, Air Marshal Torpy later indicated that the British national contingent never felt that only RAF assets should support British land forces, because “that would be an inefficient use of air power. Inevitably, we would not have sufficient [British] assets to provide cover, for instance, to a [British] land component 24 hours a day.”80 The use of air power, Torpy added, has to be planned and prioritized centrally, with execution decentralized, for efficient employment of air resources.81 At bottom, the British contingent benefited from close commonality with its American counterparts in equipment, communications, and operational mindset, as well as from close personal relationships from the four-star level all the way down to aircrews working conjointly and harmoniously at the tactical level.

  Australia’s contribution to the three-week air war began almost as soon as the RAAF’s 75 Squadron arrived in-theater and was declared operationally ready. The squadron sought to gain an early combat edge by joining the RAF in Operation Southern Watch so that Australian pilots could be exposed to the CAOC’s mode of operations in managing the airspace over southern Iraq, but the Australian high command refused to grant permission. A U.S. Marine Corps exchange pilot with the squadron later reported, “Although the coalition wanted Australians to fly [Southern Watch] missions, the federal government in Canberra had sent us . . . [only] to support ‘offensive operations’ against Iraq. In the government’s eyes, [Southern Watch] didn’t warrant our participation. As termed by the commander of Australian forces, that would have been ‘mission creep.’”82 In fairness to the Australian government’s position in this regard, enforcement of the no-fly zone under the UN mandate was never one of the reasons for which the ADF had been deployed to the Persian Gulf region.83

  The RAAF’s Hornets were initially assigned to provide defensive counterair protection for such high-value coalition aircraft as the E-3 AWACS, E-8 JSTARS, RC-135 Rivet Joint, and allied tankers operating near and over southern Iraq, with 75 Squadron typically generating twelve sorties a day toward that end. These defensive counterair missions typically lasted between five and six hours, with the F/A-18s conducting three or four in-flight refueling evolutions from allied tankers in the process. Because of the considerable distance between Al Udeid and their assigned area of operations in southern Iraq, the Hornets were always configured with three 330-gallon external fuel tanks in addition to their normal air-to-air and ground attack weapons loadouts. A 75 Squadron pilot later described these initial sorties: “We’d fly out of our host nation and then we’d refuel up in the Gulf region around Kuwait. You would pretty much cross over into Iraq with full tanks. Although most sorties lasted six hours, some of those I was involved with turned out to be nine-hour marathons. That meant you were strapped into the jet for up to ten and a half hours from the time you started up until finally shutting down at mission end. . . . It was like being strapped to a kitchen chair and put into a phone booth for ten and a half hours.”84

  With respect to the Australian contingent’s confidence level going into the RAAF’s first shooting war since Vietnam, the commanding officer of 75 Squadron, Wing Commander Mel Hupfeld, later reflected on the question candidly and at considerable length.

  The Americans had been fighting there for 12 years, so they knew what Iraq had. That was shared well with us as Australians, so we had a good idea of the threats, and we pretty much trained to what we thought the worst case would be. . . . Our basic level of training was right where we needed it, so it was quite a simple process to actually then focus it more on the threats that we expected in the Iraqi theater. . . . I was very comfortable that our aircrews knew what was required, and there was a broad range of skills that we needed. . . . [Yet] I was very comfortable with our level of skill at that stage and comfortable with the capabilities of the aircraft. There were some limitations with the aircraft, but we knew what they were, and we could mitigate against those and operate in an appropriate manner not to have those affect us. . . . Before the major conflict started, [there were naturally] a few nerves, but once we actually got across the border and started doing what we were doing, it was business as usual. And with the training that we’d been doing, it was all second nature.85

  At the outset, when 75 Squadron’s fighters were principally assigned to defensive counterair CAPs (with the option to be re-roled as necessary for strikes against emerging ground targets), the typical weapons loadout for each aircraft consisted of two wingtip-mounted AIM-9M Sidewinder infrared air-to-air missiles, three AIM-120 advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles (AMRAAMs), and a single 500-pound GBU-12 LGB. Just a day into the campaign, however, the CAOC asked a 75 Squadron Hornet escorting a high-value coalition aircraft to strike a designated ground target that had just emerged and been validated. After confirming that the requested attack was consistent with the laws of armed conflict and standing rules of engagement, the Australian air contingent commander, Group Captain Brown, approved the attack. One of his F/A-18s promptly dropped the first Australian bomb released in anger since a 2 Squadron Canberra light bomber last did so during the Vietnam War. The entire request and approval sequence took less than thirty minutes, with an initial bomb damage assessment provided to the ADF’s forward headquarters ten minutes thereafter.86 Within forty-eight hours of the campaign’s commencement, the CAO
C switched 75 Squadron to a “swing mission” configuration, swapping out one of the three AMRAAMs for an additional GBU-12 or 2,000-pound GBU-10.

  On March 24 the RAAF’s chief, Air Marshal Angus Houston, reported that 75 Squadron’s Hornets were being assigned strike missions against selected fixed targets in Iraq, even as they continued to fly defensive counterair sorties as required by the CAOC. In the strike role, RAAF fighters flew as autonomous formations within a larger coordinated package of coalition aircraft, with one such early strike featuring an RAAF Hornet pilot serving in the role of mission commander.87 As the campaign moved closer to its endgame and the squadron found itself performing almost exclusively CAS missions, smaller 500-pound GBU-12s replaced the GBU-10s.

  The RAAF’s air contingent commander, by then Air Commodore Brown, recalled that “in the initial planning, the USAF wanted to have about four CAPs [provided by 75 Squadron’s fighters], but we were tanker-limited, so we ended up just having the three CAPs. . . . We normally had a counter-rotating CAP of two aircraft and [another] two aircraft would be on the tanker at any one particular time. Just to maintain that over an eight-hour period—which we did—took 12 of our 14 aircraft. So over [the first] nine days, we had to keep 12 of the 14 F/A-18s serviceable. That was a challenge, as the logistic system did not work quite as well as I would have liked.”88 Nevertheless, the RAAF’s F/A-18s managed to maintain a better than 90 percent FMC rate throughout the campaign. It was fortunate, Air Commodore Brown added, that the Australian government had deployed the Hornet detachment more than a month before the campaign got started, because “it took us probably about two weeks to make sure we had communications links and everything working properly.”89