The Unseen War

by Lambeth, Benjamin S.

  Once it became apparent to CAOC planners after about nine days of combat that the Iraqi air force was likely to remain out of the fight, the RAAF’s Hornets were swung almost exclusively to ground attack operations. The first preplanned strike mission took place even before that determination when a four-ship flight of 75 Squadron F/A-18s was integrated into a strike package that also included American and British strike and electronic warfare aircraft in an attack against Republican Guard units near Al Kut. In addition, as the allied land offensive reached full swing, RAAF Hornets contributed to KI/CAS operations in support of both V Corps and I MEF. Because the RAAF’s F/A-18s were not configured to carry JDAMs, they dropped either the GBU-10 2,000-pound LGB or the GBU-12 500-pound LGB, depending on target weapon requirements; these two precision munitions types accounted for all of the bombs delivered by RAAF fighters during the campaign.90

  By March 29, 75 Squadron’s Hornets had flown defensive counterair, strike, and CAS missions, with CAS sorties typically being diverted from initially assigned defensive counterair missions. At that point in the campaign, the fourteen aircraft were totaling about ninety flight hours a day, five times their normal peacetime operating rate. The ADF’s air contingent commander credited his support staff: “The maintenance guys did an outstanding job. We had to have 12 of those 14 aircraft serviceable. Most of the time they had 13, often 14, serviceable and we never missed a mission.”91 During the campaign’s final days, when kinetic attacks became increasingly infrequent, the RAAF’s Hornets would join other coalition strike fighters on request from ground commanders to provide so-called shows of force by making low-altitude, high-speed passes over concentrations of Iraqi civilians to break up gathering crowds that were causing problems for allied occupation forces. By the deployment’s end, the 14 RAAF Hornets had flown 1,800 hours and more than 670 sorties, with more than 350 of those having been combat sorties, and had dropped 122 LGBs on assigned enemy targets, all to useful combat effect.92

  RAAF C-130s also supported allied operations in southern Iraq, their first mission having been to airlift ground refueling trucks into the recently captured Tallil Air Base near An Nasiriyah on March 30 so that coalition aircraft could use the base as a forward operating facility. On April 13, after the major combat phase had ended, RAAF C-130s flew their first mission into the newly named Baghdad International Airport as part of the coalition’s Operation Baghdad Assist. Although the three C-130s provided by the RAAF represented only 3 percent of the total coalition Hercules force, they lifted 16 percent of the coalition’s total cargo delivered by C-130s into CENTCOM’s area of operations.

  Finally, the RAAF also operated one of its two deployed AP-3C Orions in various time windows over the North Arabian Gulf, using the aircraft’s onboard sensors to detect and identify vessels in or near Iraqi waters, with special interest in any such vessels that might threaten coalition and civilian maritime operations by means of mine-laying or suicide attacks. By April 11, two days after the Ba’athist regime collapsed, the RAAF’s Orions had maintained a near-perfect FMC rate of 98 percent.93

  ADF Special Air Service (SAS) troopers joined with other coalition SOF teams in scouring the Iraqi western desert for concealed ballistic missiles that might be fired against Israel or other countries. During these ground sweeps, allied combat aircraft performed armed overwatch missions in constant readiness to provide any immediate on-call CAS that might be required. The previous February and early March, before the campaign’s start, these forces had conducted full mission profile exercises day and night with other coalition SOF teams, including the involvement of on-call CAS by U.S. and RAF combat aircraft. Beginning on the night of March 19, the Australian SAS teams were flown deep into Iraq by low-flying American SOF helicopters, often through heavy enemy air defenses.

  On April 11, two days after allied forces took Baghdad and the Ba’athist regime collapsed, an entire Australian SAS squadron, at CENTCOM’s request, captured Al Asad Air Base some 120 miles west of Baghdad, with RAAF F/A-18s providing top cover. In the course of securing the base, the squadron discovered more than fifty concealed MiG-21 and MiG-25 fighters. The task force then cleared and repaired Al Asad’s runways using captured Iraqi equipment so that allied fixed-wing aircraft could operate out of the base, with the first arriving aircraft being an RAAF C-130 from 36 Squadron.

  Not only was 75 Squadron’s involvement in Operation Iraqi Freedom the first time an Australian aircraft of any type had seen combat since Vietnam, it also represented the RAAF’s first fighter combat operation since 77 Squadron’s P-51 Mustangs and, later, Meteor jets joined U.S. forces in Korea a half-century before. By the time the Ba’ath regime fell, 36 Squadron’s C-130Hs and 37 Squadron’s C-130J had exceeded 2 million pounds of cargo and more than 700 passengers delivered since the start of the deployment. In a message issued five days before the fall of Baghdad, Air Marshal Houston quoted the chairman of the American JCS, General Myers, who had declared that “the contributions from the Australian force have been tremendous. . . . They have been absolutely superb, and we appreciate it.”94 For their exceptional performance throughout the campaign, 75 Squadron earned a meritorious unit citation from the Australian government. The squadron’s commanding officer, Wing Commander Hupfeld, was one of only three participating ADF officers (and the only RAAF officer) in Operation Falconer to be awarded Australia’s Distinguished Service Cross.95 The RAAF’s air contingent commander, Group Captain Brown, was also awarded the U.S. Legion of Merit by General Moseley, as was the RAF’s air contingent commander, Air Marshal Torpy.

  Afterward, Group Captain Brown reported that there had been no major interoperability issues with the F/A-18s, C-130s, or P-3s. He added:

  If you ask any of the guys who flew in the missions over Iraq, they were pretty happy with the [rules of engagement] that they had, and they were pretty happy with the targeting directives. I believe that that was a very mature approach by everybody who was involved in the chain. In the CAOC, I also had exactly the same sort of collateral damage criteria as [General Moseley did] and, again, that made it easier to operate [in a coalition context]. . . . The fact that we fitted into the operation seamlessly, I think, had a lot to do with the training regimes that we have had over the last 50 years.96

  Among the operating issues that 75 Squadron encountered, Brown singled out the Nighthawk targeting pod (the same as the one carried by U.S. Navy and Marine Corps F/A-18s before the advent of ATFLIR) as “the one that gave me the most heartache over the five weeks” because it “was unreliable and . . . did not have enough magnification capability.” He also mentioned the RAAF’s lack of NVGs, an inadequate electronic warfare suite, and a lack of all-weather standoff precision munitions such as the satellite-aided JDAM series. (The RAAF has since acquired both JDAMs and the Litening II pod for its strike fighters, as well as NVGs and a new electronic warfare capability for their F/A-18s.)97 As for the many positives, he concluded:

  The coalition with whom we worked, and the USAF in particular, were incredibly accommodating. The USAF allowed us to do pretty much what we asked them. I do not think I was ever knocked back on any particular request. . . . If you are going to work with anybody, you cannot pick a better partner. We also had the RAF there and, again, they were incredibly generous to us. I did not have a communications aircraft to get from where I was to the other bases, but the two-star there [then Air Vice-Marshal Torpy] gave me a pretty free rein in his HS 125. So great cooperation . . . really made the difference.98

  One minor problem experienced by the RAAF’s Hornet pilots, and often, no doubt, by U.S. Navy and Marine Corps and RAF pilots, whose aircraft were similarly configured with the probe-and-drogue in-flight refueling system, had to do with refueling from the U.S. Air Force’s KC-135 tanker, which normally uses the boom refueling system but also is equipped to provide probe-and-drogue refueling for non-USAF aircraft. One RAAF F/A-18 pilot frankly recalled:

  Tanking was comfortable from the KC-10, as it had a large and forgiv
ing basket. The KC-135, on the other hand, was a nightmare to refuel from. Although it was easy actually to plug in, staying in the basket and getting gas was challenging, to say the least. You had about four feet in which to move around before you got sprayed with fuel or fell out of the basket, with no formation cues to use. The basket was made of hard metal and was attached to the solid boom by about six feet of hose—crazy design. We nicknamed it “the wrecking ball,” and one of our pilots trashed a probe soon after we arrived in theater.99

  Another reported source of frustration for 75 Squadron’s pilots, and one that was encountered at times by all coalition combat aircrews, entailed the inefficient apportionment of KI/CAS targets by the U.S. Air Force ASOC that supported V Corps due to the V Corps commander’s insistence on close control of kill-box operations on his side of the FSCL (see Chapter 5). Like the other allied strike pilots, those in 75 Squadron soon eagerly sought assignment to the far more efficient Marine Corps direct air support center (DASC) that supported I MEF so that they might have greater opportunities to employ their GBU-12s to useful effect rather than returning to Al Udeid with unexpended munitions. At first, the ADF’s air contingent commander and the commander of Australian forces denied the request because it smacked of “mission creep.” Eventually, however, as the U.S. Marine Corps’ exchange pilot with 75 Squadron recalled, “after figuring out that Warhawk [the ASOC’s call sign] was not a good organization to work for, the Aussies asked to get into I MEF’s [area of responsibility] and were accepted—as any jet carrying bombs was.”100

  Looking ahead, the MoD’s after-action report on Operation Telic recognized that “the implications of maintaining congruence with an accelerating U.S. technological and doctrinal dominance [will] need to be assessed and taken into account in future policy and planning assumptions.”101 The most senior British military leaders also recognized the importance of planning for future combined contingency responses with the United States, especially those that might entail policy dimensions and implications less than fully congruent with British national interests. On this point, Air Chief Marshal Burridge underscored the fact that the current American style of military decision making, going at least as far back as Operation Desert Storm, depends largely on the personalities of the most senior principals involved. He added that were UK participation in future combat with the United States to become “more the norm than the exception,” Britain should approach with care the question of whether “we need a different sort of command and control structure which fits a bit more easily with that direct line that the Americans are currently using.” Noting the personality-driven aspects of the U.S. approach, he suggested that “you cannot always say that their doctrine looks like this and that is what they will do. If we modify, we may find that the next time it does not work quite so well.”102 In a similar vein, the Defence Committee of the House of Commons acknowledged that the British officers embedded at all levels of CENTCOM’s command hierarchy gave the United Kingdom welcome influence over CENTCOM planning. However, it went on to raise a cautionary note about the “parallel dangers of being locked into American policy where that planning leads to military action.”103

  Perhaps most important from an operational perspective was the serious and legitimate concern within the British defense establishment, and particularly within the RAF, that the close commonality of operational styles and the trust relationships established between British and American airmen through their combined involvement in enforcing the no-fly zones over Iraq would disappear once Northern Watch and Southern Watch were no longer needed. In this regard, RAF officers from the chief of the air staff on down acknowledged a pressing need to replace that former real-world marriage of forces with surrogate peacetime mutual training opportunities that are regularly exercised either in the United States or wherever else the airspace and required training infrastructure might allow. Addressing an important facet of this concern, an RAF group captain noted that since “it is most unlikely that the [United Kingdom] will ever fight another major campaign of the nature of Operation Iraqi Freedom except as a coalition partner of the United States, . . . we need to develop an understanding, particularly in our middle-ranking officers, of our shared concepts for the employment of air power to enable them to understand the context of any combined operations and headquarters in which they may find themselves involved.”104

  RAF operators further identified an ever-growing need for joint and combined air-ground training for close air support that regularly exercises the entire command and control system from the CAOC through the ASOC to JTACS and FAC-As.105 General Moseley emphasized the same point in his postcampaign reflections, insisting that all services, both U.S. and allied, must devise ways of jointly exercising such crucial command and control assets as the theater battle management core system (TBMCS) and area deep-operations coordination system in a dynamic peacetime training setting.106 On this important point, some CENTAF planners declared that “counterland is, arguably, the most difficult mission that the air component performs. The size, diversity, and mobile nature of the counterland target set, in combination with the extensive real-time coordination that is required, challenges both aircrews and command and control unlike any other air-component mission.” In the face of this challenge, these planners added, both the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Army still lack any realistic means for rehearsing the joint counterland mission in peacetime training. Lacking in particular are significant opportunities to exercise and refine critical force employment processes through extended, large-scale, live-fly execution of the KI/CAS functions that proved so critical time and again throughout Iraqi Freedom.107

  To head off or ameliorate this mounting concern, the U.S. Air Force and the RAF in 2005 implemented a new engagement initiative aimed at sustaining close ties between the two services to help ensure that their long-standing interoperability efforts and joint training and dialogue would continue to flourish. An early testament to this continued commitment was the successful conduct of the first Coalition Flag exercise involving U.S., RAF, and RAAF aircrews held at Nellis AFB in January 2006. More important yet, ever since the period of major combat in Iraqi Freedom ended, RAF and RAAF officers have continued to serve in key positions in CENTCOM’s CAOC at Al Udeid Air Base, with air commodores performing rotational duties both as British and Australian air contingent commanders and as CAOC director. RAF aircrews have continued to contribute to the counterinsurgency air operations over Iraq and Afghanistan that have ensued at varying levels of intensity in each country since 2003, although that commitment ended in Iraq in May 2009 at the behest of the elected Iraqi government in compliance with the agreed timetable for the gradual withdrawal of coalition forces from that country.108

  Key Accomplishments

  Unlike the first Persian Gulf War, the major combat phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom did not begin with a sudden attack from a standing start after a gradual buildup of forces in the region. It was the culmination of a sustained pattern of force employment that exploited infrastructure laid down during the early aftermath of Desert Storm and that entailed continual offensive air operations throughout the twelve-year course of Operations Northern Watch and Southern Watch.1 Good adaptive planning on CENTCOM’s part, unprecedented joint force integration, and a thorough melding of special operations forces with allied air power were only three of the many factors that accounted for the campaign’s rapid success in bringing down Hussein’s regime.

  In the crucial air portion of the three-week offensive, roughly 1,800 allied aircraft were committed to the campaign, more than 850 of which were provided by the U.S. Air Force and nearly 800 more of which were operated by the Navy and Marine Corps from carrier flight decks and shore bases in the region. These aircraft operated from more than 30 bed-down locations in various countries surrounding Iraq, ranging from nearby Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates to locations as far away as Spain, Diego Garcia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Allied aircraft flew 41
,404 combat and combat-support missions during the major combat phase of Iraqi Freedom, roughly half of which were fighter sorties and nearly a quarter of which were supporting tanker missions (see chart 4.1). Of the nearly 20,000 strike sorties, more than 15,000 performed kill-box interdiction and CAS in direct support of the land component (see charts 4.2. and 4.3).2

  Precision target attacks reached an unprecedented high in both number and intensity during the three-week campaign. All told, CENTAF strike sorties delivered 29,155 munitions to 24,898 designated target aim points, with precision-guided weapons accounting for almost 70 percent of all munitions expended, in contrast with only 8 percent in Operation Desert Storm.

  As an added reflection of the extent of allied air support to ground operations, 328,448 rounds of cannon ammunition were shot during strafing attacks against enemy surface targets during the campaign, the vast majority from the

  CHART 4.1 CENTAF Overall Sorties by Aircraft Category

  Source: CENTAF

  CHART 4.2 CENTAF Strike Sorties by Category

  Source: CENTAF

  CHART 4.3 CENTAF Strike Sorties by Service

  Source: CENTAF

  GAU-8 30-mm antitank gun carried by the A-10.3 In connection with the information operations effort, more than 40 million propaganda leaflets were dropped and more than 600 hours of radio broadcasts were made to various targeted Iraqi audiences. Only 108 U.S. and 27 British military personnel lost their lives during the 3 weeks of fighting that led to the regime’s collapse, with another 339 Americans wounded, compared with 148 killed and 467 wounded during the 6 weeks of fighting in Operation Desert Storm. Estimates of casualties incurred on the Iraqi side ranged from 5,000 to 20,000 military fatalities and no fewer than 4,000—and most likely more—civilian fatalities.4