Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign sic-2

by Tom Clancy

  If the Iraqis decided to move south into Saudi Arabia, the CENTCOM ground component was the XVIIIth Airborne Corps, which could be on the scene relatively speedily, some of it in days. Iraqi options were limited. Since the terrain became more and more difficult the farther west one got from the Gulf coast, and since the Israelis were in the extreme west watching any military moves in their direction, any Iraqi attack would probably come down the east coast. This was also where the oil was and most of the significant Saudi population centers, such as Jubail and Dhahran. If Riyadh was an Iraqi goal, they would probably come south and then turn right toward the capital. It was clear to Schwarzkopf what divisions he’d need and where they needed to go to stop such an attack.

  Air, however, was another matter. Horner was aware that Schwarzkopf had no significant knowledge of that component, much less experience with it. The proper use of an air force was not then part of his mental equipment. Horner was also aware — though the CINC never said it explicitly — that Schwarzkopf was less than confident his planning staff would be able to prepare an air briefing for him that he could happily take to the President. That’s why he wanted Chuck Horner at MacDill. After he’d explained to Horner that Air Force Major General Burt Moore’s J-3 (CENTCOM Operations) shop was working the briefings, he asked if Horner could go down to the command center and give them some assistance. Moore was the chief reason Schwarzkopf was worried about his planning staff.

  Moore had only recently taken over the CENTCOM J-3 slot after four years as the Air Force congressional liaison in Washington — hardly the best preparation for planning and operations. Not only was he new to the job and yet to prove himself, but he lacked both experience in the theater and current knowledge of airpower. Almost as bad: he was an Air Force officer, a segment of humanity that the CINC instinctively disliked and distrusted. “With Schwarzkopf,” Horner reflects, “you had to out-tough him to be accepted. Once he’d concluded that you were smart, tough, and loyal, then he would accept you. If he didn’t accept you and you were an Air Force officer, you were double dead meat.” Schwarzkopf didn’t accept Burt Moore.

  Moments later, Horner was out of the serene yet intense office of the CINC, and into the noisy chaos of the CENTCOM command center. Burt Moore was under the gun, and a raft of Air Force, Army, and Marine lieutenant colonels and colonels were crowded into a small conference room, all of them very much on edge, building briefing slides to present to the CINC at the 1700 (5:00 P.M. EDT) conference. The urgency of their efforts was heightened by their fear of provoking a Schwarzkopf rage.

  As soon as he walked into the conference room, Horner sensed that such an event was a very real possibility. Everyone there was more than a little confused and demoralized. Their efforts lacked order and focus, and they seemed to be missing essential details, such as basing, logistics, and sortie rates.

  For their part, Moore and his people were neither delighted to see Horner nor eager to listen to his thoughts and suggestions — which he understood. Ordinarily it would have peeved him to be told to get out of their hair when he was sure he could help them, but they had obviously been working the problem for days, and they didn’t need some outsider sticking his nose into their business. If they were going to be ripped apart by the CINC, at least it should be as the result of their own efforts, and not because of some unwanted advice from the Air Force component of the command. He was also well aware that rank had little importance among fighter pilots. He let the matter drop. If they needed his help, they would call him.

  There was a spare office up on the second floor. If he liked, they told him, he could wait up there. He sighed, and retired to the solitude of the bare-bones office on the second floor.

  It was now 3:00 P.M. He decided he might as well not waste his time, so as he sat, he pondered: What would I tell the President of the United States if I were General Schwarzkopf?

  He’d tell him how much military force he could deploy; what types of units, how fast, where they would be based, and how they would be supported. They’d be broad summaries clearly based on intensive examination of thousands of details. Next, he’d show what amount of military coercive force this air armada could generate. Again, the summaries would capture the strength of modern airpower without boring the listener with the particulars. Here, too, the President would know these statements were supported by a thorough review of nuts-and-bolts detail. Finally he’d conclude with employment concepts — a strategy for employment of airpower to bring the invasion to a halt in preparation for an offensive air campaign that would throw the invading army out of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, seize control of the air, interdict Iraqi fuel, munitions, food, and water, as well as command and control, and provide close support to the outnumbered ground forces. All of this would be enough to the point to let the President know that he, General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, U.S. Army, had his act together and was ready, capable, and in charge.

  More specifically, Horner thought, Schwarzkopf would want to protect our own forces, so he’d want to put up a defensive air CAP—Combat Air Patrol—with AWACS, so he could keep the Iraqi Air Force from attacking us. This would also allow our forces maneuver space, and protect the cities and oil facilities. Once that was done, he’d worry about the Iraqi ground thrust. Where our ground forces were engaged, he’d provide air support. But the real aim of air in this situation would be to defeat the enemy’s ability to sustain the attack, so he’d go after supply depots and lines of supply. That would likely mean he’d have to give up some ground in the opening battle, but as the enemy’s supply routes became longer, the Iraqis would become increasingly vulnerable to air attack. In time we’d cause the attack to dry up, while forcing their ground forces into a posture that our ground forces could handle. Meanwhile, we would conduct operations against their infrastructure and their nation that would punish them for initiating the attack. How? By hitting specific targets with a specific number of sorties. In order to do it, we’d provide such and such a force, to be based here and here…

  In order to fill in the blanks, Horner spent the rest of the afternoon on the phone to Shaw AFB, getting information from his Director of Operations, Colonel Jim Crigger, and his Director of Logistics, Colonel Bill Rider. Crigger looked up for him the sortie rates they’d used during the Internal Look exercises, as well as historical aircraft loss rates, readiness states of various fighter and bomber units, deployment schedules, and beddown locations — locations where units would have fuel, food, ammunition, housing, and everything they needed to function. Rider provided endless streams of data on munitions availability, spare parts, fuel supplies, and the beddown capacity of various bases — all the supporting factors that spelled the difference between victory and defeat.

  ★ Above all, Horner wanted to avoid the misconceptions that got tossed around all too easily in discussions of air planning and air operations — that there were such things as distinct “strategic” and “tactical” airpower. He knew that if they got bogged down in such distinctions, then the whole operation could be a disaster. He explains:

  The use of the words “strategic” and “tactical” are a heritage from previous wars, where in general strategic attack was directed at an enemy’s heartland, and tactical operations were directed at his military forces in the field or at sea. More recently, “strategic” has come to mean nuclear strikes against the Soviet Union, or other powerful enemies, and “tactical” all other forms of air warfare.

  Meanwhile, the less lofty terms, “offensive” and “defensive,” have long been associated with counter-air operations. Defensive sorties were ground alert, airborne alert, or scrambles launched against enemy aircraft attacking your territory or forces. Offensive sorties attacked enemy forces, usually over enemy territory or controlled seas.

  I understand offensive and defensive; they have to do with where and when and situation. I don’t understand tactical or strategic. The words have now become meaningless and dysfunctional. In fact, in modern military speech, they are
more often used to divide people and frustrate efforts than to illuminate and facilitate. People use them loosely who don’t know what they are talking about. So, for example, a B-52 is called a “strategic bomber.” A strategic bomber? Then why was it doing close air support in the Gulf, a “tactical” operation?

  In reality, the person most likely to call a B-52 a strategic bomber will be an airman from SAC headquarters trying to keep control of an asset he is responsible for in terms of organizing, training, and equipping. If that asset is engaged in non-nuclear operations and deployed to a theater other than CINCSAC’s, it’s an asset potentially lost to SAC. It’s all thought of as a zero-sum game.

  There is also a service-biased crowd that like to think of the USAF as made up of strategic or tactical elements — that is, either elements that attack the enemy heartland (as the Eighth Air Force did over Germany in World War II — the real Air Force) or tactical elements that are essentially mobile artillery for the army, and therefore not really Air Force. I call such people airheaded airmen. They don’t realize that air can and will do whatever is necessary to get the job done. In fact, the real Air Force does not define the job as either “strategic” or “tactical.” The job flows down from the President and the Unified Command. As an airman, my job is to tell the President and the Unified Commander what air can do to get that job done, either on its own or by supporting other forces.

  This last explains in part why Goldwater-Nichols has had such a deep and far-reaching effect on our military. It is an effort to stomp out the desire of each service to think it is the end-all, and the others are around just to support them. Thus, in the traditional Navy view of the world, it’s “We like you all, but we are busy out here alone in the middle of the deep blue, so don’t bother to write except to send tankers and AWACS overhead.” The Air Force has those who see airpower as the only solution to all problems, but they want the Army to defend their bases and the Navy to make sure the JP-4 fuel tanker ships get to port. The Marines are most “ joint” of all; they need the Navy to get them there, they can’t survive without the Air Force’s lift and heavy support (they don’t have enough jets), and the Army is responsible for designing and acquiring their equipment. So the way they keep their bias alive is to make sure they always fight alone on some island somewhere without ever integrating into a larger picture.

  Some of the more doctrine-laden ground people also talk about the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war, so they can think in bins or boxes: “strategic” means whatever the President thinks about and does, “operational” is what the CINC thinks about and does, “tactical” is component-level-and-below thinking and doing.

  To an airman this is meaningless. My tactical fighter (tactical), flying to Baghdad (operational), kills Saddam Hussein (strategic).

  So finally, in talking about air plans or air operations, I keep as far from these words as I can. Airpower is essentially very simple: Aircraft can range very quickly over very wide areas and accurately hit targets very close to home or very far away. Nothing more. Nothing less.

  ★ These are the briefing elements Horner put together that afternoon at MacDill:

  First came the basics:

  • Forces available: Under Goldwater-Nichols, CENTCOM was apportioned certain forces — primarily the 1st TFW (F-15s at Langley) and the 363d TFW (F-16s at Shaw). There were also F-111s, A-10s, C-130s, intelligence assets, ground radar units, a number of E-3 AWACS, a Red Horse engineering unit (for construction services), the Ninth Air Force staff and commander, and so forth. The CINC of CENTCOM could also obtain units apportioned to other CINCs, but for that he needed the approval of the Secretary of Defense. Thus, CENTCOM was later given the Army’s VIIth Corps, which came from EUCOM and was an enormous addition to its ground forces; and CENTAF was also considerably augmented before the actual beginning of the war in January of ’91. (All of these changes were several months in the future.) In August, Chuck Horner’s position was to fight the forces that were already apportioned to CENTCOM. Since, as CENTAF Commander, Horner was not just the Central Command Air Force component commander, but also the joint force air component commander (JFACC), the forces available additionally included the fixed-wing aircraft that belonged to the Navy, Marine, and Army units assigned to CENTCOM. He looked at all of these forces day to day, to keep track of their readiness posture, so he knew what forces he could count on.

  • Types of units: Though all types of units make up an air force, the basic breakdown of roles is Air Superiority, Air Interdiction, Close Air Support, Reconnaissance, and Airlift. Some of the units were dedicated to one role. For example, the F-15s were used only in air-to-air missions[1]; the F-16s could do any role except Airlift; the A-10s were best used for Close Air Support (though they could do much more than that); and the C-130s hauled men and materiel, mostly Army, around the theater. However, C-130s had also been used in Vietnam to drop huge bombs to make helicopter landing pads in the jungle. So when Horner looked at an aircraft, he considered all its possible roles.

  • Speed of deployment: This issue had to be approached from three directions — need, tanker availability, and airlift availability. Horner’s first job was to make sure he controlled the air and could protect the rest of the force arriving by air and sea. Thus, he needed F-15s (for air-to-air), AWACS (for radar), and Rivet Joint (for signals intelligence). Flying the large jets such as the AWACS to Saudi Arabia was not a problem, since they could cross the ocean without tanker support; but the smaller aircraft, such as F-15s, required tankers, meaning that his deployment tempo was limited by tanker availability. Next, only the C-130 units could self-deploy — that is, bring their own spare parts and people with them. In order to be operational when they arrived, the jets sent to Saudi Arabia would need a support airlift, or else they would have to be based with a like Saudi unit to allow Horner to support operations with Saudi parts and maintenance people until his own people and parts arrived. Thus, he initially based the 1st TFW’s F-15s with Saudi F-15s at the Saudi base at Dhahran. Once these three basic elements were determined, he prioritized the lineup in terms of what he wanted to go first and how long he thought it would take, knowing that all active air force units must be capable of deploying in twenty-four hours, and all guard and reserve units in forty-eight hours.

  • Basing: Over the years, Horner had done preliminary planning about what units and aircraft to base where, and in fact his people already had considerable basing experience in Saudi Arabia. Earlier that year (1990), for example, AWACS and tankers had come home from Riyadh air base, where they had been operating for the previous eight years, protecting Saudi Arabia and its oil from possible spillover from the Iran-Iraq War. Since there were already hangars, ramps, fuel, and all kinds of equipment and supplies available, and the unit knew where to set what up, it made sense to send AWACS to Riyadh. Again, like units went best with like units. After that it was a matter of available ramp space and a feel for the pluses and minuses of the bases themselves. From visits with his counterparts, Horner knew all the airfields in the region. He had walked the ramps and flown from their runways. He also knew which countries were likely to let the United States in and which ones might balk. (As it turned out, all of them were very cooperative.) In short, he had done his homework; basing would not be a problem.

  • Facing the enemy: Since the aim of all this activity was not movement or placement of assets, but (at least potentially), the generation of combat sorties, aircraft needed to be located where they would be available for the maximum number of sorties. Thus, Horner wanted to put the A-10s and Marine Harriers (short-range Vertical Take-Off and Landing aircraft) as near Kuwait as possible, because A-10s and Harriers were used primarily in close support roles. He also knew that the Marines liked to be near the sea. Conversely, he wanted the air CAP jets near the border, which meant placing them at Dhahran and Tabuk. On the other hand, since his tankers were nothing more than modified 707s and MD-11s, and since a 707 or MD-11 didn’t know whether i
t belonged to United Air Lines or the United States Air Force, the tankers would fit best at international airports, where maintenance and ground-handling equipment were available for large commercial aircraft. He wanted to place aircraft carriers in waters as close to Iraq as he could persuade the Navy to put them. And he wanted B-52s near the theater, but in locations that were not vulnerable to Scud or air strikes.

  Second, Schwarzkopf (and after him the President) would want to understand the amount of military coercive force this air armada could generate. Here, briefing slides would come in handy:

  The first of these would picture a map of the Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia region, a very simple map, just border outlines with a few symbols of major towns, highways, and rivers. On this map, a pair of large arrows would drop out of Kuwait, one aimed south along the coast, and a second aimed south but then bending to the west toward Riyadh. One of these two would be the probable Iraq course of attack. The map would then depict aircraft in orbit over central Saudi Arabia — AWACS and their CAPs to the north of them. It would also depict F-16s and A-10s attacking the lead elements of the Iraqi army, as well as the logistics bases and supply lines supporting the attack.

  A second slide would list aircraft types down the left side. A middle column would list the number of aircraft expected to be based in theater and the expected sortie rate. So, for example, the sortie rate for the A-10 might be 3.5, and for the B-52 it might be.60. The right-hand column would multiply the number of aircraft by the sortie rate to give the number of sorties Horner would expect to fly per day. This would convey the level of effort he expected to sustain once the battle was joined.