by Tom Clancy
★ How would these forces actually be used to defeat an Iraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia?
The basic strategy was to defeat the Iraqi invader by first cutting off his essential supplies and then by hitting his forces where they were causing problems with the U.S. ground forces. More specifically:
• Seize control of the air: Blind the centralized air defense system by knocking out their radars, and the command and control that directs them. Shoot down the Iraqi fighters brave and stupid enough to fly. Hit their airfields to limit the number of fighters they can put up to challenge you. Strike fear in the hearts of the radar-guided SAM operators by using Wild Weasels and HARM missiles to make them afraid to turn on their radars. And avoid the guns and shoulder-fired infrared (IR) missiles by flying at medium altitude.
• Interdict Iraqi fuel, munitions, food, and water: Armies have to set up dumps where their vehicles can go for gas and ammunition, so find the dumps and blow them up. Armies need fuel trucks to carry gas to their tanks and vehicles; and they need freighter trucks to carry their ammunition, so patrol the roads to the dump and strafe the trucks going and coming.
• Attack command and control: Find enemy headquarters — probably a group of tents or command-and-control vehicles (armored personnel carriers — APCs — loaded with antennas). This is an attacking army, so it has no bunkers. You find these headquarters by listening for them. They have to talk. They have to use radios or ground lines. Either way, you’ll know it. Without communication, a commander can’t control anything. (He can use runners or carrier pigeons, but the bandwidth on those is very low.) When you hear them talking, you can do four things: (1) listen but otherwise leave them alone, so you can disrupt their attack plan; (2) jam them and so deny communication; (3) voice over them and deliver the wrong communication (“Saddam Hussein here. I want you to change your direction of attack. Go north. Got that? North.”); or (4) bomb them. Because you control the air, the enemy has none of these options (though he might try ground-based systems; the range of these is short, however, due to the earth’s curvature).
• Provide close air support to the outnumbered ground forces: There were two issues here — providing close air support (CAS) for U.S. ground forces, a mission that had been practiced long and hard, and providing CAS for the Arab allies, which was more problematic because of language issues, and because it hadn’t been practiced — at least adequately and routinely. However, even CAS for U.S. forces had some problematic elements, partly because of the differing needs (or perceived needs) of air and ground forces, and partly because of recent changes in the very nature of warfare itself.
An air force is in the ordnance-delivery business, just as an airline is in the seat-delivery business. A TWA jet is well used when it is in the air and all its seats are filled. An F-16 is well used when it is in the air delivering ordnance to a target. The needs of ground people are somewhat different. For one thing, they like to have friendly aircraft visibly overhead. It makes them feel good. If these aircraft are not in fact delivering ordnance, that is not terribly important to their feelings of well-being. For another, ground people like to schedule air strikes the way they like to schedule artillery — hours, sometimes days, in advance. However, modern warfare has changed so greatly, the tempo of war has speeded up so much, and a good modern army is so mobile (you don’t know what you need because you don’t know where you’ll be fighting), that scheduling air strikes in the old way had become seriously counterproductive.
Very early on in their command relationship, Horner talked at length with Schwarzkopf about these issues, and convinced him then of a way of providing close air support that later came to be called Push CAS. That is, aircraft would be designated for CAS, but where, how, and when they would be used would be determined “on the run” by events in the field. If no one in the field had an immediate need for CAS, or if they were holding their own or winning, Horner would send the jets to the enemy rear area. Though the effects of these last strikes wouldn’t show up immediately, when they did, they would prove dramatic. Push CAS required excellent communications and control and also good ways of identifying the precise locations of the targets, but it was not otherwise more difficult than earlier ways of operating. Schwarzkopf had bought into Push CAS in April during the Internal Look exercise, and Push CAS became a reality in February 1991.
The problem of providing CAS to Arab-only speakers was solved by asking the RSAF (Royal Saudi Air Force), all of whom were bilingual in English and Arabic, to provide CAS controllers. It also turned out that there were a few USAF fighter pilots who, by reason of family origin, spoke Arabic. However, neither of these solutions could be instantly implemented. There would have been real problems in August 1990 if the Iraqis had come south.
• Once the Iraqi invasion has been brought to a halt, begin an offensive air campaign whose aim is to throw the invading army out of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait: Though CENTCOM tasking in August was to focus on the defense of Saudi Arabia, nonetheless, no one could ignore the event that had started the crisis, the invasion of Kuwait. Thus, initial plans had to be made for attacks against key targets in Iraq — oil refineries, power-generation plants, major rail yards, large factories, interstate highways, bridges, and the like. The idea was to link the destruction of these targets essential to Iraq with a coherent strategy designed to gain a political objective, such as the removal of the Iraqis from Kuwait. In point of fact, Horner and Schwarzkopf had recently come from the Internal Look exercise in Florida, where their air planners had been selecting targets throughout Iraq in response to the exercise scenario. Most of the target materials used during the war had already been ordered from intelligence sources the previous spring (primarily the DIA) as part of the preparations for Internal Look.
By the time the 5:00 P.M. conference with the CINC had arrived, Horner was ready to step in, if necessary, and provide Schwarzkopf with the basics he’d need to take to Camp David. He grabbed his notes and headed down to the CINC’s conference room to listen to the briefing proposed for the CINC by the J-3.
The small conference room was small and crowded, and the atmosphere was tense. The CINC was tired, the process of preparing the presidential briefing had not gone smoothly, and now time was running out. Fortunately, no one was allowed to smoke. Schwarzkopf ’s predecessor, Marine General George Crist, and many of his staff had been chain-smokers; CENTCOM meetings in those days had been agony to nonsmokers.
The meeting started with a short update on the situation in Kuwait. It turned out that when the crisis had broken out in July, General Schwarzkopf had had a man in a hotel across the street from the American Embassy in Kuwait City. His name was John F. Feeley, and he was a major on the CENTCOM Intelligence staff. Feeley had been sent to Kuwait with a briefcase full of top-secret photos to show the Kuwaiti leaders and had been caught there during the invasion. Now he was providing direct eyeball updates via a man-portable satellite phone. Horner didn’t know this man, but he imagined he was operating at a high pitch of excitement, perched as he was in the middle of the Iraqi Army as they rounded up elements of the Kuwaiti Army and foreign visitors. The CINC was obviously pleased that he’d inserted a pair of eyes in the enemy camp. Horner wondered if the “pair of eyes” shared the CINC’s joy.
The next part of the briefing took up the use of ground forces to counter an invasion of Saudi Arabia. Schwarzkopf asked few questions and made few comments; it was obvious this was his briefing and he had personally worked hard on it. The material was clear, understandable, and to the point; it addressed in detail the issues that constitute war on the ground — terrain, enemy forces, lines of communication, armor, tactics. For someone who could only guess at how events would unfold, it was quite reassuring.
The air part of the briefing was another thing; it turned out to be everything Horner had feared. As soon as it started, Horner could see a titanic disaster in the making. Burt Moore’s people, for all their talent, had fallen into the trap of trying to give the boss wha
t they thought he wanted, rather than what they knew he needed. The material was vague, airy, lightweight. It scarcely began to show comprehension of the myriad facts and details that a good briefer condensed and focused into a very few words.
It primarily contained a list of forces that would deploy according to the Time Phased Force Deployment List (TPFDL — which is the military’s way of talking about moving things and people), as well as some discussion about where the forces would be located on the Saudi Arabian peninsula. This was interesting and important information as far as it went; but the point of any deployment was not the movement and placement of forces, but the way the forces could be brought to bear against a potential enemy. The briefing did not address that issue. It did not convey the combat power those aircraft were capable of bringing against the attacking Iraqi forces, nor did it point out where and when the aircraft would strike the Iraqi forces, nor the logistics factors (such as fuel and munitions availability) these combat operations would require, or how these would impact sortie rates.
In short, the briefing talked about things, the elements of airpower — numbers of aircraft and bases — but did not talk about the application of force and how it would be used to frustrate the enemy and accomplish the CINC’s military objectives. It described a horse without telling the listener how he intended to use the horse.
During the first two slides, the CINC showed amazing patience. “Perhaps he was hoping it would get better,” Horner observes, “like the kid pawing through a pile of horse manure hoping to find a pony inside.” Unfortunately, the briefing got worse, and so did Schwarzkopf ’s temper. As his questions and comments increased in volume and velocity, the room grew charged with electricity. Many hunkered down into the near-fetal position staff officers learn to achieve in an upright chair. Others gleefully anticipated the inevitable Schwarzkopf eruption.
For a second, Horner allowed himself a small, childish “I told you so” thought, but quickly switched it off. Time’s running out, he told himself. No need for any poor sons of bitches to suffer CINC abuse. And more to the point, it’s not fair to Schwarzkopf to provide him less than our best efforts.
He turned to the CINC and quietly suggested that perhaps the President just wanted to know how soon Air Force units could arrive in the theater, where they would be located, how they would be supported, what levels of effort could be sustained, and what type of jobs they could be expected to undertake to deter or defeat an Iraqi invasion. He could see that this part of the briefing had been troubling the CINC, and that he was looking for a way to convey this information to the President in as credible a manner as the ground piece of the briefing, which he had worked out so well.
Schwarzkopf agreed. In fact, Horner’s suggestion was just what he wanted to hear just then. That being the case, he ordered the staff to turn out and help Horner put it together.
You could feel the relief in the room from everyone except Chuck Horner. In essence, he’d promised that he’d fix up everything himself. Now he had to perform perfectly, and fast; the CINC was due to depart for Washington and Camp David around midnight.
He returned to the command center, only this time he did not ask, “Can I help?” Horner told them what he wanted, and, to their credit, Burt Moore and his J-3 staff gave him their complete support.
What he needed first of all was a stack of overhead transparency slides. Since 1990 was already the day of desktop computers with dedicated software, he sat down next to a young, computer-literate staff member and his machine, and went to work. He’d draw a sketch of what he had in mind on a piece of typing paper, and then the kid would punch it into the computer to produce the finished slide. Quickly, the pile of slides began to grow — number charts, maps, diagrams. The various slides outlined a vast exercise in airpower, rapidly and easily deployed, hosted at a number of bases throughout the Gulf region. The operations were to be supported in large measure by over a billion dollars’ worth of equipment, munitions, and supplies.
If Iraq continued its attack through Kuwait and into Saudi Arabia, land-and sea-based aircraft would immediately be on the scene to work with the Gulf allies. They would bring to bear an array of modern weapons targeted by a host of the latest intelligence-collection assets, directed by a theater-wide command-and-control element that could devastate the attacking Iraqi forces as their supply lines fanned out across the desert and along Saudi Arabia’s highways. It would be a formidable challenge. It had to be. Iraq’s air force was well trained and equipped. Its army was shielded by thousands of antiaircraft guns and surface-to-air missiles. Formidable as they were, however, they would encounter airpower beyond their ability to comprehend.
Horner threw himself into the briefing. With over thirty-two years of experience in the Air Force, and three years of working with the Gulf nations and their air forces, he knew he could put together a briefing that would make the pieces of the air plan clear to the President. No one knew more about threats, air war, and air operations in the Middle East than he did.
He was confident, and it showed when he went over the slides with General Schwarzkopf at 2300 (11:00 P.M. EDT) that Friday night.
But then his fighter pilot confidence wavered when General Schwarzkopf smiled and said, “Looks good, Chuck. Why don’t you brief it? The aircraft leaves at 0200.”
Horner sat stunned for a moment, then let out a puff of air. They can kill me, but they can’t eat me, Horner told himself.
★ Later, after Schwarzkopf had left, he sat thinking. He couldn’t screw this up. If he failed to transmit the right information, it could endanger the lives of many thousands, and the existence of a nation he respected deeply. This was not about war. In fact, if the military options were presented truthfully and executed skillfully, then war might be averted. But if war was in the cards… he let out another puff of air… then he would be the commander of the most powerful air attack in history.
He looked through his notes again, then through the slides, then he leaned back in his chair, thinking back to that day twenty-eight years before that was never far from his mind: the sand, the sky, the certainty that he was going to die. Was this what it had all been for? Was this what God had had in mind…?
I
Into the Wild Blue
1
Every Man a Tiger
Fighter pilots know something of what Arabs know, and what few of us like to admit — that none of us is in control of our lives, that we’re all in the hands of God.
In 1962, while he was stationed at Lakenheath, England, young Lieutenant Chuck Horner was in North Africa, at Wheelus, Libya, flying an F-100D Super Saber, training on the gunnery range that the Air Force had established in those days of friendship with the Libyan government of King Idris. The weather in Libya was better than anywhere in Europe; there were hundreds of miles of desert to spare for a gunnery range; and for recreation, the old walled town had a camel market, Roman ruins, decent Italian restaurants, and beaches nearby for relaxing on weekends. The officers’ club rocked every night, and the pilots had plenty of time to drink and lie, two of their most pleasurable activities. It was fighter pilot heaven.
One day at Wheelus, Horner was number three in a group of four, flying strafe patterns. Imagine four lines in a square pattern on the ground whose corners are — very roughly — a mile apart. At each of these corners is an F-100. The target is located in one corner of this box. The airplane on the corner turning to head toward the target is rolling in to shoot at the target. The airplane behind him at the corner diagonally across the box is turning base leg; he is getting ready to shoot next. The airplane behind him is flying toward the base leg turning point. And the airplane coming off the target has just completed his gunnery pass and is trying to visually acquire the other three aircraft so he can space on them for his next turn at the target. It’s extremely important to maintain that spacing. If the pilot puts the base leg too far out, then his dive angle is flat and he can pick up ricochets. If he gets it in too close, his dive a
ngle’s too steep, and he’ll hit the ground while trying to pull up from his firing pass on the target.
That day there was a ghibly blowing — a sandstorm. Visibility was bad, less than a mile, which meant each pilot could see where he was in relation to the ground and could sometimes dimly spot the location of the aircraft ahead of him, but it was next to impossible to see the target itself or determine how the aircraft were spaced in relation to each other and the target. In other words, it was a day they shouldn’t have been on the range.
According to the procedure they normally followed, when a pilot made a turn, he’d call it over the radio—“turning in,” “turning off,” “turning downwind,” “turning base.” Most of these calls were for the information of the other pilots, to let everyone know where he was. But the “turning base” call was more serious. That call let the safety observer in the tower know he was about to approach the target. When the observer heard that, he would be watching the aircraft ahead of the caller making his firing pass, which meant he was also ready to hear the next pilot’s turning-in hot call. Then he would give the pilot, or deny him, clearance to fire. For instance, if another airplane was in the way, he would say, “Make a dry pass” or “You’re not cleared.” And then the pilot would break off his attack, fly through level, and resume the correct spacing.
At Wheelus was a nuclear target circle, next to the conventional bomb circle and strafe targets. This circle had a long run-in bulldozed in the desert that served as a guideline about where to fly when the fighters were in the strafe pattern. On the run-in line was a smaller bulldozed line, more like a short streak across it, that was located 13,000 feet out from the nuclear bomb bull’s-eye. This mark was exactly the right place to start the turn to base leg to set up a pass at the strafe target. Normally, pilots making the gunnery run would turn base over that same streak. On this day, though, the pilot (number two) ahead of Horner got lost. Instead of turning base over the bulldozed lines in the desert, he kept flying away from the target and the proper place to begin his base leg turn.