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

by Tom Clancy

  We will end up at one of the USAF squadrons and talk to Intel, pilots, etc., and answer questions, perhaps in a short pilots’ meeting. The pilots are worried about screwing up in combat and tired of flying from midnight till dawn in the “CAP FROM HELL” (so called because you do it late at night, you are tired and bored, but you have to stay alert).

  1700 Grr and I climb in our jets. I lead this time, and we fly along the Iraqi border to check out the ground forces that have moved in and to check in with any of the attached Tactical Air Control parties that may be in place. Grr coordinated with these while I was touring with Boomer. Lead elements of the 82d Airborne are north of Dhahran, and we do some dry CAS with their Battalion ALO; but there is not much else in the desert. By the time we land at Riyadh and the crews going back to the UAE take the jets from us, it is starting to get dark. I am tired from flying and fall asleep in the car as we drive back to MODA.

  1900 In MODA, I read stacks of messages and make the usual notes on the margins. Don Kaufman has a list of things that have come up, and we run through them. I call Schwarzkopf to give him an update and listen as he anguishes about the problems he is facing getting combat power over ahead of headquarters (since headquarters doesn’t fight the enemy). John Yeosock is also in the suite after an afternoon of visiting with arriving units (he gets around in a C-12 light aircraft or a helicopter); and we compare notes about what we will do if the Iraqis attack that night. As we talk, we eat some french fries and swarmas, which are Saudi sandwiches — pita bread with grilled slices of lamb and mayonnaise.

  Later, I may have a visitor from one of the arriving coalition forces, and we chat about their plans — e.g.: what forces they are bringing, where they would like to beddown, what support they might need, and the command-and-control lash-up. I put them at ease about the logistics concerns and promise to help with any special needs. For example, the airmen all want to know how their squadrons will receive the Air Tasking Order, and I explain that we will either have them collocate with a CAFMS [37] -equipped U.S. squadron or I will get them a CAFMS terminal of their own. If the visitor is a high-ranking officer (which might be a major, if that is high ranking for that air force/ army/navy), then I will invite him to the evening meeting.

  2100 John, Don, and I go downstairs to the MODA bunker for the evening meeting with our Saudi counterparts. General Hamad and I will cochair the meeting, but Khaled will also be important. That is to say, if anything is to be decided afterward, it will be done in private with Khaled. John and his counterpart, Yousef Rashid, Tom Olsen and Behery, Grant Sharp and Admiral Talil will all sit with one another. I am always diffident at this meeting, because I am simply filling in for Schwarzkopf and do not want to make any waves. Still, we need some structure for working together and addressing any problems that come up. We do not spend a lot of time working strategy, as I am not sure the American ground forces want to fight in an integrated manner with their Saudi counterparts, and besides, they are just getting unloaded from the ships and planes and don’t know how to find the bathrooms yet. All the same, we must have some interaction. (The air forces, we quickly find, are already well integrated after years of training together and because of our AWACS operations during the Iran-Iraq War.)

  The meeting will start off with an intelligence update: One night the United States will supply the briefers, the next night the Saudis will brief. After about twenty minutes of briefing, other briefers describe ongoing operations — who is flying what CAPs where, the status of forces in terms of buildup, and where they are deploying in the desert. Hamad says little, and the individual Saudi chiefs are reluctant to talk too much in front of him, probably because they wish to keep their own prerogatives and enjoy working with their U.S. counterparts. Thus, the RSAF and USAF work well together, while the RSAF and RSLF, though friendly and polite, do not have a history of close cooperation.

  2230 I’m back upstairs putting out fires. There’s a telephone call from a civilian contractor at one of the U.S. compounds asking if it is true that the Iraqis had launched an attack and that poison gas had been used. “It’s not true to my knowledge,” I tell him, “but I will check into it.” A quick check of headquarters (the TACC in the RSAF) shows that all is quiet as far as AWACS can tell. RSLF listening posts on the border have not reported anything unusual. I get back to the contractor and calm him down, or else I have Don do it if I am busy with something else.

  Now callers begin stopping by the office. You can never forget that most serious business in the Arab world is done between 11:00 P.M. and 3:00 A.M. A couple of print newsmen spend fifteen to thirty minutes asking me questions. Since it’s too early in the deployment for a Public Affairs Officer to be in theater, I use my best judgment and depend on their honesty and willingness not to make me look like a fool. (I never really had a problem except with Jack Anderson, who was writing reports back in the States that gave the impression he was in Riyadh; he even “quoted” me. The man has no integrity.)

  Midnight I am really getting tired and fall asleep reading messages. My eyes start burning and watering, so I put some ice cubes on them, which gives some relief. I still doze off from time to time.

  Even this late, there is lots of activity, and the phones are ringing off the wall (it’s daytime at CENTCOM Rear in Tampa and in Washington). I avoid most of the calls, and John Yeosock and Don Kaufman do most of the talking to important people, while the small stuff is handled by Grr. I do talk to Schwarzkopf if he calls, but he seldom does this late. And I also may talk with USAF generals, but I usually refer them to Tom Olsen at RSAF rather than try to do both jobs. There will be plenty of time to command the air forces when Schwarzkopf comes, and for now the people need a commander for all the theater.

  Later, John comes in, and we sit and talk. Others join in, and we go over what we can do if the attack comes at first light or anytime tomorrow. I may call Tom Olsen, Gary Luck, or Walt Boomer if I have something to say to them, but I usually don’t, as their forces are just getting settled in and mating up with their equipment on a very piecemeal basis. When I talk to them, I do a lot of listening as to what they think and are planning, and I give suggestions based on what John and I have discussed. But for the most part, John Yeosock is in charge of organizing whatever ground forces we can muster, and Tom Olsen has the air forces along with Ahmed Sudairy, the RSAF/DO, who is an incredibly brilliant and take-charge airman.

  0300 Things seem to be settling down. The night shift people are slowing down and starting to sit around and talk over coffee. But they will still be organizing reports, answering questions, or directing activities (such as rerouting an incoming C-5 so it lands at Dhahran and not at Jeddah). By now I am pretty much useless, due to fatigue; and John and I reluctantly head for the sack.

  On some days, like Friday (Islamic Sunday), we might sleep in till 8:00 A.M. On some nights, just as we crawl into bed, the phone will ring with someone from the States calling one or the other of us. The idiot, not realizing the time in Riyadh, is trying to get a problem solved or a question answered before he leaves the office. They usually start off with, “Did I bother you? By the way, what time is it where you are?” Both questions mark him as an idiot.

  6

  Planning the Storm

  It was time to start formulating the Plan.

  War is essentially chaos, and the line between control and sickening confusion is paper-thin. If one takes care, the violence applied can be focused with precision, yet even when care is taken, it can easily degenerate into wild and formless mayhem. Look at Bosnia, Cambodia, and Rwanda.

  It is no surprise that commanders devote much of their best effort to reducing chaos. One of the major means to that end is the Plan.

  Planning in the U.S. military starts with the national command authorities — the President, aided by his chief advisers — who articulate the political objectives and overall goals to be achieved by the use of military force. The ball is then passed to the CINC in whose Area of Responsibility the force
is to be used, and he determines how to put together and marshal the forces available to him in order to bring them to bear on his nation’s adversaries with the maximum focus and effect (and thus with the minimum of disorder and chaos). It is then the responsibility of the various component commanders to construct a plan to achieve the CINC’s objectives — a campaign.

  ★ That all sounds simple enough, but the reality is more complicated. To begin with, it is easy to assume too much for the capabilities of military force. What can military force actually do? What is its capacity to achieve a goal? The answer is: not very much, and very little well. At best, a specific goal can be more or less precisely matched with a specific use of military force — evicting the Iraqi army from Kuwait, for instance. But no amount of force could bring democracy to Iraq.

  It is equally easy to assume too much, or too little, for an air campaign. The doctrinaire advocates of airpower believe, as an article of faith, that destroying the “controlling centers” of an enemy nation will render the enemy impotent and helpless, no matter how powerful his forces in the field. The doctrinaire advocates of land power conceive of air only as flexible, longer-range artillery, really useful only against those same enemy forces in the field. The reality does not so much lie in between as it varies with the demands of each situation.

  There is further debate among airpower intelligentsia about whether the attack should be aimed at destroying an enemy’s means (his military forces and the various facilities that allow him to make war) or his will (his determination to resist). The extremists on both sides hold that if you do one, then you don’t need to do the other. Both are wrong. Attacking an enemy’s will can pay big dividends, but it is hard to know exactly how to do it. Bombing cities into dust sometimes works, as does targeting his military capabilities, but both are costly and have many drawbacks; so the theorists can debate in their ivory towers until they run out of words.

  Meanwhile, the men and women in the field have to select the best of both as they apply to their given situation, and sometimes they don’t get the mix right. This was one area, in fact, where airpower failed in the Gulf War.

  In Desert Storm, Coalition air forces attempted to destroy the will of Iraq by bombing leadership targets in Baghdad, but these attacks failed miserably to degrade Iraq’s determination to resist. Why? Because Coalition air commanders did not know what constituted the sources and strength of Saddam’s will. As Chuck Horner is the first to admit, he had the means to destroy Saddam’s will but didn’t know how to do it.

  In contrast, when the Coalition attacked the means of the Iraqi Army in the field, it also destroyed that army’s will. Thus, when Coalition land forces engaged forty-two Iraqi divisions, the result after four days was 88,000 Iraqi POWs and only 150 U.S. ground force deaths (half of which were accidentally inflicted by U.S. forces).

  What went wrong? The first problem was with intelligence. U.S. intelligence operatives have not been trained to think in terms of the effects of military force on a given enemy. As a result, instead of risking judgments, they behave like accountants (with numbers, there is little risk). Intelligence operatives like to count enemy airplanes rather than determine the effect of killing an ace pilot.

  The second problem was with the Plan. The Plan is not chiseled in stone. It is a script, and no performance ever goes according to script. After the first bomb drops, the enemy changes. Perhaps he is stronger than before, perhaps he is weaker. But changed. So the theorist is right at the opening moment of the war, and wrong ever after.

  We’ll be discussing both problems in more depth later on.

  WHAT IS AN AIR CAMPAIGN?

  An air campaign is a series of military actions that employs air vehicles in order to achieve a political goal. It may be a phase in an overall campaign that also uses land, sea, and space vehicles, or it may be a phase that uses air vehicles primarily. (Air is the area above the surface of land or sea and below the vacuum of space. The edge of space is currently reckoned to be about 90,000 feet above mean sea level, but in the future it will probably rise to about 350,000 feet above MSL.) A commander has a wide range of missions, available to him as part of those actions — air superiority, air interdiction, air reconnaissance, airlift, and close air support.

  In addition, an air campaign (in fact, any campaign) has to address a specific situation — in this case, the invasion south by Iraq into Kuwait and, potentially, Saudi Arabia.

  Once the objectives and the actual situation have been determined, how does a commander build an air campaign?

  He starts by using his available intelligence information to decide on an overall plan, which contains all the elements he thinks are needed. Then he examines the contributions airpower can make and decides how it will be used. This last is primarily a list of functions, such as: “I want to gain control of the air and keep the Iraqi Army from inflicting casualties on our ground forces.” This, in turn, leads to target selection, such as, for example: “I’ll want to bomb a particular Sector Air Defense Operations Center.” Or, “AWACS sees a MiG-23 flying south. We need to stop it.” Or, “We need to destroy tanks and artillery in order to keep our own losses on the ground low.” Once the targets have been determined (and the target list will always be changing), he aligns the targets with the attack forces he has available. He then overlays all the other support elements needed to get the job done — intelligence, command-and-control measures, refueling, search and rescue, AWACS, electronic countermeasures, Wild Weasels, communication codes — and lists them in the daily Air Tasking Order (called the Frag in Vietnam). This is the control document that tells virtually everything that flies what to do in the air, where to be, and when (including where not to be—“airspace deconfliction”).

  We’ll discuss the ATO in depth in a little while. Before that, however, Horner had a much bigger task in front of him as he began to figure out his air campaign.

  THE PLAN AND THE CINC

  Plans are not made in the abstract. They are addressed to specific commanders, and though this is primarily to satisfy the commander’s expressed needs, it is also inevitably tailored to the commander’s personality. As the various plans that eventually grew into the actual plan of attack in Desert Storm were created and developed, Chuck Horner was sensitive to both the needs and to the personality of H. Norman Schwarzkopf.

  He was aware, first of all, that Schwarzkopf was a landman, not an airman. As a result, from the beginning of their relationship in CENTCOM, he had tried to elevate the CINC’s sights into thinking about the importance of airpower to devastate the enemy in ways that were not directly connected to land warfare. He feared that Schwarzkopf would fall into the land-centric error that too many land officers made: thinking that war was only the battlefield meeting of two land armies. Those officers understood that you bombed the enemy homeland, government, and infrastructure, but they were never sure why or what relevance that had to real war, which to them meant surviving on a battlefield and destroying the enemy soldiers. Next to these, all else was of limited relevance.

  Horner wanted the CINC to consider the use of airpower to achieve goals that were not about destroying the enemy army. And in fact, he succeeded.

  As it turned out, Schwarzkopf wished to be the kind of CINC who approached warfare from a much broader perspective than is usually the case with land-centric thinkers. He wanted Goldwater-Nichols to work. The proof of it was in the way he created a theater leadership capable of blending the best of land, sea, air, space, and special operations activities and capabilities.

  Horner didn’t know that yet, however. This is the way he saw him at the time.

  First of all, Schwarzkopf was extremely intelligent. It never took him long to grasp what he was being told.

  Like Bradley, he deeply loved ground troops. He cared passionately about their safety.

  Like Patton, he believed in his own destiny. This meant that he feared history would not remember him as the heroic man of destiny he considered himself to be�
� or rather, that others would foul things up for him and prevent him from achieving his historic destiny.

  Finally, his ego was enormous, yet he was enormously insecure.

  His insecurity was the key to his famous rages. For instance, Schwarzkopf could never handle well being put on the spot; and when he was put on a spot, his tendency was to lash out and bully or to throw blame on someone else. For this reason, Horner learned never, never to put him on the spot. He never confronted him in public, but always in his office, when they were alone or with another person the CINC trusted. This not only protected the CINC from himself and his insecurities; but when the CINC was nervous and insecure, he sometimes made wrong decisions, which might require a lot of work to undo.

  To have constructed any kind of war plan without taking consideration of these and other personality and character issues would have been far worse than unwise.

  INTERNAL LOOK AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE PLAN

  Norman Schwarzkopf took command of CENTCOM on November 23, 1989. Chuck Horner took the first major opportunity he could to talk to him about airpower.

  This came during the preparations for the Internal Look exercise planned for July 1990 in which Country Orange invaded Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. In April 1990, Horner gave General Schwarzkopf a briefing that covered his planned use of airpower in Internal Look — a briefing that came to have important consequences for Desert Storm, both in the way air was actually used operationally and in the way it added to General Schwarzkopf’s understanding of airpower.