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

by Tom Clancy

  Other issues raised at that briefing let the CINC know that Horner was thinking about fighting Schwarzkopf ’s war in Horner’s part of the world and that he could have confidence that Horner was a team player working Schwarzkopf’s concerns. For this reason, Horner showed him how he planned to work with the host nations (by merging air defense forces, by providing CAS to Arabs who didn’t have tactical air control parties and didn’t speak English, and by operating the Civil Airspace Control during time of war), and how he was ready to provide his air forces with sufficient logistical support and to take care of his people (with food, shelter, beds, and water).

  Trust between and among commanders is essential. And it has to be earned. Horner earned Schwarzkopf’s trust.

  In Horner’s words:

  The bottom line was that I was telling him, “I know you are in charge. I am not going to be an Air Force prick, but I know more about airpower than you ever will, and you need to trust me and let me do my thing, so you will be a hero.”

  In air-to-air engagements, if you can “lead-turn” a jet flying directly toward you, and he fails to see what you are doing, you will have an advantage when you pass, in that you have already started to turn toward his tail. If he discerns you have started a lead turn, he can negate it by passing as close to your jet as possible. Then each of you has to make up the 180-degree offset in the ensuing maneuvers. If he doesn’t and you have similar-performing jets, then the one who lead-turns wins.

  At the April 1990 briefing, I was lead-turning the issues that had been a problem in the past: failure of the Marines to fight jointly, ignorant attempts by the Army to own the air forces, and failure of land force-trained CINCs to understand how to fight airpower. The briefing was a great success for me, for Schwarzkopf, and eventually the country.

  I had Schwarzkopf’s confidence, and I got that the old-fashioned way: I earned it. So when he would call me in the middle of the night in the TACC from his war room and say, “Chuck, I am looking at a Joint STARS picture, and I see thirty trucks at XYZ, can you get them?” I could reply, “I will certainly try, but if they are not there because the picture you have is too old, I will send the force to where it was originally scheduled to go.” And he would reply, “Okay.”

  ★ All the planning and the thousands of actions that go on in war depend on faith and trust. No single commander can know all that needs to be known, can be everywhere to make every decision that needs to be made, or can direct every action that is taken.

  The Strategic Plan

  The briefing ended with a discussion of what Horner labeled for Schwarzkopf a “strategic air campaign plan” (much to his later regret). What he meant was “targets strategic to Iraq”—that is to say, high-value targets, such as oil production and electrical distribution facilities, that could be held hostage in case Iraq used mass-destruction weapons.

  Again, he was talking in the context of the essentially defensive Internal Look Scenario. Thus, the strategic campaign Horner was proposing then was only peripherally related to the plan of attack that later was to emerge in August and September of 1990. Unfortunately, the word strategic carries great magic, especially for commanders, and that day the word worked its magic on General Schwarzkopf. Ever after, he called the plan of air attack against Iraq the “strategic” air campaign, when, in reality, it was an offensive air campaign, a means to achieve the political objectives of the President and the Coalition, should diplomatic efforts and the embargo on Iraq fail.

  This confusion was to resurface in August on the tarmac in Jeddah when the CINC asserted his desire for a “strategic” air campaign… and yet again in the plan proposed by Colonel John Warden and his CHECKMATE team, about which there will be more to come.

  THE D DAY ATO

  Deterrence is effected by having a strong military force in place that is ready to fight and capable of winning.

  We will probably never know why Saddam Hussein did not attack Saudi Arabia in August. He may well have had that intention, yet was deterred by the rapid buildup of airpower and the U.S. ability to conduct a sustained air campaign within hours of the initial deployment.

  Meanwhile, though the military commanders on scene did not know Saddam’s intentions, they had to be ready to counter the very real threat posed by twenty-seven Iraqi divisions on the border.

  If Saudi Arabia were to be attacked, the following strategy was foreseen:

  • First of all — and most important — air defense would be maintained, so Iraq could not use its own air forces to devastate the cities, ports, and airports in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

  • There would be direct attacks on the attacking elements of the invading force.

  • However, the greater concentration of attacks would be on the logistics lifelines of the Iraqis as they fanned out across the desert.

  • Finally, Chuck Horner also asked for attack options against “strategic” targets inside Iraq. In this case, “strategic” attack meant strikes against targets not directly related to Iraqi military forces in the field.

  This strategy was translated into what became the “D Day Plan” or “D Day ATO.” This is a good place to discuss just what an ATO is.

  Air is a task-organized force — that is, each airplane is tasked to go somewhere and do something that will benefit the overall effort to attain a campaign objective as part of the overall theater strategy to support national objectives. The air commander plans tasks and allocates forces to do those tasks, based on the characteristics of the force elements. So, for example, on January 25, 1991, from 1000 to 1030, the USAF tasked A-10s to patrol a particular road in Kuwait and kill vehicles, using its gun and Maverick missiles. The way this tasking was transmitted to the people who would have to execute it was by means of an Air Tasking Order. In Desert Shield/Desert Storm, the planning that went into the preparation of the ATO was centralized at the headquarters of the JFACC and was done by representatives of all the functional elements (A-10 pilots, F-16 pilots, AWACS pilots, etc.) and nations represented (the United Arab Emirates Air Force, the RAF, etc).

  The ATO is a statement of marshaled resources that is based on the best available information and the best available guidance at the time it is prepared. Each day, the commander will have a new appreciation of what needs to be done. Perhaps the enduring objective he sought to achieve has also been modified by new realities (definitely the case for the side that is losing).

  That is to say, when constructing the plan and its expression in the ATO, the commander can never forget that the situation is fluid, that chaos is always a close neighbor, and that terrific opportunities may arise in an instant. This is especially true in war, where aircraft move about in the battlespace in minutes or seconds, and information about new situations and alignments of forces arrive in real time and must be acted on instantly. Even though the commander must have principles to hang on to, as time passes, his objectives may become modified, and he will certainly gain more information about the reality of his situation.

  To make all this more complicated: The ATO itself is like a moving train. If someone suddenly changes one element, he must consider the ripple effect on other elements. Sometimes the effect is minimal. For example, Tiger Flight is scheduled to hit target X at Y time, but new intelligence comes in that says target X has moved five kilometers north. No problem. The new target coordinates are inserted, the change is added, and the ATO is hardly affected. But suppose that Y time becomes two hours later. Then there’s a serious problem. The new time may well drastically affect the aircraft generation schedule at the base. It may well affect tanker availability. It may well affect airspace deconfliction. And it may well affect the intelligence-collection efforts associated with that strike. For these reasons, it is sometimes better to freeze the ATO early and make up for the changes in the chaos that reigns in the current operations efforts during the day of execution.

  Thus, an ATO is the marshaling of available resources against a series of tasks as they are best known whe
n the plan is created. But the day that plan is executed, there will be more information that may in fact require reordering of priorities and tasks.

  That means that the old paradigm — ready, aim, fire — has changed. In modern war, you ready, fire, and then aim. The deployment and sustaining of the force, a service responsibility, is the ready; the launch of the force against a preconceived schedule is the fire; while the command and control associated with the operations is the aim. That is, one now often loads up his aircraft, puts them in the air, and then decides what target to hit, based on real-time intelligence.

  The plan, again, is not a sacred document. A commander has to be prepared to change it on the fly, and he has to have machinery in place to transmit the changes instantly to the people affected by them. For this reason, during Desert Storm, ATOs were built two and a half days — no more than that — before they were put into operation (since this was the minimum time for necessary preparations). This made it hard for the planners who made ATOs, but it ensured that changes would be more easily and quickly accommodated.

  Chuck Horner imposed this two-and-a-half-day limit because he didn’t want his forces to be constrained by planning that went on days or even weeks before the war started. He wanted planners to be forced to evaluate the first day’s efforts and results, and then to plan what to do on day three. To make things easier, he gave them a half-day start. Then, as the days proceeded, they needed to make plans completely from scratch, using what they’d learned as previous days unfolded. “Of course, they had target lists hidden in their pockets,” Horner adds. “I expected that. But I wanted to force them into thinking about where we were at a given time and then planning from that, instead of building an entire air campaign and then just modifying it here and there. Chaos reigns and Huns like me revel in it.”

  Likewise — as we’ve pointed out before — the commander can’t allow himself (or herself) to be a slave to seemingly potent doctrinaire concepts such as “strategic,” “tactical,” or “operational.”

  Chuck Horner takes up the thought:

  I have often said in the past that “strategic,” “operational,” and “tactical” are confusing words. And if you try to link strategy, operations, and tactics with the first three, you have a real mess, where people are talking past one another. I can make a strategy of tactical operations using unique tactics in order to attain a series of tactical goals to achieve an operational-level objective, which turns out to be the strategic center of gravity. Take tank plinking. It was a strategy — to deny the enemy the use of his killing machines. It had tactical goals — to destroy one hundred to two hundred tanks a night. It had an operational-level objective — to deny the enemy the effective use of his ground forces against our invading army. It had unique tactics — medium-altitude air attacks using laser-guided bombs with infrared sensors. And it destroyed a strategic center of gravity — since Saddam’s goal was to win a victory or stalemate by inflicting casualties on our forces. You have to be specific when talking about war. But unfortunately many are lost in the heady sense of destiny and all that bullshit, so they use powerful-seeming words like “strategic” when they don’t really know what they are talking about.

  ★ The D Day ATO tasked the air forces assembled in Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf nations, as well as those aboard the Navy aircraft carriers in adjacent waters, where and when to strike attacking Iraqi forces. It was modest at first, but as more and more aircraft deployed into the AOR, and as more and more planners from the Coalition allies came aboard, the daily ATO (updated daily and stored on floppy disks ready for immediate execution) grew in size and complexity. Meanwhile, as strength on the ground grew with the arrival of more and stronger ground forces, the targeting emphasis changed to reflect new overall campaign strategies.

  ★ Three people watched over the development of the D Day Plan — Major General Tom Olsen (Chuck Horner’s deputy), Colonel Jim Crigger (Horner’s Director of Operations), and Lieutenant Colonel Sam Baptiste from the CENTAF operations staff.

  It would be hard to imagine a more suitable deputy than the silver-haired, grandfatherly, commonsensical A-10 pilot Major General Tom Olsen: Olsen was loyal; thoughtful when Horner tended to be rash; non-egotistical (so he worked Horner’s agenda, not his); and he made decisions Horner could easily live with. Olsen, in Horner’s absence, was the senior commander who approved or disapproved the ATOs and other efforts.

  Colonel Jim Crigger was more directly the driving force behind the setting up of the TACC and its processes to produce the ATOs. Crigger had been the last commander of the 474th TFW at Nellis (the wing was phased out in 1989) and then, when he didn’t make General because of the draw-down resulting from the end of the Cold War, he became available for the Director of Operations job at Ninth Air Force/CENTAF. Crigger was intensely quiet, modest, and self-effacing, yet exceptionally smart (both in intellect and common sense), very tough, and deeply compassionate. After Horner hired him, he very quickly established his credibility with the hard-nosed staff (no small challenge, as they were the world experts in building an ATO and fighting war in the Middle East, having been together for over six years). The staff loved working for him; he coaxed their best efforts without driving them. Not only was his work as DO first class (he asked for guidance only when he needed it), he kept his mouth shut, and let the actions of his staff take the credit — always putting his people in front of himself when laurels were handed out, while taking the shots personally when things went wrong. Instead of ranting and raving at mistakes, he quietly dealt with them (including his boss’s) in private with constructive criticism. It wasn’t just his staff work that was exceptional; he was the point of contact with the deployed wing commanders, the man on the staff who, because he had himself just left wing command, could understand both their comments about ATOs and their needs, but could be counted on for good advice. The result was excellent chemistry with his commander.

  Sam Baptiste had been operations officer for a squadron deployed in Iceland when a pilot had been killed in a crash and the blame laid on him, thus effectively ending his Air Force career. Afterward, Horner arranged to have him assigned to Ninth Air Force. Despite the cloud he was under, few people had his knowledge of fighter operations and intelligence. In the early days of Desert Shield, Baptiste handled the operations staff that determined which units would do which tasks if the Iraqis attacked; and in general, he laid out the details (such as CAPs) for Crigger. Later in the war, he joined Army Lieutenant Colonel Bill Welch in the more important job of planning the Kuwait Theater of Operations (KTO) portion of the daily ATO.

  On August 8, 1990, when Olsen and the elements of the CENTAF planning staff arrived in Riyadh, Horner turned over to him command of CENTAF while he himself was occupied as CENTCOM Forward. Olsen quickly set up a warm working relationship with the RSAF commander, Lieutenant General Ahmed Behery.

  Almost immediately, Jim Crigger and his staff had joined with the RSAF operations staff, and were conducting the appointment and guidance meetings that initiate the ATO planning cycle. Shortly after this, they were publishing a daily ATO. At first, these only coordinated combined air defense sorties, though they quickly grew to cover all the combined and coalition operational and exercise flying in the AOR. (This system was in place by August 13.)

  On August 10, longer-range planning was begun. And on August 12, as the acting CINC, Horner asked Olsen to build a preplanned ATO that would rapidly respond to an Iraqi attack on Saudi Arabia — the “D Day ATO.”

  Though (thankfully) the D Day Plan was never put into effect, it served as a springboard to subsequent planning for an offensive air campaign — not, interestingly, because of the planning itself, but as a training device. Training became an issue when the planning staff was augmented with many new people who were familiar with combat, fighters, and bombers, but who had never built an ATO. Putting together the D Day ATO gave these people on-the-job experience in the reasoning processes and the integration that needs to
be considered — such as airspace deconfliction, tanker tracks, command-and-control agencies, radio procedures, and code words.

  Meanwhile, communication of the ATOs between the TACC and operational units was soon accomplished by means of the Computer-Aided Force Management System (CAFMS) — best understood as a combination of word processor and e-mail. In the CAFMS computers were preprogrammed forms (spreadsheets and text). When these were filled out by the planners they became the ATO. These forms were then accessed by the wings that had communication links with the TACC in Riyadh.

  The CAFMS terminals were also used to execute the ATO. At each duty position in the TACC current operations room, the duty officers monitored and communicated with the bases via CAFMS. So, for example, takeoff times would be sent from the wings to the TACC, which meant that the TACC operators knew who was en route to the tankers or their targets and could divert them to other targets if they wished. The TACC would also receive flight abort information, which allowed them to divert other missions against those targets they really wanted to hit.

  CAFMS had several limitations. For one thing, the Navy carriers were not equipped with the SHF antennas needed to receive it, which meant that floppy disks containing the next day’s ATO had to be flown out to the carriers each night. (The foreign air forces that did not have a CAFMS terminal went to the USAF unit collocated with them and picked up the ATO there.) There were also systemic limitations. For example, because it was limited to word processor and e-mail functions, CAFMS was not able to show the effects of upstream changes downstream. Thus, if the TACC operators wanted to change a strike, the computer was not able to show how this change would impact on tanker off-loads and other such data.

  JOHN WARDEN AND CHECKMATE

  As Tom Olsen, Jim Crigger, and their staffs were setting up the planning and operational machinery required in theater, General Schwarzkopf was making good on his undertaking to Chuck Horner in Jeddah on August 7 to ask the Joint Staff to start the planning process for a strategic air campaign.