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

by Tom Clancy

  Why only three days? Even though Horner knew the air campaign might go on for several months, he was convinced that no plan would last more than a couple of days before events caused it to be taken apart and put back together, so he allowed Glosson and his team to lay out the first three daily ATOs and nothing else. The general planning went on, of course, but Horner did not want his people to lock into specifics beyond that time.

  When the plan was presented to Schwarzkopf, he approved it with little change.

  The only detail that bothered him was the use of Special Operations Forces (SOF) helicopters during the opening moments of the war to lead Task Force NORMANDY, a planned strike on Iraqi early-warning radars located on the border with Saudi Arabia. The issue came up during the third run-through of the briefing. As Chuck Horner tells the story:

  The CINC’s concern, and that’s a polite term for an 8.0 outburst on the Richter Scale, was that the Special Forces were going to start their own little war up there. And when they got in trouble, as he feared they would (he had his own ghosts from Vietnam to deal with, remember), he would have to bail them out with regular Army troops. In response, Buster carefully pointed out that the MH-53 PAVE LOW helicopters of the SOFs had to lead the way because they were equipped with the new, accurate NAVISTAR global positioning satellite (GPS) navigation systems needed to find the radars. He further reported that the actual shooting would be done by regular Army AH-64A Apache attack helicopters of the 101st Air Assault division. He then added that the PAVE LOWs would also provide up-to-the-minute satellite communications, as well as provide a combat search and rescue (CSAR) capability, if it was needed.

  This idea of Army helicopters striking the first blow of the war really appealed to the CINC and greatly worked in our favor. To wit, even though the F-117 Stealth fighters were approaching Baghdad, and the air- and sea-launched cruise missiles were on their way, the first actual ordnance on target in the war would be delivered by the regular forces of the U.S. Army. It’s sort of like locating your Navy base in South Carolina when Mendel Rivers was in Congress. Though you could build the base at just about any harbor, it sure was going to be a lot smoother if you put it in Charleston, South Carolina. In our case, while anyone could drop the first bomb to hit a target, it made sense to use the Apaches. And it sure made the briefing with the CINC go a lot smoother!

  CENTAF COMMANDER

  Here, meanwhile, are Chuck Horner’s reflections on the responsibilities he faced as he got back into the saddle:

  I had several jobs, so I guess I didn’t have to worry about boredom.

  Planning for the offensive while maintaining the defense was job one.

  Related to that was job two, which was to make sure we were ready at all times to go to war.

  Job three was to be the leader without giving the impression of wanting to be in charge.

  In this regard, I had to be especially sensitive in my approach to the contingents from the other nations in the Coalition. They expected me to lead, yet it was important for me to respect their inputs and concerns. In other words, I had to create the trust that would make them want to come to me for ideas, help, and coordination. On the other hand, if I needed anything from them, I had to be very careful how I approached them. And when putting together my guidance to U.S. airmen of all services, I had to make sure it was sound, not only for the sake of my own people, but for the sake of the Coalition partners. If they could agree with it, then they would nod and say, “That sounds good to me.”

  I worked very hard to create an environment of openness, respect, and trust. There were no secrets, no special friends; all of us were equal and important, regardless of service or nation.

  This attitude sometimes rankled my people, but they soon caught on and operated in the same mode (except for the majors from the USAF and the USMC; they always kept a wary eye on one another).

  Job four was to be the spiritual leader of the airmen, primarily of the USAF, but (in a more understated role) of units from the allies as well.

  What do I mean? First of all, I visited each unit as often as possible to make sure they had what they needed (to the extent that I could get it for them). They needed a lot: In some places, the folks lived in tents. Others in the early days had abysmal food (some meat they got had hair and teeth). Others had trouble getting mail, intelligence products, or weapons. And from time to time there were small problems with the host nation that I was able to nip with a friendly word to the local commander.

  A big part of doing this job was just being seen. This means a lot to the troops living in uncertainty (How long are we going to be here? When is the war going to start?) and in difficult conditions (where the temperature is 110 degrees Fahrenheit, and they live in tents, without cold beer, far away from home).

  At the same time, the commanders knew when I was coming and that I would be asking about how the troops were being taken care of. Although they all knocked themselves out to take care of their own troops, it helped when they could go to the local host commander and say, “You know about those gym privileges you were going to give my women on Wednesday nights? Well, General Horner is coming tomorrow, and I know he is going to beat me up about that. So can you help me out?” And General Mohammed (not a real name), who had been avoiding the issue, since he did not want women in his gym on Wednesday nights because his own troops couldn’t use it then, would say something like, “Yes, I think it is a wise thing for the women to have use of the gym one night a week. But you must make sure that the doors are guarded and that no men are allowed to see them in their sports clothing.” (By men, he of course meant his own men, some of whom would have been offended at the sight and might have complained to the local religious police.) But his real message was more like, “Okay, you got me, because your request is reasonable and I am your host. And besides, I don’t want you to tell Horner that I am not helping you out, because he might go back to Behery and then I’d get chewed out.”

  To sum up, my job in Riyadh was to serve the CINC and form the Coalition. My job as a commander was to care for the troops. And my job as the JFACC was to provide for vision and esprit de corps.

  Just about everything I watched over was of course the responsibility of someone in the staff. For example, Bill Rider in logistics, Randy Witt in communications, and Randy Randolph, the surgeon, had specific responsibilities in areas such as fuel, munitions, spare parts for Rider; lines of communication, message traffic flow, equipment status for Witt; and public health, hospitals, and medical evacuation plans for Randolph. I didn’t know anything about these matters — all of which are pass/fail in war — but I knew enough to know when they had all the bases covered; and I could help them get what they needed when they were having problems with their counterparts back in the States.

  Though rank is not that big a deal in the Air Force, and we are taught that getting the job done is more important, still, each of these deputies was a colonel, while their counterparts in the States were two- or three-star generals. Thus, there was friction now and then. The folks in Europe and the States busted their asses to help us, but sometimes they had a different appreciation for what we needed than we did. Sometimes, in honest differences of opinion, a general tends to think he is more right than the colonel way out there in Riyadh. Well, if I sided with my colonel, then the guy back in the States had no choice but to give in; for ours was the only show in town, and the Chief of Staff of the Air Force was not only my dear friend, but he sure didn’t want Schwarzkopf telling Powell that the Air Force was not supporting their troops in the field. Keep in mind that I did not throw my weight around, but I was well aware of the power I had, and I didn’t hesitate to indicate a willingness to use it when it was appropriate to do so. In the process I hurt a few feelings, but only those that needed to be hurt.

  THE MIKE DUGAN FIASCO

  General Mike Dugan became Chief of Staff of the Air Force in August 1990, taking over from General Larry Welch. The two men could not have been more different.
Welch was shy, retiring, and shunned publicity, while Dugan was outgoing, flamboyant, and courted the press. He was also blazingly candid, and had a striking aptitude for putting his foot in his mouth.

  In September, Dugan made a trip to Riyadh during the same week Colin Powell was in the Kingdom for update briefings (as Chief of Staff, Dugan’s relationship to CENTAF was at best indirect, and thus the reason for the visit was of tenuous validity). The Chairman arrived on the scene quietly, bringing with him only an aide. Dugan arrived with an entourage, including several press people. Both the trip and the entourage were probably innocuous in themselves, though General Powell no doubt noticed and disapproved. Later events would cast them in a somewhat more sinister light.

  In fairness to General Dugan, we should point out that he felt General Welch’s inaccessibility had prevented the Air Force from gaining its fair share of press coverage. His own aim, therefore, was to build the Air Force’s credibility with the media. And he had courageously set out to present the USAF as it was — good, bad, and ugly. Looking later at the events of September, Chuck Horner is convinced that Dugan brought reporters along on his visit not for the sake of polishing his own ego, but to give the press an opportunity to see and highlight the men and women of the Air Force in the desert.

  In preparation for the visit, Horner asked General Schwarzkopf if Buster Glosson could brief the air campaign to General Dugan. The answer was a surprising no, owing to the CINC’s deep concerns about security. This was not intended as a slight. Security was (and had to be) tight. So, for example, when Powell was briefed, Lieutenant General Tom Kelly, the J-3 of the joint staff, was left out. Because he was not cleared, he was not told about the plan. Schwarzkopf undoubtedly was also far from eager to have Washington brass second-guessing him or trying to run his war — certainly well-founded concerns.

  Nevertheless, Horner insisted. “After all,” he told the CINC, “this is the Air Force leader and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And it will mostly be Air Force people who execute this plan.”

  And Schwarzkopf finally relented.

  The briefing itself pleased Dugan. In fact, it would have been hard for him not to like it. The information held no surprises for an airman, and indicated that Horner, Glosson, and the Black Hole gang had developed a thoughtful, executable plan.

  During the flight back to Washington, however, the affair began to turn messy. General Dugan (undoubtedly in an expansive mood following his successful visit) discussed with members of his press entourage what might happen if an air campaign were to be launched against Iraq. The remarks were generalized and broad. He simply described how any airman would have conducted war against Iraq at this time and place, information every airman knows as well as he knows his own skin. In the process of describing the upcoming battle, it was clear that the Army would play second string behind the Air Force’s lead (another act that was later given a somewhat sinister interpretation in some camps, though in the event it turned out to be correct).

  Unfortunately, there is only one really good way to conduct an air campaign, which meant Dugan was guilty of giving away secrets. And there is no doubt that Dugan gave out information that had been outlined in specific detail in the air campaign plan briefing; and that he had made inferences and remarks which could have been taken as disrespectful to the Army, Navy, and Israel. There is also no doubt that keeping Saddam Hussein ignorant of U.S. war strategy made absolute sense; to do otherwise jeopardized the lives of pilots.

  So in telling the airpower story, he gave away secrets, put down the Army, and was crucified for it. As the old children’s joke has it, “Open mouth, insert foot.”

  On Sunday, September 16, the story broke in the Washington Post. An outraged Colin Powell called Schwarzkopf and Cheney. An outraged General Schwarzkopf called Chuck Horner, who shared his boss’s outrage. And the next day Secretary Cheney called Mike Dugan to fire him. He had paid for his foolishness by being relieved from duty.

  The official reason for the public execution of General Dugan was his revelation of secrets, and it is true, he was guilty of that. However, a case can be made that his real crime was insensitivity to the role of the CINC. It was Norman Schwarzkopf’s responsibility, not Mike Dugan’s, to describe how the air campaign in the Gulf Theater would be conducted. Dugan failed to appreciate that. Even his trip to Saudi Arabia was of doubtful wisdom from the point of view of his command responsibility. Yes, he was Chief of Staff of the Air Force; but he was also out of the direct command loop of CENTCOM.

  Chuck Horner says in summary:

  I can tell you that while I love Mike Dugan as a close friend, I was hurt by his interview. First, even though both of us hate ego people (and granting that I am one myself), I felt he was on an ego trip. Second, I felt he had betrayed the trust I had put in him when I’d persuaded Schwarzkopf to let us brief him. But then, third, after I got my ruffled feathers back in place, I felt sorry for Dugan. I was surprised he didn’t act smarter. Why not? I believe he had been suckered in by his own enthusiasm and the euphoria and false expectations you get when you become a high muckety-muck, like the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, with everyone congratulating you and telling you how smart you are and how pretty. The line between self-confidence and inflated ego is very fine, and generals too easily slip over to the inflated side of the line. I know I’ve done that, and it is likely that Mike Dugan did this time, and paid for it.

  BRIEFINGS IN WASHINGTON

  Even as Buster Glosson and his Black Hole team were pounding out the air campaign, a select group of Army planners had been developing a ground campaign. The team, called the Jedi Knights, was led by Lieutenant Colonel Joe Purvis from the Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth. The Jedi Knights had developed a ground campaign plan that called for a single U.S. Army Corps, U.S. Marine Corps, British, and Islamic force attack into Kuwait.

  Bear in mind that they were looking to attack an army twice the size of theirs — half a million men, including the elite Republican Guards, with their up-to-date Soviet armor and equipment — and that the Iraqis had been busily fortifying the Saudi-Kuwait border with artillery, mines, trenches, barbed wire, fire ditches (ditches that would be filled with oil and then ignited), and other obstacles to invasion.

  By October 6, Purvis’s planners had developed several options. The most desirable of these involved an enveloping flank attack to the west of the Iraq-Kuwait border (which lay along the Wadi al Batin, the dry riverbed that slanted north and east from the southwest corner of Kuwait). However, there were initial problems with this choice (which, of course, was the plan that was eventually adopted): Primarily, it was thought that not enough forces were available to effect the envelopment, keep the pressure on Iraqi forces along the Saudi-Kuwait border, and maintain a sufficient reserve. Army doctrine requires certain force ratios — that is, friendly-to-enemy ratios; and the forces then available to CENTCOM didn’t satisfy these numbers. Secondarily, no one knew whether the desert west of Kuwait could support armor. How hard was the ground? No one knew for sure.

  What options were then open to Schwarzkopf? None of his other choices was appealing. The best of them seemed to be to focus his attack into the western sector of Kuwait, drive north to the heights near Mutlaa Pass (west of Kuwait City), and hope that counterattacking Republican Guards could be taken out by air. And if that somehow didn’t go as planned?… Well, they’d improvise.

  Predictably, Schwarzkopf was set against this. That he never liked attacking into the heart of Iraqi defenses was always clear to Chuck Horner; that he liked armor was also clear: the lightly armored XVIIIth Airborne Corps was never his favorite attacking force against armor. And in fact, he didn’t have far to look: he had the “Left Hook”—the envelopment west of the Wadi. For that, however, he would need another heavy corps. How was he going to get it? He would present what he had to President Bush, Secretary Cheney, and General Powell — with all of its limitations. When they saw how risky this was, they
would realize he needed more, and they would give him the extra corps he required for the Left Hook.

  In hindsight, we now know that the Army planners never sufficiently took into account the ultimate effect of the air campaign on the Iraqi Army, though in all fairness, no one — not even the most optimistic airpower advocate — anticipated how seriously air attacks would damage the Iraqi Army prior to the ground campaign. If this success had been taken into account, the Left Hook would have been executable with pre-VIIth Corps Coalition forces.

  ★ On October 9, Buster Glosson and a team from CENTCOM left for Washington to brief the air campaign to General Powell (on October 10) and to the President and his chief advisers (on October 11). Heading the team was Major General Bob Johnston, the CENTCOM chief of staff. The other Army briefer was Lieutenant Colonel Joe Purvis.

  Before the briefers left Riyadh, Schwarzkopf made it forcefully clear to Johnston that he was not recommending any of the ground schemes Purvis was going to brief. His aim was to generate the question “What do you need to develop an acceptable ground campaign?” With the expected answer being “A heavy corps.”

  En route to President Bush, the briefings went through the usual reviews, which agreed that while the air campaign was well constructed and credible, the focus of the land campaign on sending forces directly into the teeth of the Iraqi defenses appeared unimaginative. Of course, it was not a lack of imagination that had given birth to this unhappy situation, it was a lack of friendly forces.