by Tom Clancy
Horner expected to be candid and straightforward, and to tell the Secretary honestly what airpower could and couldn’t do. For instance, he expected efficiency to drop for a time after the first three days. There would be an unavoidable lag until intelligence could be exploited and aircraft directed onto new targets (though this new targeting would be done in a matter of minutes). During the briefing, the Secretary seemed to welcome the candor, and in retrospect, it is clear that he would not have accepted a slick presentation that promised smooth and easy success.
When Horner made his presentation, he stood in front of a table where Cheney was sitting, with Schwarzkopf on Cheney’s left, Powell on his right, and Wolfowitz on Powell’s right. The other key component commanders were seated in the back, and the lights were low. As far as Horner was concerned, there were just five people in the room. Nobody else mattered. Though Cheney, Powell, and Wolfowitz did not expect him to fail, and they were not there to score debating points, their questions and comments were intense and probing; they intended to examine their concerns in detail.
The results, though, were rewarding. After it was all over, it was clear that the Secretary fully understood Horner’s intentions and accepted his inability to answer every question as one of the prices of honesty.
Schwarzkopf made few initial comments. He seemed to be waiting to see how Horner made out before he took sides.
As it turned out, hopes for an hourlong briefing were misplaced. It went three hours that day, and continued into the next.
The first hard questions addressed the destruction of Iraqi forces in the Kuwaiti theater of operations — specifically, how long would it take to destroy 50 percent of Iraqi armor and artillery. Because different studies gave different answers, Horner walked Cheney through the analytical effort that provided the basis for his own estimate.
A Pentagon air staff study had claimed the 50 percent goal would be achieved in less than a week, but that just didn’t pass the common-sense test, so Buster Glosson had asked the Plans and Analysis people to change their assumptions and fine-tune the data. Their new study expanded the campaign to three weeks — still unrealistic, in Horner’s view. In his best judgment, it would take up to six weeks of air combat to prepare the battlefield.
Cheney gave a nod to indicate that this made sense to him, and the briefing continued (the six weeks figure turned out to be substantially accurate).
The two hardest issues concerned Scuds and biological weapons. Though chemical weapons were also discussed, these were expected to be delivered by artillery shells and used primarily against military targets. Since the military had protection against these weapons,[56] Cheney was not greatly worried about them.
The “Bugs” were another thing. Not only could biological agents be spread in Israel and the populated areas of Saudi Arabia with relative ease, but there were no effective antidotes against them.
Earlier that month, Saddam Hussein had test-fired his homebuilt, “improved” version of the Soviet Scud missiles. To double the range of his Scuds, Saddam had to cut his warhead in half. Moreover, the Scud was already terribly inaccurate. To a military person like Horner, this meant the weapon was insignificant. To a civilian, however, a wildly inaccurate, seemingly unstoppable weapon capable of randomly destroying your house and family was very significant. As was demonstrated by the V-2 attacks in World War II and the Scud attacks in the 1980s War of the Cities between Iran and Iraq, even inaccurate ballistic missiles can terrorize civilian populations. Horner missed the point about the Scuds. Dick Cheney did not. He was a lot closer to the voters.
Horner outlined for the Secretary how his bombers would attack the fixed Scud erector launchers in western Iraq during the first hours of the air campaign. This was followed by a description of the strikes planned for Scud production, storage, fuel production, and repair facilities (although he believed most of these would be empty of the Scuds and their mobile launchers). Finally came the words Cheney was not eager to hear: “There is no way I can stop the Iraqis from launching Scuds at Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Israel from their fleet of mobile launchers.” When the Secretary pressed further, Horner wanted to assure him that the problem would be temporary and the solution was at hand; but there was no way he could honestly claim that. At best he could only describe their measures to suppress Scud launches, or, failing that, to defend against them with Patriot batteries once they were launched. Stopping the Scuds, Horner had to admit, was hopeless.
This did not please Cheney, but he was a realist. He understood that if Horner had possessed a bullet — magic or otherwise — that prevented Scuds from falling on Israel or Saudi Arabia, he would have used it.
★ Saddam Hussein’s use of poison gas on his own people and during the Iran-Iraq War was widely known. Less was known about Iraqi research and production of germ-warfare weapons. That meant there were a number of “what-ifs” to consider long before the Cheney briefing, all posing a number of dilemmas. The first problem was to isolate the Iraqi capabilities to produce, store, and deliver biological weapons.
Though intelligence information pointed to a number of laboratories capable of producing such agents, targeting production facilities was difficult, since very little was required to grow the agents — especially for people indifferent to protecting their work force from inadvertent exposure. To manufacture biological agents, no special chemicals (as in the case of most poison gases) or special equipment (as in the case of nuclear weapons) were required. Every hospital has a laboratory capable of producing biological agents, and food-production facilities can be changed into germ factories without difficulty.
If production facilities were hard to counter, delivery was even harder. Biological agents can be distributed to their intended victims any number of ways.
Against military forces, these were the choices:
The most effective delivery system would have been an aerosol-fogging machine (like those used for mosquito control) pulled behind a car or truck; but driving such a device into Israel or Saudi Arabia presented obvious problems. A helicopter equipped with spray bars could also have worked, but given the effectiveness of U.S.-Saudi air defenses, its potential for harm was limited. The agents could have been shot in artillery shells, placed in missile warheads, or dropped in bombs, but in each of these cases, dispersal patterns are small, and any explosion used to break open the projectile case would have proved fatal to some of its payload. In short, delivering biological agents against Coalition troops in the field would not have been efficient, especially since those forces were already prepared to endure attack from chemical weapons. The suit and mask designed to protect the soldier from gas attack also provided a measure of protection from biological weapons.
Biological agents could possibly have damaged Coalition armies and even terrorized many of the troops, but they would have been far more effective in terrorizing and killing civilians in large cities. In cities are herded men, women, and children who don’t have available the gas masks and impregnated clothing needed to counter harmful agents. Because people are packed closely, small numbers of weapons offer effective coverage. Because the diseases can take several days to harm their victims, terror and confusion have ample time to get out of control. And because cities are usually dependent on centralized sources of fresh food and water, these sources are easy to contaminate. One scenario imagined Iraqi infiltrators entering Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf countries and releasing anthrax or botulism spores into water supplies.
Though air defenses and counter-ballistic missile operations could shield against most aircraft or missile-dispersed biological agents,[57] and Saudi border guards were doing a superb job picking up Iraqi infiltrators, such measures could only suppress delivery of biological agents. Total prevention could not be guaranteed.
That left storage as the best place to attack. And intelligence information pointed to Salman Park, just south of Baghdad, where botulism and anthrax spores were stored in Teflon containers in massive, well-c
onstructed, environmentally controlled bunkers.
Yet bombing these bunkers posed a dilemma for Horner and his planners. Would that destroy the spores, or would it release them into the atmosphere, where they could spread and contaminate the entire Arabian Peninsula? The choice then was this: To blow up the bunkers and kill every living thing on the Arabian Peninsula — a position given authoritative voice in a pair of scientific white papers published in England and the United States.[58] Or to let Saddam Hussein release the spores himself, which might also kill every living thing on the Arabian Peninsula.
As he was currently stationed on the Arabian Peninsula, Horner took the warning seriously, and there was no clear answer about the best course of action.
A solution to the dilemma came from an unexpected source.
One day in early December, an Army major, a biological-warfare expert from Fort Meade, Maryland, appeared at Horner’s door and presented his credentials (Horner never actually learned his name). “I understand you are concerned about Iraqi biological agents,” he said. Interested, Horner listened: “While the white papers often lead readers to conclude that any minute exposure to anthrax or botulism will be lethal,” he explained, “anthrax and botulism spores are not in fact as deadly as many so-called experts fear. In fact,” he noted, “we are often exposed to anthrax, perhaps every day; the spores live for years in the soil. Exposure itself is not a problem. It is the amount of exposure that constitutes the danger. And it takes a lot. Or,” he bluntly put it, “the best way to die from anthrax is to kiss a sick sheep.” He then pointed out that while heat, sunlight, and water — especially chlorinated water — killed the spores, these were no guarantees. Therefore, at the risk of fallout (primarily in Iraq), the most reasonable course was to destroy the agents and deny the enemy their use.
That seemed like a good idea to Chuck Horner.
Already, plans for the destruction of the bunkers had been made to minimize fallout. The idea was to crack open the bunkers when the wind was calm just before first light, then put cluster-bomb units on the stored agents to create the maximum heat with the minimum blast. For good measure, the attack would be ended by dropping randomly exploding land mines, in order to prevent the Iraqis from scavenging undamaged Teflon bottles of agents.
★ “Chuck,” Secretary Cheney asked, with deceptive simplicity, “what about attacks against the biological weapons storage areas?”
Horner described the target, summarized the Army major’s position, and then described the attack sequence proposed by his planners and weaponeers.
While Schwarzkopf kept silent and Cheney asked questions to better understand the issues, Powell and Wolfowitz offered counterarguments, citing the white papers condemning such attacks.
It was difficult for Horner to argue with Colin Powell, his military superior, in front of Powell’s superior, the Secretary of Defense, even when he believed he was correct. Nevertheless (diplomacy not being one of Horner’s strong suits), he set forth his reasons, and Powell and Wolfowitz disagreed. For a time there wasn’t much progress, since Cheney was withholding judgment, and Schwarzkopf continued to maintain his silence (though Horner remembers a gleam in his eye that said he enjoyed watching the Air Force general sweat).
The impasse continued until Horner recalled the larger issues. “Yes,” he told himself, “this is a war against aggression. But it is also a war against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. And while our calculations may be in error, and some innocent Iraqi civilians may die from the fallout resulting from our attack, that would serve a useful purpose. The contamination of Iraq would send a signal, provide a lesson, to any nation contemplating building and storing those horrible weapons.” It didn’t take Horner long to lay out this new line of reasoning. Paul Wolfowitz quickly picked it up, and now began to find reasons to attack the storage bunkers.
As support for Horner’s position waxed, Powell’s opposition waned, until Cheney finally turned to Schwarzkopf and asked, “Norm, what do you think?”
“I think we ought to do it,” Schwarzkopf answered.
Nothing more was said, and the bunkers remained on the target list.
As it turned out, they proved to be a difficult nut to crack, buried as they were under extensive layers of dirt and concrete. The munition selected for the job was the I-2000 bomb (Mark 84 bomb class), which was designed for that kind of job. The I-2000 Mark 84 had a steel nose that would not fracture when it hit reinforced concrete, and its time-delay fuse was in the tail, so the bomb could penetrate before it exploded. Finally, unlike most bombs, which are dropped on a slant, the I-2000 was dropped from medium altitude (which gave the bomb enough kinetic energy to penetrate the reinforced concrete and its earth overburden) directly over the target (which allowed its laser to guide it to a near-vertical angle). The force this generated was sufficient to penetrate most reinforced bunkers.
In the event, when the I-2000 penetrated the biobunker, its explosion touched off an enormous secondary explosion, with a vast fireball and prodigious quantities of billowing smoke. What was stored in that bunker will probably never be known, but it turned night into day.
After the war, Horner researched the available sources to see if there was evidence of fallout of biological agents. Though he found reports of Iraqi guards killed during the bombing attacks, no evidence of deaths from biological fallout appeared (there have been reports of postwar civilian deaths due to disease, but these cannot be connected to the bunker attacks).
After the bunker issue was settled, Horner’s briefing was over, and he returned to his seat between John Yeosock and Stan Arthur at the back of the room. The meeting ended with a brief discussion of ground operations.
COUNTDOWN
The final weeks were a jumble. The buildup and beddown, as well as plans and training, were proceeding satisfactorily, though with lurches and hang-ups. To ensure that the executors of the plan had a say in its planning, Buster Glosson took the ATO around to the bases, briefed the commanders and crews, and ran one last sanity check on the tactics, the timing, and the force packages of various bomb droppers and electronic-combat support aircraft. Anything that looked unworkable was changed on the spot. Horner continued working his role as cheerleader and team builder, visiting the bases and the units, giving encouragement, laying on hands. Yet he always managed to find time to keep up his own flying skills, by combining visits to the bases with training sorties (he averaged four to six F-16 sorties per week).
Surprisingly, not every second was filled with demands. During free moments, he read military history (provided by Dr. Dick Hallion, the USAF historian) to see how others had done the job he was now doing. Two he especially remembers were The Sky Over Baghdad, about the RAF in post- World War I Iraq, and Eagle Against the Sun, about the war with Japan. He learned there that MacArthur’s relationship with his air chief, Kenney, was very like his own with Schwarzkopf (both CINCs knew the importance of air to their overall combat plan, and both trusted their airman to carry out the right air strategy).
Finally, there was a round of official dinners with cabinet ministers, princes, heads of state, near heads of state, and other high-level people — somewhat daunting for a boy from Iowa, yet also a source of pride and a visible sign that he was moving up in the world. And in truth, important work was accomplished:
A dinner at the Crown Prince’s palace found Horner seated between the Saudi Ministers of Petroleum and Finance, both men educated in U.S. business schools, both extremely personable, both working hard to keep the wheels of the Coalition turning; and Horner needed help from them. In August, the Saudi government had agreed to pay for jet fuel, but no one in August had envisioned how large U.S. forces would grow. Later, the Ministry of Finance was reluctant to fund the rapidly increasing fuel bills from the Ministry of Petroleum; and the Ministry of Petroleum was therefore reluctant to refine and ship the jet fuel Horner’s increasingly large air forces were using. It was already costing $20 million a day to keep up air defen
se CAPs and conduct rehearsal training, and the costs were only going to grow. Over dinner, at Horner’s urging, the Minister of Finance agreed to send the money to the Minister of Petroleum, so he would send the jet fuel to Horner’s bases. (During Desert Storm, Saudi Arabia became a net importer of jet fuel, with an average of forty tanker ships per day inbound to the Kingdom.)
Horner had another problem persuading the Saudis to allow the staging of B-52s at Jeddah (where facilities were large and modern enough to handle them).
Saudi leaders were reluctant to allow large bombers — especially large bombers whose original function was to deliver nuclear weapons — to be based on their territory… and worse, near Mecca. Fighter-bombers and transports were another thing. The Saudis were used to fighters and transports taking off and landing at their bases.
At Prince Sultan’s horse farm about a mile across the highway from the international airport, Horner was able to engage Khaled on this issue.
Always sensitive to the likely Saudi reaction, he crafted his request carefully: “I know you don’t want to do this because of the impact it can have on your people,” he told the Prince, “but I need to base the B-52s closer to the enemy, so I can get more sorties out of them than if they have to fly all the way from England or Diego Garcia. If you’ll let me put them at Jeddah the first night of the war, and operate them out of there afterward, I will redeploy them out the day after the war ends. And besides,” he offered, “during the war there will be so much going on, the people won’t notice them.”