by Tom Clancy
An air commander manages loss rates. If you have time, and the target is not urgent (either in time or in priority), then you back off from great risk (on those occasions, for example, when the weather will make it difficult to visually acquire SAM missiles and outmaneuver them). On the other hand, if the situation is dire — if, say, a ground unit is being overrun — then you order the force into greater danger. At Khafji, we lost an AC-130 that stayed too long over the battlefield. Day came, and the sky grew light enough for an Iraqi shoulder-fired SAM gunner to visually acquire him and shoot his missile. Our pilot was not reckless. He elected to err on the unsafe side because there were lots of high-priority targets for him to shoot. It was a bad judgment, but that’s how airmen think and evaluate risk. If the target had been more ordinary and he had been facing the same risk, he’d have gone somewhere else and hit an easier target.
Because I absolutely had to knock out the Iraqi air defense command and control, I risked sending all the F-117s to Baghdad (I didn’t realize then how good Stealth was). However, if I had the same appreciation of Stealth that I had during the opening moments of the war, and the target was the Baath Party headquarters, I would not have sent the F-117s. That target wasn’t worth the gamble.
To me, the goals of the air superiority campaign were threefold:
(1) To render the Iraqi fighters inoperable. We would blind them by cutting off their command and control, terrorize them by shooting down anything that flew, and make life difficult by bombing airfields and radar sites.
(2) To render the radar-guided surface-to-air missiles impotent. We would attack command and control and use support jamming EA-6Bs and EF-111s, in order to force each piece of the system into autonomous operations (in that way they had to radiate with their own radars to find a target, making them more vulnerable to HARM attacks). We would terrorize the operators to induce them not to use their radars. We would kill them on a priority basis, using Wild Weasels and USN HARM-equipped aircraft. We would self-protect by using ECM pods, and by flying in VFR conditions, so aircraft could see the radar-guided SAMs and outmaneuver them.
(3) To render guns and shoulder-fired IR SAMs useless. We would fly at medium altitude; keep the time at low altitude (such as at the bottom of a dive bomb pass) at a minimum; and — the age-old lesson we always relearn in combat — we would not make multiple passes on the same target.
From the start, General Schwarzkopf was always asking when we would have air superiority, but I would never tell him. I knew we would be able to do anything we wanted to from the start, yet I also knew the Iraqis would contest control of the air as long as Saddam could fire his pistol toward the sky (as he often did in newsreels). The CINC wanted some magic number. I knew there was no such thing. I knew the answer lay in Chuck Horner’s gut, and it was determined by my gut feelings about the losses and efficiency of the operation.
That is why my first stop every day was at the search-and-rescue cell to talk over losses. How did they happen and what was the status of the crews? That stop had many purposes: one, to keep reminding me that war is about death and killing and that our guys were dying, just as the enemy was; two, to keep the faith with the aircrews (we were honor bound to do our best to rescue them if they got shot down); three, to learn what was working and what was failing so that I could crank that information into my targeting, rules, advice, and strategy.
So when did we get air superiority?
We had it before the war began, because we had the means to get it — equipment, intelligence, training, and the courage of the aircrews. We had it the minute Bernard Shaw went off the air, because that told me the central nervous system of the Iraqi air defense system had been severed. We had it when it became clear that Iraqi fighters, their most potent weapon, were being shot down and our fighters were not. We had it when it was clear that Iraqi SAM radar operators were not turning on their radar, even as they shot missiles blindly into the sky. We had it when RAF Tornadoes finally stopped flying at low altitude.
About three days into the war, General Schwarzkopf announced that we had air superiority. This information did not come from me. He just went ahead and said it, I suppose because it was “good news from the front” sort of thing. Later he announced that we had air supremacy. Again, I never told him that, but I guess it provided him a means to show progress. Did I mind? No, of course not. My job was to plan and employ airpower operations against an enemy and to do that as efficiently as possible (realizing that war is about the most inefficient thing man does… and the most stupid). His job was to handle the bigger picture.
★ Here’s how we did all this.
I’ll say it again, the Iraqi air defenses were massive. One had only to tune in to CNN and watch the night sky over Baghdad to get some idea of what our aircraft confronted throughout the war. What you did not see were the Iraqi fighters and surface-to-air missiles.
Our plan to control the air was complex. First, we would blind the Iraqis by destroying communications links between the air defense search radars, the commanders who dispatched interceptor aircraft or assigned targets to individual SAM batteries, and the pilots who would be given vectors toward their target. Second, we would strike fear in the minds of the Iraqi Air Force pilots, SAM radar operators, and antiaircraft artillery gunners. Our goal was to make them hate to come to work. We wanted them convinced that if they tried to engage our aircraft they would die. Nothing subtle, no nuances, just fear. Finally, we would avoid as many defenses as possible.
★ There is a new buzzword going around nowadays—“information war.”
When people talk about it, they usually mean putting viruses in a computer or making networks crash. Information war can do that, but it is really a lot more.
The key concept involves getting inside your enemy’s decision cycle. That is, you know what is going on faster and better than he does, and can therefore make and implement decisions faster. This permits you to take and maintain the initiative, and causes him to lose control.
At Khafji, for example, Joint STARS told me where and when the enemy was moving — which of course told me nothing about his intentions. Nevertheless, I attacked his movement, and as a result destroyed his attack before it started. He could not form up his attacking forces or mass for the attack, because when he tried, his convoys en route to the battle or invasion were destroyed. Perhaps this is stretching a point, but you could make the case that my information superiority and my increased capacity to analyze and decide what that information meant gave me the means to thwart an attack before I even knew I was being attacked.
Information war, then, is primarily a function of the increased pace and accuracy of data now yielded by computers, sensors, and communications systems.
The analysis of the KARI command control and communication system, as well as the subsequent disruption and dismemberment of its elements, was information warfare pure and simple. Our selection of targets was the product of this analysis — who was in charge of which sectors, which kinds of sensors, whether a radar site or a man out in the desert with binoculars and a telephone. We were counting on the Iraqi reliance on centralized control. Once it was gone, the air defense system would be disorganized.
Attacking the KARI computers and links was the divide-and-conquer concept on a massive scale. Our strategy meant the “AT & T” telephone exchange had to go, and it did. Communication cables in the desert and under bridges had to go, and they did. Microwave antennas located throughout the country had to go, and they did. Some of the links were off-limits, owing to their location in hotels or near religious buildings, and so they survived. But in the first forty-eight hours of attacks, we got enough to cripple KARI. After that, individual elements — fighter aircraft, radars, SAM sites, and AAA batteries — had to fight alone and uncoordinated, acting on their own initiative and judgment; and they had not been trained to do that.
★ Meanwhile, I had no doubt that the Iraqi defenders were as intelligent and courageous as any soldiers. I also
had no doubt that they loved their country, and were willing to die in its defense, no matter how much they loved or despised Saddam Hussein and his gang. My conclusion: after weakening their systems of defense, we had to weaken their spirit of defense.
To that end, we conducted a campaign to strike fear in their hearts. I knew they would man their radars, fire their SAMs, and shoot their guns at our aircraft. They would do this, first, in defense of their people and their nation, but perhaps more important, to avoid being arrested and executed by their military superiors. I wanted thousands of Iraqi gunners who felt good about shooting (they would under most circumstances) but didn’t feel bad about missing. You know, shoot your SAM missile, especially when the major is around, but don’t bother to turn on the tracking radar needed to guide the SAM to the Coalition aircraft. Bluntly, we were going to bribe the Iraqi air defenders by using their own lives as the payment.
The main target of the intimidation campaign was surface-to-air radar operations. This was nothing new. In Vietnam, we had learned the hard way that the SAM is a tough nut to crack. Now we had a war with lots of SAMs, most of which were more deadly than Vietnam’s SA-2s. We also had F-4G Wild Weasels that were equipped with the new AGM-88 high-speed anti-radiation missile (HARM), a radar-killing weapon more accurate and easier to employ than anything we’d used in Vietnam. Though the F-4Gs were oldsters next to their F-16 wingmen, they were much more capable than the Vietnam-era F-105G Thunderchiefs I had flown. Most of all, we had a host of Wild Weasel aircrews who had benefited from superb electronic training at monthly Red Flag exercises at Nellis AFB in Nevada. The Air Force, Marines, Navy, and allied crews who had flown in Red Flag knew what these Weasels could do. The F-4G “Rhinos” were old and ugly, but now that we were at war the first thing the F-16 flight leaders wanted to know was “Where will the Weasels be during our next mission?”
But first, we had to light up the minds of the SAM operators with fear. And to do this, we staged a party—“Puba’s Party.”
General Larry Henry (“Puba”) had come to me in August to work in the “Black Hole” developing our offensive air campaign. His experience as an electronic-warfare officer in Wild Weasels, and his generally twisted mind, created the party we threw for the Iraqi radar operators.
His script was simple to build but difficult to execute. First, BGM-109 Tomahawk missiles and F-117As would arrive unannounced over Baghdad, their exploding bombs and warheads ensuring that Iraqi defenders who were not awake would get up and report to their units. At that point, the air defenses would be on full alert and fully manned, eager for the forthcoming battle. Puba would then send over Baghdad a host of small unmanned drone aircraft (ground-launched Northrop BQM-74s) that were designed to look like full-size manned aircraft on SAM radarscopes. Immediately behind the drones would be HARM-laden Air Force and Navy fighter aircraft. As the drones entered the SAM-defended areas over Baghdad, the SAM radars would radiate and the Iraqi operators would track their targets and fire their missiles. What they would not see was almost a hundred HARM missiles being launched from just outside their radar coverage.
And so it happened on the first night of the war. The Iraqi SAM operators succeeded in downing nearly all of the drones, and in so doing they provided dozens of targets for the incoming anti-radiation missiles.
The results had to be horrible. And from the horror came fear.
After Puba’s Party, the number of SAM missile firings remained high, while the number of Coalition aircraft shot down remained very low. As we had hoped, the guidance radars were not turned on. This was the feedback that told us Puba’s Party was a stunning success. It was not easy, and it wasn’t cheap (the drones and HARMs cost a bundle!), but it made possible all the efficiencies of precision munitions delivered from medium to high altitude that shortened the war and reduced the loss of life.
It was Puba’s Party that gave us the vital medium-altitude sanctuary. Sure, some continued to try low-level tactics to escape the radar SAMs, but as our losses at low altitude mounted, the message became very plain: get up to altitude and rely on the electronic battle now being directed by General Glenn Profitt, Larry Henry’s replacement.
This lesson did not come easy. During Desert Shield, I had laid down the law to the wing commanders at the bases: no low-level tactics or training unless they could explain to me why they wanted their aircrews to do it. I expected a great gnashing of teeth, wails, and moans (low level keeps coming back, like a monster at the end of a horror movie). In the event, however, only two commanders came forward to argue for low-altitude tactics — Colonels Hal Hornberg of the F-15E wing and Tom Lennon of the F-111 wing. Because I’d promised the wing commanders they could run their own show in areas like tactics, I let them return to low-level attack tactics. But after a few days of real combat, real bullets, and unfortunately, real losses, both wings pitched out low-level operations and joined their friends at medium altitude.
When I asked the F-16 and A-10 wing commanders why they didn’t ask to go back to flying among the rocks, their answer was simple: “We want to survive this war.” Why, then, did the F-111s and F-15Es have to find out the hard way? I thought about that long and hard after the war. It couldn’t have been peacetime training. No one spends more time flying at low altitude than the A-10s. Their slower speed permits the Warthogs to fly legally almost anywhere in the United States at low altitude. And yet, even with the protection of their titanium armor, the A-10s didn’t want to tool around the Iraqis at low altitude. Why F-111s and F-15Es? The answer was twofold, I reasoned. First, except for the infrared sensor, their systems were optimized for low altitude. Their attack radars worked best at the low grazing angles afforded by low-altitude ingress. Most important, in my view, one half of the crew of these two-place fighters — the weapon system operator — earned his living telling the pilot where to go. If you were at low altitude without GPS (and only the F-16s had GPS), the pilot relied on the WSO for navigational assistance. When it came to attack, the WSO was the king; but if they didn’t go low-level, the rest of the trip could be pretty meaningless.
Iraqi Air Defense Radar Activity
Italian and British Tornadoes also suffered losses — all, save one, the result of low-level, low-altitude tactics. In fact, in the first two days of the war, approximately two-thirds of our losses were suffered by aircraft flying low-level tactics, even as the majority of our sorties were being flown at medium altitude.
Because they were taking on the most difficult, most well-defended targets outside of Baghdad, the RAF GR-1 Tornadoes were especially hard hit. Saudi and British Tornadoes were equipped with a munition designed to shut down airfields, the JP-233, which had to be delivered at low altitude. But the airfields bristled with defenses, especially AAA guns, which continued to take a discouraging toll of Tornadoes well after the F-111s and F-15Es got back up to medium altitude. The Tornadoes had few good alternatives to flying low altitude. And I had no alternative but to let them do it. If I was loath to dictate tactics to USAF wings, I was definitely not going to do it to an ally. But if I could find an opening to introduce the subject, I would.
One night at a gathering of national air commanders, I said, “We’ve gotten some experience in this war. This looks like a good place to take a look at what we are doing right and wrong. I suggest we form a multinational tactics team to evaluate our operations and suggest changes they think appropriate.”
Without hesitation, Air Vice Marshal Bill Wratten spoke up: “I think that’s a good idea, and I’d like to lead the effort.” I couldn’t have been more pleased. Bill, like all the rest of us, had been in anguish over the losses. Even though there had been all sorts of speculation about the causes and the possible fixes, we needed an experienced airman close to the scene of the action to give us an objective view. Bill Wratten was just the man, and with the support of Air Chief Marshall Patty Hine, we were able to stop losses due to low-altitude tactics.
Here are some facts and figures:
We
lost twelve GR-1s (of which one was Italian and two were RSAF). Nine were shot down or crashed doing low-level attacks, two were lost at medium altitude, and one ran out of fuel. The GR-1 loss rate was significantly higher than other aircraft:
The Tornado, which flew more low-level tactics than any other aircraft, had a loss rate nine times the F-16s and over six times the fairly slow A-10s.
★ AAA and SAMs were dangerous, but the most lethal threat to our attack was the enemy’s interceptor aircraft.
Why?
Ground-based defenses stayed in one place and could be avoided by flying around them, if we knew where they were (and we usually did), or by high- or medium-altitude attack. If a SAM site shot at you, you could evade the missile and distance yourself from the site at 600 to 800 knots. A MiG, on the other hand, could encounter you anywhere over Iraq. If he jumped you, you might not be able to disengage; and since he was as fast as you, he could take a missile or gun shot if you turned tail to run.
I had studied the Iraqi Air Force for years, and had found many strengths, including a number of first-rate aircraft equipped with adequate missiles, a comprehensive command-and-control structure, and a few excellent pilots. Its single greatest weakness was its reliance on centralized command and control; but the training its pilots received was not uniformly good, and the logistics support was shaky.
To have had a chance against us, the Iraqis needed innovative tactics and an awareness of the air situation. They had neither.
In the hands of a good pilot, virtually any interceptor can badly hurt an attacking air force. Iraq had some excellent aircraft, especially their MiG-29s and Mirage F-1s, as well as an inventory of older aircraft, principally MiG-21s and MiG-23s. Though the older aircraft weren’t much of a threat on their own, if they’d been used in conjunction with the newer Russian and French models, they could have caused us serious problems. Their best tactics would have been to engage our air-to-air fighters with their top-of-the-line fighters, then run the older MiGs in on the bomb-laden aircraft using high-speed hit-and-run tactics. Even if they were unable to achieve a kill, their supersonic bounce would have forced our bombers to jettison their air-to-ground ordnance (externally stored bombs and missiles cause drag and have to be dropped).