by Tom Clancy
BLUE-ON-BLUE
Friendly fire — blue-on-blue, fratricide, whatever you wish to call it — has been around as long as war. During the Gulf War, we put greater efforts than ever before into reducing this tragedy. Though we tried hard, and can take satisfaction from our efforts, it was a battle we did not win. The blue-on-blue statistics from the Gulf War are shocking. After-action reports of U.S. Army deaths indicate that about half of their losses were caused by friendly fire, and over 70 percent of U.S. Army tanks and APCs that were hit were hit by friendly ground fire.
In the Gulf, the majority of friendly-fire incidents occurred ground-to-ground; that is, people on the ground were hit by fire from ground-bound platforms.
On the other hand, there were no air-to-air blue-on-blue incidents — the result of stringent rules of engagement, modern technology, aircrew discipline… and luck.
Here is a story to illustrate all that:
Captain Gentner Drummond was an F-15C pilot assigned to Boomer McBroom’s 1st Tactical Fighter Wing at Dhahran, and he looked every inch like the central casting dream of a fighter pilot — tall, slim, handsome, steely-eyed, with a soft Oklahoma drawl. Of course, his name, “Gentner,” was a negative. It should have been Spike or Rip or Killer.
At any rate, this misnamed, but highly talented, fighter pilot was leading an element on MiG CAP south of Baghdad the first night of the war, when AWACS called out a bandit — high-speed, low-level, headed south out of the Baghdad area.
Gentner came hard left and rolled out on the vector he got from AWACS. He then pointed his antenna down and got an immediate lock on a target heading south 1,000 feet above ground level at very high speed. He began pushing the buttons on his stick and throttles that would identify the target and tell him whether or not it was friendly, and if friendly, what type of aircraft.
In the meantime, AWACS was calling for him to shoot.
Gentner knew that the AWACS controller had access to intelligence information from the Rivet Joint Aircraft that would confirm that the aircraft was Iraqi. Still, there was room for doubt.
As the F-15 pilot streaked through the night at 30,000 feet, he worked his system on the target. Time was running out. In a few moments, he’d be inside R minimum, which is the closest in range he could get to the target and still use his AIM-7 missile. There was still no ID.
Meanwhile, the AWACS controller was ordering Gentner to shoot.
He decided not to. He wanted to be sure in his own mind, and he figured that his altitude advantage would allow him to perform a stern conversion. That way he could get a better ID of the target, and then down it if it was an Iraqi.
Pulling his Eagle around hard left and down, he screamed into the night and pulled up alongside a Saudi Tornado on his way home from a successful strike deep into Iraq.
For this act of restraint, Gentner received a Distinguished Flying Cross — that is, he received it for not shooting down an aircraft. His composure under the most extreme stress, his use of logic and judgment, and his concern for human life prevented what could easily have been a tragic mistake.
In fact, his was not the only such story, yet it is typical of the stress our aircrews had to endure, as well as the high standards of conduct expected of them.
★ Unfortunately, our record in air-to-ground combat was not perfect.
More than twenty friendly ground forces, U.S., Saudi, and British, were killed by weapons delivered from the air.
Thus, during the confusion at the Battle of Al-Khafji, a USAF A-10’s Maverick hit a U.S. Marine armored vehicle, a Marine A-6 bombed a Marine convoy, a Marine gunship attacked a Saudi National Guard armored car, and an unknown aircraft strafed Saudi troops who had wandered into a free-fire zone. Later in the war, a pair of Air Force A-10s attacked two British armored personnel carriers, Army Apaches destroyed two Army APCs, and our airmen destroyed two more British armored vehicles.
Lives were lost in each of these tragic events.
Though all were great tragedies, when placed against the total of air-to-ground attacks, their numbers were quite small — especially compared with other wars. Moreover, we must also weigh in the lives of friendly ground forces saved because air attacks on the Iraqis were so devastating. Of course, no saving of friendly lives makes any loss of friendly life “acceptable” to a commander. Mistakes happen, to be sure, but every effort should be made to prevent needless killings.
★ The officer I tapped to work the fratricide-prevention problem was Lieutenant Colonel Joe Bob Phillips and his fighter Weapons Tactics Team. Joe Bob and his team of eight fighter weapons school instructors had arrived early in February, after General “Tiny” (six feet four and three hundred pounds) West, the commander of the Fighter Weapons School at Nellis, had offered them, both to augment our staff in Riyadh and to capture Gulf war experiences. They’d come not as experts—“We’ll tell you how to win this one”—but as field hands. After the war, they could go home to train others, using what we had learned in the only school for combat — war.
With typical fighter-pilot confidence and enthusiasm, Joe Bob and his team went to work. They had a big question to answer: if we had four incidents at Al-Khafji, how many would we face when five corps were unleashed on the Iraqis?
Here are some quotes from Joe Bob’s notes: “Working the CAS problem hard. Basically, the mechanics of generating the flow and communication are OK. We’re working backups for traffic jams. We have a shortage of airborne FACs and need tighter rules for TICs [troops in combat] situations. Seems that we have forgotten the need for fighter pilots to have guidance on ordnance type and distances from friendly forces, unwise delivery modes, etc., for TIC contact. Also, have only twelve OA-10s [airborne FAC aircraft] in theater — not enough to provide coverage for a hooba of this size. We are working out procedure and agreements with the corps commanders to keep the Killer Scouts employed both inside and outside the FSCL. Inside the FSCL, the attack aircraft must be under control of a forward air controller and prevent attacks on friendly forces and to hit the targets the Army wants hit. Outside the FSCL, the attacking aircraft is cleared to strike without any additional control. He may use J-STARS or Killer Scout, but a FAC is not required.”
By mid-February, these efforts were starting to make sense. As previously mentioned, we developed preplanned FSCLs, so that no matter how fast the ground war went, we could stay ahead of it. The more than 2,000 U.S. Air Force people assigned to work forward air control with the ground forces (except for the British and Marines, who provided their own FACs) would be adequate for that job, and our shortage of airborne forward air controls would be augmented by the Killer Scouts. Using AWACS, Joint STARS, and airborne command-and-control aircraft of the USAF and USMC, we were able to meter the flow and provide the needed control that would let us put bombs on target in a timely fashion, while avoiding friendly forces. Though it was a huge and complex undertaking, Joe Bob stuck to it, in spite of occasional abuse from me.
These are from his notes for February 19: “Have been continuing to work the CAS issue hard over the past several days. General Horner has thrown us out a couple of times. I think we are getting closer to understanding his approach. The closest analogy I can come up with is Force Protection. Only, the protected force is super-large and undisciplined, and both sides look the same. Our job is to anticipate what the enemy will throw at the force and come up with a plan and ROE [rules of engagement] to maximize enemy kills while preventing fratricide. VID [visual identification] is out. Assuming that the Army knows where its forces are is out. Earlier approved concepts of providing CAS for an advancing friendly force are out, because they emphasized a superior force attacking a retreating enemy. Kill zones are okay, when the friendlies are in dire straits and need air at any cost. ‘Figure it out, shit-head, that’s your job’ is a phrase I’m getting accustomed to from General Horner.”
When Joe Bob’s plan was published, it provided guidance to FACs, Scouts, Planners, and Air Tasking Order writers. Its basic me
ssages were: “If in doubt, don’t. Service CAS requests first. Don’t even assume things will be easy or go as planned.” And for the most part, they worked.
AND THEN THERE WERE NONE
As the days of the ground war continued, the attitude in the TACC grew ever more relieved. Spirits were high. At each shift change, you could hear the upbeat buzz as the guys related how well the troops in the sand of Kuwait and Iraq were doing. Most important, there were few reports of casualties, and incredible reports of Iraqis surrendering in such numbers that our forces could only give them food and water and tell them where they needed to go to be picked up.
To be sure, we had problems — placement of the FSCL, the weather, friendly-fire incidents, and trying to keep track of all that was going on on the battlefield, with its hellish oil fires and rainy weather — but the good news continued.
By February 26, Walt Boomer was a few miles south of the major highway intersection west of Kuwait City; Gary Luck had turned the corner and was racing down the Iraqi highway south of the Euphrates; and Fred Franks was advancing toward the Republican Guard, his ultimate target.
At that point, the Iraqis totally lost heart and started to evacuate occupied Kuwait, but airpower halted the caravan of Iraqi Army and plunderers fleeing toward Basra. This event was later called by the media “The Highway of Death.” There were certainly a lot of dead vehicles, but not so many dead Iraqis. They’d already learned to scamper off into the desert when our aircraft started to attack. Nevertheless, some people back home wrongly chose to believe we were cruelly and unusually punishing our already whipped foes.
Meanwhile, numerous tank engagements shredded the myth of Iraqi Army “battle hardness.” Fred Franks’s VIIth Corps slammed into the heavy divisions of the Republican Guard and other Iraqi armor. And always POWs, and more POWs.
It wasn’t all easy. An A-10 was shot down; and an Army helicopter attempting to rescue the pilot was itself shot down, killing several of the crew, with the rest being taken prisoner. Even though it was absolutely clear that the Iraqis were thoroughly defeated, they still remained dangerous, simply because they remain armed, and were frightened and disorganized, in many cases an armed rabble.
By February 27, talk had turned toward terminating the hostilities. Kuwait was free. We were not interested in governing Iraq. So the question became “How do we stop the killing?”
I knew we were close to answering that question when General Schwarzkopf asked me how much notification I would need to turn off our attacks. He was trying to come up with a plan for stopping the war. He knew Washington was going to be asking him very soon, “When can you stop? How long will it take to turn off the ground fires and air fires?”
“I figure two hours,” I said, “will be enough to get the word to the pilots before they take off, or drop off a tanker, en route to their targets.
“Once there’s a cessation of hostilities,” I went on to explain, “we will still maintain fighter patrols over the country, in case the Iraqis attempt a sneak punch with their remaining fighters or bombers. We’ll also keep aircraft on the ground loaded with bombs and missiles, in case the cease-fire fails and Iraqi ground forces threaten Coalition ground forces.”
But I knew this was just playing it safe. In reality, all that was left to do was begin the talks at Safwan that would make the end official.
After Schwarzkopf’s call, I sat in the now very hushed TACC as the duty officers busied themselves reading books or trying to figure how to get back home. There was still flying to do over Iraq, but it was routine. There were still a few engagements on the ground as the Iraqis stumbled into our ground forces and a firefight broke out. We still shot down a few Iraqis who thought it was okay to attack their insurgents in the south and north. But in our hearts, the war was over. We knew it was time to stop the insanity.
14
Shock and Awe
The war to liberate Kuwait ended on February 28, 1991. To be sure, conflict in the region did not cease; armed revolts broke out throughout Iraq. Nonetheless, the purpose of the Coalition forces had been achieved. Kuwait was free. But what did we learn from all this? Chuck Horner continues:
★ As Coalition forces packed up their kits and headed home, historians began analyzing and comparing — and some comparisons are enlightening; see the accompanying charts — while military staffs began compiling studies (in militarese, these are often referred to as “Lessons Learned”). A problem quickly became apparent: This war was so different from — and in many ways so much more successful than — any other example of armed conflict, it offered advocates of practically any point of view an opening to make a favorable case. In the United States, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and each of the service departments published “Lessons Learned” documents that were in fact advertisements for individual programs, requirements, or services. This is not to say they were totally dishonest. Some of them actually uncovered areas that needed to be fixed.
Still, the so-called “studies” tended to be self-supporting rather than critical of the agency that sponsored the work. And too many of the books, articles, studies, and official documents misstated the facts, with the aim of salvaging a weapon system, military doctrine, or reputation whose worth could not otherwise be supported. They were public relations documents, not clear-eyed, honest appraisals, and they were aimed at influencing the soon-to-come budget reductions and debates over each service’s roles and missions.
Since the various conclusions tended to be contradictory, there were inevitable battles. The pie was finite.
These battles were best summed up in the debate over whether or not the Gulf War was a “revolution in military affairs,” or RMA, as it was expressed in the acronym-happy Pentagon.
The RMA debate divided those who wished to continue business as usual from those who believed that war had changed so fundamentally that new organizations, strategies, doctrines, and military forces were needed. The former tended to come from the land services. They took it as an article of faith that war was a matter of meeting the enemy army, navy, and/or air force on the battlefield, and inflicting such damage that he could no longer resist the will of the dominant military force. The goal was to destroy the enemy military so greatly that resistance was impossible or futile.
The revolutionaries — often air, sea, and space advocates — tended to talk about asymmetric warfare. In asymmetric warfare, an apparently weak nation (call it nation A) will refuse to engage its stronger enemy (nation B) in the areas of its strength, and instead will attack where B is most vulnerable. Thus, if B has a large land army, A will avoid ground combat, and perhaps use computer attacks against B’s national infrastructure to weaken it, while inflicting large numbers of casualties on B’s army with weapons of mass destruction. In asymmetric warfare, A’s forces may not even engage B’s in direct battle. For example, A might try to isolate B’s economy or to debilitate its political leadership to the point where A’s will could be imposed, while B’s military forces remained relatively intact.
In fact, both schools have missed the point of the Gulf War. Desert Storm was not about a revolution in military affairs, it was a demonstration of the revolution that had already occurred in technology. The RMA has not happened to any great extent because neither the United States military nor its counterparts around the world have been able to fully exploit the technological revolution revealed during the Gulf War.
The Gulf War demonstrated the possibilities available to a nation that decides to revolutionize its military operations. If used effectively, precision weapons, Stealth aircraft, space reconnaissance, and rapid communications would so change military affairs that today’s military leaders would no longer recognize the military in which they served. Certainly, Schwarzkopf, Yeosock, Boomer, Arthur, and I did not fully understand how to exploit these revolutionary capabilities. Yet we perceived the clues and (within our own limitations) tried our best to use the resources available, to free Kuwait as soon as possible, while keeping the loss
of life at a minimum.
Since this book is about airpower, what is the future of air, looked at from the light of the coming revolution? The best way to get a handle on that, I think, is to examine how we dealt with the new technologies during the war, and then to use that as an entry into the coming revolution in military affairs. Parts of this story will be familiar, but not from this angle.
U.S. Bomb Tonnage Used per Month by Conflict
U.S. Aircraft Combat Losses/Sorties by Conflict
★ The Coalition strategy was simple — to gain control of the air, use airpower to isolate and debilitate the Iraqi Army, and then use ground forces to drive them from Kuwait. The war in Vietnam did not have air superiority as a pressing goal; the result was a drawn-out conflict with thousands of aircraft shot down. I could never forget that lesson. Therefore, the first step, gaining control of the air, was key.
For this, I had advantages no other commander in history had enjoyed. For starters, a U.S. Navy analysis of Iraqi air defenses provided a system-wide understanding of the role of each element that had been designed to protect Iraq from air attack. The point to pay attention to is the system, not the elements. No longer would I have to bomb every enemy airfield, or shoot down every enemy fighter, or destroy every enemy surface-to-air missile site. If I could isolate and destroy the heart and brain of the Iraqi air defenses, then the arms and legs could not function, and attacking them would only use precious resources that would be better used in attacks on other target sets.
The analysis of the system told the air planners what nodes should be attacked, in what sequence, and when the attacks should be repeated. These attacks would be conducted with such ferocity and accuracy that the air defenders would be shocked into a state of awe and helplessness. The tools, Stealth and precision, would exploit the opportunities revealed by the complete knowledge of the Iraqi air defense system.