by Tom Clancy
Sultan walked across the room to the general, saluted, and asked, “What is going on?”
His squadron commander answered, “We are going to war.”
Sultan then asked, “Is it real?”
The general slowly and sadly answered, “Yes, this is real.”
The aircrews were now assembled, and now it was time for the mission commanders — like Sultan — to lead them. The young lieutenant colonel was one of the oldest fliers in this young squadron in this young Air Force, and now it was time for him to take charge.
Sultan walked to the mission planning table, where the crews were poring over maps and intelligence plots of Iraqi air defense guns and surface-to-air missile sites. At that point, Lieutenant Mohammed Raja, Sultan’s weapons system officer, gave him some disturbing yet exciting news: “Colonel Sultan, sir, I think it’s our time!”
Sultan looked at him. “Are you sure?” he asked, and Mohammed nodded yes.
As they turned to leave, General Turki stopped them. All the pilots at Dhahran’s King Abdullah Aziz Air Base respected Turki. Not only was he a superb aviator, he listened when they needed to get anything off their chests, he chewed them out when they made a mistake, and he praised them when they shined. Because the aircrews loved their commander, they wanted to please him; and because he was one of them, he loved them in return.
Now they had to go on the RSAF mission of war.
Colonel Assura, the chief of logistics, who was standing beside Turki, took Sultan’s hand. “I wish you good luck,” he said.
Then Turki put an arm around him. “Just go for it,” he said. “Good luck. I wish I was with you.”
Moments later, Sultan had assembled the crews in the personal equipment shop. There they donned their survival vests and G suits. Once they were suited up and gathered close around him, he could sense their eagerness and fear. “I know you are used to having a briefing before we fly,” he told them. “Tonight this is war. We will fly off the plan. Don’t change anything. We have been planning this strike for six months. Just follow the plan and you’ll be all right.”
Though he was the oldest man there and was doing all he could to calm them, in his heart Sultan himself was deeply troubled. Most were his students. They hung on his words. But this night would see the birth of a combat air force. After tonight, they would be the old heads, the veterans — but first they had to make it through the night. This was a first time for everything — first time into combat, first time to carry and drop the huge JP-233 runway-busting munitions, and the first time someone would make a concentrated effort to kill them.
The bus ride to the aircraft shelters was deathly quiet. Each man was locked in his own thoughts. For his part, Sultan wondered why they were fighting this war. He thought about the Iraqis, brother Arabs, united in Islam, who had savagely violated Kuwait, also brothers. He thought about an old adage: If someone points a gun at you, and you think he’ll shoot, then you must kill him. Well, the Iraqis were pointing their gun at Saudi Arabia, so he and his WSO Mohammed had killing work to do.
At the aircraft, number 760, the crew chief was busy pulling off the dust covers. Sultan did not do a preflight, since the crew chief had already done that, and he appreciated Sultan’s trust and confidence. As he swung his right leg into the cockpit, a warrant officer on the ground crew asked if they could write a message on the bomb load slung under the fighter’s belly. With a grin, Sultan told them to write whatever they wanted to, then went through the time-honored procedures of strapping the jet to his body. He never learned what message he carried to Iraq, because he was too engrossed with engine start and system check to find out.
Because Sultan had skipped the preflight, he and Mohammed reached the runway first. Though they rolled into their takeoff position eight minutes behind schedule, they knew they could make up the time because slack had been built into the inflight refueling delay. The engine run-up was good, and the afterburners lit off, blasting the night’s silence and darkness with a roar and yellow-blue flames. As they rolled down the runway, however, Sultan realized he had never flown so heavily loaded and had not computed the takeoff data, check speed, nosewheel liftoff speed, takeoff speed, and distance.
“What’s the takeoff speed?” he asked Mohammed on the intercom.
“I don’t know,” Mohammed replied. In true WSO fashion, the backseater had no intention of doing the pilot’s job for him, even if it meant he might wind up in a ball of blazing twisted metal off the end of the runway.
“Okay,” Sultan told Mohammed, “I’ll take her to the end of the runway, and then if we can’t get off, I’ll eject and take you with me, okay?”
Mohammed did not answer, as the fighter was now going over 150 miles per hour.
Aware that the heavy bomb dispenser fastened under the aircraft required added speed for a safe takeoff, Sultan watched until the “3,000 Feet Remaining” sign flashed by, then tenderly pressed the front part of the control stick, and the nose of the Tornado started to fly off the runway. As the last of the runway flashed by, the jet was waddling into the darkness.
Sultan had never flown in worse weather — thunderstorms, rain, and lightning buffeted the jet as they searched the night sky for their RSAF KC-130 tanker aircraft; yet when they reached the air refueling contact point over northern Saudi Arabia, they were now only four minutes behind schedule… only, there was no tanker. They had to refuel or they could not get to the target and make it back home.
This really must be war, Sultan thought, because things are rapidly getting all screwed up.
Breaking radio silence, he called the “Camel” aircraft, asking for his position (“Camel” was the call sign used by Saudi pilots for their refuelers).
His tanker answered that he was a hundred miles to the south, too far for Sultan to make a rendezvous, refuel, and make it to the target on time. In other words, Sultan and Mohammed were out of the show their very first try at combat.
Just then, another Camel aircraft called, its pilot a longtime flying buddy of Sultan’s. “Sultan, is that you? Do you need gas? I’m at the refueling track at the next block altitude, sixteen thousand feet.”
In their excitement, Sultan and his KC-130 pilot friend were talking in Arabic instead of the more correct English, until someone else came up on frequency to tell them to keep quiet (they were supposed to be comm out). Sultan then climbed up 4,000 feet and put his Tornado behind this new tanker. Now he had to get hooked up to the basket trailing a hundred feet behind the KC-130. During daylight and in good weather, this was a demanding task. At night and in thunderstorms with a heavily loaded jet, it proved close to impossible.
Sultan called his tanker friend: “If you really want to help me, climb another four thousand feet so we can get on top of this weather.”
“I can’t,” Camel replied. “There are aircraft above us.” (He had read the Air Tasking Order, good man.)
Always the fighter pilot, Sultan simply hooked up and said, “Then keep your eyes open and give me high flow.” (That meant pump the gas at maximum pressure, so the receiver aircraft would fill its tanks in the minimum time.)
As they bounced through the night sky, riding the tops of angry clouds, desperately hanging on to the hose of a pirated tanker, risking collision with other aircraft scheduled to use that same piece of sky, Sultan asked Mohammed to let him know exactly when they had enough fuel to get to the target and back. Though they were now eight minutes late and still short on gas, Mohammed advised Sultan that they could do that.
Sultan thanked the tanker and backed off, then rolled the fighter onto its back and split “S”s down into the inky blackness. Because of their high-speed descent, and because the tanker had dropped them off at the north end of the refueling track, they were able to save six minutes. Now they needed only to fly faster and make their appointed time over target.
Leveling off at 3,000 feet, Sultan checked out the terrain-following radar and its connections with the jet’s autopilot. Since everything
was working, he selected 1,500 feet, soon followed by 1,000 feet; and then, swallowing hard, he flipped the switch that caused the fighter to drop to 200 feet above the ground.
This was another first — the first time this crew had operated this close to the ground using the terrain-following system.
Mohammed extinguished the aircraft’s exterior lights, and now, the only light came from the eerie glow of the cockpit displays.
Meanwhile, Sultan watched his moving map display, which showed them where they were located at any given time. He watched with fascination as the Saudi border with Iraq began to approach. This looks like the real thing, he thought, ten miles to the border. Perhaps they’ll call us back. Surely they will call this off.
When they flashed across the border at 200 feet above the desert, Sultan sadly concluded, “Well, so it’s war!” and armed up his weapons dispenser.
On the radio, two squadron mates called that they were three minutes behind and low on fuel. Sultan ordered them home, as they could not possibly catch up, and they must not be late. Meaning: Sultan and Mohammed were now alone.
Mohammed then said to his pilot, “We’re on track and on time.”
Sultan looked ahead, but saw nothing except darkness. At thirty-five miles out, he concluded they were headed for the wrong target, or else nothing was there. At twenty-five miles, the supporting Wild Weasel launched a high-speed antiradiation missile at a SAM radar, and suddenly night turned to day, as thousands of tracers lit the night sky.
In his surprise, Sultan cried out, “My God, look at this, Mohammed!”
But Mohammed, ever the quiet one, had nothing to say about the show. And anyhow, he had more important things to do than gawk at fireworks; he had the exacting work of putting the crosshairs on the target.
At fifteen miles, Sultan asked his mate if he was happy with the target. Meaning, is the radar picture good enough for an accurate release of their weapons?
“See that big fire?” Mohammed answered, meaning the SAMs and tracers rising from the airfield ahead. “That’s it.”
It’s a beautiful thing when your WSO is cool, while you are thinking you’ll never see your wife and children again.
Sultan then realized that it was time to pay more attention to what he’d been sent out to do. At the same instant, it occurred to him that he was likely to die. Thinking he’d better let Mohammed have a vote, he asked, “Mohammed, we can turn back. It’s up to you. Will you go with me?”
The taciturn Mohammed replied simply, “I’ll go.”
Then Sultan repeated the Islamic prayer uttered by those about to die.
As they neared the target, Mohammed got a perfect placement of the crosshairs on the runway that was their target.
Meanwhile, Sultan had grown concerned that the terrain-following autopilot might give a fly-up command because of all the debris being thrown up in front of them. He toggled off the automatic flight system and began to hand-fly the aircraft, easing it down to below 100 feet.
His preplanned attack had him flying across the runway, so bombing errors would be canceled out by the long string of bomblets carried in the JP-233 dispenser. However, since the other Tornadoes tasked to cut the runway would not be coming, he made an instant decision to fly down the runway to ensure it was rendered inoperable for its entire length. Even though this change in plan would expose their aircraft to the maximum gauntlet of enemy fire, he knew he had to do what he had to do.
Slamming his jet around in the night at hundreds of miles per hour, only tens of feet above the ground, he lined up on the long runway now located somewhere in the holocaust of bullets and rockets shooting into the sky. He pressed down with his right thumb on the red button on top of the stick, and the fire-control computer initiated the process that would dispense the runway-cratering bomb over the target.
The jet flashed into the bright streaks from the bullets and rockets meant to kill them, and Sultan spent his longest six seconds, flying down the Iraqi runway.
Then they were streaking back into the darkness and Sultan was about to sigh with relief, when he heard a loud thump, and the aircraft made a shudder. He froze, certain they had been hit by the antiaircraft fire. He nervously checked his dials and lights to see where the problem was. Are we on fire? Are we streaming precious fuel? Is this the end just when I’ve cheated death?
He shouted to Mohammed on the interphone, “We’ve been hit!”
“No, no,” Mohammed answered with his usual cool, “that’s just the empty weapons dispenser.” The dispenser automatically jettisoned when all the bombs were gone. Then he implored his fearless leader, “Please turn back, or else we are going to Baghdad!”
Filled with relief, the pilot pulled his aircraft around to a southerly heading and climbed away from the place of terror and death toward home.
As they crossed the border into the safety of the Kingdom, Sultan and Mohammed were filled with pride — and with gratitude that they hadn’t screwed up. A month earlier, Sultan had gotten into trouble for doing an aileron roll during a night flight. But now as they crossed the border, he made a series of celebratory rolls to the right and then to the left. They were both alive!
At home in the shelter, the crew debriefed to a wildly enthusiastic ground crew. They had successfully brought off a lot of firsts for their young air force.
The next day, I reported the success of their mission success on worldwide news. Their attack had been so precise, I said, that you couldn’t have placed their munitions more accurately if you had driven them out to the runway in a pickup truck.
Meanwhile, after the laughter and crying, General Turki sent Sultan and Mohammed home and told them to take the next day off, which they did; but these combat veterans quickly discovered that in war you don’t relax, except through exhaustion. After they returned to the flying schedule, they flew thirty missions.
Let me add that after his first experience of low-level ground fire, Sultan demanded that they stop flying low-altitude bomb runs, and Turki backed him up. This paid off, for the only Saudi Tornado lost in the war ran out of fuel trying to land in fog at the King Khalid Military City forward operating base (where there was no approach control capable of handling such emergencies).
Some jobs require heroes. Someone has to set the records for others to follow. The hero is afraid, sure: afraid of enemy fire, afraid of being killed, but most of all afraid of screwing up and letting his mates down, afraid of failure. In spite of their fear, Captain Sultan and Lieutenant Mohammed fought the people like me at headquarters who failed to give them adequate warning, fought the weather that dark and stormy night, fought the disruptions that left them the sole aircraft to attack the target, and fought the Iraqis, who had not yet learned to fear and respect our Coalition airpower. They fought and won.
Thank God for heroes.
BUILDING COALITIONS
The key ingredients to forming and maintaining a military coalition are common purpose, political leadership, and military forces that can work together.
The common purpose removes the tendency to define national interests, as in, “What’s in this for me?”
The coalition that fought in the Gulf had one common purpose, to liberate occupied Kuwait. Sure, there were other national interests at stake. For the Europeans, it was access to affordable oil. To the Arabs, it was national survival. Nevertheless, the overarching purpose, the one used to goad the United Nations into action, was to stop the rape, murder, and robbery of one nation by another.
It’s easy enough to say that we need to have a common purpose. The trick is to understand and articulate it. Or, as General George Marshall said, “The hardest thing to do is define the political objectives of war. Once that is done, a lieutenant can lay out an appropriate military strategy.”
★ The political leadership President Bush provided the Desert Storm Coalition was critical to its success. Because he listened to and consulted with the political leaders of the Coalition nations, they were confident that the
ir views and concerns were being considered as the Americans formulated policy and actions. The outgrowth of this trust at the top was trust at the military levels below. And so as the military leaders met, there were no hidden agendas. Certainly there are already enough honest differences between air, land, sea, and space approaches to war; suspicions of national agendas could only have made it far more difficult to plan and execute military operations.
For our part, we among the military worked hard to respect the rights of other sovereign nations. Where a nation had concerns and sensitivities, we modified our rules of engagement, our proposed operations, or our tactics to accommodate them.
We also worked hard to develop interpersonal relationships with our Coalition partners. This was not easy, as rank, egos, and the size of each nation’s military contribution could cause divisiveness.
For airmen, fortunately, rank had little importance, and all spoke the common language of aviation, English. But egos were inevitably a problem, especially for United States personnel who have been taught to swagger from the first day of pilot training and have been brought up in a nation that has little experience of international tact. The size of a nation’s contribution could also have led military leaders to conclude that one nation had more combat expertise than another. Yet superior equipment and more personnel did not automatically translate to wisdom. All had to listen to the others, and where there was honest difference of opinion, it had to be resolved by hard-fought, respectful, but honest debate.
Here the United States military was at a disadvantage, as we are so certain of ourselves. Since we are usually the biggest player, without meaning to, we tend to intimidate our partners. Sure, the others want Americans to lead, but they resent it that we act as though we are in charge.