Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign

by Tom Clancy

  In our doctrine, we assign air to attack targets. When these targets are associated with the enemy air defense, our missions are called counter air. When these targets are in close proximity to our friendly ground forces, our missions are called CAS. When these targets are associated with whatever supplies the war effort, our missions are called air interdiction (that is, using air to interdict fielded forces from their support, logistics, command and control, reinforcements, movement, letters home, etc.). Other doctrinal missions include air superiority and nuclear strike (there is not a doctrinal mission called “strategic attack”).

  Now, what do we call bombing a secret police headquarters that supports the evil regime? It isn’t counter air. It isn’t CAS. It isn’t interdiction (although we have to file it under that mission area now). So what is it?

  What we need is a category of effort that addresses missions that are designed to defeat an enemy through means other than attacking his military forces. That is, once we have gained control of the air and hit the various fixed targets, our main effort has to be to isolate the battlefield. In Vietnam we hit the North for two reasons: (a) to interdict supplies coming south; and (b) to punish the North Vietnamese into stopping their support of the insurgency in the south. This latter category (b) really needs a name. Some would call it strategic, but strategic technically means either attacking a nation’s vitals or nuclear operations. Take your pick. I like the term offensive airpower, as this indicates you are doing something over enemy territory that is neither air superiority, air interdiction, nor CAS.

  ★ The Plan, of course, is only a step toward the war. Once the planning process was under way, there remained the millions of necessary actions, operations, procedures, problems solved, and just plain acts of sweaty labor that translated the Plan into focused violence.

  7

  Band of Brothers and Sisters

  BY the time General Schwarzkopf returned to Saudi Arabia on the twenty-third of August, the offensive air plan had been hammered into workable shape, and Chuck Horner had come to realize that the United States would almost certainly have to fight Iraq. Says Horner:

  By then I had no doubts that at some point we would have to go on the offensive. It was just a question of when—sooner if the Iraqis launched an attack, later if we did. I hoped that my convictions were wrong and that perhaps diplomacy would work, but the fortifications rising in Kuwait made it very evident that diplomacy was going to fail. That would leave us with the job of throwing the Iraqis out of Kuwait. Though I was convinced this would mean hard work for us, I also felt the fight would go fast. As events unfolded, I was pretty much right.

  One option open to Saddam that may have saved him from war (and, thank God, he was probably too proud or too stupid to take it) was for him to have pulled out of Kuwait City and simply remained in occupation of the oil fields in North Kuwait and the islands at the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Doing that would have posed a terrible dilemma for us: To stay and not fight? To declare victory and go home? Or to fight, even though Saddam had given up the greater part of his spoils? If we went home, then Saddam could continue to threaten his neighbors with an intact army. If we stayed without fighting, we would not only risk looking like an army of occupation, but it was a hard land and climate for our troops. But then, would an offensive to eject Saddam be justified?

  Saddam, it turned out, was a lucky adversary for us. He could have made life much harder for us than he did.

  The actual military situation had changed very little during the CINC’s absence. There was as yet nothing much standing between Saddam Hussein’s divisions on the Kuwaiti border and the Saudi heartland. The relatively thin Islamic Peninsula Shield forces were centered in the west in King Khalid Military City,48 while elements of the XVIIIth Airborne Corps and the U.S. Marines were just getting off the boats and airplanes at Dhahran.

  The ground defense plan remained for small unit resistance along the coast road, if the Iraqis had attacked that way. And if they had attacked inland, where there were no roads, air would have stopped them. Since the early U.S. defensive force consisted primarily of elements of the 82d Airborne division, and the 82d has no armor (after they drop into battle, they walk), what effectively blocked Saddam from Riyadh was 82d Airborne “speed bumps.”

  It would have been a repeat of Korea in 1950—that is, fight where possible, but pull back. Trade land for time. Sting the enemy at every opportunity, but keep U.S. and friendly losses to a minimum. And use air to sap the enemy’s strength until he had exhausted his force, and friendly forces could be built up for a counterattack.

  All of this began to change when the 82d Airborne division began to be augmented by the armored punch of the 24th Mechanized Infantry division and their Abrams tanks. At that point, Saddam had a lot more than “speed bumps” to worry about if he moved south.

  Meanwhile, Horner was eager to shed the hat he wore as CENTCOM Forward and get back to his real work as CENTAF commander. Working the essentially political job of looking out for General Schwarzkopf’s interests (making sure that when the CINC returned to Saudi Arabia, he could pick up where he would have been if he had not left Jeddah nearly three weeks earlier) was not a grievous burden for Horner; it was an honor that Schwarzkopf had entrusted him with the responsibility. But he was doing the CINC’s work and not his own, and he wanted to get on with his own work—planning for and employing airpower. He wanted to be with his own troops. And he wanted to get into the details he’d had to relinquish to Tom Olsen. Though Olsen had handled things in his usual exemplary way while he himself was occupied with the CINC’s business, Horner did not like being a spectator.

  So there was no one happier than Chuck Horner when General Schwarzkopf’s plane touched down on August 23.

  ★ Meanwhile, after much blood, sweat, and tears, the Black Hole team had created a complete, executable plan—that is, a plan that could be translated into a series of Air Tasking Orders that munitions and maintenance troops could use to load and marshal the jets, and that the pilots and crews could use to navigate and bomb. It met the CINC’s guidance about political objectives, and it was a living document that would flex in response to changes in the coming battle.

  Buster Glosson had been a difficult boss, yet that had had little impact on the morale of the people assigned to the Black Hole. They simply had had so much important work to do that they’d been too challenged and busy to be much bothered by him.

  The toughest element in creating an ATO is its open-ended character: it can always be made better, but when one piece is moved, all the other pieces shift—some only a little, others a lot. Though a perfect ATO might exist in some dream (or textbook), it has never existed in fact; and each day the Black Hole crew worked on the offensive air campaign, they discovered things that needed to be done to make it better . . . and at first to make it executable.

  In late August, the plan was little more than a briefing, covering the highlights that the ATO would in time cover in detail, but it was a briefing that carried much on its shoulders, for it was tasked with conveying the plans and intentions of Chuck Horner and his staff to those who had to approve them—Schwarzkopf, Cheney, and Bush. Later, the President would also bring approval of the United Nations and Congress along with him. Specifically, the briefing had to convey the mental images of thousands of airplanes in a nearly three-day-long ballet.

  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 mom
ents 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.