Published in cooperation with the RAND Corporation
Allied Air Power and the
Takedown of Saddam Hussein
BENJAMIN S. LAMBETH
Foreword by Gen. T. Michael Moseley, USAF (Ret.)
Naval Institute Press
Annapolis, Maryland
Naval Institute Press
291 Wood Road
Annapolis, MD 21402
© 2013 by RAND Corporation
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lambeth, Benjamin S.
The unseen war : allied air power and the takedown of Saddam Hussein / Benjamin S. Lambeth.
1 online resource.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.
ISBN 978-1-61251-312-6 (epub)1.Iraq War, 2003–2011—Aerial operations, American. 2.Iraq War, 2003–2011—Campaigns. 3.United States. Central Command—History. 4.Air power—United States—Case studies.I. Title.
DS79.76
956.7044’348—dc23
2013018020
Print editions meet the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
212019181716151413987654321
First printing
CONTENTS
List of Figures, Maps, and Charts
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
Acronyms and Abbreviations
Introduction
1The Road to War
2CENTCOM’s Air Offensive
3The Allies’ Contribution
4Key Accomplishments
5Problems Encountered
6Toward a New Era of Warfare
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
FIGURES, MAPS, AND CHARTS
Figures
FIGURE 1.1General Franks’ Lines and Slices Matrix
FIGURE 2.1Common Grid Reference System
FIGURE 2.2Kill-Box Status Change Request Format
FIGURE 4.1Air Tasking Order Processing Cycle
Maps
MAP 1.1Iraqi Northern and Southern No-Fly Zones
MAP 1.2General Franks’ Five-Front Construct
MAP 1.3CENTAF’s Main Operating Bases
MAP 2.1Iraqi Theater of Operations
MAP 2.2Iraqi IADS Super MEZ
MAP 2.3Iraqi Military Airfield Distribution
Charts
CHART 1.1CENTAF Aircraft by Category
CHART 4.1CENTAF Overall Sorties by Aircraft Category
CHART 4.2CENTAF Strike Sorties by Category
CHART 4.3CENTAF Strike Sorties by Service
FOREWORD
THE THREE-WEEK AIR OFFENSIVE THAT FIGURED CENTRALLY IN THE TOPPLING OF Saddam Hussein was a testament to air power’s final maturation for the sort of high-intensity warfare that the major combat phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom represented. In both its independent strategic role and its enabling support to allied ground troops, that offensive reflected a culmination of all that the United States and its coalition partners had done by way of steady force improvement, doctrinal refinement, and realistic training since air power’s breakthrough achievement during the first Persian Gulf War more than a decade earlier.
It was my special privilege to command and lead the many fine airmen who made possible that remarkable air power success story. Notwithstanding our unmatched combat systems and technology, it is our high-quality professionals at all levels whose devotion to mission and natural adaptability to overcome any challenge have rendered the American air weapon a unique asset to our nation. Those key shapers of events were backstopped in every way by the able contributions of the United Kingdom and Australia, whose respective air contingent commanders, then Air Vice-Marshal Glenn Torpy of the RAF and then Group Captain Geoff Brown of the RAAF, were my partners from the start of our planning to the final execution of the campaign. It speaks volumes for the uncommon reservoir of talent that they brought to the fight that both of these outstanding airmen later went on to head their respective air forces.
In the years since those eventful three weeks, the United States and its allies have been consumed by lower-intensity counterinsurgency operations in which kinetic air attacks have been largely overshadowed by ground combat—to a point where some observers suggest that the sort of cutting-edge applications of air power that were so pivotal in 2003 have since been superseded by a new form of warfare in which high-technology weapons have become irrelevant. That notion could not be further removed from the realities of today’s world. The era of major wars entailing existential threats to the United States and its closest allies has not ended. Demands for the most lethal and survivable air capabilities that our nation can muster will arise again. And there is much in our experience gained from the air war over Iraq in 2003 that offers a preview of how such capabilities might be best exploited in the future.
This important book, begun under my sponsorship as the commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) Air Forces, reconstructs the campaign’s air contribution in impressive depth of detail. Along the way, it weaves a gripping narrative of the air war at multiple levels of analysis, from the perspective of the coalition’s most senior leaders all the way down to individual airmen as they watched the campaign play out from their cockpits in the heat of combat. One of the many notable aspects of the air offensive explored in the pages that follow concerns the trust relationships that were first forged within CENTCOM during Operation Enduring Freedom against Al Qaeda and its Taliban hosts in Afghanistan in late 2001 and 2002. Those close interpersonal ties were sustained among the same top leaders as we segued into the campaign against Iraq’s Ba’athist regime the following year. They were indispensable in accounting for the campaign’s all but seamless cross-service harmony.
This assessment also explores the many challenges that those at the center of preparations for Iraqi Freedom faced, including the possibility of an Iraqi chemical weapons attack on both allied forces and civilian populations in the theater, our felt need to ensure that the Iraqi air force would not generate a single combat sortie, our determination to ensure that our air support arrangements were in closest possible accord with the land component’s anticipated maneuver needs, and our resolve to keep Iraq’s western desert free of any means for Hussein’s forces to fire missiles into Israel and Jordan.
The compression of the campaign’s phases into a concurrent air-land push into Iraq compounded those concerns. That last-minute development saddled CENTCOM’s air component with the daunting need to satisfy multiple mission demands simultaneously—establishing airspace control, finding and destroying hidden Iraqi Scud or other tactical missiles, targeting Iraq’s key command and control centers to impose rapid paralysis on the regime, and supporting the conventional land advance and associated covert activities by allied special operations forces in both southern and northern Iraq.
Finally, this book spotlights the many unique achievements registered during the three-week air offensive, such as the close integration of our naval and Marine Corps air assets into the overall campaign plan, meeting the immense challenges of securing adequate fuel supplies and tanker support, assigning a senior airman to the land component as my personal representative, and securing for the air component the all-important prerogative of approving the nomination of enemy targets without my having to defer repeatedly to higher authority for permission. It also explains t
he many valuable lessons that were driven home by the campaign experience, such as the importance of organizing the air component’s elements for maximum effectiveness, training those elements routinely in peacetime in a way that fully exercises the entire command and control system, and equipping our forces with the most effective and survivable aircraft and systems.
Ben Lambeth’s assessment offers an exhaustive account of the Iraqi Freedom air war in its most essential details. His adept telling of that story is conveyed with a tone of authority that will resonate instantly among the airmen who were actually there in the fight. Yet at the same time, it is written with a clarity of expression that will render it equally accessible to a wider circle of readers. I commend it highly to all who have an interest in air power and its key role in our nation’s defense, and most particularly to the successor generation of military professionals in all services who will gain much of lasting value from its many informed observations and insights.
—T. Michael “Buzz” Moseley
General, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)
Commander, U.S. Central Command Air Forces (2001–2003) and Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force (2005–2008)
PREFACE
SINCE EARLY 2004, UNDER THE SPONSORSHIP OF U.S. AIR FORCES CENTRAL (AFCENT), I have pursued an in-depth assessment of the American and allied air contribution to the three weeks of major combat in Operation Iraqi Freedom that ended the rule of Saddam Hussein. This research followed an earlier AFCENT-sponsored study to assess the war against Al Qaeda and its Taliban hosts in Afghanistan between early October 2001 and late March 2002 in response to the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001. That earlier effort is reported in Benjamin S. Lambeth, Air Power against Terror: America’s Conduct of Operation Enduring Freedom.1 The present book offers a similar treatment of the shorter but more intense air war that occurred over Iraq a year later when American air assets, aided substantially by the contributions of the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), played a pivotal role in securing the immediate campaign objectives of U.S. Central Command. This book aims to fill a persistent gap in the literature on Operation Iraqi Freedom by telling that story as fully and credibly as the available evidence will allow.
1 Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, MG-166-1-CENTAF, 2005. The abbreviation CENTAF (for U.S. Central Command Air Forces) was changed to AFCENT (for U.S. Air Forces Central) on March 1, 2009, after the U.S. Air Force leadership redesignated some of the Air Force’s numbered air forces as formal warfighting headquarters. I use the abbreviation CENTAF throughout this book because it was CENTAF that planned and fought the three-week Iraqi Freedom air war in 2003.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
FOR THE INDISPENSABLE SUPPORT HE OFFERED TOWARD MAKING THIS BOOK POSSIBLE, I am indebted, first and foremost, to Gen. T. Michael “Buzz” Moseley, former U.S. Air Force chief of staff and, before that, commander of U.S. Central Command Air Forces (CENTAF) during the planning and conduct of the major combat phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom. General Moseley consented unhesitatingly to underwrite the research reported here as a sequel to an earlier study I prepared for CENTAF, also under his sponsorship, on the largely air-centric war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002. I am also grateful to Lt. Gen. Robert Elder, then vice commander of CENTAF, who lent abiding support to me in late 2003 and early 2004 after General Moseley had moved on to become the Air Force vice chief of staff. My thanks go as well as to Kathi Jones, CENTAF’s command historian, who oversaw this effort throughout its long gestation.
I also am indebted to Vice Adm. David Nichols, deputy air component commander under General Moseley throughout the major combat phase of Iraqi Freedom; to Gen. Gene Renuart, director of operations at CENTCOM during the planning and initial execution of Iraqi Freedom; and to Lt. Gen. Daniel Darnell, principal director of CENTAF’s combined air operations center (CAOC) at Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, during the workups to and initial conduct of Iraqi Freedom, for generously sharing their time and recollections of those aspects of the air war that most bear remembering.
I am additionally indebted to Gen. Gary North, who as CENTAF’s commander in 2007 sponsored an extension of this effort so that I could flesh out my initial draft by incorporating the many reader reactions that I had received and take advantage of some important additional documentation bearing on the Iraqi Freedom air war that I had since accumulated. In this regard I owe particular thanks to Col. Douglas Erlenbusch, at the time CENTAF’s director of operations, and to Maj. Anthony Roberson, then chief of General North’s commander’s action group, for commenting in detail on my initial analysis and helping me to refine my plan for this more expanded and enriched final product.
In connection with my treatment of the contribution of the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force (RAF) to the major combat phase of Iraqi Freedom, I am pleased to acknowledge the generous support that I received from Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, then chief of the air staff. During a four-day visit to the United Kingdom on October 26–29, 2004, I was able to meet virtually all of the RAF players who were pivotal in the planning and conduct of the RAF’s contribution to the British role in the campaign, code-named Operation Telic. These included Air Chief Marshal Stirrup and his personal staff officer, then Group Captain Stuart Atha; Air Commodore Andy Pulford, who commanded the UK Joint Helicopter Command during the air war; Sebastian Cox and Sebastian Ritchie of the RAF’s Air Historical Branch; then Air Marshal Glenn Torpy, at the time chief of Joint Operations, who had served as the British air contingent commander during Operation Telic; Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge, commander in chief of RAF Strike Command and the British national contingent commander up to and throughout the major combat phase of Iraqi Freedom; Air Vice-Marshal Andy White, air officer commanding of Strike Command’s No. 3 Group; Group Captain Mike Jenkins, station commander at RAF Wittering; Group Captain Chris Coulls, station commander, and a group of his subordinate unit commanders at RAF Waddington; and Air Commodore Chris Nickols, commander of the RAF’s Air Warfare Centre at Waddington.
With respect to my similar treatment of the role played by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), I thank former chief of the air staff Air Marshal Ray Funnell, RAAF (Ret.), and Alan Stephens, former chief historian of the RAAF, who brought my initial working draft to the attention of Group Captain Richard Keir, then director of the RAAF’s Air Power Development Centre. Group Captain Keir provided me with copious documentation on the RAAF’s role in the three-week campaign that allowed me to fill in that still-outstanding gap in my chapter on the allied air effort.
For their valued help in providing me additional documentation, for commenting on all or parts of my earlier draft, and for otherwise helping to enrich this assessment in various ways, I wish again to thank General Moseley for the generous amount of time he shared from his busy schedule, first as Air Force vice chief and then as chief of staff, during three lengthy sessions in which he offered his reflections on those aspects of the war that mattered most from his perspective as the air component commander; Gen. John Corley, commander of Air Combat Command; Lt. Gen. Allen Peck, then commander of the Air Force Doctrine Center at Maxwell AFB, Alabama, and numerous members of his staff, particularly Lt. Col. John Hunerwadel and Lt. Col. Robert Poyner; Lt. Gen. Michael Hamel, then commander of 14th Air Force at Vandenberg AFB, California, and Maj. Mark Main, chief of his commander’s action group; Lt. Gen. Richard Newton, then with AF/A3/5, Headquarters U.S. Air Force; Lt. Gen. William Rew, CENTAF’s director of operations and co-director of the CAOC during the three-week air war; Maj. Gen. Eric Rosborg, commander of the 4th Fighter Wing’s F-15E Strike Eagles during the campaign; Air Vice-Marshal Geoff Brown and Group Captain Keir of the RAAF; Dick Anderegg, director of the Office of Air Force History; Maj. Gen. David Fadok and Col. Scott Walker, Air Force Studies and Analysis Agency; and Brig. Gen. Mark Barrett, commander, 1st Fighter Wing, and former executive assistant to the USAF vice chief of st
aff.
For their helpful comments on various earlier iterations of this study, I thank Brig. Gen. Michael Longoria, commander of the 484th Air Expeditionary Wing, who oversaw air-ground integration on the CAOC’s behalf during the campaign; Col. David Hathaway and Col. Mason Carpenter, key principals in the CAOC’s strategy division during Iraqi Freedom; Col. Lynn Herndon, director of the ISR Division in the CAOC during the air campaign; Col. David Belote, former air liaison officer to the commander of the U.S. Army’s III Corps at Fort Hood, Texas; Brig. Gen. Rob Givens, an F-16CG pilot with the 524th Fighter Squadron during the three-week air war; Col. Matt Neuenswander, commandant of the USAF’s Air-Ground Operations School at Nellis AFB, Nevada, during the campaign; Col. Gregory Fontenot, the principal author of On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom (Naval Institute Press, 2005); Col. Thomas Ehrhard; Col. Charles Westenhoff; Lt. Col. Mark Cline, head of the CAOC’s master air attack planning cell during the major combat phase of Iraqi Freedom; Lt. Col. Chris Crawford, who served with CENTAF’s air component coordinating element to the land component during the campaign; Lt. Col. John Andreas Olsen of the Royal Norwegian Air Force; Maj. Scott Campbell, A-10 Division, USAF Weapons School; Robert Jervis, professor of political science, Columbia University; Sebastian Ritchie, deputy director of the RAF’s Air Historical Branch; and Thomas Rehome of the Air Force Historical Research Agency at Maxwell AFB, Alabama, for his helpful archival research.
For their informed suggestions regarding my treatment of U.S. Navy and Marine Corps air operations, I extend my thanks to Adm. Tim Keating, CENTCOM’s maritime component commander during the major combat phase of Iraqi Freedom; Adm. John Nathman, then commander, Naval Air Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet; Vice Adm. Lou Crenshaw, then director, assessments division, OPNAV N81; Vice Adm. Marty Chanik, then director, programming division, OPNAV N81; Adm. Mark Fitzgerald and Vice Adm. Tom Kilcline, successive directors of air warfare, OPNAV N78; Vice Adm. Dick Gallagher, then commander, Carrier Group Four; Vice Adm. Jim Zortman, then commander, Naval Air Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet; Adm. Sandy Winnefeld, then executive assistant to the vice chief of naval operations; Vice Adm. Mark Fox, then commander, Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center; Capt. Brick Nelson and Capt. Flex Galpin, OPNAV N3/5 (Deep Blue); Capt. Chuck Wright, then director for naval aviation systems, Office of the Secretary of Defense (Operational Test and Evaluation); Capt. Calvin Craig, then OPNAV N81; Capt. Ken Neubauer and Cdr. Nick Dienna, both former Navy executive fellows at RAND; and Capt. Andy Lewis, then executive assistant to the commander, Naval Air Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet.
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