Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an Air Force Combat Wing

by Tom Clancy

  Tuesday, April 19, 1994—Adversary Tactics Operations Center

  Today we would view the morning mission from the Adversary Tactics Control Center, then fly an afternoon tanker mission with the 22nd ARS. Our host, Major Steve Cutshell, gave us the Red side of the Green Flag story. He confessed that the 366th had given the Red Force challenges they had never experienced before, and that subsequent exercises might require more Air National Guard F-16s to reinforce the Red air forces. On the other hand, the ground-based Red forces had done well, considering the age of the equipment. The wily contractor personnel who live uprange and operate the emitters have years of experience. Indeed, they could probably teach the Russians a thing or two about how to use their systems! Red communications jamming against the Have Quick II radios had been fairly effective, though it tended to wipe out their own communications. And Red’s radar jamming usually worked, though the newest U.S. airborne radars with advanced signal processing can out-fox most ground-based jammers, or just burn through them with raw power.

  That afternoon, we headed back out to the HVHAA ramp, and were pleasantly surprised to find we were assigned to the same aircraft (62-3572) and crew we rode with the previous week. This time we were the second tanker in the flight, called “Refit,” and our call sign was Ruben-50. We would refuel six F-16s from the 389th FS that were going to strike targets on the southern side of the range, as well as a pair of F-4G Wild Weasel aircraft from the 561st FS at Nellis AFB. The Vipers would each get 5,000 lb./2,272 kg. of fuel, with 8,000 lb./3,636 kg. going to each of the Weasels. Since the F-4s had the shortest “legs” of any aircraft in the strike force, they would tank last, to be as full as possible when the push to the targets came. Takeoff went smoothly, though there was a lot more cloud cover this afternoon, a residue of the previous day’s thunderstorms. This made for a rough ride, and Sergeant Hughes’s skills were taxed to keep the tanking on schedule. He had particular difficulty with the old refueling receptacles of the Phantoms; their tricky (and now worn-out) refueling probe latching mechanism had trouble establishing and maintaining a solid connection. Nevertheless, he managed to fill everyone up, and they all made the mission push on time.

  An F-4G Wild Weasel aircraft from the 57th Wing’s 561st Fighter Squadron pulls away from a 22nd Aerial Refueling Squadron KC-135R tanker during Green Flag 94-3. These defense-suppression aircraft are rapidly being replaced by F-16Cs equipped with the AQS- 213 HARM Targeting System pod. John D. Gresham

  Then, just as we were scheduled to head home, there was an urgent radio call from the Blue Force air-to-air mission commander. Several aggressor F-16s had finally made it over the top, and were chasing several of the HVHAAs, including us! Luckily, a couple of Eagles hunted them down, but it was now clearly too risky to leave the big birds unescorted during missions. For the rest of the week, until it was certain that all the airborne Red aircraft had been killed, there would be fighter cover for the HVHAAs.

  Friday, April 22, 1994

  As the last missions finished up, the 366th and the other units prepared to pack up and head back to their home bases. While the Gunfighters had “won,” that really was not the intention of the exercise or the true measure of what was achieved. Much more important: The composite wing concept was validated, at least as far as the resources of Nellis were capable of testing it.

  For the 366th Wing itself, there was a mass of data to be analyzed, assessed, and acted upon when they got back to Mountain Home AFB. As the last missions were flown and the ground crews started packing up their gear onto the FAST tankers, everyone could take pride in his or her own contribution. The raw steel that General Hinton had passed on to General McCloud the previous year was now a sharp sword, though it might still require some polishing. That could wait for tomorrow. Today the Gunfighters were going home to their families. As we joined them, it gave us much to reflect on, for we had seen more than any civilian had seen before about how the USAF gets ready for war.

  AFTERWARDS

  Later in 1994, we returned to Mountain Home AFB to see how the wing was implementing the changes that emerged from Green Flag 94-3. In the few months since the deployment, many jobs in the wing had changed hands. When we arrived, Dave McCloud had less than a week left in command of the 366th; his next assignment was a staff job for General Joe Ralston (now the ACC commander) in the Operations Directorate of the Air Staff. This was a good omen for his future promotability to lieutenant general (he made the list “under the zone” in early 1995). McCloud’s replacement, Brigadier General “Lanny” Trapp, came from the A-10 wing at Davis-Monthan AFB in Arizona, and chose an F-15E Strike Eagle as the new “Wing King” aircraft. Colonel Robin Scott had left to attend the U.S. Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. Lieutenant Colonel Clawson, now promoted to full colonel, moved over to the wing staff. Roger “Boom-Boom” Turcott, who had given John Gresham his ride, moved up to command the “Bold Tigers.” And the 34th BS became fully operational with its B-1Bs. It conducted its first Global Power/Global Reach mission just six months after “standing up.” The steady flow of new personnel is a positive sign that the wing is alive and healthy.

  Finally, there was one more big exercise for the 366th Wing in the fall of 1994—Joint Task Force (JTF)-95. JTF-95 was planned to team elements of the new Atlantic Command (a carrier battle group and a Marine expeditionary unit) in a combined exercise. But just as the exercise was kicking off, the U.S. intervention in Haiti and an emergency deployment to Kuwait took away the Atlantic Command assets, wiping out the entire JTF-95 exercise package. In our “new world order,” global events seem to be keeping military units too busy to train for the future. In a time when we are contemplating further force structure cutbacks, that is something to think about.

  Operation Golden Gate Southeast Asia

  Operation Golden Gate. Jack Ryan Enterprises, Ltd., by Laura Alpher

  Roles and Missions: The 366th Wing in the Real World

  AS we have seen, the power a composite wing like the 366th can bring to bear in a time of war is impressive, possibly even decisive. But how might this power actually be used in a crisis? The question is often on the minds of a number of folks, from the JCS Tank in the Pentagon to the flight line at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho. (Currently, only one of the three USAF composite wings assigned to ACC, the 23rd at Pope AFB, South Carolina, has ever been deployed during a crisis.) The decision when and where to use the 366th, with its unique capabilities, will be a tough judgment call for the national command authorities who will order it deployed and the regional CinCs who will command it during a crisis.

  The following scenario is designed to show you some of the possibilities. I hope it will help you understand the capabilities of the 366th Wing and of modern airpower in general. The composite wings of ACC, along with the carrier air wings (CVWs) on our aircraft carriers, are going to be our aerial fire brigades for the next generation or so. If the last few years have been any indication, the coming decades will be violent enough to make the Cold War look no more frightening than an election in Chicago.

  OPERATION GOLDEN GATE—VIETNAM, MAY 2000

  The inevitability of the event seemed so clear in retrospect, yet this did not mitigate the surprise. South Vietnam, once deluged by American and other Western influences, simply never bought into the Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy of the North. And while Hanoi was able to make it stick for a generation, the demise of their governing philosophy everywhere else in the world only encouraged the South to go its own way. The leader was a former chieftain with the Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN—the former Viet Cong headquarters) with his own reasons for rebellion. Only 5 feet/1.5 meters tall and thin, even by Vietnamese standards, Duc Oanh had been an earnest and effective foe of the RVN and its American protectors. Wounded twice in combat actions and nearly buried alive by a B-52 Arc Light mission in 1970, he’d carried the banner for his beliefs, only to be shunted to a minor post office job when the North finally overran Saigon in 1975. What began as personal
resentment in Duc’s mind grew into a dream as he watched the North stagnate while the South fought the ideological reins well enough to begin something akin to genuine national development. He saw the perversion of his people’s revolution by the ruling council of the North as final proof of the folly of the old men who ruled this corner of the world. One day, the dream formed into action.

  Many former revolutionary soldiers shared Duc’s feelings.

  The coup that followed was anything but bloodless. In eight violent hours of darkness, combat veterans of the Vietnamese Army systematically assassinated their own senior officers during parties following the twenty-fifth anniversary Liberation Day ceremonies on April 30th. By dawn most of the military formations in the southern half of Vietnam had either been decapitated or had new leadership. And from Radio Saigon (nobody but foreigners had ever called it Ho Chih Minh City) went out a cry of renewed Southern independence that caught every news and intelligence agency in the world by total surprise.

  Hanoi’s first reaction was predictably intemperate.

  The People’s Republic of China was the only nation with any inkling of what was happening—Duc had established covert links to that government, whose hatred of Hanoi was every bit as deep as his own—and by noon the first international recognition of the revolutionary government had been announced. As for the Americans, the timing was too close to an American election. The President—himself a veteran of the aerial campaign against Hanoi in the 1970s and one of a generation of former warriors with a personal promise to make that lost war right—had to act.

  Communist Party Headquarters, Saigon, May 1, 2000, 0930 Hours

  The Party headquarters in Saigon had originally been built by the French as Saigon’s city hall. The wide corridors, arched windows, and high ceilings with slowly rotating fans gave the building an air of faded colonial elegance. But the wiring was almost as bad as the plumbing. The emergency diesel generator in the basement had been delivered from East Germany in the 1970s, and was inoperable for lack of parts. Brownouts and complete power outages in the city had grown more frequent lately, as the arthritic Vietnamese economy and crumbling infrastructure were increasingly unable to meet payments on oil shipments, even at the subsidized “friendship price” the Chinese comrades offered to help prop up one of the world’s three remaining Communist states.

  Vu Xuan Linh, Chairman of the city’s Party Committee and effective ruler of a metropolitan region of over five million people, was not surprised when the lights went out. That happened often enough. He was surprised, though, when he heard bursts of automatic fire in the corridor outside, and a ragged crowd of men armed with sticks, hand tools, and a few AKMs taken from the still-warm bodies of the dead guards outside burst into the office, grabbed his speechless body, and hurled it from the third-floor window. As the pavement rushed up to smash him, he only had time to wonder why the crowd in the plaza outside was waving those tattered, forbidden yellow flags with three horizontal red stripes.

  Tho Xuan Airfield, Vietnam, May 1, 2000, 1445 Hours

  The phone lines to the South were down, and the few military posts that had not thrown down their weapons or joined the rebels were getting out only fragmentary reports. The rebels seemed to have some sort of electronic jammers (ham radio gear actually) and knew how to use them. But the CNN news feed on TV in the ready room of the 923rd Fighter Regiment was clear and chilling. Saigon, Danang, Hue, even small provincial towns like Dalat and Ban Me Thuot, all seemed to have broken out in a mad carnival of mutiny, vandalism, looting, and murder of government and party officials. Colonel Nguyen Tri Loc, chief political officer of the Vietnam People’s Air Force (VNPAF) Fighter Command, could see that he was facing the greatest challenge of his career. He would have to send his pilots into action against their own people.

  “Airmen,” he said quietly to the two dozen pilots in the ready room, “this is the most serious crisis Vietnam has faced in a generation. Your grandfathers shed their blood to drive out the French imperialists. Your fathers shed their blood to drive out the Americans. If this criminal counterrevolutionary uprising is not crushed swiftly, all their sacrifices will have been for nothing, and your children will become slaves of international monopoly capitalism. Remember your training, and your aim will be true. The Party and the Nation are depending on you.”

  The pilots looked straight ahead, stood to attention, and filed out to the flight line. There were no sidelong glances or murmurs of conversation. The colonel had no idea what they were thinking, and that made him uneasy. The 923rd was trained for the ground attack role, operating some 24 Su- 22M-3 Fitters. Twenty were flyable today, an excellent maintenance performance considering the difficulty of keeping the temperamental Tumansky engines running without regular factory overhauls. The range of over 600 miles/983 km. for this mission would limit the ordnance each could deliver on downtown Saigon to either two pods of 57mm rockets, or two napalm canisters. The most urgent target was the secret police headquarters. If the rebels could secure the building and its voluminous records, it would be a disaster. (The Party leaders had learned well the lessons of the overthrow of the German Democratic Republic.) After striking the city hall, the broadcasting stations, the Caravelle Hotel, and other likely centers of the revolt, the planes would recover at Danang, if that airfield was still secure, or alternatively at Cam Ranh Bay, then refuel and return to Tho Xuan to re-arm. There were no target folders, but every pilot was given a large-scale city map. The latest weather satellite pictures indicated that after some morning showers, it would be clear over most of the South. There was no up-to-date reconnaissance beyond what every pilot could see on CNN. The air defense missile sites around Bien Hoa and Tan Son Nhut airport had been thoroughly sabotaged by their loyal crews before they were evacuated, but there was no way of knowing how many handheld SAMs and anti-aircraft guns had fallen into the hands of the rebels. The regiment took off in five four-ship waves, spaced a few minutes apart.

  HQ PACAF (U.S. Pacific Command Air Forces), Hickam AFB, Hawaii

  “Looks as if the VNPAF is making a full court press,” General Russ Dewey, commander of the U.S. Pacific Air Forces, observed as the situation display flickered with the latest updates. “We haven’t seen this much activity out of them since, oh, hell, back in ’72.”

  “There’s still no word from the Pentagon,” Admiral Roy Shapiro, the Commander in Chief, Pacific (CINCPAC), replied. “Not that we could do much right now, even if we got a green light.” You didn’t have to see the gold wings above the admiral’s chestful of ribbons to tell that he was an aviator. He had flown off carrier decks in the Gulf of Tonkin, out of Subic Bay and Clark Field in the Philippines, out of Andersen AFB on Guam, the Marine base at Kadena on Okinawa, and a dozen other places that were now mostly memories. It was the kind of situation that was every CinC’s worst nightmare. Another Major Regional Contingency (MRC) was shaping up, and the nearest airpower that U.S. Pacific Command controlled was exactly two squadrons of 8th TFW F-16s in Korea, two thousand long, long air miles away.

  Downtown Saigon, May 3, 2000, 2035 Hours

  There was still some daylight fading in the western sky as the planes came in from the north low and fast. Because the mission had been laid on in a hurry and the ground crews had humped whatever ordnance was immediately available in the closest bunkers at Gia Lam and Hue, they had been loaded with 250 kg. incendiary and fragmentation bombs.

  The slaughter in the streets, thronged with celebrating crowds, was appalling. Months later the International Committee of the Red Cross estimated that over five thousand people had been killed outright and about fifteen thousand seriously burned or injured. No one would ever know for sure—the provisional city government committee reluctantly had to order the dead buried in mass graves for reasons of public health. Some of the fires burned for days, but not as hotly as the wave of rage and revulsion that swept through the normally docile and apolitical Saigonese population. Even worse from the point of view of the world press was w
hat happened to the visitors that made up Vietnam’s major cash industry—tourism. Better than two hundred foreigners, mostly businessmen from Europe or Japan, were checked in at the Caravelle Hotel in Saigon. Most of them were eating an early dinner or drinking in the world-famous bar. There were also about a hundred elderly American Vietnam War veterans in the country, invited by the Hanoi government to visit old battlefields and exorcise ancient demons. The original idea behind their visit, in fact, had been to speed along the normalization of U.S.-Vietnamese relations. Unfortunately for them, and for Hanoi, the pilots of four MiG-27 attack fighters had been told that the Caravelle was under rebel control.

  It is one of the realities of our time that satellite news networks are the finest intelligence-gathering agencies in the world. Though Hanoi denied conducting the strike, a Sky News TV crew from Britain had it on tape, with the yellow stars clearly visible on the MiGs. The tape was uplinked immediately to the global satellite network.

  The United Nations Security Council, New York City, May 4, 2000

  The first Security Council resolution came up for a vote within hours of the airing of the tape; the pictures from Saigon had shocked even the hardened diplomats of this cynical group.