Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign sic-2

by Tom Clancy

  The briefing to the President had mixed results. The air briefing delivered by Buster Glosson was generally accepted, though not without questions about the plan’s assumptions of success. It simply looked too good. It was hard to accept its claims.

  It’s worth looking at what lay behind these doubts — an outdated mind-set that did not yet understand the full impact and capabilities of modern airpower. Let’s examine a pair of facts:

  First, the reputation of airpower had been created long before by air campaigns whose success had at best been mixed — the P-40s at Kassarine Pass, the B-17s over Germany, the F-100s bombing the Vietnam jungle. If such actions were paradigms for all air campaigns, then President Bush and his advisers had good reason to throw hard questions at Buster Glosson. How could any human endeavor go as well as he promised?

  Second, technology had outrun conventional perceptions. In the years after Vietnam, airpower had taken a technological leap comparable to the shift from cannonballs to rifled shells. Now there were laser-guided bombs on Stealth aircraft, A-10s with Maverick missiles, and 30mm cannon shooting up tanks and APCs in the desert. The air campaign would go that well.

  In the event, despite attempts to poke holes in it, the air briefing stood up.

  The Army briefing didn’t fare so happily. For reasons unknown to Chuck Horner, it was never made clear that General Schwarzkopf had intended all along to offer Joe Purvis’s plan as a straw man that would justify the extra corps the CINC wanted very badly. To the best of Horner’s knowledge, Schwarzkopf had told Colin Powell time and again, “This plan is not what I want, but I can’t do what needs to be done without another corps at the minimum.” So Joe Purvis, courageously, stood up and got pummeled (and by implication, Norman Schwarzkopf got pummeled with him). The Army plan was called unimaginative, timid, risky. There were jokes about it: “Hey, diddle diddle, right up the middle.” All the while, Joe Purvis stood up time and again and absorbed the hits that led people to come to the hard conclusion that more ground forces would be needed if offensive operations were to be initiated. Though he never got much credit for it, he turned out to be a key factor in the success of Desert Storm.

  And in the end, General Schwarzkopf got his second corps.

  TRAINING

  As the plan of attack was being developed and briefed, the Coalition air armada was being deployed to the Gulf and trained to fight.

  What did this take?

  Deployability is a major part of the normal, necessary business of the U.S. Air Force. Units are graded according to their ability to deploy quickly, and are often tasked to deploy to an isolated area on their own base, from which they fly sorties at surge rates[49] to make sure they have brought the correct amount of spares and other equipment. Deployment to the Gulf was made additionally easy for the USAF because of pre-positioned stores and Coalition equipment at collocated bases.

  The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps had different methods of achieving the same results. Primarily, the Navy and embarked Marine jets were already in deployed status when their carrier left the United States, while the Marines had spares kits (containing thirty days’ supply of line-replaceable units, such as radios or altimeters) just like the USAF.

  Though NATO units practiced deployment, it was usually not to the same intensity as U.S. services. However, since they were closer to home, they could use C-130s to ferry spares or equipment rapidly. Some units arrived with nothing more than aircrews and aircraft, but these were collocated with U.S. units that used the same equipment. If they needed a part, they could borrow one until another one could be flown from home. Special ground-support equipment and maintenance personnel were also shared as required. “One Team, One Fight,” as the slogan has it. In this case, it was true.

  ★ Though the six-month span between the initial deployment and the start of the war certainly helped, air forces train the way they fight (and by assigning to the enemy their own capabilities, the U.S. Air Force makes peacetime training more difficult than any war they are likely to fight). Thus, when the Coalition units arrived in the Gulf, they already knew how to go to war. The next steps would bring everyone to the next level, where a large, diverse force would be integrated, even as new approaches and methods (such as the Night Camel exercise, which we will look at more closely) were tried and practiced.

  The focus of the training, in other words, was directed toward harmony among the various units, using the ATO as a score. Each pilot played a different instrument: The F-15C was used air-to-air; the F-15E, F-16, Mirage, or F-18 was used air-to-ground; and the Wild Weasel, the Joint STARS, the Compass Call, and the AWACS had their parts to play. If the music was written to exploit each unique sound, and if the tempo was the same for all, then it all would come together.

  Everyone there was already a competent musician on his own instrument. The planners knew how to write a playable score. Chuck Horner’s job — as builder of teams and teamwork — was to wave his baton to keep the beat and to cue in specific sections of the orchestra. As in an orchestra, the musicians knew if they were making beautiful music; they knew when they were playing as one, and they enjoyed the confidence that engendered.

  To these ends, Jim Crigger’s and Ahmed Sudairy’s operations staffs planned and tasked units to exercise together, most of whom had never flown with each other. A practice strike on a target on a gunnery range in the UAE involved Saudi, Italian, British, U.S., and UAE aircraft, for example. Or one or more units from non-U.S. forces would act as red air and intercept U.S. attackers to give the MiG CAPs a workout. Or there would be launch rehearsals, during which several sorties would take off in quick succession. Additionally, everyone received training in large-scale tanker operations, during which sixteen fighters would take off, join up, fly to a group of tankers and refuel, and then drop off at the right place and time to form up with other aircraft so they could hit a target at a given time.

  Such exercises accustomed everyone to using the ATO and other common procedures and documents; listening to a Saudi AWACS controller; using code words and radio discipline; and thinking about integrated packages of strike aircraft, CAP aircraft, and support aircraft (Wild Weasels, Rivet Joints, EF-111 jamming aircraft, and AWACS).

  Such harmony was most difficult for the Islamic allies. Though the USAF and USN had experience working with Arab air forces (in Bright Star exercises; Red Flags; and as a function of the training detachments associated with foreign military sales programs), the Arab air forces, culturally reluctant to fail in public, rarely trained together (training always involves learning how to overcome mistakes). Though there was surely some nervousness among the Arab allies before they let their pilots fly in Crigger’s exercises, there was an immediate imperative — war around the corner — that made these much more important than the cultural fear of public mistakes.

  ★ A more worrisome problem was aircraft accidents. There were far too many of them, though in Chuck Horner’s view, no aircraft accident was ever necessary.

  One involved an ANG RF-4C (a reconnaissance version of the Phantom jet) practicing low-level gun jinks — that is, flying at low level to avoid radar-guided SAMs while maneuvering so AAA guns could not track them. Another involved an F-111 flying at low level on a gunnery range at night. Both pilots flew too low and paid for the error with their lives. Later, a young pilot in a two-seat F-15E strike aircraft decided to “play” air-to-air against an RAF Jaguar, despite strict orders against making air intercepts (unless he was actually attacked). His job was to carry bombs. The problem was that F-15E pilots wanted to be F-15C pilots, for the F-15Cs had the air-to-air mission, the mission with all the glamour.

  This young pilot took off on a single-ship training mission at maximum gross weight in his F-15E (it was equipped with conformal tanks, which made it much heavier than the F-15C). Before coming to the Gulf, he had had an exchange tour with an RAF unit in Scotland. As it happened, the two units were now based together, which allowed the young pilot to conduct an intercept with an RAF
squadron buddy, who was also flying in the local area on a training mission — the RAF Jaguar fighter at 100 feet above the ground and the F-15E at 10,000 to 15,000 feet. Since the F-15E’s radar could easily see the Jaguar, the young USAF pilot and his WSO attempted a stern conversion. In that maneuver, the pilot flies head-on to the target, then rolls on his back and pulls down until he can roll out behind his target, trading altitude for airspeed and G force for turn radius.

  He almost made the final turn to pull out a few feet above the ground, but his tail scraped the ground three hundred feet before the final impact scattered the F-15E into thousands of burning pieces. The bodies were found in the wreckage and the final maneuver was observed and reported by the RAF pilot.

  Horner was very upset with the wing commander, Hal Hornberg,[50] because he had specifically told him no air-to-air. If he had found out that Hornberg had winked at the ban on air-to-air training, or that he was running a lax operation in which others were winking at these restrictions (which many thought unreasonable), then Horner was going to find another wing commander. To find out the truth, Horner brought in from the States one of the most honest men he knew, Colonel Bill Van Meter, and sent him to investigate. In due course, it was determined that the old relationship with the RAF squadron, and not the squadron and wing commanders, was to blame. Horner further believes that if Hornberg had himself found that this tragedy had resulted from his own inattention or lack of leadership, he would have asked to be fired.

  The year before deploying for Desert Shield, one of Horner’s wing commanders actually did that after he had lost three aircraft (his wing had gotten infected before his arrival, and he had to reap the rewards of his predecessor’s failures). “Fire me, boss, and put me out of my misery,” he had said to Horner, whose answer was, “I’m too mad at you right now for these accidents, and so I am going to leave you in the job just so you bear the pain while you put a stop to this nonsense.” He fixed the wing and went on to be a two-star; he was always an excellent leader.

  In October, Horner called all the wing commanders to Riyadh for a let-it-all-hang-out meeting. The topic was not flying safety, it was preserving the force, and it got results. There was no screaming and shouting. There was no blame. Those wing commanders who’d had accidents felt worse than anyone else could make them feel (“If they didn’t feel that way,” Horner observes, “they shouldn’t have been commanders”). The ones who had not had accidents knew that “there but for the grace of God go I.” So each man gave his views about what he was doing right and what he was doing wrong, and about whatever he had discovered that led to accidents.

  Everyone bared their souls, as they would at a mission debriefing, but with even greater intensity, brainstormed the potential pitfalls, and shared anguish for the organizational failures that had caused the deaths in the desert.

  The actual reason for most of the accidents was not hard to discern: the crews were training too hard, pushing their aircraft, pushing the rules, and flying tactics far too risky for the situation. When pilots deploy away from home, constraints are lessened. And when they deploy in anticipation of war, the lure to go beyond the limits seems justified. As a result they often exceed their own capabilities and create situations that saturate their capacity to cope; they put their aircraft in positions that defy the laws of physics and are unable to recover.

  Most of those at the meeting agreed that everyone needed some time off. Many of the pilots had been in the desert for over sixty days, living in crowded quarters, often with painfully uncomfortable sleeping arrangements, working twelve to fifteen hours a day, seven days a week. The troops were tired.

  As luck would have it, living conditions were already getting better. Some of the units were now taking a weekly day off. As more tents became available, the number assigned to each tent was decreased. Recreation facilities were being established. But greater efforts were taken to lessen the stress.

  ★ The October meeting in Riyadh marked an important turning point in the period leading up to the war: Though other accidents happened, the curve went down. The dangerous trend was over. More important, the meeting marked the moment of truth when all the commanders realized they were going into the war in an orderly fashion, and that pilots must fly more conservatively in wartime than in peacetime. In peacetime they practice against a threat — SAMs, MiGs, AAA — that is perfect and omnipresent, while in an actual war they fly against an enemy operator, pilot, or gunner who is scared, tired, and working with equipment that cannot be well maintained and operated twenty-four hours a day. Very few accidents occur in combat. In combat, pilots avoid undue risks and keep everything as simple as they can. If an enemy kills you, that’s a tough break, but no one wants to be killed by his own dumb mistake.

  ROTATION POLICY

  In the midst of the training and deployment, Horner had a serious disagreement with the generals and lieutenant generals in Washington over rotation policy. They wanted to rotate troops back to the States; he didn’t.

  He could not forget Vietnam, with its one year or 100 missions over the North, a policy that had robbed the deployed force of its commitment to success. He was going to have nothing like that in the Gulf… or he would go down swinging.

  There were phone calls from General Russ, seeking Horner’s views about such a policy. “Chuck,” he asked, “what do you think about this—120 days in the AOR, and then we rotate the individual but not the unit?”

  Horner’s reply was close to an ultimatum: “Respectfully, General, there’s no way I’ll ever agree to a rotation policy.”

  “See here, Chuck,” General Russ answered, disturbed by Horner’s attitude. “This isn’t a discussion of whether or not we are going to have a policy. It’s a given that we are. Rather, it is a chance for you to give us your views about what policy we should implement. We can’t keep those people in the desert forever.”

  To which Horner replied, “General, I respect what you are trying to do and appreciate your concern, but I will never agree to a rotation policy. We have been sent over here to do a job. When we get the Iraqis out of Kuwait, then bring us home. We are here until victory.”

  These were brave words… and maybe foolhardy ones, Horner told himself, and sometimes he didn’t think he could make them stick. Yet he felt that this was one of those issues he needed to get fired over if it went the wrong way.

  Fortunately, General Schwarzkopf felt as he did (probably as a consequence of his own Vietnam experience, though Horner can’t say this for sure), and so Horner’s policy stood — even in the face of higher-ups in Washington.

  After that, Horner had to convey this hard message to the troops.

  I found, he says, that if I told them the truth, they understood: That in fact I didn’t know when we would go home, that I didn’t know when the war might start, but that in Vietnam we had a rotation policy which made it our goal not to win but to stay alive until we rotated, and that I wasn’t going to be caught in that trap again.

  I also told them that I wanted to be home as much as they did, and while I had better living conditions than theirs, I understood their frustrations. “We came to do a job,” I went on to say, “and it’s a worthwhile job. So as far as I’m concerned, we all stay until that job gets done. Sorry, but none of us can go home until the Iraqis are out of Kuwait, and the murder, rape, and robbery stop. It is my decision to make, and that is the decision I have made. If I get fired, then the new guy can do whatever he wants, but for us today it is here until victory.”

  Certainly, we let people with special circumstances go home, and we had to let some of the reserve forces rotate their people, because they were on active duty for only a limited time. As for everyone else, morale was sky-high; people understood the contract and they had a stake in the outcome. They were committed to it, so let’s get on with it. A far cry from Vietnam.

  THE AGONY OF KUWAIT AND THE HOME FRONT

  Every day, the commanders in Riyadh and their staffs received reports of the Kuwa
itis trapped in their occupied country — firsthand accounts of brutal acts of murder, torture, rape, and looting. At their best, the Iraqis in Kuwait City were a gang of thugs, stripping cars and houses. At their worst, they were beasts, executing children in front of their parents, decapitating with power saws men suspected of being resistance fighters, gang-raping foreign women once employed as domestic servants in wealthy homes.

  Meanwhile, there was governmental and U.N. uncertainty about how best to remove Iraq from Kuwait, including considerable talk of alternatives to fighting. Most Americans wanted to avoid war, while many in and out of government — highly respected people such as Senator Sam Nunn and General Colin Powell — were counting on diplomatic initiatives and the U.N. embargo imposed soon after the invasion of Kuwait.

  Others felt that the United States should not rush into a war where thousands of Americans might be killed, simply to secure Kuwait’s oil — or as some op-ed wag put it: Would the United States have risked so much of its wealth and so many of its young warriors if the chief export of Kuwait had been broccoli? (President Bush famously disliked broccoli.)

  The view in the Gulf was vastly different. Proximity to the suffering in Kuwait made war seem increasingly better than waiting for the always doubtful success of the embargo or other initiatives.

  All the talk of delay, along with the confusion of aims among their leaders, disheartened the families of those who were deployed, and left them in a conceptual bind. Without the appreciation of events in the Gulf afforded by firsthand knowledge, they were reduced to whatever information was provided by the U.S. media — a perplexing variety of views about what should be done to end the crisis in the Gulf. The families at home saw at best a vague end in sight to the crisis — and what appeared to be an ever-longer separation from their loved ones.