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

by Tom Clancy

  • ABCCC (Airborne Command, Control, and Communications; pronounced “AB triple C”) — A C-130 aircraft used primarily for command and control of close air support. A command-and-control module in the cargo compartment held about fifteen people, half of whom were likely to be Army or Marines after the ground forces were engaged. The Marine ABCCC was called the Airborne Direct Air Support Center, or DASC.

  • Compass Call — An EC-130H configured to jam communications, such as Iraqi military communications.

  • Commando Solo — An EC-130 configured to conduct psychological operations by broadcasting television and radio.

  • Rivet Joint (RC-135) — A special reconnaissance version of the Boeing 707 that provided data on enemy air defense systems and other intelligence information.

  • Joint STARS (E-8A) — A modified Boeing 707, equipped with a large radar that provided Moving Target Information (MTI) and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images of surface targets. This information was presented to air controllers on the aircraft, who tracked, identified, and directed strikes against enemy ground targets. Because the E-8 was still undergoing testing, it was largely crewed by Northrop Grumman civilian engineers who had volunteered for the war. The Joint STARS radar and air controllers proved to be of immense value in halting the Iraqi ground attack into Saudi Arabia at El-Khafji in late January.

  • Killer Scouts — F-16 fighters assigned to patrol kill boxes (twenty-mile-square areas in Iraq and Kuwait) and locate Iraqi army units visually or by radar. They provided target information to flights of attack aircraft fed into their kill box area by ABCCC, AWACS, Joint STARS, or the TACC.

  After the ground war started:

  • Air Liaison Officers (ALOs) and Ground Forward Air Controllers (FACs)[52]— Both connected ground units with air and handled close air support. The difference lay in their rank and the level of army units to which they were assigned. FACs were usually junior officers assigned at battalion level or below. ALOs were usually majors or above and assigned to brigade or above. For example, a colonel would be the ALO at corps level, a lieutenant colonel at division. The ALO role emphasized senior-level experience and thus made the ALO the air adviser to the Army commander. While the ALO could control a strike, most often strikes were controlled by FACs, who were closer to the battle.

  • Air Operations Support Center — A mini-headquarters, usually a corps ALO, heavily equipped with communications and computers. It was to the corps headquarters, or Army group headquarters, what the BCE was to the TACC. The Marine equivalent was called a Direct Air Support Center.

  Other elements in the system:

  • Control and Reporting Center (CRC) — A ground-based van that could also include one or more TPS-75 radars to provide an air picture. CRC controllers backed up AWACS controllers when the AWACS was too busy or not available — though they could not do the job as well as AWACS, because ground-based radar could not see airborne targets at low altitude due to ground clutter and the curvature of the earth. Other elements in the command-and-control systems with a similar function included U.S. Aegis cruisers and the Sector Operations Centers, operated by the Saudi Air Defense system and co-manned primarily by the RSAF and USAF. CRC displays were also linked into the AWACS and other radar nets, and provided the AWACS picture to those who didn’t otherwise have it. Thus, a CRC was set up at KKMC to give the Syrians and Egyptians an input into the air picture.

  • Control and Reporting Posts (CRP) — Individual ground radar units that performed essentially the same functions as the CRC or AWACS, but were smaller and depended heavily on the other two for a comprehensive air picture. They were also called gap fillers.

  • Wing/Squadron Command Posts — This was the primary hub linking the squadron, wing, or base with the TACC current ops. Each base would have a main command post, but its size and complexity varied with the base’s size and activity level. At a base with just a few jets, like Arar, the CP might be a tent with a telephone, a CAFMS terminal, and a table with maps used for planning. At a big operation like Dhahran, the CP might have air defense displays with the AWACS picture, intelligence computers to display updated threats, and a wealth of duty officers and cells to coordinate operations.

  • Flying Squadron Operations — Here pilots planned the missions and got intelligence not provided by wing operations, briefing rooms, and scheduling boards. The ATO came from the TACC Plans to Wing Operations, where it was broken out and parceled out to the squadrons to execute.

  • The Air Traffic Control System — This included towers, departure and approach control, and air traffic aids — TACAN, VOR, ILS, ADF, runway lights, Air Base Operations, GCI, and GPS.

  • And a number of support elements such as maintenance control; security police operations; civil engineer operations (who watched over runway shutdowns); fire operations; bomb disposal; and hospital operations.

  The center of it all, the TACC (pronounced “T-A-C–C”), had two functions: current plans and current operations. Plans — the Black Hole, current plans, and the computer room (which was part of current plans) — built the ATO; Operations executed it. However, in normal conversation, the TACC meant Operations, which was much larger than Plans, and more was going on there.

  The Operations section changed the ATO.

  In a perfect world, where nothing unforeseen happens, no plan goes amiss. In the real world, where the ATO was already forty-eight hours old when it was executed, a system was required that could change the ATO quickly, based on new intelligence, weather changes, unforeseen enemy actions, new opportunities, or even relatively small mishaps, such as a KC-10 tanker aborting a takeoff. The jets that tanker was scheduled to refuel had to somehow find fuel, and one of the teams in the TACC Ops section had to find a way to provide it. Likewise, if the weather was bad in the ATO target area, one of the TACC teams would likely change the scheduled flight from its preplanned route to a new target area.

  During the war, the closest that planning came to perfection was perhaps 50 percent, and on some days virtually every sortie was altered.

  ★ When the Ninth Air Force came to the Gulf, they brought their command center with them, originally housed in an inflatable building (called “the rubber duck”), which was set up in the parking lot behind the RSAF building in Riyadh. It soon became evident, however, that a better site was needed. For one thing, the American airmen needed to adapt their operation to the immediate situation. Since they were in Saudi Arabia, the appropriate site for the control center was with the air force of the host nation. For another, the rubber duck — based on an outdated vision that placed the Air Force out in the countryside with the Army — was obsolete and only marginally functional. It was too small, too dark, and most of its technology came from the fifties (though some systems, like CAFMS, were newer). The 150-plus members of the TACC staff needed a more efficient layout — and hard walls to shield against the Scud threat.

  The obvious site was in the basement of RSAF headquarters. In December, Operations took over a fifty-by-seventy-five-foot room previously used by the RSAF to teach computer operators. Power generators, communications vans, and satellite dishes, however, remained in the parking lot, and their cables were rerouted into the new TACC.

  A TOUR OF THE TACC

  At the front of the Ops room was a small open space. Down the room’s large center section were ranks of tables, covered with phones and computer terminals. Beyond a pair of side aisles were desks, most facing the center.

  The right front wall contained BCE maps with plastic overlays depicting the strength and position of allied and enemy ground forces. To their left were a pair of large screens displaying the AWACS air picture and intelligence data, such as Scud launch and impact areas, active Iraqi radars, or data about airfields, transportation networks, or any other data loaded into the intelligence systems computer.

  The commanders’ table was at the front center.

  Seated at its far right (facing forward) was a Kuwaiti Air Force officer, Li
eutenant Colonel Abdullah Al-Samdan. On leave in Jordan when the war broke out, Al-Samdan had left his wife and children there, leapt into his car, driven to Riyadh, and set himself up as the Kuwaiti Air Force representative at RSAF headquarters. He was at the commanders’ table because he held a special place of honor: it was his country they were there to free. But he also “paid his keep” by providing access to the resistance leaders in occupied Kuwait (they risked their lives daily by using their satellite phones to relay target data to him[53]) and by flying missions during the war. His parents, brothers, and sisters remained trapped in Kuwait City.

  The RSAF leader, General Behery, sat on Al-Samdan’s left, with Horner next to him, and either Major General Tom Olsen or Major General John Corder next to Horner (Olsen generally worked days, Horner worked nights, and Corder, it seemed, worked all the time). Horner had brought his old friend Corder onto the team as a general officer director of operations. Though Jim Crigger had been performing splendidly in the DO role, he had no stars on his collars and so was not taken seriously in high-level meetings with other services. The intense, intellectual,[54] selfless Corder could handle the point man role superbly, and allow Crigger full time to run daily operations.

  The last two chairs were occupied by the TACC Directors — Jim Crigger and Al Doman (Mike Reavy and Charlie Harr worked the night shift). Their job was to run current operations — that is, to execute the air war. When a change was made to the ATO, they were the approval authority, ensuring that all the pertinent people were informed and coordinated.

  Behind the commanders’ table was a square table with a large map of Iraq under Plexiglas, around which sat the national leaders of the coalition air partners — Major General Claude Solnet from France, Major General Mario Alpino from Italy, Lieutenant Colonel John McNeil from Canada, and RAF Air Vice Marshal William Wratten, RAF, who was also the deputy to Great Britain’s top military leader in the Gulf, Sir Peter de la Billiere.

  On their left sat the people who actually ran the TACC, primarily Lieutenant Colonels Bill Keenan and Hans Pfeiffer. They saw to it that people and equipment stayed in working order (they were the TACC’s “building superintendents”).

  Duty officers — liaison officers from the various bases, air forces, and services — occupied the rows of tables down the center of the room;[55] their job was to organize changes to the preplanned ATO. Since most changes occurred after a flight was airborne, they were usually passed to the flights by the AWACS; but the airborne command element aboard one of the AWACS aircraft, or another command-and-control element, such as ABCCC aircraft or Killer Scouts, was also sometimes pressed into service.

  The system also required a number of support and liaison elements, such as weather, intelligence, search and rescue, air defense, AWACS, airspace management (to keep objects from occupying the same place at the same time), electronic warfare, special operations, and the BCE (the liaison between the Air Force and the Army).

  All of these elements were important. A few deserve more explanation:

  The air is the Air Force’s sea, so weather was obviously important — far more important than knowing whether or not it was going to rain. The decision to load TV-guided Maverick missiles, for instance, depended on the forecast of optical slant ranges: Could the pilot see through the haze with his Maverick so he could lock the missile onto the target? The current operations weather section (supported by Colonel Jerry Riley’s larger weather shop across from the Black Hole down the hall) answered such questions and kept everyone in the TACC advised about weather in the target areas, refueling tracks, and airbases.

  The large intelligence section in Current Operations received data from several sources: national intelligence sources (such as the DIA); units flying missions (their intelligence shops would debrief the pilots and call in anything hot); and analysts in tents on the soccer field in the USMTM compound next to the RSAF headquarters. The soccer field also sent target materials to the wings and made studies of the Iraqis (which went, for example, to the Black Hole, so the findings could be incorporated into the targeting process).

  In the rear corner of the operations room was the search-and-rescue cell, led by Colonel Joe Stillwell. His team initiated, coordinated, and tracked rescues. For this they could call upon any available asset — navy ships, army helicopters, or Special Operations infiltration capabilities. Because search and rescue required joint resources, the SAR team in the TACC worked officially for the CINC and not for Chuck Horner. However, since search and rescue efforts were directed primarily toward downed aircrew in territory that was accessible only to air, and since the first indication of a loss, as well as its location, came from the AWACS picture, the team was located in the air operations center in the TACC.

  Each morning that Horner entered the TACC, his first stop was at this cell, to check on losses and rescue efforts. As he saw it, there was no more fitting way for a commander in wartime to start the day than to be reminded of the cost of his mistakes.

  NIGHT CAMEL

  Airmen are always experimenting with better ways to fight.

  During Desert Shield, 48th Wing F-111F aircrews flying over the Saudi desert discovered somewhat unexpectedly that friendly tanks were visible on their PAVE TAC screens, even when the tanks were dug into revetments in the sand.

  The PAVE TAC pod was located under the F-111F fuselage. This pod housed an infrared scanner that gave a fuzzy television picture of the ground 10,000 to 15,000 feet beneath the aircraft. Since the metal in the tanks heated and cooled more rapidly than the surrounding desert, the tanks showed up brightly when the aircraft pointed its sensor in their direction. Once they got a glimpse of a hot or cold spot, they’d lock the sensor onto the target, and it would track the target as the aircraft moved overhead. The sensor was quite sensitive and could present an excellent picture of anything in its field of view; but there was a trade-off. The field of view was very narrow. For the aircrew, it was like looking through a soda straw at objects three to five miles away.

  Also in the pod turret was a laser slaved to the IR sensor. After the air crew had found a tank and locked the sensor in a track mode, they would confirm the sighting with their cockpit television scope. The weapons system officer would then illuminate the tank with the laser and send a laser-guided bomb homing in on the laser reflection (F-15Es and F-16s equipped with LANTIRN Pods achieved similar results).

  These tactics and procedures, practiced and refined during the Night Camel exercises in November and December, became tank plinking in Desert Storm. At the height of the Storm, the 48th Wing were killing over a hundred tanks a night.

  Plinking had unintended effects. Soon after the campaign began in mid-January, reconnaissance photos began to show slit trenches some distance away from the parked tanks. During the war with Iran, Iraqi tankers had gotten into the habit of sleeping in their tanks — tanks being on the whole safer than the surrounding desert. Tank plinking ended that haven.

  Later, during the ground war, U.S. tankers always seemed to get off the first shot against Iraqi dug-in tanks; and as the battles progressed, enemy tank fire was often sparse. Later analysis showed that when U.S. ground forces approached, the Iraqis were not in their tanks, and then as the first shots hit the Iraqis, the Iraqi tankers concluded they were under air attack and went into bunkers. By the time the truth hit them, it was too late. Though the bravest tried to crawl back to their tanks, they were often cut down by U.S. machine guns; and those who reached their tanks successfully were too confused to fight effectively.

  Night Camel not only seriously weakened the Iraqi Army, it had a major impact on the ground war.

  DECEMBER BRIEFING

  In December, General Schwarzkopf called a command performance for his component commanders on the twentieth of the month to brief Secretary Cheney, General Powell, and Assistant Secretary Paul Wolfowitz at his headquarters at MODA. This was to be the last major war council before the proposed January U.N. deadline.

  Though all the
components were scheduled to participate, discussion of Army plans was to be minimal. Because the only war in the immediate, post-January 15 period would be the air war, the air campaign was to be the central focus. It was also Schwarzkopf’s intention (Horner suspects) to limit the land force briefing to logistical matters, in order to avoid premature judgments about the tactical details of the proposed ground attack. There would be time for that after the progress of the air war could be analyzed.

  The Navy and Marine discussion would also be kept to a minimum. Though the Navy was handling the embargo of Iraqi shipping in their usual solid, professional way, there was little to be said about that. There were, however, potential questions about a Marine amphibious operation into Kuwait, which a few Marine leaders in Washington were pressing for — though enthusiasm for such an operation died the closer one came to Riyadh (neither Schwarzkopf nor Boomer wanted one). The defenses the Iraqis were setting up on the shores of Kuwait looked murderous. In the end, an amphibious deception was part of the final ground plan, and it tied down several Iraqi divisions during the land phase of the war.

  The briefing was held in Schwarzkopf’s war room at MODA, and it was scheduled to last an hour, of which Horner had been allotted fifteen minutes; but since air would be the major topic, he prepared a fifty-viewgraph update of the briefing Buster Glosson had presented to the Secretary in October. That briefing had laid out a picture of the first three days of the war and a general look at the activities beyond that. Now Horner would explain in detail how all that would be accomplished, how long it would take, how the Air Force planned to fight as part of a coalition, and how they were going to support the ground forces when they came up at bat. Finally, he had been warned by Cheney’s military assistant that the Secretary was especially concerned about Iraq’s ballistic-missile and germ-warfare threats (in Horner’s shorthand, Scuds and Bugs), and for that reason, he had prepared two separate briefings about his plans to handle them.