by Tom Clancy
I enter the TACC and stop at the Air Rescue Coordination Center to check on downed pilots. No bad news. In fact, the news is almost good: an A-10 pilot previously listed as MIA has turned up in Iraq, as shown on CNN. It’s not good that he’s a POW, but it’s better than being MIA.
I stop to talk with people along the way to my place, to see how things are going. Nothing much to report.
When I reach the commander’s table at the front of the room facing the big-screen display, Tom Olsen is sitting in my chair, and Mike Reavy and Charley Harr are to his left. They are probably discussing a request to divert an F-16 package to another target.
I stop by Intel, but there is nothing exciting on their displays. I don’t stay long there, as they are working feverishly to finish some viewgraphs they will use in the changeover briefing at 0700.
Meanwhile, the room is full, because both shifts are there. People are explaining what has been going on and what needs to be taken care of as the day progresses. The night-shift people, who will be back in eleven-plus hours, are looking forward to getting out of the basement and into the open air and riding the bus back to Eskan Village and bed. They will probably stop for breakfast at either the RSAF or the village mess hall before they turn in.
Before I take my place, I look over the “doofer book”—the log — a plain notebook with a green hard cover that is always left on the commander’s table. The only thing I find is a debrief from the F-16 LANTIRN pilots who were orbiting eastern Iraq when the Scuds were shot at Riyadh last night. There had been a low overcast, and the missile came roaring up out of it about fifteen miles to their south. Though they tried to work down through the weather to look for the mobile launcher, the cloud bases were too low for them to muck around under. They never have much time, since the Iraqis pack up their launchers and get the hell out within ten minutes of their shoot. It is frustrating for all of us.
★ 0700 By now all the national leaders have wandered into the TACC and are sitting around the small table behind my chair.
The U.S. Navy is represented by Rear Admiral (lower half) Connie Lautenbager and Captain Lyle Bien (called Ho Chi Minh by all), the USMC is represented by Colonel Joe Robbin, the Army BCE cell is fully manned, and of course there are too many Air Force people to name.
It is very crowded, with the generals and colonels getting seats on a first-come, first-seated basis. I face the room, and the formal briefings begin. From the get-go, I’ve tried to make sure they all feel they can speak up at any time. There is no limit to the good ideas a group harbors; the problem is to get everyone to speak up and share their views. At the same time, we don’t want rambling conversations. The briefings have to be over fast so people can get to work or go home, as the case may be.
The weather briefing is short. It’s either going to be good or not so good. But we will go regardless, changing targets based on what we can get. The weather briefer is usually a young lieutenant or captain, and he gets a lot of barbs thrown his way. If he has no sense of humor, he is dead meat. It helps to loosen up the room.
In their formal briefing, Intel gives BDA from yesterday, unusual events, thoughts about Iraqi air defenses or Scuds, or whatever is the hottest button. We might even get some news about events outside the war zone, such as peace initiatives by Iraqi foreign minister Tarik Aziz in Russia. (Question: How did he get out of Baghdad? Answer: He took a car to Iran and caught a commercial flight.) Sometimes the national leaders will ask questions, but not wishing to seem impolite or ungrateful, they leave the barbs at the briefers to me.
Next comes a run-through of logistics and communications, paying special attention to munitions and fuel reserves, aircraft status, and unusual transportation problems. Rider and Summers have done such a good job that they anticipate and fix problems before they become serious. It also sure helps to be fighting a war on top of most of the world’s oil supply and to have giant refineries operating near the bases.
Though the B-52s at Jeddah are eating munitions at a fantastic rate, Jeddah is fortunately a large port, so we are able to truck the munitions quickly from the port to the build-and-storage areas. Rapidly generating the thousands of tons of bombs needed to support a high-tempo operation is no small thing. Even getting rid of the dunnage that the bombs came packed in is a major undertaking. And then specialized machines are needed to lift the bomb bodies and attach the fins and lugs. If you get careless, then you don’t live to tell about it, and you’ll probably take many of your friends along with you. Once the munitions have been built up, you have to deliver them to the aircraft and load them on the racks attached to the jets. About an hour before takeoff, the weapons troops place fuses and safety wires in each bomb.
★ 0730 The formal briefings are finished, and now all at the head table swivel their chairs and face the back of the room for Chris Christon’s more speculative Intel briefing. This is where Chris sticks his neck out in a thoughtful, considered way, and it is understood that he does not have all the answers, and won’t need an excuse if he is wrong. He also has a second, unofficial job — to keep General Horner awake, for I am now fighting off sleep with a vengeance. I make notes, just to keep my eyes open, but have trouble maintaining focus.
After he finishes (and it may be five or thirty minutes, depending), all feel free to challenge him, argue, or comment. Here we do our brainstorming. Obviously the junior officers are reluctant to speak, but if there is a burning idea they speak up; and if what Chris or someone else has said doesn’t convince them, the bullshit flag is thrown.
Now it is somewhere near 0800, and I open the discussion to the national leaders, the top representatives from the Army, Navy, USMC, and Special Ops, and my own staff leaders. Some talk a little, some say nothing, and some have long but insightful comments. Anyone who gets long-winded, we joke into brevity. When I sense all have had their say, I wrap up the meeting with some nonthreatening (but sometimes negative) feedback and thoughts about where we need to go. When I have to threaten, I do it in private and give the individual a chance to explain.
By about 0815 to 0830 the meeting is over, and the night shift heads out. ★ 0830 Down the street, the CENTCOM staff is coming up to speed, which means that the phones will occasionally ring with their questions. Though I leave these matters to the TACC directors or my generals, I do want to know what questions are being asked, as the subject will likely come up in the CINC evening meeting, which means I have to be on top of it.
This is also a good time to chat with the national leaders, since they tend to leave during the day to visit their forces, or perhaps to escort some bigwig from their home country or grab a nap.
Tom Olsen has gone to bed. He is tireless, but getting on in years, and the night shift is a strain for him.
★ 0900 I go for a cup of coffee at the snack bar just off the right-hand side of the TACC toward the rear, over by airspace management. The cookies are abundant, and I take too many for my own good. The American people have kept us in goodies at a staggering rate. No wonder morale is so high. We know that our people at home are pulling for us and proud of us… so unlike Vietnam, so different.
I take my coffee and chat with the AWACS and Patriot teams, then pass by the Scud warning lady (since it’s daytime, she won’t have anything to do and can safely read her mystery or romance novels), the airspace management team, the duty officers on my left, the admin section on my right, and out the rear door. On good days, I make it without spilling any coffee.
Now I stroll down the hall past the ATO room, which is going full speed in mass confusion, and into the Black Hole for the daily strategy meeting. I will take what comes out of this to Schwarzkopf that night. Inside the Black Hole, Glosson, Tolin, and Deptula are drinking coffee and arguing about how the war is going and what we ought to do next. Though doctrine writers wax eloquently about this level of strategic thinking, as always it is coming down to people who don’t have a clear understanding of what exactly needs to be done yet are far from blind, since they have
intelligence not available to others, etc.
For my part, during the run-up to the war, I had read all I could about Saddam and the history and culture of Iraq. Dick Hallion, the USAF historian, had flooded my office with books on these subjects, which I’d devoured, sometimes reading more than one a day. It’s funny how focused you get when final exams are approaching. This is the final exam of my military career.
As soon as I wander in, Dave Deptula, Buster Glosson, or Tony Tolin goes to the wall where a map of Iraq is stuck with colored pins indicating various category targets (blue might represent air defense; red, leadership; orange, NBC facilities; and green, Scud-related targets), and we discuss what needs to be done two days from now. (Sometimes when I am busy with a crisis, they do this without me; sometimes Buster comes down to the TACC and kneels beside my chair, and we go over what he is thinking.)
After we discuss the so-called strategic targets I move to the next room, where Bill Welch and Sam Baptiste will be dealing with long lists of targets nominated by our land force brethren. Fred Franks’s VIIth Corps worked this list hard, both because they believed it was their duty and responsibility and because they believed air would be wasted going after targets that didn’t matter to the real war if they didn’t. XVIIIth’s list was much shorter. Gary Luck had fewer Iraqis in front of him, and he would not get into the heavy stuff until his divisions had wheeled to the right along the rivers and attacked toward Basra. I also believed that he figured we knew how to do what was best and if he needed help he could count on us. In fact, I never got the impression he felt he was going to need any significant help. Walt Boomer’s list was not as short as Luck’s but much shorter than Fred’s, perhaps because he figured he had his own Marine Air Force at his fingertips if he needed it. That was true in some ways, because the Harriers were thought of as CAS aircraft and really couldn’t go very deep, due to range and vulnerability considerations. On top of that, the Marines will be loyal to one another in ways the Army and Air Force may not. (Neither Walt nor I have this attitude, but it may have influenced his iron majors and kept them from submitting long lists of targets in order to make sure they got their fair share of airpower, whatever that is or was.) The Northern Area and Eastern Area lists were submitted by Colonel Ayed al-Jeaid, the RSAF representative working in the C31C at MODA.
In fact, few specific targets came out of any of those lists, partly because we had adopted the kill box and level of effort concepts for attacking targets in the KTO, but mostly because Schwarzkopf really called the tune on this part of the ATO. Thus at the evening CINC meetings, the KTO targets would be briefed as 200 sorties against Iraqi divisions in this area and 150 sorties against divisions in that area. And every day, a Republican Guard division would be the “target du jour,” and we would devote a great deal of effort to it. So every day we would work up a target list and present it to him; but each night he would to some extent redistribute the air level of effort. Though he was just doing his “land component commander” thing (as was his right and duty), in truth which targets we hit didn’t really matter, since we were going to get them all before we started the ground war.
★ The air-superiority efforts (under Glenn Profitt) are planned in the next room of the Black Hole, but I don’t have to spend much time there after the first days of the war. By now, the folks there mostly make sure the CAPs are in the right place at the right time, with emphasis on MiGs fleeing to Iran. They also frag the Wild Weasels, EF-111s, and EA-6Bs for support jamming; but that is easy, as our flights in the KTO consume most of the current effort, and about all they have to do is make sure there is coverage. Still, a few special flights require detailed support planning, such as the B-52 raid on the industrial complex north of Baghdad, or F-16s going after a nuclear R & D facility, but for the most part their work has become routine.
On my way out of the Black Hole, I pass the Scud cell, which is now empty. About all we can do is chase Scuds in real time with SAS and special forces on the ground and F-15E/F-16C LANTIRN-equipped patrols in the air. So planning consists of fragging the jets to provide coverage throughout the night, making sure we have maximum coverage at the most likely times for Scud launches. Because we have no idea where the Scuds are hiding, we have to dedicate significant resources — forty-eight jets — to work the problem.
If we were in the same boat today, I suspect we would use more human intelligence assets on the ground (such as paid Bedouin spies wandering around in places that are too hot for Westerners), and better technical solutions (such as Joint STARS with automatic target recognition programs in their onboard computers, which would mean that controllers on the Joint STARS would not have to dig the target out of the maze on their scopes).
The automatic target recognition program would work like this: When the Joint STARS radar picked up a stationary Scud (using its synthetic aperture radar mode, SAR) or a transporter erector launcher (TEL) in transit (using its moving target indicator mode, MTI), the computer would recognize the target as a Scud or a TEL and alert the controller, who would then arrange for the target to be entered into the command-and-control system, and struck.
Between 1000 and 1100, I come out of the Black Hole and stick my head in the weather shop across the hall to get a detailed feeling about the weather over Iraq and our bases over the next few days. When you have a good sense of what might happen, then you better understand what people are telling you about what is happening. That is why you want to be close to the action, listen to what Intel and weather and logistics all tell you, and get a broad idea of how they reached their current solutions. So, for example, I would give the weather guys points of interest to look out for, as I described for them what I thought we would be doing the next few days. That way, they knew where to concentrate their attention when they looked over meteorological events.
After the weather shop, I hit the Marines and Navy rooms. These are built out of plywood and located in a dead-end hall next to the weather shop and across from the Black Hole. Now I am hungry and in a cookie hunt, and these guys always have some really good ones squirreled away. The Marines and Navy guys feel like part of the team and understand airpower, since most are pilots or weapons systems officers (or Naval flight officers, as the Navy calls them). I don’t spend long there, because I want to get upstairs, either to clean up my desk or get a nap.
★ 1100 In my office three people are waiting to see me — Colonel Randy Randolph, my chief medical officer; Colonel Chaplain Hanson; and Colonel George Giddens, the “Mayor” of Riyadh for U.S. forces.
The doctor, Randy Randolph, wants to talk about inoculations for anthrax and botulism. He tells me what he thinks we should do with our limited number of injections and what the CENTCOM SG has put out for guidance. I go along with his advice, because he has his head on straight about everything else (from where to locate hospitals to which doctors and nurses to put in charge).
Colonel Chaplain Hanson, a Mormon, wants to know how I’m holding up, but I would rather learn his views about how everyone else is holding up. There are no surprises: we are pleased with the success we’ve had, but we are sick and tired of killing and having our guys shot down, and are all very tired and want to go home. It is good to meet with him, and he knows that I appreciate just talking about how God might be looking at what we are doing and about what he might want us to do — not that I believed we were any more important in God’s eyes than a sparrow. Nonetheless, these higher-level questions do rumble around in your mind, and this guy gets training, time, and money to think about such things.
Last is George Giddens. Schwarzkopf instituted a “Mayor” wherever Americans were stationed, so the locals could have a single contact point where they could address concerns and get problems solved. When Schwarzkopf asked the Air Force to appoint the Mayor of Riyadh, George got the job. He is responsible for the care and feeding of U.S. residents in his city, and he works with the local Saudi civil and military chiefs; he has done a wonderful job.
George is he
re today because he is having a problem with some of the residents at Eskan Village and is going to take action. (I don’t remember what the problem was — probably something like our guys were giving the Saudi guards on the gate a hard time, or else our guards were giving the Saudis delivering food and water a hard time, since anybody in Arab dress was looked on as a terrorist.) Since some of the troublemakers are Army guys, he wants me to know what he’s doing in case I want him to back off. As usual, he is thoroughly on top of things and will get the problem solved. It is a great comfort to have such a mature, thoughtful, yet disciplined Mayor running things in my name. If he were less capable, I might find myself caught up in his job. Even though it is important to the war effort that the various staffs and troops about town have hot food to eat and a decent place to stay, I really shouldn’t have to get into the hows and whens of any of that.
★ 1145 In the small dressing room next to the bathroom Tom Olsen and I share behind our office, there is a stuffed couch that looks like the finest king-size bed right about now. I sneak in for a quick nap, while George Gitchell sits outside the door and screens calls and callers. In seconds I’m into a deep sleep, but I will wake up according to an internal alarm clock in my brain. I have always been able to wake up after whatever time I choose — fifteen minutes, thirty minutes, an hour, or 6:00 A.M. the next day. As it is, I will sleep between half an hour and an hour. After I wake up, I will go downstairs to lunch with the troops — another chance to find out what is going on and what they are thinking or worrying about.
