Special Ops: Four Accounts of the Military's Elite Forces

by Orr Kelly

  Breast was told what targets to hit and when to do it. But his contingency plans had been approved without tampering by higher officials, and he was left free to decide how many planes to use, what aiming points to employ, and precisely when to make the attack.

  The Libyan raid has now become part of the curriculum at Strike U, an object lesson in how to conduct a surprise attack against shore targets.

  One of the most impressive parts of the whole operation was the navy’s demonstration of its ability to spirit two battle groups across the busy Mediterranean without anyone knowing they were coming. In 1941, the Japanese moved a much larger fleet into position for their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. But there were no satellites overhead in those days, and there were no trawlers constantly shadowing the carriers.

  As recently as the mid-1970s, the U.S. Navy had great difficulty shutting down all the emissions from its ships. Now, after years of practice, it can be done in moments. The navy has also become a master of deception. A carrier may suddenly turn off its radios and radar and speed away while a destroyer continues on the carrier’s course, broadcasting what sounds like a carrier’s normal radio traffic.

  An impressive demonstration of a combination of EMCON and deception was put on by the U.S.S. Ranger shortly after the Libyan raid. During exercises in the Pacific in the summer of 1986, the ship sailed from San Diego, bound for Hawaii, and then disappeared for fourteen days despite an intensive air, sea, and satellite search by the opposing side. During its furtive voyage, it continued to fly its planes in mock attacks on surface, submarine and land targets.

  Strict EMCON, of course, makes life more difficult for the pilots. They complain that the first switches pulled shut down the beacons and radar that help them to navigate and to find the ship when they are returning, low on fuel. The pilots say that anyone who thinks it is easy to find a carrier in EMCON, even if you know where the ship is supposed to be, ought to try it on a dark night. Except in their early training, pilots now routinely operate “zip lip,” with no radio communications and even with their own radar turned off. When planes return from a mission, the pilots place themselves into a holding pattern near the ship and then come in, one after the other, without a word spoken.

  To help them get aboard safely in these conditions, Hornet pilots have at their fingertips an automatic landing system in which the plane’s computers bring the craft right down onto the deck without a human hand on the controls. The system is so good it seems almost uncanny.

  During a shakedown cruise before the Constellation’s first deployment, a sudden fog enveloped the ship off the San Diego coast while many of its planes were in the air. Admiral Edney, who had seldom seen weather so close to zero-zero—no visibility and no ceiling—sent all but two of the airborne planes to bases on shore. Then he asked two of his most experienced pilots to try to bring their Hornets onto the carrier using the automatic landing system. One plane landed perfectly on the first pass. The second boltered the first time and then came aboard the next time around.

  Despite this dramatic demonstration, pilots on those first two deployments—of the Constellation in the Pacific and the Coral Sea in the Mediterranean—seldom used the automatic system. One pilot, “Smooth Dog” Vaughn, became so enamored of the system that he used it all the time aboard the Connie until he was told that he was being paid to take his plane off from the pointy end of the ship and put it back on the dull end.

  Most pilots seem to resist using the system. One reason is the fear that it might not work when it is needed most. They feel that the more they practice landing on their own, the safer they will be. There is also the macho factor. Pilots are rated on the quality of their landings—“Okay,” “Fair,” “No Grade,” “Wave Off,” and “Cut Pass” (unsafe but too close for a waveoff)—and the competition among pilots and between squadrons is intense. But a landing in which the computer does all the work doesn’t qualify for a rating.

  Rear Adm. William A. Dougherty, Jr., commander of the Atlantic Fleet’s Carrier Group Four, says he doesn’t want his young pilots to rely on the automatic system as a crutch. But he says they should use it routinely as they approach the ship. This is the way he puts it:

  I can use it and break out of it. That’s what I like. If I can get myself in to a quarter of a mile, the game’s won. The hard thing in night or bad weather is to get set up. The last portion is a piece of cake. I feel better landing it myself. When you’re in the goo, at night, and you have a rolling, pitching deck, and you have a system that will get you in so you can see the ship and the deck, that is worth its weight. The only contention is the last quarter of a mile. Someone who doesn’t use it to come within a half-mile or a quarter-mile is not smart. But you still ought to be able to get the plane into the basket with your own skills.

  In practice, on most carriers the system is not kept in tip-top operating shape all the time, and pilots use it far less than they should if they are going to have full confidence in it when the weather turns bad, and they need all the help they can get to come aboard safely.

  The Coral Sea’s first deployment with the Hornet not only took the plane into combat for the first time but, if anything, provided an even rougher test for the plane than the first cruise in the Constellation. The weather in the Mediterranean was the worst Lockard had ever seen. He was aghast when he saw blue water breaking over the deck and drenching the Hornets with salt. Although corrosion was much less than on other planes, it still caused far more maintenance work than had been expected.

  Particularly disturbing was the discovery that the edges of the wing carry-through bulkheads, where the wings are attached, were corroding. The problem was found before the corrosion ate away enough metal to cause a plane to lose its wings, but it did require each plane to be pulled out of service while the bulkheads were treated to avoid further damage.

  The seven-month cruise also had its share of landing gear problems—an average of one a month. At first the crew thought the problem was metal fatigue, and then they suspected corrosion. Breast called the problems “strange.” Years after the cruise ended, Lockard acknowledged that he did not think the navy had seen the end of its landing gear problems.

  While the Libyan raid answered many questions about the performance of the Hornet and other new weapons, it fell far short of demonstrating how the navy would perform if it had to go to war against the Soviets.

  While the general easing of tensions between Moscow and Washington seems to make such a conflict only a remote possibility, the navy, mindful of the speed with which international relationships can change, still considers a confrontation with the Soviets the ultimate challenge, and plans its forces and its strategy with that in mind. This is the way navy planners think such a conflict might unfold and how the Hornet would fit in:

  War does not come without warning. First, there is a period of growing tension between East and West. Soviet troops in Germany go on higher alert. Soviet reserves are called up. Civilian trucks begin moving men and equipment into position.

  In the West, reservists are called to active duty, and the U.S. begins flying troops across the Atlantic to draw tanks and other pre-positioned equipment and then move toward the East-West border. The navy cancels all leaves and prepares to escort supply ships across the Atlantic and to protect ports on both sides of the ocean.

  The attention of most military men and much of the world is focused on the central front in Germany, where war could come at any moment with the movement of armies of tanks and regiments of attack aircraft. But navy leaders look nervously toward the north—toward the sparsely populated area of Norway above the Arctic Circle; toward the approaches to Iceland through the Sea of Norway; toward the Red navy’s big, missile-carrying nuclear submarines in their sanctuaries in the Barents Sea and under the polar ice—and toward the buildup of ships, planes, and troops on the Kola Peninsula. The military force concentrated here seems to loom over the narrow, lightly defended stretch of Finnish, Swedish, and Norwegian t
erritory lying between the Soviet Union and the Sea of Norway.

  If, as seems likely, the millions of men facing each other in Central Europe are fairly evenly matched, what happens on the northern flank, in the vast open reaches of the Sea of Norway, in the narrow wind-swept fjords along the Norwegian shore, and in the air over the craggy snow-clad mountains of northern Norway, may determine the outcome of the entire conflict.

  It is here, far from the major land battles, that the navy expects to make its contribution.

  As tension rises, the president confers with leaders of the NATO alliance, and then gives the order for three carrier battle groups, together with a force of American, British, Dutch, Norwegian, and Danish surface ships, to move past Iceland and across the northern tip of Scotland toward Norway. Marines, equipped for fighting in the far north, accompany the task force, prepared to set up defensive positions on shore. Norwegian law bars the stationing of foreign troops on its soil, but the marines have practiced fighting in the harsh Norwegian weather during peacetime exercises. Scouting ahead of the flotilla are aircraft from the carriers and planes from bases in the British Isles. Moving silently under the sea, American submarines listen for the faint sounds of Soviet subs lying in wait up ahead.

  The task force commander gives a prayer of thanks. His greatest fear has always been that his orders to move north would come too late, after fighting had already broken out. He now has the chance to prevent enemy occupation of Norway and Iceland, rather than the much more difficult task of dislodging forces already in place.

  As the task force moves north, the individual ships are spread out over thousands of square miles. To enemy analysts poring over satellite photography and reports from listening posts on shore, in the air, and at sea, there is no discernible pattern. Ships seem to be moving almost aimlessly. What appears on one pass of a satellite to be a carrier is nowhere to be seen on the next pass.

  Even the task force commander doesn’t know exactly where his own ships are. Before moving north, he called the leaders of his three battle groups together aboard his flagship. He told them where he wanted them, when they should be there, and what he wanted them to do. How to get there was left up to them.

  And then most of the ships and planes went into strict EMCON. But there were exceptions. Some of the surface ships were assigned to broadcast signals that would make them seem to be something they weren’t. With destroyers sounding like aircraft carriers—and then suddenly going off the air—it was difficult for the enemy analysts even to count the number of ships in the flotilla, let alone know exactly what types they were, where they were, or where they were headed.

  With silence or deception the rule, the admiral in charge of the entire operation would seem to be as much in the dark as anyone else. Actually, a steady flow of information comes to him from E-2C Hawkeye aircraft flying out hundreds of miles from the fleet. The Hawkeye, like the air force’s airborne warning and control system [AWACS], is a flying command post, sporting a huge radar dome and sprouting communications antennae. With its radar, the Hawkeye is capable of keeping track of aircraft and ships within a circle of hundreds of square miles. But the Hawkeye is old and inadequate for the job. Hornets and Tomcats, borrowed from their primary jobs, are assigned as scouts and they report in with high-speed bursts of data to fill out the picture of the battle scene.

  In effect, the admiral becomes an “information sponge,” soaking up data about the situation facing his task force. His ship remains silent, its radio and radar systems shut down. It is the duty of his subordinate commanders to communicate with him only if they are unable to carry out their assignments. Otherwise, he assumes they are where they are supposed to be.

  If the Soviet commanders can move quickly enough, before this powerful force is in place, they will gain a major advantage. If they can take Iceland and the isolated Norwegian bases such as Bodo, they will not only be in a strong position on the northern flank of the allied forces in Central Europe. They will also have air and sea bases from which to attack the approaching task force and then strike at shipping in the Atlantic.

  But the mere fact that a powerful allied force is moving northward presents them with serious problems. They have no choice but to move planes and troops that might otherwise be positioned along the German border far to the north to protect their own northern territories. They must also worry about the possibility of devastating air attack from the American carriers anywhere along a broad arc extending from northern Germany to the ports for their Northern Fleet and their air bases in the area around Murmansk.

  Even discounting its nuclear weapons, the task force steaming northward represents a formidable array of military power. Many of the surface ships and submarines bristle with Tomahawk cruise missiles that can be launched to slip in under defensive radar to hit targets far inland. Each of the three carriers has nearly a hundred aircraft. With the F/A-18s capable of operating as fighters or attack planes—or both on the same mission—that means a potential attack force of more than 100 aircraft.

  The danger of air attack on the approaching force grows rapidly, once it comes within about 1,200 miles of Soviet bases. The latest model Backfire bombers, recently assigned to the Northern Fleet, rise from their bases along with older Bears and Badgers in swarms of as many as forty planes, seeking to get close enough to the American carriers to launch their air-to-surface missiles. The Bears and Badgers lead the way, firing subsonic cruise missiles.

  Part of the Badger force complicates the fleet’s air defense problem by firing Kingfish missiles from altitudes above 35,000 feet. The missiles, flying at three times the speed of sound, soar upward to nearly 60,000 feet before diving toward the ships below. This attack from above, while the attention of the ships’ crews is riveted on beating off surface-skimming missiles, is eerily similar to the American dive bombers’ attack on Admiral Nagumo’s carriers in the Battle of Midway.

  Many of the missiles fired in this first-wave attack are launched at extreme range, and most of them are older weapons, relatively easy to confuse or shoot down. But even if most of the missiles don’t get through to the carriers, they create confusion and may even saturate the defense with more targets than it can handle.

  In the early stages of the battle, the planes can only come from the direction of the Soviet Union because of the distance they have to fly. F-14s, with their long-range Phoenix missiles, are sent out to loiter on station, several hundred miles in advance of the fleet. On the carriers, pilots sit strapped into their F/A-18s on five-minute alert, ready to join the Tomcats as soon as the approach of the enemy planes is detected.

  As American commanders such as Admiral Dougherty picture the confrontation, the Soviet pilots face a daunting challenge. They are approaching an extremely powerful force—but they don’t know exactly where it is. All they know is that it is out there somewhere. And yet, between them and the fleet is a picket line of fighter planes armed with a variety of missiles as well as guns.

  “Think about this,” Dougherty says.

  Here you are sitting on land, and you know there’s a pretty potent force out there you want to try to get. Well, if you know their guns are cocked and they’re going to shoot you, you don’t just go blundering out there, because you’re liable to get shot down and never even find the ships. That’s one of the beauties of the whole battle group. The advantage is in my favor. I’m floating around there, I’ve got my guns cocked, and the burden is on him to come out and find me. All he has to do is get within my lethal range, whether that be with fighters or guns or missiles, and he’s a grape. I mean, that’s a turkey shoot.

  The first obstacle Backfire pilots face is the threat from the Phoenix missiles, capable of reaching out scores of miles. But the launch of a Phoenix can be detected—and if it is detected, it can be defeated. If a Backfire pilot detects the Phoenix in time, he turns sharply right or left and forces the missile to chase him in a long arc until it runs out of fuel. But the Backfire pilot has also burned precious fu
el, and he has had to turn away from his target. Perhaps a Phoenix that runs out of gas and splashes into the sea has still paid its way.

  As the Tomcats seek to knock down or drive away the incoming Backfires, they are soon joined by scores of F/A-18s armed with Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles to increase the odds against the attacking planes.

  As pilots run low on fuel, they pull back to refuel. They may find big air force KC-10 tankers waiting to fill their tanks. When ammunition runs low, the fighters are forced to withdraw from the battle and return to the carrier, but only for a brief visit. As soon as they have been refueled and fitted with missiles and more ammunition, they move up to the catapult again. In a couple of days of combat, a pilot flies more hours—and takes more Gs—than during an entire month in peacetime. Every bone and muscle aches, and he feels like a Redskins tackle after a Super Bowl game. Exhaustion begins to take its toll in combat and accidents.

  For the F/A-18 pilots, the pace is even more strenuous than for those flying other planes. Peacetime experience indicates the Hornets will keep on flying when other planes begin to break down and remain on the deck for repairs. The Hornet pilots also have more different jobs to do—dropping bombs; dogfighting; launching HARM, Harpoon, and Maverick missiles; serving as scouts—than pilots of other planes, and the struggle to do all of those jobs well is a constant strain. Fortunately, the Hornet is a comfortable plane to fly—except for the webbing of the parachute harness criss-crossed under the pilot’s buttocks. When the Australians bought the F/A-18, they found the harness so uncomfortable that they modified the ejection system so there is only a cushion beneath the pilot. They also use sheepskin seat covers on long flights. The American pilots make do with sheets of the kind of plastic filled with bubbles that is used as packing material.

  The Americans may well succeed in beating off the first assault. But that will not be the last battle. As the task force moves forward, the danger arises that the allied ships may be attacked not just from one predictable direction but from any point of the compass. As the situation changes, the F/A-18s may be called on to play a new role.