Our guys were red hot. There guys were doodily squat. :>)
washingtonpost.com
An Air War of Might, Coordination and Risks
By Bradley Graham and Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, April 27, 2003; Page A01
Several days into the war against the government of Saddam Hussein, sandstorms raged across Iraq, and thinly stretched U.S. ground forces paused in their rapid march to Baghdad. But there was no pause in the air war. On the contrary, Air Force Lt. Gen. T. Michael "Buzz" Moseley ordered a dramatic escalation in the assault on Iraqi military forces dug in south of the capital.
"We're killing the Republican Guard," Moseley said at the close of his morning briefing at the U.S. air operations center in Saudi Arabia, according to a deputy. "But I want you to kill them faster."
Moseley did not just order more attacks; he rearranged the air battle. In a risky bid to extend strike missions by making it easier for planes to refuel, he ordered tanker aircraft -- which are relatively vulnerable, because they lack their own warning radar and armaments -- to venture into Iraqi airspace, even though Iraq's dense air defense network had not been eliminated.
At the same time, he shifted large, lumbering and similarly vulnerable surveillance aircraft into Iraq. Among them were JSTARS radar planes, each equipped with a Doppler radar system capable of viewing hundreds of square miles at once -- and unaffected by blowing sand.
Information from JSTARS and other monitoring systems was relayed in minutes to target planners on the ground, who then sent attack instructions to AWACS control planes over Iraq, which in turn directed warplanes to the target. "If the Iraqis moved in a coherent formation, they were immediately detected and targeted," said Maj. Jon Prindle, a senior JSTARS director. "Most of them got destroyed."
With such imagery streaming into the air operations center, U.S. commanders "knew the layout of the Republican Guard forces better than their own division commanders did," said Air Force Brig. Gen. Dan Darnell, the center's director.
Although television cameras captured the dramatic bombardment of downtown Baghdad, Moseley's aggressive prosecution of the broader air war -- a campaign that dropped 29,000 bombs and missiles on thousands of targets in Iraq -- played out largely behind the scenes. There were several reasons for this: Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations playing host to U.S. air crews refused to accept embedded reporters, who might have conveyed a greater sense of the air strategy to American audiences; many targets were out of sight of journalists on the battlefield; and senior military officials did not discuss their strategy in public.
But in interviews over the past week, Air Force pilots and battlefield commanders described an air campaign significantly different from any the United States had waged before, one that not only featured far greater use of overhead imagery and all-weather precision munitions but that also saw an unprecedented degree of coordination between air and ground forces.
The main result was an intense, sustained air assault on Iraqi forces that cleared the way for the speedy advance of U.S. ground troops into Baghdad, followed by the sudden collapse of resistance in the Iraqi capital.
Beyond technology, the air war also stood out for the way commanders fought it, showing a willingness to take considerable risks -- risks that mirrored those taken by ground commanders, who invaded with a smaller force than traditionalists would have liked. They were emboldened in part by the fact that Iraqi air defense forces put up less of a threat than anticipated, never sending their own fighter jets aloft and keeping their targeting radars turned off to avoid being located by U.S. planes. But the Americans also had planned an aggressive campaign from the start.
Moseley credited Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the war's top commander, with setting the campaign's push-the-limits tone before the first bombs fell.
Franks's "guidance was to make it 'fast and final,' " Moseley said in written response to questions. "That was the mark on the wall for his commanders."
Pulling Punches
That aggressive spirit was evident from the beginning. When the air campaign kicked off in earnest on March 21, it unleashed more than 2,500 missiles and bombs across Iraq in the first 72 hours. There were 11 missions reflected in the campaign's daily blueprint, the "air tasking order." They included close air support for Special Operations Forces in southern, western and northern Iraq; suppression and destruction of Iraqi air defenses; and missions designed to keep Iraq's air force on the ground by patrolling the sky and bombing Iraqi airfields.
Nonetheless, two senior military officials acknowledged that U.S. commanders, anticipating a possible quick victory, pulled some punches in the opening days of airstrikes. In part to limit civilian casualties, about two dozen targets, mostly communication nodes and a few leadership sites, were dropped from the hit list, they said.
"There was a hope that there would be a complete and utter collapse of the regime early on," said Lt. Col. David Hathaway, deputy chief of strategy at the Combined Air Operations Center at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. "In order to let that come to fruition, they initially held back those targets."
When U.S. and British ground troops entered southern Iraq a day ahead of schedule on March 21, scores of other targets in that region also fell off the list. Hundreds of bridges, rail lines, power stations and other facilities, once considered potential targets, were spared to preserve infrastructure for a speedier postwar recovery.
This restricted approach drew criticism from some inside and outside the Air Force for weakening the impact of what was widely labeled a "shock and awe" campaign. But architects of the strategy said they believed that by focusing the first strikes on Hussein's palaces, security operations, intelligence services and Baath party buildings, the protective screen around the Iraqi leader could be removed and his downfall precipitated.
"We wanted to make it clear to the Iraqi people that we were attacking regime targets," said Col. Mace Carpenter, chief strategist at the air operations center. "We wanted them to see that we were clearly targeting those people who had been repressing them."
Targeting the Guard
Once it became clear that the initial attacks had not broken the government's will to fight, the air campaign shifted focus to Republican Guard forces, particularly the three divisions -- the Medina, Hammurabi and Nida -- arrayed south of Baghdad.
While the ground forces paused during the last week of March to refuel, refit and wait for the sandstorms to blow over, air commanders pressed the attack.
"There was no pause," said Vice Adm. Timothy Keating, who commanded naval forces in the war, including more than 250 strike aircraft flying from five aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean. "The visibility was lousy and I'm sure brutal for the folks on the ground, but from the various sensors we had and the very good intelligence work done before the campaign started, it was a simple matter to continue prosecuting a certain target set -- the Republican Guard. We could tell where they were."
Lt. Col. Robert Givens, an operations officer with the 524th Fighter Squadron who was piloting an F-16, could see through the dust using an infrared scope. With coordinates provided by Army intelligence officials, he bore in on a battalion of the Medina Division about 20 miles east of Karbala, dropping 500-pound, laser-guided GBU-12 bombs on eight tanks and infantry fighting vehicles one night.
"We would set up different types of attack patterns to try to be random to defeat any enemy gunners, who were still shooting in the sandstorm, still putting up antiaircraft artillery," Givens said in a telephone interview.
The Iraqis appeared to believe the sandstorm would provide cover. For example, instead of dispersing to avoid detection, so many T-72 tanks and other armored vehicles ended up packed together tightly near Najaf that a U.S. strike took out 30 of them with four satellite-guided bombs, according to Air Force Maj. Gen. Dan Leaf, the senior air commander at the allied land forces headquarters in Kuwait.
Lt. Col. Mike Webb, an operations officer for the 190th Fighter Squadron, told how A-10 attack planes in his unit were given additional latitude to operate during the sandstorm. Normally, he said, A-10 pilots are required to identify their targets "either by eyeball -- binoculars -- or onboard sensors" before firing. But in this case, the requirement was lifted. Authorization to drop 1,000-pound CBU-87 cluster munitions -- weapons that disperse hundreds of smaller bomblets across the ground -- on Republican Guard positions came from airborne controllers, who took responsibility for assessing the potential damage to civilians.
"At any other time, that would not be standard procedure for us," Webb said.
As the weather improved, the attacks on the Republican Guard intensified, occupying more than two-thirds of the approximately 800 strike missions being flown by U.S. and allied aircraft in the war's second week. By then, U.S. forces had seized Tallil air base outside Nasiriyah and turned it into a refueling station for A-10 attack planes, providing them an extra hour over most target areas.
Aircraft flying a variety of missions over all parts of Iraq were also instructed, before returning home, to circle back over the Republican Guard divisions and unload whatever ordnance they still had on board.
Finishing the Job
Unlike the 1991 Persian Gulf War, which had distinct air and ground campaigns, this air war was designed, in Darnell's words, to stay "very tightly lashed" to the ground campaign.
To pound the Republican Guard harder, U.S. commanders had to resolve an early difficulty with what the military calls the "fire support coordination line." That is the line, demarcated ahead of advancing Army forces, that keeps U.S. warplanes from bombing too close to U.S. ground troops. But in this case, it had been set so far ahead that it was inhibiting air attacks on Iraqi fighters on whom U.S. soldiers were closing in.
When the problem became clear, Moseley arranged with Army ground commanders to allow warplanes to operate behind the line in 30-mile-by-30-mile "kill boxes" -- areas that had been identified as free of U.S. troops.
"The first few days, things were moving so fast that it was difficult to optimize the use of anything," said one senior Air Force officer who requested anonymity. "There's a price to be paid for simultaneity."
By pushing the tankers and surveillance aircraft north nearer to Baghdad starting on March 24, Moseley was extending the time that U.S. warplanes could spend over Iraq between refuelings and support advancing Army and Marine forces. Moseley himself questioned whether his gamble was paying off and queried Leaf after several days. Leaf recalled telling Moseley that the improved intelligence from the surveillance aircraft was indeed proving "worth the risk."
Moseley left the guarded security of the air operations center on April 3 and flew on a tanker mission that brought him within 60 miles of Baghdad.
"He knew he was pushing the risk envelope, and he wanted to show the folks who flew for him that he was willing to take the risk," Leaf said.
Much of the air attack on the Republican Guard by then was being watched -- and coordinated -- by soldiers and Marines on the battlefield. On April 4, for instance, as the Marines were advancing on Baghdad, a Hunter reconnaissance drone spotted a large group of Iraqi artillery and other military vehicles moving out of the capital under the cover of darkness. In the Marines' Combat Operations Center, the video stream played live on a display screen, and the officers coordinated a devastating attack on the convoy.
Lt. Col. David Pere, the senior watch officer, called out grid coordinates as other officers forwarded them either by telephone or even Internet chat rooms. A flock of F/A-18 Hornets and AV/8B Harriers raced to the scene. On the video, tiny figures could be seen running from the vehicles. At times a giant flash of light would blind the Hunter camera, and all that would be left on the highway would be smoking wreckage. On a few occasions, the initial hit was followed by repeated secondary explosions and crackling fireworks, suggesting that an ammunition truck had been struck.
A bomb-damage assessment report indicated that about 80 vehicles were destroyed in what amounted to a turkey shoot.
By April 4, U.S. Army intelligence estimated the Medina Division had been reduced to 18 percent of its full strength. The Hammurabi Division was rated at 44 percent. An Army intelligence officer, presenting these figures to unit commanders, added: "These numbers are somewhat in dispute. They may actually be lower."
Battle over Baghdad
As they bore down on Republican Guard forces in the field, U.S. commanders also turned more aggressive in striking Baghdad, going after those targets that had been held back initially out of concern for avoiding civilian casualties or damaging civilian property. These included not only telephone exchanges and other communication nodes, but also Iraqi television broadcast facilities.
To provide air cover for the U.S. Army and Marine forces moving into Baghdad, air commanders had developed a special concept for close-air support in a large urban area. It involved stacking different types of warplanes with varying munitions over the city to provide multiple attack options. It also involved allowing aircraft to fly as low as they needed to identify targets and to shoot.
For the A-10s, which are equipped with 30mm Gatling guns, this meant getting down to 2,000 or 3,000 feet at times for strafing runs. Webb, the A-10 operations officer, said his aviators were "very concerned" about the lingering air defense threat in the capital, particularly from "dozens and dozens" of portable, shoulder-mounted launchers.
One shoulder-fired missile ended up downing an A-10 on April 8. Another A-10 was hit nine minutes later but managed to fly back to Kuwait. The day before, an A-10 was also struck but limped to Tallil air base.
Of 1,800 U.S. and allied aircraft, only two U.S. warplanes were lost to enemy fire: the A-10 over Baghdad and an F-15E fighter jet that went down April 7 near Tikrit north of the capital. The A-10 pilot was rescued; the two F-15E crewmen were killed.
One of the lingering mysteries is why no Iraqi warplane took to the air. Moseley suspects the Iraqi air force was intimidated by the U.S. attack, which included heavy bombing of airfields.
"We hit him pretty hard up front," Moseley said in a news conference on April 5. "So I believe that he has not flown because in their mind, they've made a calculation that they will not survive." |
