Lords of the Sky: Fighter Pilots and Air Combat, From the Red Baron to the F-16 (70 page)

Enter the F-16.

Initially conceived as a lightweight, ultra-maneuverable daytime fighter, the first production model of the Viper, as it was known, first flew in August 1978. With a satisfying irony, European production of the F-16 would be accomplished in the Fokker Aircraft facility at Schiphol-Oost—exactly where Anthony Fokker had first demonstrated his Eindecker monoplane’s synchronized gun during the Great War. Truly revolutionary, the F-16 was the first fighter fielded with RSS—relaxed static stability. Inherently unstable, the plane could fly only if equipped with a digital flight control computer that performed thousands of calculations per second and kept the jet under control. The advantage of this design was unbelievable maneuverability: a jet that could turn all the way around in a few thousand feet while maintaining over 400 miles per hour.

Composite materials were used, and a unique bonded honeycomb structure made the Viper extremely light but very strong. The cockpit combined all the previous ergonomic lessons into a pilot’s dream and was contained under a beautiful bubble canopy. At the heart of this was the HOTAS (hands on throttle and stick) system. Every weapon and every system needed to fight could be controlled by switches on the stick and throttle; a pilot never need take his fingers away. A pair of multifunction displays would give a pilot his air-to-air and air-to-ground radars, display his weapons, and let him navigate anywhere in any type of weather, day or night. All of this was repeated in the heads-up display, so the net effect was the ability to fly and fight with perfect visibility while never looking away from the action.

Powered by a variety of Pratt & Whitney or General Electric engines, the maximum thrust available could exceed 32,000 pounds in full afterburner.
^*
Capable of carrying all types of precision guided munitions (PGMs), conventional or nuclear bombs, the F-16 was also equipped with a 20 mm internal cannon. Air-to-air ordnance was initially just the AIM-9, but the AIM-120 BVR missile was added in the 1990s. Small, smokeless, nearly impossible to see, and capable of flexible weaponeering, the Viper was an excellent choice as a follow-on Weasel.

However, this decision wasn’t greeted with universal enthusiasm, particularly (and understandably) in the EWO community. The USAF also didn’t help matters with its typical ham-handed approach to personnel issues. About five experienced F-4 pilots from each of Spang’s three squadrons were chosen to convert to the F-16, and the rest were really given no options. Neither were the EWOs. They knew their jet was going away, and they were, too—at least out of the cockpit, which is the same as going away. There were also bad rumors that all the leadership positions would be assumed by the incoming F-16 pilots. According to Capt. Dale Shoupe, a highly experienced EWO and flight commander, there was much angst (quite understandably) accompanying all of this.

Well, the rumors weren’t true, and the wing compromised by generally alternating leadership positions within a squadron between F-4 crews and F-16 pilots. A half dozen EWOs were also chosen to become F-16 simulator evaluators. They were taught the basics of Viper systems and how the checklists worked, and they were given as many familiarization flights in the few available two-seat F-16s as possible. The result was a cadre of men who knew the electronic warfare mission back to front and now could tailor what they knew to the F-16’s capabilities.

They could tailor it to the new pilots as well. Again, this wasn’t something smart that the USAF did; it was a group of professional aviators like Dale Shoupe who knew the mission had to continue and were willing to do whatever was needed to ensure that it did. This included extraordinary patience with brash, young single-seat fighter pilots who’d never seen an EWO, along with a talent for formulating new tactics based on those pilots and their new jet. This was especially true in the air-to-air environment. No longer did the F-4 have to retrograde away in the presence of MiGs; it could stay on station, hunting and killing because of the F-16. By the same token, the Viper was unable to locate enemy radars on its own, but by working with the Phantom, SAMs could be found and destroyed. It was a good match, as Mooman and the 23rd Tactical Fighter Squadron would soon prove.

The Korean War decade saw a shift from piston-driven warplanes with guns to jets and missiles in Vietnam. It was a technological leap, to be sure, but the short time between the two wars meant that many Korea veterans had to make the jump into advanced jets. However, eighteen years passed from Vietnam to the Persian Gulf War, and it was in many ways an uneasy transition. With no combat, everyone just flew harder, applying the lessons of the Arab-Israeli wars and Southeast Asia to the Cold War as best they could.

The Navy, Marines, and Air Force all trained to fight a low-altitude European war. Vast, complex war plans were formulated, revised, and recolored all through the 1970s and 1980s. Unlike in most previous conflicts, the forces that would fight got to fly over the terrain every day and practice—for two decades. Every hill and every valley were known, and endless training scenarios were played out on daily missions and tactical evaluations. Operational peacetime flying (overseas especially) was the best there was.

In an age before abject political correctness, men (still only men) flew hard, trained hard, and drank hard. Officers’ and Enlisted Clubs remained as they had been; there were no cost-cutting measures and no combined clubs, no mission statements framed on squadron walls or little printed pamphlets enumerating roles, duties, and responsibilities.
^*
Everyone
knew
why they were there. The Soviet horde loomed just across the border, ready to pour through the Fulda Gap into Western Europe. You could see them, especially at night when they shut off their electrical grids to save money and Eastern Europe got dark while the West was lit up like Las Vegas.

Once a flight took off and got clear of its base defense zone, it was fair game for any NATO aircraft. Rules of engagement had been prearranged, so you could be attacked anywhere, anytime, and at nearly any altitude by any fighter jet in the inventory. Germans, Dutch, Belgians, Canadians . . . they were all there. It was terrific training and as close to combat as one could get without actually being shot—though you could die, and many did.

Because of the development of the low-altitude SA-3, SA-6, SA-8, and other man-portable killer SAMs, the training attacks were low and fast.
Very
low. There were immense swaths of Germany designated as 250-foot low-fly areas, but it often got done below 100 feet at 500 knots. Looking at the threat maps, it was obvious there was simply no way to survive in Central Europe at medium altitude. This was not the Sinai, or the Mekong Delta; as bad as those places had been, they were limited geographically and logistically. There were no such constraints here. This fight would be against the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries, which had built the weapons used by the Vietnamese, Syrians, and Egyptians.

It was this superb training that made what happened next possible.

DOWN THE TIGRIS
River, 225 miles to the southeast of Baghdad, the city of Basra sprawled along the dusty floodplain of the Shatt al Arab marshes. Less than 50 miles from the port of Um Qasr on the Persian Gulf and 20 miles from the Iranian border, Basra had always been the strategic key of the region. Just before dawn on August 2, 1990, six Iraqi divisions moved out of the Rumaila oil fields south along Highway One. Special teams had been inserted after midnight by helicopter and had seized border posts and bridges, so the invasion was unopposed. Crossing the Kuwaiti border, the main force drove straight into the capital, and Kuwait City fell quickly.

Anyone with money, which was most Kuwaitis, fled the country for Cairo, Geneva, and New York. Saudi Arabia immediately began screaming for help because despite the billions spent on their military, they were utterly incapable of stopping the Iraqi army. With the potential for sixty divisions and a million men under arms, the Iraqis under their leader, Saddam Hussein, had more than five thousand tanks and five hundred combat aircraft. The Iraqis were a formidable foe for the Iranians, Kuwaitis, or Saudis. But much of this was paper strength. Poorly trained and unmotivated conscripts made up at least half of the Iraqi army, while most of the Iraqi air force flew MiG-21s and MiG-23s, hardly a threat to modern warplanes. There were, however, Mirage F-1s and the MiG-29.

Called a Fulcrum, the MiG-29 was another Soviet copy of several American designs, yet remained a capable, well-armed point defense fighter. But enemy aircraft weren’t really a concern, in fact. Coalition fighter pilots were practically salivating at the chance to destroy the Iraqi air force. No, like other combatants before them, the Iraqis had already lost the battle of fighter pilots to the West. Air defense in the form of Triple-A and SAMs was the biggest threat, and in this Baghdad had invested heavily. Eight thousand pieces of anti-aircraft artillery included the smaller 37 mm and 57 mm varieties, plus bigger 85 mm to 130 mm guns, and many of these were radar-guided. The extremely dangerous ZSU-23-4P system was everywhere and could be effectively fired using optics with no warning given.

There were larger SA-2 and SA-3 systems protecting Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, and Kirkuk, but the Iraqis also had several hundred mobile SAMs. Soviet-made SA-6 and SA-8 batteries were camouflaged around train stations, oil refineries, power plants, and dams. The Roland was a Franco-German creation with a better radar and higher-quality optics than Soviet SAMs. Particularly nasty was the SA-9/13 mobile missile system. It could use a Gun Dish Triple-A radar for initial pointing, then its own infrared tracking would take over after launch. Small and quick, it smoked very little and also gave no warning.

The Iraqis also learned a lesson from the Vietnamese and built a first-class integrated air defense system. Designed and constructed by Thomsen, a French company, the network was called KARI and it worked like this.
^*
Outlying EW and search radars were connected to a central tactical operations center. From here, the air defense commander could assign targets to SAM sites and scramble fighters to intercept incoming aircraft. Communications were redundant; there were landlines, HF radios, and fiber-optic cables. It was a compact, very centralized system and worked well—against the Iranians and their thirty-aircraft strike packages.

Iraq had battled Iran from 1980 to 1988, ostensibly over the Shatt al Arab coastal region. The reality was somewhat more complicated. Always fearful of the large resident Shi’ia minority in Iraq, Hussein was convinced that predominantly Shi’ia Iran was encouraging a rebellion. Even after Hussein used mustard gas against the Iranians in 1983, Washington supported him and continued government subsidies of grain, weapons, and technology. Emerging from the war with another 500 square miles of territory, Baghdad was also deeply in debt: over $65 million was owed to the Soviet Union and Europe, with another $80 billion to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait. Desperately needing revenue, Saddam counted on increasing his oil production while his neighbors voluntarily reduced their own.

On July 25, 1990, over the objections of President Bush, the U.S. Senate passed the Iraq International Law Compliance Act. This stipulated Baghdad’s observance of the Genocide Protocols and Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in return for continued American aid. Bush opposed any action against Iraq, despite the gassings and mass murders, as Washington’s notion of
realpolitik
meant supporting Iraq against Iran. April Glaspie, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, spoke at length with Hussein at the end of July, reassuring him over the Senate vote and passing along President Bush’s wish for continued good relations. She left for her summer holiday on August 1, 1990, after telling Hussein, “We [the United States] have no opinion on inter-Arab disputes, like your border dispute with Kuwait.”

Saddam read into that exactly what you’d expect, and invaded the next day. But this wasn’t his mistake. His mistake was stopping at the Saudi border.

With 130,000 men, 1,200 tanks, and a numerically impressive air force, Hussein should’ve continued straight into the Port of Dhahran and seized the Ghawar oil fields. These are the largest in the world and account for at least 65 percent of total Saudi production. As fast as the United States could move, effective intervention within forty-eight hours would’ve been difficult, if not impossible. With northern Arabia and Kuwait in his possession, Saddam’s bargaining position would’ve been virtually unassailable.

Fortunately, he stopped. Perhaps he believed that the point had been made; he’d again proven Iraq’s willingness to attack, so further aggression wasn’t necessary. Besides, he now occupied Kuwait. Hussein may have also judged that an invasion of Saudi Arabia, home to the holiest sites in the Islamic world, would provoke a reaction among his Muslim neighbors or give Iran a pretext for thrusting into his exposed flank. Whatever his reasons, he certainly believed from his communications with Bush and Glaspie that he had nothing to fear from the United States or Europe.

At 2:10 a.m. (Baghdad time) on January 17, 1991, even Saddam Hussein understood his colossal miscalculation, as the largest air attack since Vietnam was unleashed against him. It opened with Operation Normandy, a helicopter assault on Iraqi early warning radars along the Saudi border. This was followed by a USAF strike against Iraq’s western airfields, primarily MiG-25 bases that could target Coalition command and control aircraft or air refueling tankers. The first bombs fell on Baghdad at 3:00 a.m. as F-117 fighters hit command posts and palaces.

Out in the Persian Gulf the USS
Saratoga
,
John F. Kennedy
,
Theodore Roosevelt
,
Ranger
, and
Midway
shot A-6s, A-7s, F-14s, and F/A-18s into the night toward Iraq. Hundreds of Tomahawk missiles flashed over the dark water, then headed north to destroy power plants, communications nodes, and TV and radio stations. In exactly the way Vietnam should’ve been fought (and could have been fought), airpower delivered a disorienting and crushing first blow from which Iraq never recovered. In denial and thuggishly defiant, Saddam took to a surviving radio station to rave, “The great duel, the mother of all battles, has begun! The dawn of victory nears as the great showdown begins.”