Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an Air Force Combat Wing

groups. The overwhelming majority was associated with the traditional Tactical Air Control Center operations staff that up until three or four days before the war actually started thought that their only job was to work on the defensive plan for Saudi Arabia. Then, there was a relatively small group that was operating in the Black Hole — fifteen to twenty people maximum, working under 'compartmented' security conditions. It was those folks working in the Black Hole planning center — Glosson, Deptula, etc. — that we were trying to support by pushing data and ideas forward. The intelligence bureaucracy was putting out megabytes of data also, but the problem with their institutional products was a lack of correlation. So, we sent over processed data in the form of target coordinates, specifications, and strike/targeting plans. Buster and Dave were under no compulsion to use it, but they found most of it pretty good and did end up using it. What we were doing was putting it into something as close as possible to an executable plan. In many cases, all you had to do was put a tail number [i.e, assign aircraft] to it, and say what time it was supposed to happen.

In November 1990, with diplomatic options running out, President George Bush ordered the reinforcement of the existing forces assigned to Desert Shield, with additional units designed to provide 'an offensive option,' should it be required. General Horner picks up the story at this point.

Tom Clancy: November 1990 comes, and the President decides that if Iraq doesn't get out of Kuwait, the U.S.-led coalition will use force to get them out. Where are your people in the planning process now?

Gen. Horner: I think we had an offensive air campaign laid out pretty well in October 1990. Then, when President Bush made that decision, the Army was told it needed more forces. So of course, the Air Force needed more forces to support the Army. We basically doubled the size of the overall Air Force in-theater, being intelligent about where we could base more airplanes. This was because at that point, ramp space [for parking and servicing coalition aircraft] was becoming the driving limitation on adding more aircraft to our force.As for the strategic air campaign plan itself, I would only let them plan the first two days. Another problem was that a multi-national coalition force was forming. As you can imagine, respecting the various host countries' laws, and ensuring that the host nations knew what was going on, was of vital import. Thus, if you wanted to fly, you had to be in the ATO. The Saudis wanted that, because then they knew what was going on, and could say, 'No you can't fly here.' Or ask, 'Who owned those planes that sonic-boomed that camel herd?'

January 1991 came in like a lion, and with it came the war. General Horner remembers his surprise at the successes of the early moments of Desert Storm, and his reservations about the inevitable costs ahead.

Tom Clancy: If you were to summarize the objectives of the air campaign plan that became Desert Storm, how would you characterize them?

Gen. Horner: First, to control the air (Phase I). Secondly, cripple the Iraqi offensive capabilities, in particular the SCUDs and nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons to the extent we could (Phase II). Then, isolate the battlefield (Phase III), and prepare it for the ground war (Phase IV).

Tom Clancy: The first night of the war (January 16th/17th, 1991), did you have any idea of how well things were going?

Gen. Horner: No. Partly because — along with the rest of the USAF — I represented twenty five years of pessimism. I guess I had started believing the stuff that we heard all these years — that we were no good. As a society, we thought our military forces were a bunch of dummies.That kind of pessimism is useful in my profession, because it's much better to be surprised the way we were than the way the Lancers were in the Crimea [the famous 'Charge of the Light Brigade']. The highlights of that first night were how the F-117As were able to penetrate Baghdad, and the fact that we lost just one airplane [a Navy F-18 Hornet]. A tragedy, but not the thirty or forty lost aircraft that some had predicted.

Tom Clancy: Talk about 'Poobah's Party.'

Gen. Horner: 'Poobah's Party.' That was planned by Larry 'Poobah' Henry, probably one of the best planners we ever had. He was the only navigator [backseater] who was a wing commander in the Gulf. He looks mediocre, he's got navigator wings, but he's an incredible genius. The man's an absolute fiend when it comes to hunting SAMs. He arranged to have a mass of air- and ground-launched decoys, and one hundred HARM missiles all in the air at the same time. It was devastating to the Iraqis, something they never recovered from during the war.

While General Horner and his staff were launching the aerial assault on Iraq, back at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., Colonel Warden and the Checkmate staff were watching it on CNN, just like the rest of us. Nevertheless, the events of that night are worth his recollection.

Tom Clancy: What was it that the CENTAF units were actually hitting at the first bang, H-Hour (0300 hours local time)?

Col. Warden: The national command authority, centers of operations, any place that we knew was serving as a command post; the two principal communication facilities in downtown Baghdad, as well as the electrical power grid and the key nodes in the KARI [Iraq in French, spelled backwards] air-defense system. These are the things that were being hit in a matter of a couple of minutes or so at H-Hour [0300L, January 17th, 1991]. Essentially, at this point, Iraq was unable to respond, due to the breakdown of its systems.

Back in Riyadh, General Horner and his staff were trying to deal with the inevitable changes and difficulties that come with trying to execute any sort of complex plan. The worst of these was the threat posed by the Iraq ballistic missile systems, generically known as SCUDs.

Tom Clancy: Did the Iraqis do anything smart in their conduct of the war?

Gen. Horner: Well, they did the command and control of the SCUDs pretty well, using motorcycle couriers; and they hid the SCUDs well. Their COM-SEC [communications security] was awesome. We had the impression that Saddam had orders out that anyone who used a radio would be shot.

Tom Clancy: Talk about the underestimation of the SCUDs.

Gen. Horner: Being a military person, I tend to do my pluses and minuses in military terms. Civilians just don't exist in the mind of a military man until you get into a war; then you are surrounded by them. What happened was the SCUDs started coming at us. Now, the Saudi society handled it pretty well. On the other hand, the Israelis went into shock, and that surprised me. The SCUDs would hit their cities, and the Israelis would go into panic; people literally died from fear.

Tom Clancy: How did you feel about the performance of the Patriot SAM missiles in intercepting the SCUDs?

Gen. Horner: Good. Let's put it this way, though. Who cares if they ever really intercepted a SCUD? The perception was that they did. The SCUD is not a military weapon, it's a terror weapon. So if you have