Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign

Still, because I was much impressed with the excellence of his overall effort, I kept my patience, a rare thing, and continued to ask questions. “Humor me, John, just for the sake of discussion, what if the Iraqi Army attacks?…” But each time, he seemed certain I was too stupid to grasp his central concept and gave me a patronizing “If you could only understand what I’m trying to tell you” answer.

Soon, as the discussions became increasingly disjointed, the room grew tense. One thing was clear: John Warden and I looked at the problem of air campaign planning differently. He viewed it as an almost Newtonian science, with the targeting list being an end unto itself, while for me, air warfare revolves around the ATO, logistics, joint service and allied agreements, and the million and one little things that he never had to worry about back in the Pentagon. For me, the campaign plan and the targeting list are just the starting point. They are the place where the real work on an air war begins.

The more he talked, the more I realized that the major flaw in his plan was more than the piece he had left off about the Iraqi Army. The major flaw was that he did not have an executable document. He had no idea of the processes used to integrate the air war and all that is involved. He says, “Hit this and that target.” Fine, but where is the tanker schedule and the airspace deconfliction plan? Where are the rules of engagement, code words, IFF [Identification Friend or Foe] procedures, Coalition forces, radar coverage and orbits, and on and on? He skimmed through the details for a few days’ effort, and ignored the problems he didn’t want to or couldn’t deal with. He saw war in terms of the SIOP: execute this plan and the enemy is defeated. Well, good. But what if he decides not to be defeated? What do we do then?

In the end, it took weeks to build the first offensive air campaign plan. Much of Warden’s work was in it, but it went far, far beyond his work.

Sadly, I realized that his brilliance as a thinker would not carry through working with the team in Riyadh. Though I would have liked to use his efforts and his team to build an offensive air campaign, John Warden was too much in love with his own thinking, and too prickly to handle the give-and-take — the communicating — that Riyadh required. I decided he was better off away from the Gulf theater. I did keep the lieutenant colonels he brought with him, to help form the nucleus of the planning cell that we would create.

John Warden went home, where he did continue to support us by sending forward a flow of valuable planning and targeting information. But as far as I was concerned, he was out of the war.

BUSTER GLOSSON AND THE BLACK HOLE

The forced departure of John Warden left Chuck Horner in a bind. He had to take the remains of the CHECKMATE effort, the Internal Look plans, and the discussions with the CINC, and meld these with the thousands of other details needed to build a campaign plan that fit into the CINC’s intentions and, later, his overall plan for the liberation of Kuwait. This included the mundane aspects of logistics, communications, and day-to-day priorities. But more than all that, Horner needed a living, breathing plan that could adapt to the chaos of war, and not a set-piece, preordained effort that would lock him into a battle plan that was based on how his people conceived the world.[44] He needed an air strategy that could unfold in an ever-changing struggle, reacting to the enemy, maintaining the initiative and flexibility that airpower — and only airpower — could provide in this conflict.

Who could he put in charge of the plan? He needed the job filled now—August 20. He looked over his options:

Jim Crigger could do the job, but he was tied up running day-to-day operations. These were enormous, and getting bigger by the minute, as more reinforcements flowed into the AOR. Tom Olsen could also do it, but CENTAF needed a commander, and Schwarzkopf was still days away from coming in-theater, meaning that Olsen had to continue as Horner’s stand-in for the time being. Brigadier General Larry “Puba” Henry had arrived the day before, on loan until October from General Bob Russ, who had sent him to provide planning expertise on electronic combat operations (Henry had been an electronic-warfare officer — EWO). Few nonpilots make general, and none get to command fighter wings. Henry had done both. He was that good, and that smart. He would have been perfect as planning chief, but Horner needed his full efforts on the electronic-warfare elements of the plan, and besides he was only there on loan. His continued presence wasn’t guaranteed. Brigadier General Pat Caruana was also a possibility (he’d been sent to work the bomber/tanker force), but Horner didn’t know him, so he was out.[45]

“I was in a fog about who to pick,” Horner recalls now. “Then, just like in cartoons when the lightbulb comes on over somebody’s head, it hit me. Buster Glosson!”

Brigadier General Buster Glosson was already in-theater. In June of 1990, he had been exiled (for reasons lost to Chuck Horner) to work for Rear Admiral Bill Fogerty (aboard the USS LaSalle docked in Manamah, Bahrain) as deputy commander, Joint Task Force Middle East (JTFME), a job given to the Air Force in recognition of the important role the AWACS radar aircraft and air refueling tankers played in Operation EARNEST WILL (escorting Kuwaiti oil tankers down the Arabian Gulf and through the Straits of Hormuz). When Horner had arrived in Riyadh, Glosson had flown up to brief him on the KC-135 tanker deployment to the United Arab Emirates during July of 1990, which had been the opening U.S. response to Saddam’s threats prior to the invasion of Kuwait. During the meeting, Buster had asked Horner to keep him in mind if he could be of any use.

“Yes,” Chuck Horner told himself on August 20. “Now I can use Buster.”

Buster Glosson was a South Carolina patrician — silver-haired, stocky, extremely intelligent, a smooth talker, quick to laugh… also complex, mercurial, and flamboyant. And very political; he was always working an agenda with great skill;[46] he was always intriguing; and he was extremely competitive, extremely combative, abrupt, a bulldog: for him, like Vince Lombardi, winning was the only thing. If you were not on his team, then you must be the enemy — an attitude that inevitably caused friction in the staff. In some quarters he was (and is) despised.

Because he was himself an innovative thinker and doer, and liked aggressive innovators around him, he was a good leader for people with thick skins and daring. But he inflicted deep distress on those with an accountant’s view of the world, or even on those seeking order and quiet.

Because he liked public praise, he was easy to motivate: praise him publicly and privately point out his shortcomings, and he would work harder than ever. And yet he was for the most part indifferent to what other people thought of him; he marched to his own drum.

Because he was usually decisive, he had to be reined in now and again, but for Chuck Horner, this was no sin. He would much rather have someone who took action, even if wrong, than someone who stood around waiting to be told what to do.

Chuck Horner had known Buster Glosson for years, and their relationship had sometimes been stormy, yet Glosson was obviously the one to head the planning effort. It wouldn’t be fun or pretty, but he would get results. He would form a team, and he would seek feedback from the troops who might have to execute the offensive air campaign that he would be tasked to draft.

Horner called him that night (the twentieth) and ordered him to Riyadh. He was in Horner’s office in the MODA building the next day.

Horner’s instructions to Glosson were simple: Take the CHECKMATE effort and build an executable air campaign. To begin with, he had to build a team. He could have the CHECKMATE group that remained in Riyadh, he could have Larry Henry, he could raid deployed wings and bring over anyone else he wanted from the States; but since Horner could not spare many from the small CENTAFF staff, he was on his own. Second, Horner wanted to keep the effort U.S.-only, until they had a handle on the details of who was going to be joining in the effort. At the same time, he wanted to open up the effort to the Coalition partners as soon as possible. Third, Glosson’s team needed to get their act together fast; the CINC would arrive in-theater within the week, and Horner didn’t yet know when he would need an air campaign plan. Fourth, his guidance to Glosson was to prepare an ATO for the first two and a half days of the war and then, starting at day three, to be ready to build a new ATO every day until the enemy was defeated. Finally, above all else, Glosson needed to keep very close hold on security. Horner had been led to understand this last point was paramount, not only from the standpoint of operations security, but also