time. Sting the enemy at every opportunity, but keep U.S. and friendly losses to a minimum. And use air to sap the enemy’s strength until he had exhausted his force, and friendly forces could be built up for a counterattack.
All of this began to change when the 82d Airborne division began to be augmented by the armored punch of the 24th Mechanized Infantry division and their Abrams tanks. At that point, Saddam had a lot more than “speed bumps” to worry about if he moved south.
Meanwhile, Horner was eager to shed the hat he wore as CENTCOM Forward and get back to his real work as CENTAF commander. Working the essentially political job of looking out for General Schwarzkopf’s interests (making sure that when the CINC returned to Saudi Arabia, he could pick up where he would have been if he had not left Jeddah nearly three weeks earlier) was not a grievous burden for Horner; it was an honor that Schwarzkopf had entrusted him with the responsibility. But he was doing the CINC’s work and not his own, and he wanted to get on with his own work — planning for and employing airpower. He wanted to be with his own troops. And he wanted to get into the details he’d had to relinquish to Tom Olsen. Though Olsen had handled things in his usual exemplary way while he himself was occupied with the CINC’s business, Horner did not like being a spectator.
So there was no one happier than Chuck Horner when General Schwarzkopf’s plane touched down on August 23.
? Meanwhile, after much blood, sweat, and tears, the Black Hole team had created a complete, executable plan — that is, a plan that could be translated into a series of Air Tasking Orders that munitions and maintenance troops could use to load and marshal the jets, and that the pilots and crews could use to navigate and bomb. It met the CINC’s guidance about political objectives, and it was a living document that would flex in response to changes in the coming battle.
Buster Glosson had been a difficult boss, yet that had had little impact on the morale of the people assigned to the Black Hole. They simply had had so much important work to do that they’d been too challenged and busy to be much bothered by him.
The toughest element in creating an ATO is its open-ended character: it can always be made better, but when one piece is moved, all the other pieces shift — some only a little, others a lot. Though a perfect ATO might exist in some dream (or textbook), it has never existed in fact; and each day the Black Hole crew worked on the offensive air campaign, they discovered things that needed to be done to make it better… and at first to make it executable.
In late August, the plan was little more than a briefing, covering the highlights that the ATO would in time cover in detail, but it was a briefing that carried much on its shoulders, for it was tasked with conveying the plans and intentions of Chuck Horner and his staff to those who had to approve them — Schwarzkopf, Cheney, and Bush. Later, the President would also bring approval of the United Nations and Congress along with him. Specifically, the briefing had to convey the mental images of thousands of airplanes in a nearly three-day-long ballet.
Why only three days? Even though Horner knew the air campaign might go on for several months, he was convinced that no plan would last more than a couple of days before events caused it to be taken apart and put back together, so he allowed Glosson and his team to lay out the first three daily ATOs and nothing else. The general planning went on, of course, but Horner did not want his people to lock into specifics beyond that time.
When the plan was presented to Schwarzkopf, he approved it with little change.
The only detail that bothered him was the use of Special Operations Forces (SOF) helicopters during the opening moments of the war to lead Task Force NORMANDY, a planned strike on Iraqi early-warning radars located on the border with Saudi Arabia. The issue came up during the third run-through of the briefing. As Chuck Horner tells the story:
The CINC’s concern, and that’s a polite term for an 8.0 outburst on the Richter Scale, was that the Special Forces were going to start their own little war up there. And when they got in trouble, as he feared they would (he had his own ghosts from Vietnam to deal with, remember), he would have to bail them out with regular Army troops. In response, Buster carefully pointed out that the MH-53 PAVE LOW helicopters of the SOFs had to lead the way because they were equipped with the new, accurate NAVISTAR global positioning satellite (GPS) navigation systems needed to find the radars. He further reported that the actual shooting would be done by regular Army AH-64A Apache attack helicopters of the 101st Air Assault division. He then added that the PAVE LOWs would also provide up-to-the-minute satellite communications, as well as provide a combat search and rescue (CSAR) capability, if it was needed.
This idea of Army helicopters striking the first blow of the war really appealed to the CINC and greatly worked in our favor. To wit, even though the F-117 Stealth fighters were approaching Baghdad, and the air- and sea-launched cruise missiles were on their way, the first actual ordnance on target in the war would be delivered by the regular forces of the U.S. Army. It’s sort of like locating your Navy base in South Carolina when Mendel Rivers was in Congress. Though you could build the base at just about any harbor, it sure was going to be a lot smoother if you put it in Charleston, South Carolina. In our case, while anyone could drop the first bomb to hit a target, it made sense to use the Apaches. And it sure made the briefing with the CINC go a lot smoother!
Here, meanwhile, are Chuck Horner’s reflections on the responsibilities he faced as he got back into the saddle:
I had several jobs, so I guess I didn’t have to worry about boredom.
Planning for the offensive while maintaining the defense was job one.
Related to that was job two, which was to make sure we were ready at all times to go to war.
Job three was to be the leader without giving the impression of wanting to be in charge.
In this regard, I had to be especially sensitive in my approach to the contingents from the other nations in the Coalition. They expected me to lead, yet it was important for me to respect their inputs and concerns. In other words, I had to create the trust that would make them want to come to me for ideas, help, and coordination. On the other hand, if I needed anything from them, I had to be very careful how I approached them. And when putting together my guidance to U.S. airmen of all services, I had to make sure it was sound, not only for the sake of my own people, but for the sake of the Coalition partners. If they could agree with it, then they would nod and say, “That sounds good to me.”
I worked very hard to create an environment of openness, respect, and trust. There were no secrets, no special friends; all of us were equal and important, regardless of service or nation.
This attitude sometimes rankled my people, but they soon caught on and operated in the same mode (except for the majors from the USAF and the USMC; they always kept a wary eye on one another).
Job four was to be the spiritual leader of the airmen, primarily of the USAF, but (in a more understated role) of units from the allies as well.
What do I mean? First of all, I visited each unit as often as possible to make sure they had what they needed (to the extent that I could get it for them). They needed a lot: In some places, the folks lived in tents. Others in the early days had abysmal food (some meat they got had hair and teeth). Others had trouble getting mail, intelligence products, or weapons. And from time to time there were small problems with the host nation that I was able to nip with a friendly word to the local commander.
A big part of doing this job was just being seen. This means a lot to the troops living in uncertainty (How long are we going to be here? When is the war going to start?) and in difficult conditions (where the temperature is 110 degrees Fahrenheit, and they live in tents, without cold beer, far away from
