target-acquisition systems.
? Iraqi pilot training came from three sources: France, Pakistan, and the former Soviet Union. Lucky for us, Soviet training proved dominant, with their emphasis on rigid rules, strict command arrangements, and standardized tactics. Coupled with this centralized approach, the Soviets were suspicious of non-Russians and disliked Arabs. The Iraqi students were taught to take off and land their aircraft safely, but otherwise their training was so basic, so lacking in advanced tactics, as to be useless.
There was, however, a wild card. Not all Iraqi training came from the Russians.
Iraqi pilots were trained well by their French and Pakistani instructors.
The French training was evidenced by Iraqi attacks on Iranian shipping and the USS
Pakistan has one of the best, most combat-ready air forces in the world. They have to; their neighbor to the east is huge, and the two nations have a long history of hostility. For Indian war planners, the Pakistani Air Force is their worst fear. Pakistani pilots are respected throughout the world, especially the Islamic world, because they know how to fly and fight.
On one or two occasions, I had the opportunity to talk with Pakistani instructor pilots who had served in Iraq. These discussions didn’t give me great cause to worry. The Russian domination of training prevented the Pakistanis from having any real influence on the Iraqi aircrew training program.
Still, there had to be a few Iraqi pilots who’d observed and listened to their mentors from France and Pakistan and the useless guidance of their inept leaders. It was those few I was concerned about — the ones with great situational awareness and good eyesight, who had figured out how to effectively use their aircraft and its weapons to defend their nation.
If those gifted Iraqi pilots existed, and I’m certain they did, they probably died on 17, 19, and 24 January. We went after them so hard and so thoroughly that they never had a chance to show that they were respectable.
Our fundamental strategy was simple. Blind them and beat the tar out of them as they groped about. We were going to stomp the Iraqi Air Force into submission. Not fair, not pretty, not poetic. Our goal was to be as vicious and unrelenting as possible. To do otherwise would just prolong the suffering and death.
To blind the Iraqi Air Force, our first bombers fell on its eyes and brains — radars, command bunkers, and communications sites. Of equal importance was the forward movement of our interceptor fighters into Iraq. We put twenty-four-hour CAPs over each of the Iraqi fighter bases.[60] Forward fighters were positioned to intercept the Iraqi jets almost as soon as they broke ground. Our hopes for the Iraqi fighter pilot were very simple: take off and blow up.
For the most part, our hopes became reality. After the first three days of the war, we had seized control of the air over Iraq and Kuwait.
Three days may seem short, and the Iraqi Air Force may look like a push-over. But do not get the idea that gaining control of the air was easy. It was not a “macho,” “no sweat” operation. What turned into a turkey shoot in late January and February started out as a bitter struggle; those first few days were the hardest-fought, most critical aspect of the entire war.
Meanwhile, when the bombs began to fall on Baghdad, Iraqi pilots ran to their planes and took off. I’m sure they sent their best and brightest, and I know they tried their hardest; but in air-to-air combat, it’s win, lose, or get out of town. There is no second place. The Iraqis lost at least eight times on the seventeenth of January. They tried again two days later and lost six more times. Their last try (and their only effort to attack our forces on the ground with aircraft) was on the twenty-fourth, when two Mirage F-1s attempted to penetrate Saudi Arabia for an air-to- ground strike. An RSAF F-15C shot them both down just out to sea in the Arabian Gulf.
After that, they tried to hide in their heavily defended aircraft shelters, also to no avail, when we picked off the shelters, one at a time, with 2,000-pound hard-case, laser-guided bombs.
They were then left with the “get out of town” option. We had actually anticipated that, but felt their destination would be Iraq’s Arab neighbor and sometime friend, Jordan. Wrong. They went to Iran, leaving our carefully placed barrier CAP aircraft orbiting between Baghdad and Jordan in the desert.
On the first night of the exodus, the burning question was whether or not the jets were defecting. Because they were fleeing to an old enemy, that was a possible inference. But when they did it again the next night, I was pretty sure it was organized and not defection.
In order to find out what was really going on, I called Mary Jo, in Sumter, South Carolina. No, she doesn’t operate a spy network; but we had an Iranian-born friend who shared our passion for Persian carpets and whose father was well placed back home. She called our friend, and he called his father, who reported that an Iraqi general had shown up in Iran a few days before and negotiated safe haven for the Iraqi Air Force. The Iranians, justifying their reputation as “bazzaris,” or traders, carefully responded, “We will keep your aircraft for you”; and so, it seems, they have. The aircraft are still there.
Once the exodus started, the Iraqis ceased operating as a fighting force; it was a panic rush to the exits. They’d wait for gaps in our CAP coverage, then bolt in groups for Iran, hoping that if they avoided our fighters, they’d have enough fuel to find an Iranian airfield. The pilots who didn’t had to eject.
BRIEFINGS
We don’t like briefings, because we don’t like to sit around in meetings. But we have to have briefings, because they offer the most efficient way to keep vital information flowing to the largest variety of people. There were three that really mattered every day — the two at our TACC changeover, and the evening briefing at MODA for the CINC.
Since we had two teams, each working twelve hours a day, the changeover briefings occurred twice a day, morning and evening. Here there was no attempt at depth, or to make speculative projections (these came in the meeting that followed). For the most part, the presenters laid out facts and made reasonable projections of trends needed to plan ATOs and bring the staff up-to-date. Intel briefers, for example, would touch on the status of the Iraqi transportation system, the bridges he or she was recommending for strike, the reasons why the Iraqi Air Force was flying to Iran, or possible Scud hiding places. And there was also plenty of BDA, target systems, and current information.
When the incoming staff arrived, they’d gather around, while each section — Intelligence, Weather, Plans, Operations, BCE, Naval Liaison, and Marine Liaison — covered anything they wanted everyone to hear. Though the briefing was directed at me and the other senior leaders of the national air forces, it also allowed the staff coming on duty to get up to speed and to talk about the coming period and beyond. Anyone could ask questions (though few did). Then, at the end, I would make brief remarks designed to keep the staff focused on what I believed important. Most of the time I kept these remarks general, but on a few occasions I outlined specific tasks for the next twelve to twenty-four hours.
After this briefing, I would turn my chair around and face the back of the room, and the senior leaders from the U.S. Navy, Army, Marines, and the Coalition air forces, along with my senior staff — Tom Olsen, Randy Witt, Buster Glosson, John Corder, Bill Rider, Pat Caruana, Ed Tonoso, Glenn Profitt, and especially the four colonels, Crigger, Doman, Reavy, and Harr (two coming on and two going off duty) — would receive a purely speculative intelligence briefing from Chris Christon. (The briefing was not exclusive; anyone could stand around and listen; but as a rule, the duty officers had to get to work, now that the previous person manning their workstation had left for food and rest.)
Here Chris would let his imagination roam and give a far more hypothetical assessment of what we were about to face than was appropriate during the changeover briefing. I wanted him to really guess. Why? Because I had to think ahead. I had to make decisions. And if I used the usual intelligence data, I didn’t have much to go on.
Our peacetime-trained intelligence organizations are taught never to be wrong. They like numbers, and don’t like to talk about what the other guy is thinking. They don’t predict, they just give you the rundown, like TV
