news anchors. Yet, as a commander, I had to think about what the other guy was thinking. I needed to get inside the other guy in order to find ways to spoil his plans and make his worst fears come true. That meant Chris had to speculate, stimulate our thinking, and provoke the questions we needed to ask. Sure, he might be way off base, but that was expected. And of course, having reviewed all the intelligence derived from our own operations (pilot reports and intelligence reports published by his staff) and from other organizations, he always explained the reasons for his projections.
In addition to providing insight into the enemy, these meetings expanded our collective thinking. For that reason, discussions always followed Chris Christon’s predictions, and these wandered wherever the various leaders wanted. Obviously, there were cultural differences that dictated how and when a particular commander spoke. The Europeans, for instance, were comfortable speaking openly, and they all felt free to take any position on any issue. The Arabs, on the other hand, were more reticent and circumspect. Nonetheless, if they thought we were missing anything important — especially if it concerned the Arab mentality of our enemy — they spoke up.
Inevitably, issues came up that we discussed at length yet never really got a handle on. Some of these, like Scuds, came up frequently.
Finally, these meetings made us a team. Our U.S. Air Force people were already working hard for harmony, side by side, throughout the TACC and at the various bases, on the ground and in the air. I wanted all the national air force leaders to have the same feelings of trust, respect, and unity of effort. That is why it was important for me not to act in charge; and that is why it was important for me to listen to them and actively seek their views. It also didn’t hurt to learn something new, and gain their perceptions, experience, and insights.
We were fortunate in this conflict in that if we failed to accurately gauge the enemy, our strength was so overwhelming that we would still prevail. Nonetheless, our mistakes could cost the lives of aircrew, or later, the lives of airmen and soldiers on the ground. That is why so many people worked so hard at thinking about the enemy, our plan to fight, and our actual minute-by-minute engagement with him.
“It all starts and ends with intelligence,” I like to say. In war, your intelligence has to be the departure point for your thinking or planning. And then, after you execute your actions, your intelligence estimates the results and the effects on the enemy, so you can plan the next move.
War is not unlike chess. But in war, you do not have a clear view of the other side of the board.
? Just before 2000 each evening, I left the operation to Tom Olsen and headed for the CINC’s meeting at the MODA building bunker. As I ran up the stairs, I usually heard Buster Glosson doing the same thing; he, too, had been busy getting ready, for it was his job to brief the next ATO. We’d both hit the glass doors and race out into the cold night to an armored Mercedes sedan, the back doors open and the motor running. Behind the wheel was Technical Sergeant Mike Brickert, a six-foot-three deputy sheriff from Chelan County, Washington, who was an air policeman in the Air National Guard and an Olympic-class marksman and athlete. His job was to get Buster and me safely and quickly to the MODA so I could be in my seat before General Schwarzkopf called the meeting together. En route, Buster and I would review his briefing.
Most days, I had gone over this new ATO during the morning, when I would wander down to the Black Hole and discuss the infant plan. Buster and his people would then massage it the rest of the day, and from this would emerge a Master Attack Plan, which listed the primary targets we intended to strike. In the car, Buster and I would make changes based on how we felt the CINC would react to comments or targets. The key was to challenge him a little bit but keep him from overreacting. So we were careful to justify each target nomination.
The one area we could not judge accurately — and didn’t really have to — was the number of sorties we needed to apply to the individual Iraqi divisions in the KTO. (All we knew for certain was that the Republican Guard was going to get more attention than conscript infantry units.) In the end, we were going to get them all, so the answer didn’t really matter. Each day we used Sam Baptiste’s and Bill Welch’s best guess (based on ground force inputs) about which units to hit, and then we distributed the rest, based on ARCENT estimates of unit strengths. Every evening, as was his privilege as CINC and land force component commander, Schwarzkopf modified this part of the plan.
My strategy session with Buster usually ended as we hit the front door of MODA and ran to the elevator that took us to the underground command post. We were never late, but we were often in the hall only steps ahead of the CINC.
The meeting that followed (like the changeover briefing we had just left) covered the weather, intelligence updates, the progress of the war, and logistics, communications, and overall support updates provided by the CENTCOM staff. Then came the main order of business — the plans for the day after tomorrow. For the first five weeks of Desert Storm, virtually the only subject discussed was the air war — in other words, Buster Glosson’s briefing. Though the daily plans tended to be an expansion of the previous day’s efforts, each also had to be coherent in and of itself and address any interim changes.
When he came “on stage,” Buster would take out his rolled Plexiglas sheets with the proposed targets outlined and notes written in grease pencil. For example, there might be a circle, with the number 50 inside it, over the general location of the 18th Iraqi Armored Division in Kuwait — meaning that two days from now we intended to task fifty attack sorties against that division (the exact time of each strike would depend on details too numerous to brief, and was anyhow of little importance in the current phase of attriting the Iraqi Army before the ground battle started). Or there might be a green triangle overlaid on a series of bridges, showing how the effort to isolate the battlefield would continue. Or there might be red triangles overlaid on a nuclear research center, a tank repair depot, and a suspected Scud storage area.
Buster would quickly, but in detail, explain the nature of each target and how its destruction fit in the overall campaign plan. Once that was done, he would briefly cover the AWACS tracks, CAPs, Scud patrols, and electronic- warfare packages. The discussion of army targets was left for last. At that point, Buster and I would take out our pencils, ready for the CINC to break in, point to a list of Iraqi divisions posted on the wall, and rattle off the divisions he wanted struck. He always did.
It was the same night after night, never acrimonious, always professional and easy to follow.
Afterward, Buster would roll up his charts and leave. He needed to hurry back to the Black Hole to input the latest guidance into the ATO (which was already starting to run late).
The CINC would then poll the U.S. and Coalition commanders or their representatives to see if they had any pressing concerns, and if the CINC had any special guidance, he gave it out. After the meeting broke up, Schwarzkopf would call Khaled bin Sultan with his update, while I rushed back to the TACC for the evening follies.
BAGHDAD BILLY… AND SOME WINS
The confusion of war breeds endless myths. Some bring laughs, others bring deaths. Ours, sadly, was the tragic kind. It was called “Baghdad Billy”—the Iraqi interceptor from hell.
Soon after the start of air operations over Iraq, pilots flying the EF-111 electronic jamming aircraft began to report interceptions by Iraqi fighters, even when there was no evidence of airborne Iraqis. They claimed they’d seen Iraqi fighter radar signals on their warning scopes, spotlights from Iraqi interceptor aircraft, or even tracers and missiles being fired at them. Yet in no case could intelligence sources or AWACS confirm these sightings. Much of the time, there were no indications that Iraqi aircraft were even airborne. There was one constant: F-15s had been in the vicinity of the EF-111s during their mysterious sightings.
In short, they were imagining things. We called their phantom “Baghdad Billy.”
But that was headquarters wisdom. The crews knew what they’d seen with their own eyes; they knew that they had narrowly escaped death at the hands of an Iraqi fighter pilot.
The sides were drawn. The fat-assed generals in Riyadh who didn’t believe the crew reports, versus the pilots and weapons systems operators who were out there night after night risking their lives.
You don’t enter an argument like this and expect logic to prevail. But these were fighter pilots, and it was all good fun until somebody got hurt. That happened the night of February 13.
Ratchet-75, an EF-111A tasked to support-jam Iraqi radars, was the third aircraft in a flight of three EF- 111s crossing the border between Saudi Arabia and Iraq in the vicinity of Ar’ar, a town in northwestern Saudi
