Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign

Scud launchers.

The first of Saddam’s Scud launches were directed at Israel on the afternoon of January 17. Early next morning, Scuds fell on Dhahran and Riyadh.

Phone calls from Washington quickly followed: “Do whatever you need to to shut down the Scuds.” The great Scud hunt had begun.

From the first, Horner’s planners had expected to hunt mobile Scuds, even though there was never great confidence that they would find them all. Still, until the hunt was on, no one realized the resources they would have to commit, even less how little the hunt would succeed. The day after the first attacks, A-10s, F-16s, F-15s, and an AC-130 gunship were deployed to search the deserts of Iraq, day and night.

First reports looked encouraging: A-10s in south central Iraq attacked a convoy of trucks that appeared to be carrying Scuds. However, it quickly became evident that if the trucks had in fact carried missiles, and if the missiles were Scuds (and not, say, shorter-range FROG 6s), the attack had had little effect on Scud launches, as missiles continued to rain down on Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Night after night missiles came down, five or more per night, and as Scuds fell, more and more scarce air assets were dedicated to hunting them: flights of four F-15Es were sent to orbit likely launch boxes in western Iraq. Any vehicle on the Baghdad-to-Amman interstate highway was attacked, much to the distress of fuel-truck drivers smuggling fuel to Jordan.

In Riyadh, the pressure for action was strong; in Tel Aviv, it was explosive. The Scud attacks had filled Israeli civilians with terror and outrage. They wanted revenge. Traditionally, Israelis did not delegate military action, and their traditional strategy was an eye for an eye. At the minimum, they expected to send their excellent air force against the Scuds. More dangerously, there was a real possibility that they would retaliate with nuclear weapons.

Hoping to put a lid on all this, Horner sent a delegation to Tel Aviv — including his deputy, Major General Tom Olsen, and one of the four TACC operations directors, Colonel Mike Reavy — to explain how Americans were working to suppress the Scuds. He also wanted high-level people there to consult in the event of an Israeli attack. If the Israelis weighed in, tangles between Israeli and Coalition air forces would have been very possible, and would have only helped the enemy. Washington wanted Coalition forces out of their way. Meanwhile, Washington was putting full diplomatic pressure into preventing Israeli action.

Chuck Horner observes:

Israeli retaliation would have been a terrible political mistake, and its chances of military success were not high, either.

Though Israeli pilots were among the best in the world, they were less well-equipped than we were to hunt mobile Scuds. Consequently, their only real contribution to the war would have been to boost the morale of their own people. Far more important, however, the Coalition was always a very fragile thing. Any Israeli retaliation on an Arab state — especially nuclear retaliation — no matter how justified, would have at best weakened the Coalition. At worst, it would have destroyed it. Though it is my belief that the Chief of the Israeli Air Force, General Ben-Nun (a dear friend and first-rate F-15 pilot), understood all this, he was under pressure to act. So planning went on day and night in Tel Aviv.

Relief in Tel Aviv came with the arrival of the U.S. Army’s Patriot missiles. Though many will claim that the Patriots failed to stop the Scuds, the question about their success is really beside the point. The Scuds themselves failed to perform well, except to bring terror. By bringing relief from terror to the people in Israel, the Patriots succeeded magnificently. The relief was important enough to allow the release of Tom Olsen and Mike Reavy to come back to run the air war, where they were sorely needed.

On the downside, Israeli worries meant pressure on Schwarzkopf from Washington to start a ground war in the west just to shut down Scud attacks on Israel. This also would have been a terrible mistake, and a logistical horror.

? Though efforts to halt Scud launches were never completely successful, neither were they futile. Flights of F-15Es and F-16s at night, and A-10s during the days, combed the desert Scud boxes (areas where Scuds could be successfully launched against a particular target, such as Tel Aviv). Though confirmed kills were few — and for the A-10s there were none — their pressure kept launches down. In time, the Iraqis risked their Scuds only when skies were overcast and U.S. aircraft couldn’t see them. January 25, when ten were launched, was the high-water mark for Scuds. After that, the average fell to about one per day (though during the last days of the war, Saddam used up his reserves, and launches increased).

The A-10 search in the western desert was far from a total loss, for they discovered there an enormous unprotected storage area — munitions bunkers, tanks, APCs, and many other vehicles. What all that equipment was doing out there is a good question. Was Saddam preparing for an invasion to the west through Jordan into Israel? Or was this his idea of the best way to prepare for an Israeli attack against Baghdad? At any rate, the A-10s named the cache they’d found the “Target of God” and quickly turned it into a giant scrap heap. After the war, a high- ranking Iraqi confided to a Russian friend that 1,800 of Iraq’s 2,400 tanks were destroyed by air before the Desert Storm ground war. How much of that was destroyed by A-10s in the western desert is hard to say, yet it gives a sense of the enormity of Iraq’s war machine.

Meanwhile, it was not U.S. aircraft, but Lieutenant General Sir Peter de la Billiere’s British special forces teams that had the greatest impact on Scud launches. Sir Peter had a long career in Special Operations, including service in the Middle East. His taciturn, calm, well-mannered demeanor masked a warrior ready to rip an enemy’s throat with a large knife.

As de la Billiere was well aware, General Schwarzkopf had serious concerns about using special forces behind enemy lines, where they risked trouble that would require rescue by regular army forces (and perhaps start an unwanted battle). After somehow persuading the CINC that his worries were misplaced, Sir Peter approved several British Special Air Service Scud-hunting missions behind enemy lines.

Chuck Horner never actually received a formal briefing about this operation. The Brits simply implemented it. One day an SAS officer showed up in the TACC and, without fanfare or cloak-and-dagger secrecy, started working with Horner’s people to coordinate the planning. “I’m going to send some lads up into western Iraq,” he explained. “How’s the best way for us to cooperate?”

“That’s easy,” Horner’s planners said. “But aren’t you worried that our Scud-hunting aircraft might attack your guys by mistake?”

“Actually, no,” he said. “My lads have to hide from the Iraqis. That’s far harder than hiding from a few high- flying jets. So if your folks find them, my folks are fair game.”

The procedures they worked out were simple: his “lads” on the ground used handheld aircrew survival radios to communicate with U.S. aircraft — a very dicey business, because the Iraqis monitored the radio frequencies used by these radios and had extensive direction-finding equipment.

As with aircraft, hard evidence of their Scud-killing success is slim, but Scud launches diminished; and the SAS troops certainly helped U.S. aircraft find launchers, as one data-recording videotape from an F-15E testifies: the world viewed on CNN a laser-guided bomb hitting what certainly seemed to be a Scud on a transporter erector vehicle. What CNN didn’t broadcast was the audio portion of that tape, in which a British SAS officer talked the fighter aircrew onto a Scud target. As he calmly directed the F-15, its crew spotted a missile much nearer his location than the one he’d seen, and they proceeded to put a 2,000-pound laser-guided bomb on the target. The resulting fireball was close enough to the Brit to singe his hair. The audio of their radio communication went something like this:

SAS: “I say, Eagle II, I have a Scud located at the following coordinates,” which he read.

Eagle II pilot: “Roger. Am one minute out, approaching your position from the south.”

SAS: “Understand you will be making your run from south to north. The target is in a small wadi, running southwest by northeast. And I can hear you approaching the target.”

Eagle II pilot: “Roger. We have the target and have bombs away.”

Soon the aircraft’s laser was pointed at what appeared to be either a Scud or a tank truck filled with fuel just south of the SAS man. Then a very large bomb was headed through the air at near supersonic speeds. Just prior to impact, the SAS officer came on the air and said: “Understand you are bombs away. I’m observing some activity on the road just—”