Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign

PROLOGUE

On Friday morning of the August week in 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait, Lieutenant General Chuck Horner was at 27,000 feet, cruising at.9 Mach (540 knots), and nearing the North Carolina coast. He was headed out to sea in the Lady Ashley, a recent-model Block 25 F-16C, tail number 216, that had been named after the daughter of his crew chief, Technical Sergeant José Santos. Horner’s aide, Lieutenant Colonel Jim Hartinger, Jr., known as “Little Grr,” was on Horner’s left side, a mile out, slightly high. Horner and Hartinger were en route to a mock combat with a pair of F-15Cs out of the 1st Tactical Fighter Wing (TFW) at Langley Air Force Base in Tidewater Hampton, Virginia: a winner-take-all contest that would match wits and flying skills. After that, they were all scheduled to form up and return to Langley AFB as a flight of four aircraft.

It was a bright, clear day — a good day to be in the air. Horner felt the joy he always did when flying thousands of feet above the earth in a fast and nimble aircraft, an emotion that few others ever had the opportunity to experience. Part of it was the feeling of unity with his aircraft — the fighter was like an extension of his mind and body. The brain commanded and the aircraft responded, with no other conscious motions. In an air battle, a pilot had no time for unnecessary thoughts. He evaluated angle, range, and closure with his target, while keeping track of all the fast, nimble aircraft that were trying to drive him in flames out of the sky. He thought and the jet reacted.

It was Hartinger’s turn to lead, to call how he and Horner would fly from takeoff to landing, and he had set up a two-versus-two air combat tactics mission — what fighter pilots call a 2v2 ACT — with the F-15s. Horner was looking forward to it. At Langley, he was scheduled to attend an aircraft accident briefing with his Air Force boss, General Bob Russ, commanding general of the Tactical Air Command. Accident briefings were never pleasant experiences, even when the accidents were proven to be unavoidable, so Horner was happy for the chance to “turn and burn” with the guys from Langley before he hit the painful part of the day.

His policy was to try to maintain his combat skills whenever he flew his F-16. Even when traveling to an administrative meeting such as the one at Langley, he liked to make the trip worthwhile. It was a good way to stay up-to-date with the younger — often much younger — pilots he might someday lead into real battle.

He was in his fifties, but he wasn’t too old to go up against an enemy. He could hold his own with most U.S. fliers; and those fliers were better than 95 percent of anyone they might meet. What he’d lost in eyesight and physical stamina, he made up for with experience and brains. Experience atrophied with disuse, however, and he needed to know firsthand not only that his combat skills were current and credible, but also what the younger fighter jocks were doing, what they were practicing — their aerial, radio, and shooting discipline and tactics.

Fighter pilots are members of a very tiny, elite tribe, who also happen to be the most arrogant group on earth. Flying high-performance jets is a consummate art, and to be merely somewhere near the top of the food chain doesn’t begin to make it. They want to be the top. If there’s nobody around you left to beat, there’s still yourself. That means if a commander does not remain credible, a pilot may be reluctant to obey his lead. In war, failure to obey in the strictest manner can get people killed. So Horner felt he owed the people he commanded the duty to remain up-to-date in the use of his equipment, in tactics, and in understanding the stresses they faced.

Since April 1987, Chuck Horner had been commander of Ninth Air Force, which supervised the Air Force’s Active and Reserve Fighter Units east of the Mississippi River. In that position, he also served as the air component commander for the Central Command, the United States military organization responsible for national security interests in the Middle East and parts of East Africa (except for Israel, Syria, and Lebanon). In 1990, Central Command was led by Army General H. Norman Schwarzkopf. It was Horner’s job as CENTAF Commander to work with his foreign counterparts in a region that stretched from Egypt to Pakistan and to plan military operations — air campaigns that might be needed should a crisis arise that endangered the interests of the United States. It was also his job to make sure that U.S. air units were combat-ready, and that the logistics were in place to support them during a rapid deployment in peacetime or war. And finally, it was his job to command air assets that had been deployed to the region — during the recent Iran-Iraq war, for instance, USAF E-3A AWACS radar aircraft had kept watch over Saudi Arabia in order to prevent the local conflict from spilling over the border. When Horner wasn’t visiting his assigned bases in the United States, he was visiting the nations in the CENTCOM area of responsibility.

The job kept Horner in the air and away from home much of the time. Somewhat unexpectedly, he had discovered that he had a second home in the Gulf region. Over the years he had made many friends there, especially with other airmen, and as he’d grown more familiar with them, both professionally and as a guest in their homes, his respect for them had increased. He’d come to admire their ways, their differences from westerners, their pride in their own nations, and their reverence for God. In time he’d also come to love the nations that had given them birth, with their rich history, culture, and scenic beauty; he found himself devouring whatever books on them he could find.

When these friendships developed, he had no idea how valuable they’d turn out to be later.

★ The two hats Chuck Horner wore — as Ninth Air Force and CENTAF Commanders — derived from a generally little-known but far-reaching transformation in military structure brought about by the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act. Goldwater-Nichols revolutionized the way the United States military services operate.

Each of the military services has its own culture and traditions, its own sources of pride and ways of doing things, but these differences, in addition to the inevitable competition for resources and status, can easily get in the way of cooperation. Meanwhile, the speed — the tempo — of warfare grows ever faster; and war becomes more lethal. The U.S. military must be able to project massive, shattering force quickly from many directions — land, sea, air, and space — which means, among other things, that service parochialism is an expensive and dated luxury. The new military mantra is “jointness”—all the services must be able to work together as well and as comfortably as with members of their own organizations.

Goldwater-Nichols aimed to implement “ jointness” by breaking the hold of individual services on their combat forces. All operational control was taken away and given to regional Commanders in Chief (Europe, Central, Pacific, Southern, and to some extent Atlantic, Korea, and Strategic) and functional Commanders in Chief (Transportation, Space, Special Operations, and to some extent Strategic and Atlantic Command). This meant that the services became responsible only for organizing, training, and equipping military forces. Once the forces were operationally ready, they were assigned to one of the Unified Commanders. Thus, a fighter wing in Germany no longer was controlled by the Air Force, but would logically be assigned to EUCOM, a destroyer off the coast of Japan to PACOM, a satellite to SPACECOM, and a stateside army division could be assigned to any of the unified commands.

As the Ninth Air Force Commander, Chuck Horner worked for Bob Russ, the TAC Commander, who in turn worked for Larry Welch, Chief of Staff of the Air Force. As CENTAF Commander, he worked for Norman Schwarzkopf, who worked directly for Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. The Joint Chiefs of Staff could meet in Washington and advise Colin Powell, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but neither Powell nor any of the service heads had direct operational authority over Schwarzkopf, unless Cheney wished it (as did, in fact, happen). Likewise, neither Bob Russ nor Larry Welch had operational authority over Horner in his role as CENTAF Commander.

The new system created by Goldwater-Nichols was not universally popular in the Pentagon, but the people in the field loved it.

★ Meanwhile, the first week of August had been a difficult — and strange — time for the CENTAF Commander. In late July, when the Iraqi Army had begun massing on the border with Kuwait, he had put on alert the 1st TFW’s F-15C Eagles at Langley and the 363d TFW’s F-16C Fighting Falcons at Shaw AFB in Sumter, South Carolina, where he himself was based. On the night of August 2, a Wednesday, Iraq had invaded Kuwait, such a blatant act of thuggery that Horner had expected an immediate U.S. response. With Kuwait in Saddam Hussein’s bag, Saudi Arabia and the other oil-rich Gulf Arab states were very much at risk. Several divisions of Iraq’s powerful Republican Guards were poised in an attack posture along the Saudi-Kuwait border. Horner could not imagine how the United States could allow Saddam further loot. If sabers were to be rattled, then Ninth Air Force was likely to be the first one to get the call.

For the next two days, Horner expected to hear from General Schwarzkopf, his Unified Command boss, yet so far he had not heard a word either from him or from CENTCOM headquarters at MacDill AFB in Tampa. Since the Iraqi army had poured across the border to Kuwait, there had been a truly eerie silence. So he had just kept to his schedule for the week as planned. On Friday, he flew off toward Langley.

The radio broke Horner’s thoughts. Grr was calling for a “G” warm-up exercise, a necessary precombat discipline in the very hot and quick F-16s. Pilots needed to know that their G suits and other protective systems were working, and that they themselves were ready for the rapid onset of G forces. Otherwise there was the danger of a blackout and an unpleasant encounter with the ground. He put himself through a ninety-degree turn to the left at 4 Gs, then 4.5 Gs, as he pulled back harder on the stick grip in his right hand. He ran through a mental checklist: G suit inflating properly; breathing not too fast, not too slow, as he strained to force the blood up into his brain. No dimness in vision — the small vessels in the eyes were the first warning signs that the brain cells were being denied oxygen-rich blood. All was going well. He rolled out, then lowered the nose, and throttled at full military power as his left hand pushed the power lever forward as far as it would go. He quickly rolled into a ninety-degree turn back to the left. Six Gs this time, again running through the checklist, pleased that his fifty-three-year-old body could handle the pain and strain of the heavy G forces. Meanwhile, even as it squeezed his thighs and calves — forcing blood into his upper body — the rock-hard, inflated G suit felt as if it were trying to pinch him in two. Once again everything was in order. He rolled out, checked for Grr on the left. Their formation was still good. Now they needed only to cruise out to the east end of the ACM practice area and wait for the 1st TFW Eagles to show up.

As they crossed the Atlantic coast, Horner’s jet almost imperceptibly shuddered, as single-engine jets always seemed to do when a pilot got beyond sight of land. He instinctively checked the gauges… all of them were in the green.

Then the radio came alive.

“Teak One, this is Sea Lion. Your F-15s have canceled and Washington Center asks that you contact them immediately.”

Sea Lion was the Navy radar station at Norfolk, Virginia, that kept track of military training airspace out over that part of the Atlantic. In an instant, Horner knew what was up — a recall to Shaw. Grr called them over to 272.7 MHz, the proper UHF channel to contact the center controller, checked Horner in, and gave Washington Center a call.

“Washington Center, Teak One. Understand you have words for us.”

“Teak One, this is Washington Center. We have a request that you return to Shaw AFB immediately. Do you need direct routing?”

“Roger, Washington. We’d like to go present position direct Florence direct Shaw FL 320,” that is to say, flight level — altitude—32,000 feet.

“Roger Teak, cleared as requested. Squawk 3203.” Grr then dialed a setting into his onboard radar transponder, the transponder transmitted a code that was used to cue the ground controllers, and “3203” was displayed over their return blip on the Center’s radar screen.

My God, Horner thought, stunned, as he and Grr turned back toward Shaw. It’s on. This has to be about the Iraqi invasion. A million questions roared through his mind: Have the Iraqis entered Saudi Arabia? How much force will we deploy? How fast can we get our Ninth Air Force squadrons in the air to rendezvous with the SAC tankers? How much heavy airlift is available to get our spares and maintenance people deployed to the Middle East? How do we get our pre-positioned tents, munitions, fuel, and medical equipment from their warehouses in Oman and Bahrain, and from the ships at anchor in the lagoon at Diego Garcia? And inevitably, How many young men and women will die?

Thank God for Internal Look, Horner thought. Every second year the Commander in Chief of CENTCOM held an exercise in the United States in which his staff planned for a mock war. CENTCOM’s forces were then brought into the field to execute that “war.” The actual component commanders, such as Horner, John Yeosock of the Army, Walt Boomer of the Marines, and Schwarzkopf himself would deploy with their staffs and forces and conduct the kind of operations they might use in a real crisis. In the process, they learned to work with each other and to test the staff ’s and their own abilities, and the CINC was able to evaluate his team and learn how to use them and all of his forces to best advantage. In the intervening year the CINC would hold training exercises in the Middle East, where U.S. soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen could experience life in the desert and serve side by side with their Arab counterparts.

In the early days after the founding of CENTCOM, it had been feared that the Russians would attack south through Iran, thus attempting to make real a long-standing, indeed, pre-Soviet dream. Early CENTCOM plans, consequently, had been aimed at stopping such a move. By November 1989, when General Schwarzkopf had taken over CENTCOM command, the Soviets were not about to attack anywhere, so CENTCOM had had to look for a new mission. They didn’t have to look far. After the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq had been left with a huge, well-equipped, well-trained, and seasoned military force and an astronomical debt. How do they pay off the debt? Norman Schwarzkopf asked himself. They go where the money is: south, into Kuwait, and if they are really ambitious, into Saudi Arabia. As a result, General Schwarzkopf had directed that the 1990 Internal Look exercise take off from the premise that Country Orange (read: Iraq) had invaded some of its Gulf neighbors. Thus, early in August of 1990, when Iraq actually followed the Country Orange scenario, Schwarzkopf and his staff had a considerable head start on the planning needed for a U.S. military response to the invasion of Kuwait.

★ All these thoughts got shoved into the back of Horner’s mind when Shaw AFB appeared under his nose. They were about 1,500 feet up; Grr guided their airplanes over the runway without slowing down. Horner took a quick glance at the airspeed displayed on the windshield’s heads-up display; they were on the initial approach at a screaming 450 knots.

They were going to make a pitchout — a loop laid on its side — that would bring them down to runway level while they slowed down to landing speed. It was not an especially difficult maneuver if the pilot didn’t mind pulling a lot of Gs and working to maintain the same altitude and spacing as the other aircraft in the flight as he rolled out in the landing pattern. It was something like driving down the street at 250 mph in formation with other cars going the same speed, then making the corner together. Of course, the leader wants to keep the maneuver tight, with the guys behind him in tight, so he doesn’t want to make the turn too loose, or else everyone else in the flight will spread out, and the landing will be inelegant. Inelegance is not an option.

The downside to making the turn too tight is to spin out and crash.

Horner felt the extra Gs needed to slow down in the pitchout force him down into his seat, then he took a little extra spacing on Grr in the event Hartinger turned a wide base. He wanted to save enough room to cut inside of him if Grr got wide on final approach, but still not overrun his aircraft. As usual, though, Grr kept the base leg tight, just outside the runway overrun. Horner grinned, put the gear down, lowered the nose sharply, and pulled the F-16 around with the stall warning sounding a steady noise in his headset. It was about 11:00 A.M.

After they landed and parked, José Santos, their crew chief, approached the aircraft, a worried look on his face. He figured they’d returned because of a mechanical problem, which would be a slap in the face for him. José disappeared for a moment to insert the ground safety pin into the emergency hydrazine tank that powered the F-16’s electrical systems and hydraulics if the engine failed. When he emerged, Horner gave him an OK sign, and his worried look changed into a relieved grin. After that, Horner ran through the engine shutdown checklist: inertial navigation system off, throttle off, and canopy up.

All about them, the ramp was silent. Shaw had been ready for two weeks to go to war, so local flying was at a minimum.

As soon as Horner climbed down the ladder, he told José to get the jet ready to go. He suspected he’d be on the ground only a short time. Meanwhile, Grr came running over. Horner told him to file a flight plan for MacDill; then he shrugged out of his G suit.

It’s hard to look anything but rumpled when you shed a G suit, but this was not a problem for Chuck Horner. For him, rumpled was normal. He had a comfortable, but not pretty, bloodhound face; sandy, thinning hair; and a bulldog body. He looked nothing like Tom Cruise or Cary Grant, or any other Hollywood fighter-jock image. On the other hand, Horner moved with great verve and dash; he had an easy, infectious laugh and a wicked wit; and inside his bloodhound head was one of the sharpest, quickest minds inside the Air Force or out. He liked to play the Iowa farm boy, but he’d come a long way out of Iowa.

He walked over to his staff car, threw his G suit in the backseat, and drove to his office in the headquarters Ninth Air Force/CENTAF building just two blocks away.

Horner’s secretary, Jean Barrineau, was waiting at the door of the outer office. A tall, slender, middle-aged woman with light brown hair who looked younger than her years, Jean was the Ninth Air Force Commander’s brain. She ruled his schedule, yet she wielded her power lightly. Most of the time a visitor would find her with a twinkling face, her eyes shining with amusement, and a little-girl smile, as though she was playing some private joke on her boss — which she often did.

Today there were no tricks and no smiles. She was worried and all business. “General Schwarzkopf wants you to call him,” she said, “secure.”

He blew past her into the office.

The office was institutional but pleasant, with the inevitable government-issue big mahogany desk at one end and a small seating area at the other. The walls held the collection of “I love me” plaques and pictures a man accumulated in the military as he went from base to base. On one wall was a large painting of an F-15 with Horner’s name painted on the canopy rail — a gift from the 2d Squadron at Tyndall AFB in Florida, where he’d served from 1983 to ’85. On the coffee table in the seating area was a copy of the Holy Bible and the Holy Koran; the Bible came from the base chapel, the Koran from a friend in Saudi Arabia. Both were in English. Around the room on various end tables and bookcases were the odds and ends he had gathered while traveling around the world. A gold-colored dagger was a gift from the AWACS crews in Riyadh, a bronze block paperweight commemorated his time in TAC Headquarters as the deputy for Plans and Programs, and there were fighter squadron plaques from the Ninth Air Force units with whom Horner had flown training sorties during base visits. To the right of the back wall was a door that led to the toilet and washstand he shared with his deputy, Major General Tom Olsen. A large, computerlike telephone was located on a credenza under the office’s rear window, directly behind the desk. It shared the space with a few books of the trade, including his F-16 Pilots Handbook and a copy of the United States Military Code of Justice. The phone looked like a computer, because in fact it was a computer, designed to scramble conversations, and it featured thirty or more hotline buttons that connected with locations in the building and around the world.

Horner sat down behind his desk and punched the top right red switch hotline button; it was marked “CINCCENT.” Schwarzkopf ’s Master Chief answered after the first ring; she said the General would be on the line right away. A moment later, the gruff yet friendly voice of H. Norman Schwarzkopf came on the line. “Chuck, can you come down to MacDill?”

This wasn’t a request. It was simply a civilized way to say, “Lieutenant General Horner, this is General Schwarzkopf. Get your ass in my office as soon as possible.”

“Yes sir,” Horner answered, in his best subservient military voice, then added, “Can you tell me what this is all about?”

General Schwarzkopf confided that he was flying up to Washington the next morning to brief the President on the situation in Kuwait, and about the options the President could consider should the Iraqi Army continue its advance into Saudi Arabia — a possibility that was worrying the President just then.

“I’ll be right there,” Horner responded quickly.

When he told Jean he’d be off for MacDill, she said that she had already called TAC Headquarters at Langley AFB, and told General Russ’s secretary that he’d miss the accident brief. He smiled and headed out to his F-16. It was then about one o’clock. They’d be in Tampa about two.

It was Horner’s time to lead the flight, and in the best of all possible worlds, he would have put together a low-level transit to Tampa; but they didn’t have time to plan that. It was first things first; a potential air war got priority over training and fun.

The trip itself was a blur. His head was a swarm of thoughts and plans — deployment concepts, numbers of sorties, bombs, enemy fighters, data from a dozen exercises, hundreds of briefings, endless hours of planning over the past three years for a threat from the north. Yet he was in no way anxious. He knew he was ready, well trained, and well supported by a dedicated staff of men and women. Some of them, in fact, had been at Shaw AFB back in the early eighties when the then CENTAF Commander Larry Welch (later the Air Force Chief of Staff) had formed the first Air Force component of the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, before RDJTF had become CENTCOM about 1982.

The RDJTF had come about when U.S. political leaders realized that the industrial world’s primary oil supply was located in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods on the globe, and that America’s allies there did not have sufficient population to create a military force capable of protecting it. The RDJTF concept had been to create a hard-hitting strike force of Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force units capable of deploying halfway around the world on a moment’s notice; hence the terms “Rapid Deployment” and “Joint.” Unfortunately, when it had first started, it had been neither very rapid nor very joint. In the intervening years, successive leaders had honed the deployment skills of their units, and practiced fighting as an integrated team in numerous joint exercises in the California deserts.

Thus, Horner’s Ninth Air Force team had been preparing to go to war in the Middle East for the past decade. Endless hours had been dedicated to intelligence workups of the region and its people. The operations and logistics staffs had fought many paper wars, using computers to evaluate their plans, strategies, and tactics. Now all that work, all that study, and all that planning was to be put to the test.

★ H. Norman Schwarzkopf was a big man, with an unusually large head and broad face — so broad that someone seemed to have stuck his small nose on as an afterthought. He was not simply big, he was imposing. When he was in a room, he was the room’s focus; he didn’t leave much oxygen for anyone else. When you worked for him, it wasn’t hard to fall into awe of him. He thrived on confrontation. His temper was famously quick and violent, and he was notorious for verbally hanging, drawing, and quartering those who didn’t reach his standards. The term for that was “CINC abuse.”

The term would be used often in the coming months… but not by Chuck Horner. In the short ten months he and Schwarzkopf had served together, the two generals had forged a very different kind of relationship. For Horner, Schwarzkopf was not the screaming, tantrum-throwing prima donna others feared. He knew, first of all, that the CINC was very intelligent and amazingly softhearted, and, for him, Schwarzkopf ’s confrontational style of leadership was a plus. Horner also thrived on confrontation. If working for him was like an air-to-air battle, that was no problem. Horner was a fighter jock. That kind of competition was a joy. Horner always worked hard to enter engagements with the CINC prepared for any maneuvers he might throw at him; and as a result, their relationship was cordial and warm. Schwarzkopf had even learned to tolerate occasional jabs from Horner’s sometimes wild sense of humor.

On this day, however, there would be no humor.

When Horner walked into Schwarzkopf ’s office, he saw that the General looked very tired. The CINC didn’t waste any time: When he briefed the President and the cabinet the next morning (August 4) at Camp David, he said, he had a pretty good idea of the options the U.S. ground forces could employ to halt any Iraqi advance into Saudi Arabia, thanks to Internal Look, and he was confident he could give a clear, solid briefing to the President. But about the “Air” part of the briefing, he was much less secure.

If the Iraqis decided to move south into Saudi Arabia, the CENTCOM ground component was the XVIIIth Airborne Corps, which could be on the scene relatively speedily, some of it in days. Iraqi options were limited. Since the terrain became more and more difficult the farther west one got from the Gulf coast, and since the Israelis were in the extreme west watching any military moves in their direction, any Iraqi attack would probably come down the east coast. This was also where the oil was and most of the significant Saudi population centers, such as Jubail and Dhahran. If Riyadh was an Iraqi goal, they would probably come south and then turn right toward the capital. It was clear to Schwarzkopf what divisions he’d need and where they needed to go to stop such an attack.

Air, however, was another matter. Horner was aware that Schwarzkopf had no significant knowledge of that component, much less experience with it. The proper use of an air force was not then part of his mental equipment. Horner was also aware — though the CINC never said it explicitly — that Schwarzkopf was less than confident his planning staff would be able to prepare an air briefing for him that he could happily take to the President. That’s why he wanted Chuck Horner at MacDill. After he’d explained to Horner that Air Force Major General Burt Moore’s J-3 (CENTCOM Operations) shop was working the briefings, he asked if Horner could go down to the command center and give them some assistance. Moore was the chief reason Schwarzkopf was worried about his planning staff.

Moore had only recently taken over the CENTCOM J-3 slot after four years as the Air Force congressional liaison in Washington — hardly the best preparation for planning and operations. Not only was he new to the job and yet to prove himself, but he lacked both experience in the theater and current knowledge of airpower. Almost as bad: he was an Air Force officer, a segment of humanity that the CINC instinctively disliked and distrusted. “With Schwarzkopf,” Horner reflects, “you had to out-tough him to be accepted. Once he’d concluded that you were smart, tough, and loyal, then he would accept you. If he didn’t accept you and you were an Air Force officer, you were double dead meat.” Schwarzkopf didn’t accept Burt Moore.

Moments later, Horner was out of the serene yet intense office of the CINC, and into the noisy chaos of the CENTCOM command center. Burt Moore was under the gun, and a raft of Air Force, Army, and Marine lieutenant colonels and colonels were crowded into a small conference room, all of them very much on edge, building briefing slides to present to the CINC at the 1700 (5:00 P.M. EDT) conference. The urgency of their efforts was heightened by their fear of provoking a Schwarzkopf rage.

As soon as he walked into the conference room, Horner sensed that such an event was a very real possibility. Everyone there was more than a little confused and demoralized. Their efforts lacked order and focus, and they seemed to be missing essential details, such as basing, logistics, and sortie rates.

For their part, Moore and his people were neither delighted to see Horner nor eager to listen to his thoughts and suggestions — which he understood. Ordinarily it would have peeved him to be told to get out of their hair when he was sure he could help them, but they had obviously been working the problem for days, and they didn’t need some outsider sticking his nose into their business. If they were going to be ripped apart by the CINC, at least it should be as the result of their own efforts, and not because of some unwanted advice from the Air Force component of the command. He was also well aware that rank had little importance among fighter pilots. He let the matter drop. If they needed his help, they would call him.

There was a spare office up on the second floor. If he liked, they told him, he could wait up there. He sighed, and retired to the solitude of the bare-bones office on the second floor.

It was now 3:00 P.M. He decided he might as well not waste his time, so as he sat, he pondered: What would I tell the President of the United States if I were General Schwarzkopf?

He’d tell him how much military force he could deploy; what types of units, how fast, where they would be based, and how they would be supported. They’d be broad summaries clearly based on intensive examination of thousands of details. Next, he’d show what amount of military coercive force this air armada could generate. Again, the summaries would capture the strength of modern airpower without boring the listener with the particulars. Here, too, the President would know these statements were supported by a thorough review of nuts-and-bolts detail. Finally he’d conclude with employment concepts — a strategy for employment of airpower to bring the invasion to a halt in preparation for an offensive air campaign that would throw the invading army out of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, seize control of the air, interdict Iraqi fuel, munitions, food, and water, as well as command and control, and provide close support to the outnumbered ground forces. All of this would be enough to the point to let the President know that he, General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, U.S. Army, had his act together and was ready, capable, and in charge.

More specifically, Horner thought, Schwarzkopf would want to protect our own forces, so he’d want to put up a defensive air CAP—Combat Air Patrol—with AWACS, so he could keep the Iraqi Air Force from attacking us. This would also allow our forces maneuver space, and protect the cities and oil facilities. Once that was done, he’d worry about the Iraqi ground thrust. Where our ground forces were engaged, he’d provide air support. But the real aim of air in this situation would be to defeat the enemy’s ability to sustain the attack, so he’d go after supply depots and lines of supply. That would likely mean he’d have to give up some ground in the opening battle, but as the enemy’s supply routes became longer, the Iraqis would become increasingly vulnerable to air attack. In time we’d cause the attack to dry up, while forcing their ground forces into a posture that our ground forces could handle. Meanwhile, we would conduct operations against their infrastructure and their nation that would punish them for initiating the attack. How? By hitting specific targets with a specific number of sorties. In order to do it, we’d provide such and such a force, to be based here and here…

In order to fill in the blanks, Horner spent the rest of the afternoon on the phone to Shaw AFB, getting information from his Director of Operations, Colonel Jim Crigger, and his Director of Logistics, Colonel Bill Rider. Crigger looked up for him the sortie rates they’d used during the Internal Look exercises, as well as historical aircraft loss rates, readiness states of various fighter and bomber units, deployment schedules, and beddown locations — locations where units would have fuel, food, ammunition, housing, and everything they needed to function. Rider provided endless streams of data on munitions availability, spare parts, fuel supplies, and the beddown capacity of various bases — all the supporting factors that spelled the difference between victory and defeat.

★ Above all, Horner wanted to avoid the misconceptions that got tossed around all too easily in discussions of air planning and air operations — that there were such things as distinct “strategic” and “tactical” airpower. He knew that if they got bogged down in such distinctions, then the whole operation could be a disaster. He explains:

The use of the words “strategic” and “tactical” are a heritage from previous wars, where in general strategic attack was directed at an enemy’s heartland, and tactical operations were directed at his military forces in the field or at sea. More recently, “strategic” has come to mean nuclear strikes against the Soviet Union, or other powerful enemies, and “tactical” all other forms of air warfare.

Meanwhile, the less lofty terms, “offensive” and “defensive,” have long been associated with counter-air operations. Defensive sorties were ground alert, airborne alert, or scrambles launched against enemy aircraft attacking your territory or forces. Offensive sorties attacked enemy forces, usually over enemy territory or controlled seas.

I understand offensive and defensive; they have to do with where and when and situation. I don’t understand tactical or strategic. The words have now become meaningless and dysfunctional. In fact, in modern military speech, they are more often used to divide people and frustrate efforts than to illuminate and facilitate. People use them loosely who don’t know what they are talking about. So, for example, a B-52 is called a “strategic bomber.” A strategic bomber? Then why was it doing close air support in the Gulf, a “tactical” operation?

In reality, the person most likely to call a B-52 a strategic bomber will be an airman from SAC headquarters trying to keep control of an asset he is responsible for in terms of organizing, training, and equipping. If that asset is engaged in non-nuclear operations and deployed to a theater other than CINCSAC’s, it’s an asset potentially lost to SAC. It’s all thought of as a zero-sum game.

There is also a service-biased crowd that like to think of the USAF as made up of strategic or tactical elements — that is, either elements that attack the enemy heartland (as the Eighth Air Force did over Germany in World War II — the real Air Force) or tactical elements that are essentially mobile artillery for the army, and therefore not really Air Force. I call such people airheaded airmen. They don’t realize that air can and will do whatever is necessary to get the job done. In fact, the real Air Force does not define the job as either “strategic” or “tactical.” The job flows down from the President and the Unified Command. As an airman, my job is to tell the President and the Unified Commander what air can do to get that job done, either on its own or by supporting other forces.

This last explains in part why Goldwater-Nichols has had such a deep and far-reaching effect on our military. It is an effort to stomp out the desire of each service to think it is the end-all, and the others are around just to support them. Thus, in the traditional Navy view of the world, it’s “We like you all, but we are busy out here alone in the middle of the deep blue, so don’t bother to write except to send tankers and AWACS overhead.” The Air Force has those who see airpower as the only solution to all problems, but they want the Army to defend their bases and the Navy to make sure the JP-4 fuel tanker ships get to port. The Marines are most “ joint” of all; they need the Navy to get them there, they can’t survive without the Air Force’s lift and heavy support (they don’t have enough jets), and the Army is responsible for designing and acquiring their equipment. So the way they keep their bias alive is to make sure they always fight alone on some island somewhere without ever integrating into a larger picture.

Some of the more doctrine-laden ground people also talk about the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war, so they can think in bins or boxes: “strategic” means whatever the President thinks about and does, “operational” is what the CINC thinks about and does, “tactical” is component-level-and-below thinking and doing.

To an airman this is meaningless. My tactical fighter (tactical), flying to Baghdad (operational), kills Saddam Hussein (strategic).

So finally, in talking about air plans or air operations, I keep as far from these words as I can. Airpower is essentially very simple: Aircraft can range very quickly over very wide areas and accurately hit targets very close to home or very far away. Nothing more. Nothing less.

★ These are the briefing elements Horner put together that afternoon at MacDill:

First came the basics:

• Forces available: Under Goldwater-Nichols, CENTCOM was apportioned certain forces — primarily the 1st TFW (F-15s at Langley) and the 363d TFW (F-16s at Shaw). There were also F-111s, A-10s, C-130s, intelligence assets, ground radar units, a number of E-3 AWACS, a Red Horse engineering unit (for construction services), the Ninth Air Force staff and commander, and so forth. The CINC of CENTCOM could also obtain units apportioned to other CINCs, but for that he needed the approval of the Secretary of Defense. Thus, CENTCOM was later given the Army’s VIIth Corps, which came from EUCOM and was an enormous addition to its ground forces; and CENTAF was also considerably augmented before the actual beginning of the war in January of ’91. (All of these changes were several months in the future.) In August, Chuck Horner’s position was to fight the forces that were already apportioned to CENTCOM. Since, as CENTAF Commander, Horner was not just the Central Command Air Force component commander, but also the joint force air component commander (JFACC), the forces available additionally included the fixed-wing aircraft that belonged to the Navy, Marine, and Army units assigned to CENTCOM. He looked at all of these forces day to day, to keep track of their readiness posture, so he knew what forces he could count on.

• Types of units: Though all types of units make up an air force, the basic breakdown of roles is Air Superiority, Air Interdiction, Close Air Support, Reconnaissance, and Airlift. Some of the units were dedicated to one role. For example, the F-15s were used only in air-to-air missions[1]; the F-16s could do any role except Airlift; the A-10s were best used for Close Air Support (though they could do much more than that); and the C-130s hauled men and materiel, mostly Army, around the theater. However, C-130s had also been used in Vietnam to drop huge bombs to make helicopter landing pads in the jungle. So when Horner looked at an aircraft, he considered all its possible roles.

• Speed of deployment: This issue had to be approached from three directions — need, tanker availability, and airlift availability. Horner’s first job was to make sure he controlled the air and could protect the rest of the force arriving by air and sea. Thus, he needed F-15s (for air-to-air), AWACS (for radar), and Rivet Joint (for signals intelligence). Flying the large jets such as the AWACS to Saudi Arabia was not a problem, since they could cross the ocean without tanker support; but the smaller aircraft, such as F-15s, required tankers, meaning that his deployment tempo was limited by tanker availability. Next, only the C-130 units could self-deploy — that is, bring their own spare parts and people with them. In order to be operational when they arrived, the jets sent to Saudi Arabia would need a support airlift, or else they would have to be based with a like Saudi unit to allow Horner to support operations with Saudi parts and maintenance people until his own people and parts arrived. Thus, he initially based the 1st TFW’s F-15s with Saudi F-15s at the Saudi base at Dhahran. Once these three basic elements were determined, he prioritized the lineup in terms of what he wanted to go first and how long he thought it would take, knowing that all active air force units must be capable of deploying in twenty-four hours, and all guard and reserve units in forty-eight hours.

• Basing: Over the years, Horner had done preliminary planning about what units and aircraft to base where, and in fact his people already had considerable basing experience in Saudi Arabia. Earlier that year (1990), for example, AWACS and tankers had come home from Riyadh air base, where they had been operating for the previous eight years, protecting Saudi Arabia and its oil from possible spillover from the Iran-Iraq War. Since there were already hangars, ramps, fuel, and all kinds of equipment and supplies available, and the unit knew where to set what up, it made sense to send AWACS to Riyadh. Again, like units went best with like units. After that it was a matter of available ramp space and a feel for the pluses and minuses of the bases themselves. From visits with his counterparts, Horner knew all the airfields in the region. He had walked the ramps and flown from their runways. He also knew which countries were likely to let the United States in and which ones might balk. (As it turned out, all of them were very cooperative.) In short, he had done his homework; basing would not be a problem.

• Facing the enemy: Since the aim of all this activity was not movement or placement of assets, but (at least potentially), the generation of combat sorties, aircraft needed to be located where they would be available for the maximum number of sorties. Thus, Horner wanted to put the A-10s and Marine Harriers (short-range Vertical Take-Off and Landing aircraft) as near Kuwait as possible, because A-10s and Harriers were used primarily in close support roles. He also knew that the Marines liked to be near the sea. Conversely, he wanted the air CAP jets near the border, which meant placing them at Dhahran and Tabuk. On the other hand, since his tankers were nothing more than modified 707s and MD-11s, and since a 707 or MD-11 didn’t know whether it belonged to United Air Lines or the United States Air Force, the tankers would fit best at international airports, where maintenance and ground-handling equipment were available for large commercial aircraft. He wanted to place aircraft carriers in waters as close to Iraq as he could persuade the Navy to put them. And he wanted B-52s near the theater, but in locations that were not vulnerable to Scud or air strikes.

Second, Schwarzkopf (and after him the President) would want to understand the amount of military coercive force this air armada could generate. Here, briefing slides would come in handy:

The first of these would picture a map of the Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia region, a very simple map, just border outlines with a few symbols of major towns, highways, and rivers. On this map, a pair of large arrows would drop out of Kuwait, one aimed south along the coast, and a second aimed south but then bending to the west toward Riyadh. One of these two would be the probable Iraq course of attack. The map would then depict aircraft in orbit over central Saudi Arabia — AWACS and their CAPs to the north of them. It would also depict F-16s and A-10s attacking the lead elements of the Iraqi army, as well as the logistics bases and supply lines supporting the attack.

A second slide would list aircraft types down the left side. A middle column would list the number of aircraft expected to be based in theater and the expected sortie rate. So, for example, the sortie rate for the A-10 might be 3.5, and for the B-52 it might be.60. The right-hand column would multiply the number of aircraft by the sortie rate to give the number of sorties Horner would expect to fly per day. This would convey the level of effort he expected to sustain once the battle was joined.

★ How would these forces actually be used to defeat an Iraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia?

The basic strategy was to defeat the Iraqi invader by first cutting off his essential supplies and then by hitting his forces where they were causing problems with the U.S. ground forces. More specifically:

• Seize control of the air: Blind the centralized air defense system by knocking out their radars, and the command and control that directs them. Shoot down the Iraqi fighters brave and stupid enough to fly. Hit their airfields to limit the number of fighters they can put up to challenge you. Strike fear in the hearts of the radar-guided SAM operators by using Wild Weasels and HARM missiles to make them afraid to turn on their radars. And avoid the guns and shoulder-fired infrared (IR) missiles by flying at medium altitude.

• Interdict Iraqi fuel, munitions, food, and water: Armies have to set up dumps where their vehicles can go for gas and ammunition, so find the dumps and blow them up. Armies need fuel trucks to carry gas to their tanks and vehicles; and they need freighter trucks to carry their ammunition, so patrol the roads to the dump and strafe the trucks going and coming.

• Attack command and control: Find enemy headquarters — probably a group of tents or command-and-control vehicles (armored personnel carriers — APCs — loaded with antennas). This is an attacking army, so it has no bunkers. You find these headquarters by listening for them. They have to talk. They have to use radios or ground lines. Either way, you’ll know it. Without communication, a commander can’t control anything. (He can use runners or carrier pigeons, but the bandwidth on those is very low.) When you hear them talking, you can do four things: (1) listen but otherwise leave them alone, so you can disrupt their attack plan; (2) jam them and so deny communication; (3) voice over them and deliver the wrong communication (“Saddam Hussein here. I want you to change your direction of attack. Go north. Got that? North.”); or (4) bomb them. Because you control the air, the enemy has none of these options (though he might try ground-based systems; the range of these is short, however, due to the earth’s curvature).

• Provide close air support to the outnumbered ground forces: There were two issues here — providing close air support (CAS) for U.S. ground forces, a mission that had been practiced long and hard, and providing CAS for the Arab allies, which was more problematic because of language issues, and because it hadn’t been practiced — at least adequately and routinely. However, even CAS for U.S. forces had some problematic elements, partly because of the differing needs (or perceived needs) of air and ground forces, and partly because of recent changes in the very nature of warfare itself.

An air force is in the ordnance-delivery business, just as an airline is in the seat-delivery business. A TWA jet is well used when it is in the air and all its seats are filled. An F-16 is well used when it is in the air delivering ordnance to a target. The needs of ground people are somewhat different. For one thing, they like to have friendly aircraft visibly overhead. It makes them feel good. If these aircraft are not in fact delivering ordnance, that is not terribly important to their feelings of well-being. For another, ground people like to schedule air strikes the way they like to schedule artillery — hours, sometimes days, in advance. However, modern warfare has changed so greatly, the tempo of war has speeded up so much, and a good modern army is so mobile (you don’t know what you need because you don’t know where you’ll be fighting), that scheduling air strikes in the old way had become seriously counterproductive.

Very early on in their command relationship, Horner talked at length with Schwarzkopf about these issues, and convinced him then of a way of providing close air support that later came to be called Push CAS. That is, aircraft would be designated for CAS, but where, how, and when they would be used would be determined “on the run” by events in the field. If no one in the field had an immediate need for CAS, or if they were holding their own or winning, Horner would send the jets to the enemy rear area. Though the effects of these last strikes wouldn’t show up immediately, when they did, they would prove dramatic. Push CAS required excellent communications and control and also good ways of identifying the precise locations of the targets, but it was not otherwise more difficult than earlier ways of operating. Schwarzkopf had bought into Push CAS in April during the Internal Look exercise, and Push CAS became a reality in February 1991.

The problem of providing CAS to Arab-only speakers was solved by asking the RSAF (Royal Saudi Air Force), all of whom were bilingual in English and Arabic, to provide CAS controllers. It also turned out that there were a few USAF fighter pilots who, by reason of family origin, spoke Arabic. However, neither of these solutions could be instantly implemented. There would have been real problems in August 1990 if the Iraqis had come south.

• Once the Iraqi invasion has been brought to a halt, begin an offensive air campaign whose aim is to throw the invading army out of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait: Though CENTCOM tasking in August was to focus on the defense of Saudi Arabia, nonetheless, no one could ignore the event that had started the crisis, the invasion of Kuwait. Thus, initial plans had to be made for attacks against key targets in Iraq — oil refineries, power-generation plants, major rail yards, large factories, interstate highways, bridges, and the like. The idea was to link the destruction of these targets essential to Iraq with a coherent strategy designed to gain a political objective, such as the removal of the Iraqis from Kuwait. In point of fact, Horner and Schwarzkopf had recently come from the Internal Look exercise in Florida, where their air planners had been selecting targets throughout Iraq in response to the exercise scenario. Most of the target materials used during the war had already been ordered from intelligence sources the previous spring (primarily the DIA) as part of the preparations for Internal Look.

By the time the 5:00 P.M. conference with the CINC had arrived, Horner was ready to step in, if necessary, and provide Schwarzkopf with the basics he’d need to take to Camp David. He grabbed his notes and headed down to the CINC’s conference room to listen to the briefing proposed for the CINC by the J-3.

The small conference room was small and crowded, and the atmosphere was tense. The CINC was tired, the process of preparing the presidential briefing had not gone smoothly, and now time was running out. Fortunately, no one was allowed to smoke. Schwarzkopf ’s predecessor, Marine General George Crist, and many of his staff had been chain-smokers; CENTCOM meetings in those days had been agony to nonsmokers.

The meeting started with a short update on the situation in Kuwait. It turned out that when the crisis had broken out in July, General Schwarzkopf had had a man in a hotel across the street from the American Embassy in Kuwait City. His name was John F. Feeley, and he was a major on the CENTCOM Intelligence staff. Feeley had been sent to Kuwait with a briefcase full of top-secret photos to show the Kuwaiti leaders and had been caught there during the invasion. Now he was providing direct eyeball updates via a man-portable satellite phone. Horner didn’t know this man, but he imagined he was operating at a high pitch of excitement, perched as he was in the middle of the Iraqi Army as they rounded up elements of the Kuwaiti Army and foreign visitors. The CINC was obviously pleased that he’d inserted a pair of eyes in the enemy camp. Horner wondered if the “pair of eyes” shared the CINC’s joy.

The next part of the briefing took up the use of ground forces to counter an invasion of Saudi Arabia. Schwarzkopf asked few questions and made few comments; it was obvious this was his briefing and he had personally worked hard on it. The material was clear, understandable, and to the point; it addressed in detail the issues that constitute war on the ground — terrain, enemy forces, lines of communication, armor, tactics. For someone who could only guess at how events would unfold, it was quite reassuring.

The air part of the briefing was another thing; it turned out to be everything Horner had feared. As soon as it started, Horner could see a titanic disaster in the making. Burt Moore’s people, for all their talent, had fallen into the trap of trying to give the boss what they thought he wanted, rather than what they knew he needed. The material was vague, airy, lightweight. It scarcely began to show comprehension of the myriad facts and details that a good briefer condensed and focused into a very few words.

It primarily contained a list of forces that would deploy according to the Time Phased Force Deployment List (TPFDL — which is the military’s way of talking about moving things and people), as well as some discussion about where the forces would be located on the Saudi Arabian peninsula. This was interesting and important information as far as it went; but the point of any deployment was not the movement and placement of forces, but the way the forces could be brought to bear against a potential enemy. The briefing did not address that issue. It did not convey the combat power those aircraft were capable of bringing against the attacking Iraqi forces, nor did it point out where and when the aircraft would strike the Iraqi forces, nor the logistics factors (such as fuel and munitions availability) these combat operations would require, or how these would impact sortie rates.

In short, the briefing talked about things, the elements of airpower — numbers of aircraft and bases — but did not talk about the application of force and how it would be used to frustrate the enemy and accomplish the CINC’s military objectives. It described a horse without telling the listener how he intended to use the horse.

During the first two slides, the CINC showed amazing patience. “Perhaps he was hoping it would get better,” Horner observes, “like the kid pawing through a pile of horse manure hoping to find a pony inside.” Unfortunately, the briefing got worse, and so did Schwarzkopf ’s temper. As his questions and comments increased in volume and velocity, the room grew charged with electricity. Many hunkered down into the near-fetal position staff officers learn to achieve in an upright chair. Others gleefully anticipated the inevitable Schwarzkopf eruption.

For a second, Horner allowed himself a small, childish “I told you so” thought, but quickly switched it off. Time’s running out, he told himself. No need for any poor sons of bitches to suffer CINC abuse. And more to the point, it’s not fair to Schwarzkopf to provide him less than our best efforts.

He turned to the CINC and quietly suggested that perhaps the President just wanted to know how soon Air Force units could arrive in the theater, where they would be located, how they would be supported, what levels of effort could be sustained, and what type of jobs they could be expected to undertake to deter or defeat an Iraqi invasion. He could see that this part of the briefing had been troubling the CINC, and that he was looking for a way to convey this information to the President in as credible a manner as the ground piece of the briefing, which he had worked out so well.

Schwarzkopf agreed. In fact, Horner’s suggestion was just what he wanted to hear just then. That being the case, he ordered the staff to turn out and help Horner put it together.

You could feel the relief in the room from everyone except Chuck Horner. In essence, he’d promised that he’d fix up everything himself. Now he had to perform perfectly, and fast; the CINC was due to depart for Washington and Camp David around midnight.

He returned to the command center, only this time he did not ask, “Can I help?” Horner told them what he wanted, and, to their credit, Burt Moore and his J-3 staff gave him their complete support.

What he needed first of all was a stack of overhead transparency slides. Since 1990 was already the day of desktop computers with dedicated software, he sat down next to a young, computer-literate staff member and his machine, and went to work. He’d draw a sketch of what he had in mind on a piece of typing paper, and then the kid would punch it into the computer to produce the finished slide. Quickly, the pile of slides began to grow — number charts, maps, diagrams. The various slides outlined a vast exercise in airpower, rapidly and easily deployed, hosted at a number of bases throughout the Gulf region. The operations were to be supported in large measure by over a billion dollars’ worth of equipment, munitions, and supplies.

If Iraq continued its attack through Kuwait and into Saudi Arabia, land-and sea-based aircraft would immediately be on the scene to work with the Gulf allies. They would bring to bear an array of modern weapons targeted by a host of the latest intelligence-collection assets, directed by a theater-wide command-and-control element that could devastate the attacking Iraqi forces as their supply lines fanned out across the desert and along Saudi Arabia’s highways. It would be a formidable challenge. It had to be. Iraq’s air force was well trained and equipped. Its army was shielded by thousands of antiaircraft guns and surface-to-air missiles. Formidable as they were, however, they would encounter airpower beyond their ability to comprehend.

Horner threw himself into the briefing. With over thirty-two years of experience in the Air Force, and three years of working with the Gulf nations and their air forces, he knew he could put together a briefing that would make the pieces of the air plan clear to the President. No one knew more about threats, air war, and air operations in the Middle East than he did.

He was confident, and it showed when he went over the slides with General Schwarzkopf at 2300 (11:00 P.M. EDT) that Friday night.

But then his fighter pilot confidence wavered when General Schwarzkopf smiled and said, “Looks good, Chuck. Why don’t you brief it? The aircraft leaves at 0200.”

Horner sat stunned for a moment, then let out a puff of air. They can kill me, but they can’t eat me, Horner told himself.

★ Later, after Schwarzkopf had left, he sat thinking. He couldn’t screw this up. If he failed to transmit the right information, it could endanger the lives of many thousands, and the existence of a nation he respected deeply. This was not about war. In fact, if the military options were presented truthfully and executed skillfully, then war might be averted. But if war was in the cards… he let out another puff of air… then he would be the commander of the most powerful air attack in history.

He looked through his notes again, then through the slides, then he leaned back in his chair, thinking back to that day twenty-eight years before that was never far from his mind: the sand, the sky, the certainty that he was going to die. Was this what it had all been for? Was this what God had had in mind…?