Finally, the existing air bases had to be enlarged, or in some cases new ones created.
First, each base was surveyed to see how much more it could accommodate. At some—such as Khamis Mushyat, where the F-117s were based—not much had to be done, since there were only a few more available to deploy. Other bases required much more.
Often, additional munitions storage areas had to be built. At Al Dhafra, in the UAE, one of these was dug in a small hill near a wadi. When it rained, the place filled up with water. The bombs weren’t harmed, but the dunnage and fuse boxes were set afloat.
Even before the buildup, some bases were short of fuel storage. The added aircraft just made the problem worse, and increasing fuel storage was not possible (adding fuel bladders might give a base a day’s additional supply). Bill Rider solved that problem by increasing the flow of fuel to the bases—that is, he increased the number of Saudi tanker trucks moving between fuel-processing facilities and bases. At Al Kharj and other bases, the flying depended on a constant stream of fuel trucks from the fuel-processing facility (in the case of Al Kharj, from Riyadh, about thirty miles north).
Fuel storage at Al Kharj was a problem because it didn’t start out as an air base; it started out as a runway/parking apron—and nothing else—surrounded by sand.
In Desert Shield, the F-15Es had been deployed initially to Thumrait, Oman. Thumrait was a fighter base, it had the fuel and munitions storage required, and much of the Air Force’s pre-position housing was stored there. The F-15E was a long-range attack aircraft, so the nearly eight-hundred-mile one-way trip to the (projected) battlefield (near the Kuwait-Saudi border) was not a problem. In fact, this distance was desirable if the battle started to move south and the Iraqis overran the more northern airfields. However, now that the projected battlefield was about to move north, the long round trip became a big disadvantage. It was therefore decided to move them five hundred miles north to the runway/parking apron the RSAF had built at Al Kharj. This move would put them an hour closer to the war.
Colonel Ray Davies and the 823 Red Horse Squadron, the Air Force’s heavy construction battalion, having just finished building ramps at Al Minhad in the UAE, and taxiways and parking at Sheikh Isa in Bahrain,51 were sent north by Colonel Hal Hornberg to build a base and a host of living facilities throughout the desert for Air Force, Army, and Navy troops. The Red Horse would raise a city for over five thousand people in a matter of days.
The problems were daunting. For starters, the sand would not hold the tie-down stakes for the Air Force’s temper tents—air-conditioned and heated desert tents that were the envy of their army brothers. Red Horse’s answer was to lay down a deep base of clay over the sand. The clay hardened like cement and gave the camp a stable base. It’s easy when you can think big.
They found and dug out ton after ton of clay, then overlaid miles of desert where they wanted to set down the tents. The next problem was no water or fuel. Their solution was to bring huge rubber bladders from pre-positioned stocks in Oman and Bahrain. Hangars for the airplanes were also up in hours, again from pre-positioned supplies. Munitions storage areas, dining halls, shops, a chapel, operations, even a sand golf course, all rose in weeks. By December, the base was ready to receive two F-15E squadrons, two F-16 squadrons, an F-15C squadron, and a C-130 airlift squadron.
★ The creation of the quick-turn base at KKMC was even harder.
Quick-turn is a simple concept: The great reliability of modern American military aircraft allows them to make several sorties a day, like airliners, lugging bombs instead of passengers. It therefore made sense to locate a base close to Iraq, where the aircraft could be quickly refueled and reloaded, and the pilot could be given target information for a new mission. In that way, they could strike the enemy four or five times a day—in a tempo that would leave the Iraqis reeling.
Coalition Air Bases in the Middle East
Though it had drawbacks, the choice for this base fell on KKMC, less than fifty miles from the border with Iraq. As with Al Kharj before the Red Horse, it contained a runway and taxiways, and little else. More worrying, it could be a prime target for enemy artillery. For that reason, no aircraft would be assigned there. The birds would only come to refresh.
Now Horner needed someone to build a tent city, munitions and fuel storage, and an operations area, and set up intelligence, air traffic control, and maintenance services . . . all in two weeks—no excuses. To bring off that miracle, he brought in Colonel Bill Van Meter to be the wing commander at the quick-turn base.
On December 21, Van Meter appeared in Horner’s office, still groggy from his rush trip to Saudi Arabia. His challenge: to build a base at the end of the supply line, working his people day and night in an extremely new and isolated environment, while preparing them to survive missile or artillery attack and perhaps be overrun by an armor thrust.
With a rueful smile, he left to talk with Bill Rider and George Summers, the logisticians. Six days later, Horner flew up to KKMC. What he found there amazed him. The base was far from finished, but bulldozers were carving munitions storage berms out of the desert; pipes were being laid for the fuel farm that would enable the fighters to refuel and rearm without shutting down their engines; and a tent city was rising in the desert between the town and the base.
As they toured the base, Van Meter told Horner about a young female airman who had just arrived, disoriented and tired. During his briefing to the newcomers about their mission and responsibilities, she had sat calmly, but when he had touched on the possibility of enemy attacks, it had hit her that she just might die. And tears ran down her cheeks.
Flash forward to the days when Scuds were falling and pilots were beginning to die in shot-up jets. That same young woman proved to be one of the strongest combat leaders at KKMC.
COMMAND AND CONTROL
Managing the vast aerial armada called for an immense, intricately connected command-and-control system. Here are some of its more notable elements:• TACC Current Ops—Located in Riyadh, the Tactical Air Command Center was the central node for the planning and execution of the air war. Chuck Horner maintained his headquarters there.
• AWACS—A Boeing 707 command-and-control aircraft with a large, long-range radar that could see aerial targets at all altitudes, provided they had a velocity over the ground relative to the AWACS aircraft. Though this number was adjustable, it was usually set at speeds greater than seventy knots, so cars would not show up as aircraft. The AWACS provided an air picture to all the theater, and the AWACS air controllers provided navigation assistance and controlled aircraft from pre-tanker rendezvous to poststrike refueling, as needed. F-15s and F-16s, with their powerful air-to-air radars, did not need such help; other aircraft often did.
• ACE Team—A small command-and-control node—usually a planner/ executor, an intelligence person, and one or two duty officers—located on board the AWACS and operating in parallel with the TACC current ops. Because it was closer to the fight, and more aware of what was going on than the TACC staff, the ACE Team had the authority to divert sorties. Normally, though, they kept in close contact with the TACC directors. They could also have acted as a temporary backup if a Scud hit had closed down the TACC.
• ABCCC (Airborne Command, Control, and Communications; pronounced “AB triple C”)—A C-130 aircraft used primarily for command and control of close air support. A command-and-control module in the cargo compartment held about fifteen people, half of whom were likely to be Army or Marines after the ground forces were engaged. The Marine ABCCC was called the Airborne Direct Air Support Center, or DASC.
• Compass Call—An EC-130H configured to jam communications, such as Iraqi military communications.
• Commando Solo—An EC-130 configured to conduct psychological operations by broadcasting television and radio.
• Rivet Joint (RC-135)—A special reconnaissance version of the Boeing 707 that provided data on enemy air defense systems and other intelligence information.
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• Joint STARS (E-8A)—A modified Boeing 707, equipped with a large radar that provided Moving Target Information (MTI) and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images of surface targets. This information was presented to air controllers on the aircraft, who tracked, identified, and directed strikes against enemy ground targets. Because the E-8 was still undergoing testing, it was largely crewed by Northrop Grumman civilian engineers who had volunteered for the war. The Joint STARS radar and air controllers proved to be of immense value in halting the Iraqi ground attack into Saudi Arabia at El-Khafji in late January.
• Killer Scouts—F-16 fighters assigned to patrol kill boxes (twenty-mile-square areas in Iraq and Kuwait) and locate Iraqi army units visually or by radar. They provided target information to flights of attack aircraft fed into their kill box area by ABCCC, AWACS, Joint STARS, or the TACC.
After the ground war started:• Air Liaison Officers (ALOs) and Ground Forward Air Controllers (FACs)52—Both connected ground units with air and handled close air support. The difference lay in their rank and the level of army units to which they were assigned. FACs were usually junior officers assigned at battalion level or below. ALOs were usually majors or above and assigned to brigade or above. For example, a colonel would be the ALO at corps level, a lieutenant colonel at division. The ALO role emphasized senior-level experience and thus made the ALO the air adviser to the Army commander. While the ALO could control a strike, most often strikes were controlled by FACs, who were closer to the battle.
• Air Operations Support Center—A mini-headquarters, usually a corps ALO, heavily equipped with communications and computers. It was to the corps headquarters, or Army group headquarters, what the BCE was to the TACC. The Marine equivalent was called a Direct Air Support Center.
Other elements in the system:• Control and Reporting Center (CRC)—A ground-based van that could also include one or more TPS-75 radars to provide an air picture. CRC controllers backed up AWACS controllers when the AWACS was too busy or not available—though they could not do the job as well as AWACS, because ground-based radar could not see airborne targets at low altitude due to ground clutter and the curvature of the earth. Other elements in the command-and-control systems with a similar function included U.S. Aegis cruisers and the Sector Operations Centers, operated by the Saudi Air Defense system and co-manned primarily by the RSAF and USAF. CRC displays were also linked into the AWACS and other radar nets, and provided the AWACS picture to those who didn’t otherwise have it. Thus, a CRC was set up at KKMC to give the Syrians and Egyptians an input into the air picture.
• Control and Reporting Posts (CRP)—Individual ground radar units that performed essentially the same functions as the CRC or AWACS, but were smaller and depended heavily on the other two for a comprehensive air picture. They were also called gap fillers.
• Wing/Squadron Command Posts—This was the primary hub linking the squadron, wing, or base with the TACC current ops. Each base would have a main command post, but its size and complexity varied with the base’s size and activity level. At a base with just a few jets, like Arar, the CP might be a tent with a telephone, a CAFMS terminal, and a table with maps used for planning. At a big operation like Dhahran, the CP might have air defense displays with the AWACS picture, intelligence computers to display updated threats, and a wealth of duty officers and cells to coordinate operations.
• Flying Squadron Operations—Here pilots planned the missions and got intelligence not provided by wing operations, briefing rooms, and scheduling boards. The ATO came from the TACC Plans to Wing Operations, where it was broken out and parceled out to the squadrons to execute.
• The Air Traffic Control System—This included towers, departure and approach control, and air traffic aids—TACAN, VOR, ILS, ADF, runway lights, Air Base Operations, GCI, and GPS.
• And a number of support elements such as maintenance control; security police operations; civil engineer operations (who watched over runway shutdowns); fire operations; bomb disposal; and hospital operations.
The center of it all, the TACC (pronounced “T-A-C-C”), had two functions: current plans and current operations. Plans—the Black Hole, current plans, and the computer room (which was part of current plans)—built the ATO; Operations executed it. However, in normal conversation, the TACC meant Operations, which was much larger than Plans, and more was going on there.
The Operations section changed the ATO.
In a perfect world, where nothing unforeseen happens, no plan goes amiss. In the real world, where the ATO was already forty-eight hours old when it was executed, a system was required that could change the ATO quickly, based on new intelligence, weather changes, unforeseen enemy actions, new opportunities, or even relatively small mishaps, such as a KC-10 tanker aborting a takeoff. The jets that tanker was scheduled to refuel had to somehow find fuel, and one of the teams in the TACC Ops section had to find a way to provide it. Likewise, if the weather was bad in the ATO target area, one of the TACC teams would likely change the scheduled flight from its preplanned route to a new target area.
During the war, the closest that planning came to perfection was perhaps 50 percent, and on some days virtually every sortie was altered.
★ When the Ninth Air Force came to the Gulf, they brought their command center with them, originally housed in an inflatable building (called “the rubber duck”), which was set up in the parking lot behind the RSAF building in Riyadh. It soon became evident, however, that a better site was needed. For one thing, the American airmen needed to adapt their operation to the immediate situation. Since they were in Saudi Arabia, the appropriate site for the control center was with the air force of the host nation. For another, the rubber duck—based on an outdated vision that placed the Air Force out in the countryside with the Army—was obsolete and only marginally functional. It was too small, too dark, and most of its technology came from the fifties (though some systems, like CAFMS, were newer). The 150-plus members of the TACC staff needed a more efficient layout—and hard walls to shield against the Scud threat.
The obvious site was in the basement of RSAF headquarters. In December, Operations took over a fifty-by-seventy-five-foot room previously used by the RSAF to teach computer operators. Power generators, communications vans, and satellite dishes, however, remained in the parking lot, and their cables were rerouted into the new TACC.
A TOUR OF THE TACC
At the front of the Ops room was a small open space. Down the room’s large center section were ranks of tables, covered with phones and computer terminals. Beyond a pair of side aisles were desks, most facing the center.
The right front wall contained BCE maps with plastic overlays depicting the strength and position of allied and enemy ground forces. To their left were a pair of large screens displaying the AWACS air picture and intelligence data, such as Scud launch and impact areas, active Iraqi radars, or data about airfields, transportation networks, or any other data loaded into the intelligence systems computer.
The commanders’ table was at the front center.
Seated at its far right (facing forward) was a Kuwaiti Air Force officer, Lieutenant Colonel Abdullah Al-Samdan. On leave in Jordan when the war broke out, Al-Samdan had left his wife and children there, leapt into his car, driven to Riyadh, and set himself up as the Kuwaiti Air Force representative at RSAF headquarters. He was at the commanders’ table because he held a special place of honor: it was his country they were there to free. But he also “paid his keep” by providing access to the resistance leaders in occupied Kuwait (they risked their lives daily by using their satellite phones to relay target data to him53) and by flying missions during the war. His parents, brothers, and sisters remained trapped in Kuwait City.
The RSAF leader, General Behery, sat on Al-Samdan’s left, with Horner next to him, and either Major General Tom Olsen or Major General John Corder next to Horner (Olsen generally worked days, Horner worked nights, and Corder, it seemed, worked all the time). Horner
had brought his old friend Corder onto the team as a general officer director of operations. Though Jim Crigger had been performing splendidly in the DO role, he had no stars on his collars and so was not taken seriously in high-level meetings with other services. The intense, intellectual,54 selfless Corder could handle the point man role superbly, and allow Crigger full time to run daily operations.
The last two chairs were occupied by the TACC Directors—Jim Crigger and Al Doman (Mike Reavy and Charlie Harr worked the night shift). Their job was to run current operations—that is, to execute the air war. When a change was made to the ATO, they were the approval authority, ensuring that all the pertinent people were informed and coordinated.
Behind the commanders’ table was a square table with a large map of Iraq under Plexiglas, around which sat the national leaders of the coalition air partners—Major General Claude Solnet from France, Major General Mario Alpino from Italy, Lieutenant Colonel John McNeil from Canada, and RAF Air Vice Marshal William Wratten, RAF, who was also the deputy to Great Britain’s top military leader in the Gulf, Sir Peter de la Billiere.
On their left sat the people who actually ran the TACC, primarily Lieutenant Colonels Bill Keenan and Hans Pfeiffer. They saw to it that people and equipment stayed in working order (they were the TACC’s “building superintendents”).
Duty officers—liaison officers from the various bases, air forces, and services—occupied the rows of tables down the center of the room;55 their job was to organize changes to the preplanned ATO. Since most changes occurred after a flight was airborne, they were usually passed to the flights by the AWACS; but the airborne command element aboard one of the AWACS aircraft, or another command-and-control element, such as ABCCC aircraft or Killer Scouts, was also sometimes pressed into service.