A few days before the big moment, we had had our final war council before the ground war. Generals Franks, Luck, and Boomer had come to Riyadh to brief their final schemes of maneuver to Schwarzkopf, while the Egyptian, Syrian, Saudi, and Gulf Cooperation Council forces were doing the same with Khaled. For all the others, this meeting had to be a high-anxiety affair (they were, after all, on the line), but for me it was a relief. For once, someone else was briefing the CINC, and the airmen were (sort of) getting the day off after being the only show in town for thirty-seven days.
So when the war council started, I relaxed in my chair, wondering how well plans would be executed, and how many men would die bravely, needlessly, or because of our failures of leadership. All three U.S. generals were calm and deliberate. No surprises.
Then the weatherman got up and briefed the weather forecast for the night of February 23-24, and it was going to be terrible—rain, fog, winds, and cold temperatures. Cloud bases would be touching the ground, so visibility for the troops would be measured in yards, not miles. That in itself would not be so bad, as enemy troops would suffer the same limitations. In fact, that would cause them far greater problems, since they had to see attacking troops in order to direct their fires. But the bad weather would cause us one problem: it would keep our aircraft and helicopters from providing close air support to attacking forces. Not only would they be denied the power of massed aircraft striking at enemy strong points in their path, but if they chanced to be pinned down in a minefield by Iraqi artillery, they would find themselves in a seriously bad way. This situation, predictably, left the CINC visibly anguished.
Though he was under intense pressure to start the ground war, his obligation to the troops not to spend their lives needlessly always came first with him, and he was prepared to delay the ground attack, no matter how great the pressure from Washington. Still, this decision, if he had to make it, would not come easy (it would have left him naked to Washington’s slings and arrows). So when the CENTCOM weatherman briefed rain, fog, and misery, Schwarzkopf ’s shoulders slumped, and he placed his huge head in his hands.
Meanwhile, my own weatherman, Colonel Jerry Riley, had already given me a preview of the likely weather on the night of the twenty-third and twenty-fourth. Riley was a spectacular weather “guesser,” both as a scientist and as a seer, reading tea leaves. He not only brilliantly grasped the scientific data sent by satellites and aircraft over the battle space and from meteorological stations all around the world, but he had a record of accurate “gut guesses” as well. Before Schwarzkopf’s high council, Riley assured me that the CENTCOM forecaster’s reading of the tea leaves of isobars, low-pressure areas, upper winds aloft, and frontal passages was wrong. As Riley read them, the worst the weather would throw at us that night would be cloud bases one to two thousand feet above the ground, with visibility of three miles in light rain and fog. I believed him. He had been forecasting the weather over Iraq and Kuwait for the previous five-plus weeks with uncanny accuracy. Though we had faced abysmal weather (it had been one of the wettest, coldest winters on record in the region), time and time again he had figured out the weather we would encounter—where, when, and how severe—well enough to let us plan our air campaign. Though the weather was going to be far from ideal on G day, he assured me that it would be good enough for our jets to slip under the clouds and hit the targets the ground forces needed hit.
So there I was, with positive weather information that I believed; and there was Norman Schwarzkopf, actually suffering over the negative report from his own weather guy. And just then I did something I’d never imagined I would do. I put my right arm around his shoulders and whispered in his ear: “Boss, I have a weatherman who’s been calling the weather accurately for the past six weeks, and he tells me that the weather is not going to be all that bad. The worst we’ll see, he tells me, is a couple of thousand feet of ceiling and a few miles of visibility. We can handle that. I promise you we can provide the close air support your guys are going to need. Trust me on this one, boss. The weather is going to be okay.”
I don’t know whether or not he believed me, but a burden seemed to lift, and we continued the meeting.
Later, he ordered the ground war to go as scheduled.
And when the troops began their attack of Kuwait and Iraq, they did it in the worst damned weather we encountered during the entire war, with rain, fog, low ceilings, and blowing mud.
Because our troops were ready, and the Iraqis debilitated, we began a ground offensive that turned out to be over more quickly, with fewer casualties, than anyone had ever dreamed. So in the end my weatherman wasn’t wrong—the weather was good enough to start the ground war. He just got the numbers wrong, as the weather was for the most part ghastly—zero ceiling, zero visibility.
THE GROUND WAR
At four o’clock on the morning of February 24, 1991, the ground war to free Kuwait began.
That night I had checked into the TACC early. The weather reports were horrible—cold, fog, rain, and drizzle, with blowing winds.
As morning approached and we waited for progress reports from the BCE, the room was filled with tension, even dread. Yet we were also relieved. For airmen, this moment marked the last spurt in a long and difficult struggle. And we were quite simply exhausted.
I tried to imagine what the Marines were going through as they picked their way through the barbed wire and minefields, always waiting for an artillery barrage to rain down on them, which they could only take or retreat.
I knew that the Marines and the Eastern Area Corps were going to give us our best clue about what was really going on. Out to the west, it was going to be more difficult to track the XVIIIth Airborne Corps and French Army, as they became strung out over miles of desert. Though they did not have to confront the massed defensive works that faced Walt Boomer, Gary Luck had problems of his own. Primarily, he had to take his forces and their logistics tails deep into Iraq before the Iraqis discovered they were there, and then he had to place his forces in position to cut off retreat of the forces facing Fred Franks’s VIIth Corps, the British, and the Northern Area Corps (Franks’s main attack was scheduled for launch on the twenty-fifth).
We were, of course, also aware that the Iraqi Army had crumbled, and that Saddam had desperately tried to escape the battlefield and occupied Kuwait. Hours before the attack, the Russians had delivered a desperate message to Washington, promising unconditional Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait, if they were allowed a twenty-one-day cease-fire. No way. Because we wanted their army destroyed, we would not permit them to leave with their equipment, so our response was: “You have twenty-four hours to clear out, not three weeks.”
As early as February 20, Army Apaches flying strikes against Iraqi targets in southern Kuwait had reported that the noise of their helicopters had brought Iraqi soldiers streaming out of their bunkers to surrender. These prisoners reported that whole units were prepared to surrender en masse, and were just waiting for our attacking army. Even so, there was plenty of Iraqi Army left to inflict casualties on Coalition ground forces.
No one can overstate the courage of those first ground forces as they carefully picked their way into Kuwait and Iraq in the cold wet darkness of that opening night of the ground campaign.
★ The opening reports were confused. The lousy weather added to the natural confusion, and the troops in the attack had better things to do than send messages to higher headquarters.
Later, reports began to dribble in, and the lines on the maps began to move; but there were no reports of engagements, only the slow, agonizing movement as the two corps in the east moved into occupied Kuwait. Best of all, there were no reports of our losses.
By midmorning, CENTCOM started to send us information: the Marines were through the wire and minefields and moving ahead at speeds five to ten times greater than expected, there were very few casualties, and the Iraqis were surrendering in such numbers that the advancing infantrymen were having trouble handling them.
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Meanwhile, aircraft were streaming over the battlefield, hitting the armored and Republican Guard divisions, as they were, we thought, preparing to maneuver for a counterattack. Though our air attacks were severely hampered by the weather, we dropped thousands of bombs on enemy encampments, trying to obstruct their movement in any way possible. Joint STARS had very few meaningful reports of movement. The Iraqi Army was frozen in place.
By noon, it looked like a rout. Though there had been some sharp engagements, our worst fears were not being realized. Iraqi artillery positions had been found unoccupied, and when Iraqi armored vehicles attempted to engage the Marines, they were quickly silenced. The Eastern Area Corps on Walt Boomer’s right flank were advancing apace, rolling up Iraqi defensive positions designed to repel the mythical amphibious landing.
When it became obvious that the Marines were advancing much faster than anticipated, I knew that Schwarzkopf ’s plans for the main attack would be disrupted.
The original plan called for Walt Boomer and the two Islamic corps to initiate an attack into the teeth of the Iraqi defenses, leading Saddam to think that theirs was the main attack. In the far west, Gary Luck would race north and then swing east behind the Iraqi Army, cutting off their escape. Twenty-four hours after the first units had crossed into Kuwait and caused the Iraqis to react to this three-corps attack in the east, VIIth Corps would launch a devastating blow into the flanks of the Republican Guard and armored divisions (for the most part located near the northwest of Kuwait) as they maneuvered to their left to engage the fake main attack.
But the Iraqis refused to act as predicted. As the attack in the east raced north, the Republican Guard and armored divisions stayed put, probably in the belief that if they moved, they would suffer air attacks like those at Al-Khafji.
Meanwhile, as the Marines and the Northern Area Corps moved forward, their own left flank became increasingly exposed to the Iraqi armor located west of Kuwait City.
The only solution was to push up the launch of VIIth Corps. In that way, the Republican Guard and other Iraqi armor would stay pinned, but the flanks of the Marines and the NAC would be protected.
When I heard that the CINC was contemplating this move, I thought to myself, It needs to be done, but it is sure going to cause problems for Fred Franks. The coordinated movement toward a common goal of a large mass of people and equipment is difficult, no matter whether it’s third-graders on a field trip or an army corps about to violently encounter a large enemy force. And keep in mind the weather, with visibility in feet and yards, as blowing sand mixed with rain and fog to produce blowing mud.
CENTCOM kept us informed about the traffic between Schwarzkopf and Fred Franks, as they discussed changing the launch of VIIth Corps’ attack. I could imagine the confusion this introduced into the carefully planned operation. Nonetheless, the order went out for the VIIth Corps to move up the attack, and the race was on.
Soon, all five corps were in Iraq and Kuwait. The weather was getting better, but there were few requests for close air support. The fighters were ranging ahead of our forces on the ground.
★ Earlier, during the “air-only war,” we had done everything in our power to minimize aircraft losses. Thus, my orders then had stated, “No enemy target is worth one of our aircraft. If you can’t hit it today, because of weather or enemy defenses, go somewhere else and we will come back tomorrow.” But now the orders were just the reverse: “You have a sacred duty to help the men on the ground. If they need you, you go, even if it means that you may stand a good chance of being shot down or losing your life. . . . Now is the time for you to risk your jet, to risk your life, because they are down there engaged in combat and are for sure risking their lives.”
Iraqi Effectiveness
At the same time, we had to make sure that our close air support did not endanger the lives of the ground troops. From the start of the war, I had agonized about air-delivered weapons falling on friendly forces.
Modern air war was so deadly that even the slightest mistake was catastrophic. In other wars, if you bombed a friendly position or vehicle, someone might be killed or wounded. In this war, if we mistakenly unleashed our deadly guided weapons or fragmentation bombs on a friendly position, everyone in the vicinity of the attack would be killed. Airpower had grown too deadly for the mistakes one expects in the fog of war. I knew such mistakes would happen; they always do; and they had—during the battle of Al-Khafji, an A-10’s errant Maverick missile and bombs from A-6s had killed Marines and Saudis on the ground—but I wanted to make sure we had done everything within our power to prevent more.
Thus, I gave an “if in doubt, don’t” order. And I had challenged everyone on the staff, especially the tactics team headed by Lieutenant Colonel Joe Bob Phillips, to figure out ways to avoid hitting Coalition ground forces, and a number of measures, rules, and guidance had been worked out between the Black Hole planners and the BCE.
The factor that drives our approach to close air support is not what one might think. Though bombing or strafing of enemy positions is certainly important, the chief aim of CAS is to avoid bombing and strafing our own forces. We do this by establishing boundaries, using ground references to guide our operations.
The first such boundary is usually called the Front Line of Own Troops, or FLOT (though there are other names for it, such as FEBA, Forward Edge of the Battle Area). Whatever it’s called, the concept is simple: Your guys are behind a line (the FLOT), and ahead of them is a no-man’s-land or else enemy. You don’t drop bombs behind the FLOT.
A second line is called the Fire Support Coordination Line, or FSCL, pronounced “fissile.” Between the FLOT and the FSCL are enemy ground forces opposing your own ground forces. If you drop a bomb in this region, you stand a good chance of killing an enemy soldier.
The complication comes because of the fluid nature of warfare. That is, the close air support pilot wants to make sure there are systems and procedures that let him avoid hitting friendly soldiers who have advanced since the FLOT/FSCL lines were determined. Thus the role of forward air controllers, and the rule “When air operates in close proximity to friendly ground forces, it must be under the control of a forward air controller.” A FAC is an airman who is in contact both with the ground commander and with the CAS aircraft, so he understands what the ground commander wants done and can convey that to the pilot, while making sure the pilot does not mistakenly attack friendly ground forces.
This rule always applies—except during emergencies, as when the guy on the ground is being overrun and says, “To hell with it, my only hope is for air to bomb my position. Maybe the enemy soldier with the knife at my throat will get hit instead of me.”
The area between the FLOT and FSCL defines close proximity, meaning that if you are attacking a ground target between these two lines, you are doing close air support and are by definition in close proximity. On the other side of the FSCL, any military target could be hit.
The FSCL is usually placed where it makes sense. For example, in a static situation where neither side is moving on the ground, a good place to put it is somewhere near the outer range of friendly artillery along some clearly recognizable feature, like a line of hills. If the ground forces are in the defense and expecting to fall back, you want the FSCL quite close to the FLOT, so you can attack the enemy ground forces with the least restrictions as they mass for the attack. If friendly ground forces are attacking and moving forward, then the FSCL should be reasonably far out, because of the greater risk of hitting your own troops as they overrun the enemy.
To accommodate the rapid advance we expected during ground operations, the land forces and airmen had arranged a whole series of “on-call preplanned FSCLs”—lines on maps that could be activated as the attacks progressed. Thus, if one corps didn’t move forward as fast as expected, its FSCL would remain close to the Saudi border. If, on the other hand, the adjacent corps moved faster than anticipated, its commander could push to the next preplanned FSCL
(or at least the segment in front of his FLOT).
During the nine hundred hours of war that preceded the ground offensive in Desert Storm, the FSCL was the border between Saudi Arabia and Iraq-occupied Kuwait.
First, there were no friendly ground forces north of that line (except for a few Special Air Service and U.S. Special Forces hunting Scuds, and we had special measures in place to protect them). Second, there was a bulldozed berm marking the frontiers between Saudi Arabia and its neighbors to the north. Every pilot could easily see if he was over friendly forces or the enemy.
Who decides where to put these lines?
Since the FLOT is determined by the actual placement of friendly forces, you simply find out where your own guys are and draw a line on the maps.
Placing the FSCL, however, is much more difficult. As I pointed out earlier, a number of factors are involved: Are you on the offense, defense, or holding ground? Are the friendly ground forces using weapons that must be deconflicted with the air strike? You don’t want a midair collision between an Army artillery round or rocket and your fighter-bomber. One must also consider the terrain—that is, the pilot needs some ground reference for his lines (this last requirement will in fact soon pass away, with the introduction of moving map displays and Global Positioning System satellite navigation systems and displays).
In practice, the ground commander defines the FSCL relative to his needs and his position on the battlefield, but—and this is a big but—he must coordinate with the air commander who is providing the close air support sorties.
Why must the Army coordinate with the Air Force? Because the FSCL limits the airman’s flexibility in killing the enemy. If a fighter pilot flying between the FLOT and the FSCL spots an enemy tank, he cannot attack it unless he is cleared and controlled by a forward air controller.