Allied Force Debrief

Page 2

Reprinted article from Code One Magazine
by Eric Hehs


October 1999

Used with permission from Lockheed Martin Corporation.

Sortie Duration And Complacency We were never complacent when we were over enemy territory, where staying focused was not difficult. Some of the longer patrol missions were more challenging. We had pilots logging eight-hour combat air patrol sorties an ocean crossing, in other words. We were burning a phase a day in the beginning. Aircraft would get reassigned in the air and forced to stay longer as we provided twenty-four-hour coverage. Pilots who were not relieved by replacement assets flew even longer sorties up to nine hours. These long missions made it more difficult to stay focused. We overcame complacency by performing pilot upgrades where prudent. For example, we got the squadron from sixty percent NVG-qualified to 100 percent qualified during the operation.

Capitalizing On Block 40 Capabilities I think we learned a lot about the use of the targeting pod, an incredible tool. We didn’t use the pod that much differently, but we really wrung it out. We used it on every sortie for a number of things: setting up basic tanker rejoins, identifying ground targets, and lazing ground targets. We capitalized on its capability as a reconnaissance tool as well we have one hell of a reconnaissance capability with the LANTIRN pod. We regularly imaged targets and got BDA with it throughout the war. This use of the LANTIRN pod is one of the greater success stories of the air campaign.

Our use of NVGs was another success. We had guys who had never flown with NVGs trained up to full combat NVG fliers in a few rides. The NVIS aircraft lighting is fantastic. The mods we made before the war made us some big money in this operation. Whoever came up with the idea for a sequenced infrared strobe should get a medal. With NVGs lights fifty miles away look like they are three miles away. But pilots can pick out their wingmen easily at any distance with the flashing strobe. We were able to employ a lot of NVG four-ship tactics during the war. We targeted to ensure that bombs tracked on simultaneous strikes. Our internal data modem worked well, too. The ability to transmit targeting data from one platform to another was extremely helpful, especially in the Kosovo engagement zone where we worked several target areas.

Most Memorable Mission My most memorable mission was on Memorial Day when the Kosovo Liberation Army was launching an offensive that went bad. The Serbs were starting to take them when the CAOC asked us to level an area in front of the Serb advance. We controlled nine sets of fighters in a short time span. The mission was NATO at its best. British pilots showed up, Spanish, Canadians, and Americans. Fifty years of training together at Red Flags, on deployments, during contingencies all came together to stop the Serb advance. It was a great day to be a NATO fighter pilot and a bad day to be a Serbian ground troop. [Editor’s note: This mission is depicted in the opening painting for this article.]

Maintainers Critical We could have kept the war going indefinitely. The airplane sure could have handled it. The one thing that could have got us in trouble was the phase inspections. We normally perform two phase inspections a week at Spangdahlem, one for each F-16 squadron. We were flying long duration sorties during the war, usually averaging five and six hours. And we were flying the jets more frequently as well. So for a while, we were flying more hours than we could put back in the fleet with phase inspections. At the peak of the war, we were flying 800 hours per week, so we had to perform four or five phase inspections just to keep up. Phase inspections were conducted around the clock and every day of the week. If we learned anything from this war, it is to get on the phases right away. I’m not exaggerating when I say the maintainers working the phase inspections kept us in the war.

We did not lose a single mission due to maintenance. Every single mission we were tasked to fly by the ATO [air tasking order] we flew. That record holds true all the way back to September when we were flying Northern Watch missions out of Incirlik, Turkey.

SEAD To DEAD At some point, the Block 50 needs to move beyond suppression of enemy air defenses to destruction of enemy air defenses. We go in there with the AGM-88. If it hits the radar, the missile will destroy it. But a smart radar operator will keep his head down and live to fight another day. Their sites will come up and they’ll take a couple of shots and then they’ll turn them off, pack up, and move.

The SAM threats we faced were not that advanced. We are talking SA-3s and SA-6s that rolled off assembly lines twenty-five or thirty years ago. They may have been upgraded, but we are still talking single-digit SAMs. We are eventually going to be involved in a conflict that includes dual-digit SAMs, which represent a much more advanced threat. We have to eliminate these sites early. We want to be able to see them when they come up and destroy them before they can move. We want the SAM operators to know that they will be destroyed if they come up. I think we will see a precision capability on the Block 50 F-16. We will have a targeting pod so we can go out there and destroy these sites.

Most Memorable Mission I was part of the first F-16 Block 50 four-ship that was scrambled during the combat search-and-recovery mission after the F-117 went down. I didn’t get shot at during that mission and I didn’t shoot at anything, but that was still the most memorable mission of the war for me. We had eighteen airplanes in the wing participating in the mission—six A-10s and twelve F-16s. At the time, Spangdahlem had the only A-10s in theater. Four F-16s flew over a nine-hour mission as part of that rescue effort. They were airborne when the F-117 went down. We were very focused and prepared to do whatever it took to get that pilot out of there. The helicopters picked up the pilot and got him home. He returned to Aviano the next morning on an MC-130, and we were all out there to meet him. That mission was very satisfying, the highlight of my career.

Success Of HARM On F-16 The fact that the Serbs would not radiate very long indicated that they had some bad experiences with the AGM-88. Had we not been there, they would have brought up their radars all the time, stayed up, and shot at our jets. We did not lose a single airplane in the war when an F-16 Block 50 was in position to threaten SAM sites. When the F-117 went down, we didn’t have any F-16s with HARMs on station. The bottom line: the system worked and worked very well. The results of this war show it.

The Planning Process C5 contained two cycles. One was used to make the target list for the day. That cycle, which had its own approval process, produced a number of targets and their associated priorities independent of the air assets. The other cycle was involved with apportioning assets and putting air packages together.

The C5 got together with the C3 people to create a master attack plan. Here, we plotted all the targets and assigned clusters of targets to available aircraft packages. We might have twenty-four aircraft in a package, including four types of aircraft with a variety of weapons. The master attack plan went to the mission planning cell at Aviano where all the detailed planning for each package was done. The US Navy did its own mission planning. The mission planners created the mission cards, which included target coordinates, radio frequencies, callsigns, and aerial refueling details. Each nation had representatives at Aviano in the mission planning cell.

Initial Strategy Our initial strategy gave the Serbs some advantages. We flew offensive missions only at night for the first four weeks of the campaign. That meant the Serbs had the liberty of action and movement during the day. They even flew CAS missions during the day. That also allowed them to move all their SAMs, radars, and aircraft. Since we did not use surprise at the beginning, everything the Serbs had was dispersed after four weeks. If we started with the plan we had at the end of April, the conflict would have been finished by the end of April.

The reason we attacked only at night was the result of a combination of factors. We had an initial plan that covered only two days. Because of that, we had only 250 aircraft in the theater. We also identified only a limited set of targets for those initial attacks. Those targets had to be approved through political cycles. We were a bit stuck. We had more political limitations early on. For example, we could attack airfields, but we could not bomb runways. We wanted to teach the Serbs a lesson. We were asked to drop bombs, but not to do too much damage. We avoided costly and long-term damage.

We did not start with clearly defined objectives of destroying Serbia’s war potential. The beginning was more like a punitive expedition. In the beginning, we were not even flying reconnaissance missions. Our first sets of targets were out of a database of fixed targets. Fielded forces in Kosovo were not targets in the first four or five weeks. So they could dig in.

Strategy Evolves When we saw that this approach was not working, we made a full-scale plan with hundreds of targets. We got more aircraft and we started around-the-clock operations. From there, the tide turned. At the end of May, it became pretty clear that KFOR had to move in if it wanted to do something about the refugee problem before winter. The ground troops had to go in under a permissive environment. We had to convince the Serbs to give us such an environment or create one for ourselves. That is why we used the heavy bombers, like the B-1 and the B-52, in late May and early June.

Milosovic made his calculations as well. The last three weeks of the campaign, we practically eliminated half of his Pristina Corps. I don’t mean the soldiers, but the combat capability. In three weeks, we destroyed seventy-five percent of his artillery and forty-five percent of his armor. He has three corps remaining and two months to go before August. With clearer weather in June and July, he would not have much left before KFOR came in. The cohesion of the alliance was still there, and we still had the political will to follow through on our intentions. Had he fought, he would have lost everything.

Serbian Hardware On Display At War’s End That was part of the propaganda. How many tanks did anyone actually count on CNN? Forty or fifty? The Pristina Corps had about 200 tanks to start with. Perception is a problem. We gave the Serbs eleven days to withdraw their forces from Kosovo. They did it in ten days. Perhaps they didn’t have much to withdraw. So don’t form conclusions based solely on CNN coverage. We have BDA results and most of them are confirmed hard kills of targets.

Assessing Battle Damage Getting good BDA is still a problem. BDA at the Joint Task Force in Naples wanted redundant sources to confirm kills. The CAOC required a single confirmation and that could have been a pilot’s report, which was not accepted at the JTF. Some A-10 pilots were asked whether they could be certain that an artillery site they had just bombed was not in fact a decoy. They replied that if the artillery pieces were decoys they must have been very good decoys because they were firing shells into the air.

At the CAOC, we needed BDA in our ATO cycle. If a target was not destroyed, we had to retarget it very quickly or else it would move. We don’t face the same problems as someone seeking BDA on a strategic level; we don’t assess the overall results of a campaign. We needed results fast and with as much accuracy as possible. Our margin of error might have been a little bigger, but we got reliable BDA faster than the JTF or at higher levels. The JTF often left targets on the main target folder because these targets were considered not destroyed by their more stringent requirements. We knew they were destroyed, but we sent pilots out to hit them again anyway. These unnecessary missions occurred more frequently than they should have.

Acquisition And Identification Our systems can accurately hit any set of coordinates on the ground. The problem we have now is that we don’t know what is on those coordinates when the bomb is delivered. At medium altitudes, we have a big problem identifying targets. We have to watch what we throw and where we throw it because collateral damage has a direct affect on a campaign. Most of our forward air controlling was done by A-10s, Block 40 F-16s, and F-14s. Those pilots had to use binoculars to identify ground targets. In an age of helmet cueing systems and night vision goggles, we still rely on binoculars. We have to look at new technologies to support a pilot who has only a few seconds to acquire a target visually from medium altitudes.

Overall Performance Of BAF We were satisfied with the performance of our aircraft and of our people. Our politicians were satisfied that we did our share of the job. We managed to use all of the F-16 MLU capabilities. We flew with the AMRAAMs, Mavericks, and laser-guided munitions. We flew around 620 missions with our F-16s 450 in air defense and 170 or so in air-to-ground. We dropped over 200 bombs and fired twenty-four Mavericks. Our air force is very pleased with our performance in our first conflict. We were created in 1947 and this was the first time we were involved in a real war situation. We learned some lessons, but these lessons were more on the organizational side than on the operational aspects with the F-16.

Most Memorable Mission The four-ship SEAD mission on 14 April was exciting even before we took off. Serb SAM activity was on the rise for the first time since the start of the war. In addition, the targets were in the highly defended area of Belgrade. Our flight was escorting B-2 bombers, which, for most of us, was a first. And if that wasn’t exciting enough, we were performing the mission at night.

The flight to the area was uneventful. The excitement began as soon as we arrived. On the way to our combat air patrol mission to cover the B-2s, the flight detected an early warning radar from Serbian airspace close to our flight path. Most enemy radars don’t stay on very long for fear of a HARM shot. This radar stayed on a long time painting a good picture for their defensive systems. Lt. Col. Bitler, the flight lead, fired a HARM at the radar at short range. The shot was spectacular from my point of view, trailing three miles behind the lead. The missile immediately soared down toward the ground. Within seconds, it exploded and the radar went quiet; however, not before the Serbs knew we were heading toward Belgrade.

Our flight was barely established in our protective cover near Belgrade when the Serbs let loose on us. My flight lead and I were turning cold [away from the target area] when I noticed the night sky turn bright. Two to three SAMs were streaking in our direction. The missiles were so bright, they lit up the ground. At that same instant, my radar warning receiver indicated these same missiles were locked on to me. Immediately, the radio was filled with chatter about the shots. I began putting my F-16 through defensive maneuvers. Finally, my radar warning receiver went quiet and one missile went flying past my jet. The second one exploded between my flight lead and me.

Within seconds after the explosion, a second salvo of missiles was fired. This time, the SAMs were heading toward No. 3 and No. 4 aircraft in our flight. Another missile exploded. This time, however, it exploded farther away from my jet and nearer to No. 3 and No. 4. I decided to fire a reactive HARM to either destroy the site or, at the very least, suppress the enemy until we could egress out of the area and regroup. As soon as the HARM flew off my jet, a third salvo of missiles began streaking through the sky. This time, however, they came from a different site. My radar warning receiver sounded. I still had no idea where flight lead was located since we had no time to regroup the flight. With all the defensive maneuvers, our four-ship was now scattered. The priority, however, was to defend. So again, I performed defensive maneuvers. Another missile exploded even closer to my jet. The cycle seemed to go on forever until no more missiles were heading in our direction and the radar warning receiver went quiet. We survived.

We regrouped our four-ship as quickly as possible to protect the B-2s. The flight lead requested our state of missiles remaining. The flight lead jettisoned his external fuel tanks during the last set of defensive maneuvers to avoid the SAMs. We established our patrol to provide coverage for the bombers. The flight lead and I stayed on station for a few turns until we had to leave to refuel. No. 3 and No. 4 stayed longer in a modified CAP to ensure complete coverage to protect the B-2s.

The overall mission was a success and emphasized the uniqueness of the SEAD or “Wild Weasel” mission. It also emphasized our training. The only difference from training was that the missiles were real. We worked together as a four-ship to complete the mission even though the plan had to be modified to make it work. By night’s end, our four-ship had launched four HARMs and survived an ambush of SAMs. Even after all the defensive situations, we completed our mission and all aircraft in the package returned safely.

First Fighters Across The Border The first night kicks off and our squadron was the first fighter unit flying across the border into Serbia. My four-ship went into Montenegro. A second four-ship went deep into Serbia. I could see cruise missiles going off along the west coast and exploding near our target area. Our target that night was a SAM site near Podgorica. We knew they had at least one SA-6. On our way, the flight lead picked up an air-to-air contact a MiG landing at Podgorica airport. For whatever reason, we did not get a declaration on the MiG, so we couldn’t engage it. We pressed further about ten miles and set up our CAP. On the cold leg of the CAP, we hear a radio call from the F-15s that have picked up a couple of MiG-29s. As we turn back hot towards Podgorica, we see a MiG-29 blow up about twenty-five miles from our position. With cruise missiles blowing up on one side of my aircraft and MiGs exploding on the other, the war seemed pretty real.

As we come around the CAP and turn hot again, we pick up the first SA-6 indication of the war. Col. New is at the front of the CAP, so he has to defend himself instead of taking a shot. He dives into the notch and goes defensive. I turn and pick up the SA-6 signal and shoot the HARM. Turns out that SA-6 was locked onto a striker the last F-16 of two four-ships going in that first night. My shot was the first HARM of the war fired in anger. We had taken one preemptive HARM shot before that. The first mission lasted more than three hours. When we took off that night, we didn’t know who was going to come home. After everyone landed safely, we had high-fives all around.

Another Memorable Mission I will remember another mission the rest of my life. I call it the Easter SAM dance. We were in the Belgrade area that night protecting F-117s. We turn cold in the CAP and turn in hot again. I see a signal I had seen in the same exact place during the last circuit. I look again and see nothing there. The signal looks like a tanker on my sensors. But it can’t be a tanker, so I don’t say anything. The third time I turn the corner and come around and the same thing happens again. I roll inverted and take another look. That’s when I see a salvo of three SA-3s taking a belly shot on me. The middle SAM looks like a flashlight with a black center. Like a doughnut of fire. I say to myself, “This is it. My number is up.” I figure from my last encounter with SAMs that I have about seven seconds to live. I start a defensive maneuver. I put the SAMs off my right wing, light the afterburner, and start to dive at the ground.

I am not even thinking about the ground at this point. I am watching the missiles. I don’t punch off my tanks because I just simply forget. It’s hard to find the jettison button at night under such circumstances. As I am going down, I realize the missiles are arcing over. As they hit the horizon, I pull back on the stick and put the missiles at the top of my canopy and pull at them. I’ve rolled and I’m starting to do an orthogonal roll, what we call a last-ditch maneuver. At this point, the first missile swings by. Then the second one goes by and I lose track of the third one. All I see is a huge light out of the back of the canopy. I realize I am upside down at this point and I see nothing but AAA below me. I roll out the aircraft and realize that my burner has been lit the whole time. The AAA gunners are shooting at my afterburner, which lights me up against the night sky. Gunners from the east and west are all shooting at my afterburner. I’m at 18,000 feet and the AAA is getting closer and closer to me. So I keep the burner lit and just climb. The engagement is over.

Interrogators For USAF F-16s F-16 Block 50s missed the first MiG kills of the war because we didn’t have IFF. We had the contacts. We ran them down. We had to abort out of each engagement because we could not get a hostile declaration. The Eagles turned south and got the kill. IFF interrogators would have paid some dividends that night. The F-15 Eagles did a fantastic job, but there is no reason not to have IFF on these F-16s.

Multirole Performance We could have filled any role with our F-16s. And we did. On one mission, we flew our F-16 Block 50s supporting F-16 Block 40s out of Aviano. We had another F-16 four-ship from Spangdahlem flying defensive counter air in the same package. We flew mostly SEAD missions, but we flew defensive counter air and strike missions as well. The 22nd FS dropped bombs for a week in the middle of May. We dropped dumb bombs and shacked our targets some radar sleds. Of course we had the Navy EA-6s out there jamming and the NATO AEW, but F-16s could have played any role.