FOR THE INDISPENSABLE SUPPORT HE OFFERED TOWARD MAKING THIS BOOK POSSIBLE, I am indebted, first and foremost, to Gen. T. Michael “Buzz” Moseley, former U.S. Air Force chief of staff and, before that, commander of U.S. Central Command Air Forces (CENTAF) during the planning and conduct of the major combat phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom. General Moseley consented unhesitatingly to underwrite the research reported here as a sequel to an earlier study I prepared for CENTAF, also under his sponsorship, on the largely air-centric war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002. I am also grateful to Lt. Gen. Robert Elder, then vice commander of CENTAF, who lent abiding support to me in late 2003 and early 2004 after General Moseley had moved on to become the Air Force vice chief of staff. My thanks go as well as to Kathi Jones, CENTAF’s command historian, who oversaw this effort throughout its long gestation.
I also am indebted to Vice Adm. David Nichols, deputy air component commander under General Moseley throughout the major combat phase of Iraqi Freedom; to Gen. Gene Renuart, director of operations at CENTCOM during the planning and initial execution of Iraqi Freedom; and to Lt. Gen. Daniel Darnell, principal director of CENTAF’s combined air operations center (CAOC) at Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, during the workups to and initial conduct of Iraqi Freedom, for generously sharing their time and recollections of those aspects of the air war that most bear remembering.
I am additionally indebted to Gen. Gary North, who as CENTAF’s commander in 2007 sponsored an extension of this effort so that I could flesh out my initial draft by incorporating the many reader reactions that I had received and take advantage of some important additional documentation bearing on the Iraqi Freedom air war that I had since accumulated. In this regard I owe particular thanks to Col. Douglas Erlenbusch, at the time CENTAF’s director of operations, and to Maj. Anthony Roberson, then chief of General North’s commander’s action group, for commenting in detail on my initial analysis and helping me to refine my plan for this more expanded and enriched final product.
With respect to my similar treatment of the role played by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), I thank former chief of the air staff Air Marshal Ray Funnell, RAAF (Ret.), and Alan Stephens, former chief historian of the RAAF, who brought my initial working draft to the attention of Group Captain Richard Keir, then director of the RAAF’s Air Power Development Centre. Group Captain Keir provided me with copious documentation on the RAAF’s role in the three-week campaign that allowed me to fill in that still-outstanding gap in my chapter on the allied air effort.
For their valued help in providing me additional documentation, for commenting on all or parts of my earlier draft, and for otherwise helping to enrich this assessment in various ways, I wish again to thank General Moseley for the generous amount of time he shared from his busy schedule, first as Air Force vice chief and then as chief of staff, during three lengthy sessions in which he offered his reflections on those aspects of the war that mattered most from his perspective as the air component commander; Gen. John Corley, commander of Air Combat Command; Lt. Gen. Allen Peck, then commander of the Air Force Doctrine Center at Maxwell AFB, Alabama, and numerous members of his staff, particularly Lt. Col. John Hunerwadel and Lt. Col. Robert Poyner; Lt. Gen. Michael Hamel, then commander of 14th Air Force at Vandenberg AFB, California, and Maj. Mark Main, chief of his commander’s action group; Lt. Gen. Richard Newton, then with AF/A3/5, Headquarters U.S. Air Force; Lt. Gen. William Rew, CENTAF’s director of operations and co-director of the CAOC during the three-week air war; Maj. Gen. Eric Rosborg, commander of the 4th Fighter Wing’s F-15E Strike Eagles during the campaign; Air Vice-Marshal Geoff Brown and Group Captain Keir of the RAAF; Dick Anderegg, director of the Office of Air Force History; Maj. Gen. David Fadok and Col. Scott Walker, Air Force Studies and Analysis Agency; and Brig. Gen. Mark Barrett, commander, 1st Fighter Wing, and former executive assistant to the USAF vice chief of staff.
For their helpful comments on various earlier iterations of this study, I thank Brig. Gen. Michael Longoria, commander of the 484th Air Expeditionary Wing, who oversaw air-ground integration on the CAOC’s behalf during the campaign; Col. David Hathaway and Col. Mason Carpenter, key principals in the CAOC’s strategy division during Iraqi Freedom; Col. Lynn Herndon, director of the ISR Division in the CAOC during the air campaign; Col. David Belote, former air liaison officer to the commander of the U.S. Army’s III Corps at Fort Hood, Texas; Brig. Gen. Rob Givens, an F-16CG pilot with the 524th Fighter Squadron during the three-week air war; Col. Matt Neuenswander, commandant of the USAF’s Air-Ground Operations School at Nellis AFB, Nevada, during the campaign; Col. Gregory Fontenot, the principal author of On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom (Naval Institute Press, 2005); Col. Thomas Ehrhard; Col. Charles Westenhoff; Lt. Col. Mark Cline, head of the CAOC’s master air attack planning cell during the major combat phase of Iraqi Freedom; Lt. Col. Chris Crawford, who served with CENTAF’s air component coordinating element to the land component during the campaign; Lt. Col. John Andreas Olsen of the Royal Norwegian Air Force; Maj. Scott Campbell, A-10 Division, USAF Weapons School; Robert Jervis, professor of political science, Columbia University; Sebastian Ritchie, deputy director of the RAF’s Air Historical Branch; and Thomas Rehome of the Air Force Historical Research Agency at Maxwell AFB, Alabama, for his helpful archival research.
For their informed suggestions regarding my treatment of U.S. Navy and Marine Corps air operations, I extend my thanks to Adm. Tim Keating, CENTCOM’s maritime component commander during the major combat phase of Iraqi Freedom; Adm. John Nathman, then commander, Naval Air Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet; Vice Adm. Lou Crenshaw, then director, assessments division, OPNAV N81; Vice Adm. Marty Chanik, then director, programming division, OPNAV N81; Adm. Mark Fitzgerald and Vice Adm. Tom Kilcline, successive directors of air warfare, OPNAV N78; Vice Adm. Dick Gallagher, then commander, Carrier Group Four; Vice Adm. Jim Zortman, then commander, Naval Air Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet; Adm. Sandy Winnefeld, then executive assistant to the vice chief of naval operations; Vice Adm. Mark Fox, then commander, Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center; Capt. Brick Nelson and Capt. Flex Galpin, OPNAV N3/5 (Deep Blue); Capt. Chuck Wright, then director for naval aviation systems, Office of the Secretary of Defense (Operational Test and Evaluation); Capt. Calvin Craig, then OPNAV N81; Capt. Ken Neubauer and Cdr. Nick Dienna, both former Navy executive fellows at RAND; and Capt. Andy Lewis, then executive assistant to the commander, Naval Air Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet.
Although this book is primarily a product of research, it is also informed by opportunities I was privileged to have in direct support of it to fly in six aircraft types that took part in Operation Iraqi Freedom. These experiences included a close air support training sortie in a Block 40 F-16CG with the 510th Fighter Squadron at Aviano Air Base, Italy, on May 19, 2004; a strike mission orientation flight in a Tornado GR4 with 617 Squadron out of RAF Lossiemouth on October 27, 2004; a fifteen-hour night combat mission over Afghanistan in an E-3C AWACS out of Al Dhafra Air Base, United Arab Emirates, with then Lieutenant General North, CENTAF’s commander, in April 2007; three F-16B Topgun sorties and an F/A-18F Super Hornet sortie with the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center at Naval Air Station (NAS) Fallon, Nevada, on August 4–6, 2009; a U-2 high flight to more than 70,000 feet on a surveillance mission orientation sortie with the 1st Reconnaissance Squadron at Beale AFB, California, on September 3, 2009; and an air combat training sortie in an F/A-18 with No. 2 Operational Conversion Unit at RAAF Base Williamtown, Australia, on March 26, 2010, with an RAAF pilot who took part in the major combat phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom. For these opportunities to gain firsthand conversancy with many of the tactics, techniques, and procedures that figured centrally in the Iraqi Freedom air offensive described in the chapters that follow, I am grateful to Lt. Gen. Glen Moorhead (Ret.), former commander of 16th Air Force; and Maj. Gen. Mike Worden (Ret.), then commander of the 31st Fighter Wing, U.S. Air Forces in Europe; Air Chief Marshal Stirrup; General North; Vice Admiral Kilcline, then commander, Naval Air Forces; General Corley; and Air Marshal Mark Binskin, chief of air force, RAAF.
Finally, I thank Barry Watts at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and my RAND colleagues Nora Bensahel, Paul Davis, James Dobbins, David Johnson, and Karl Mueller for their helpful suggestions regarding all or parts of an earlier version of this book. I am additionally indebted to Harun Dogo, a doctoral candidate at the Pardee RAND Graduate School of Public Policy, for his outstanding and well-targeted research support. Finally, I owe a special note of thanks to my able editor, Mindy Conner, for her keen eye and deft touch in improving my use of words at every chance. As always, any remaining errors of fact or interpretation, sins of omission, or other failings in the pages that follow are mine alone.