Russia and Turkey:
The Bear and the Wolf
WES BRYANT
The Bear
Our pilots in Syria were cautioned frequently about responding aggressively to the harassment and interference from Russian aircraft. Accordingly, as Russian drones, fighter, and strike aircraft regularly encroached into our areas of operations and engaged targets within our battle space, our own aircraft were forced to move out of the airspace.
On quite a few occasions in our strike cell we had to postpone strikes in order to wait for Russian air presence to leave. That sometimes resulted in a loss of target when, by the time we were able to push aircraft back overhead, ISIS had changed positions and we’d lost them. Those were hindrances to our mission, for sure—but soon came the more dangerous games.
Russian Su-30 fighter jets had been shadowing our Predator drones and other low-speed intelligence-collecting aircraft in overt shows of force for some time, often coming treacherously close. In one instance, one of our Predator operators snapped a sensor picture of a Su-30 flying so near his drone that the silhouette of the Russian jet took up the entire screen shot.
Our aircrews would attempt to hail the Russian fighter pilots over the radio in accordance with standard international air traffic etiquette. Fitting with their evident power play, the Russians rarely answered any transmission attempts. The Russians were deliberately harassing our aircraft and our pilots.
Things only got worse, and soon the Russians became even more bold and started going after not just our drones but our fighter jets.
The most audacious incident took place over the Mar’a Line in our task force airspace—against one of the F-16 Viper pilots who regularly supported our operations. Our Viper pilot was tailed and aggressively maneuvered on by a Russian Su-30 fighter jet. The Russian postured his aircraft in a manner that was fighter-talk for “I can shoot you down right now if I wanted to.” All the while, the Russian refused to answer our pilot’s multiple radio hails.
Little did the Russian know, our Viper pilot was an F-16 weapons officer—the Air Force equivalent to the Navy’s “Top Gun” fighter pilots. When he realized the Russian was serious, he quickly counter-maneuvered on the Su-30. He postured his own jet to make it clear to the Russian that he was the “Alpha Male” in the equation.
For a few tense moments, our Viper pilot considered the possibility that he may have to shoot down the Russian jet. It was the last thing he wanted to do, mostly because of the well-understood political sensitivity of such an event. Luckily, the Russian pilot broke away soon after he was out-maneuvered by our F-16 pilot.
The next day our Viper pilot vented to me over a phone call. He was a trusted colleague of mine who I talked to almost daily as the senior Air Force JTAC at the task force. As he relayed the story of the stand-off with the Russian pilot with immense frustration in his voice, I imagined some surly Russian laughing deviously in his cockpit as he maneuvered to break away from the engagement with our American F-16, satisfied in knowing that he’d just gotten some U.S. pilot’s adrenaline rushing.
Our pilot felt constrained by the mandate to avoid conflict with the Russian. Deep down, though, he’d wanted to blast the Russian pilot out of the sky. And, really, he should have been able to. Our military leadership emphasized that all U.S forces had the “inherent right to self-defense,” but that statement was discounted by a strong culture to the contrary, one that emanated throughout the chain of command: “if you do engage, you’d better be able to back up your actions, or else.” That was the real, unofficial guidance.
I knew full well how that Viper pilot felt about the rules of engagement and the politics of the situation in Syria. I’d been there plenty of times in the past as a JTAC on the ground subject to some of the most handcuffing ROE in history. I could hear the same anger and frustration in his voice that I’d often felt as he vented to me about how surreal it was to have an enemy fighter jet conducting aggressive combat maneuvers against him while he was effectively unable to counterattack for fear of retribution from his own chain of command.
That day in the skies over Syria, a Russian fighter pilot engaged in the ultimate game of “chicken” with an American F-16, playing out decades of pent-up tension between the world’s greatest superpowers while Washington and our senior military command wringed their hands wondering what to do.
After that I became more and more indifferent to the prospect of ending up in a fight with Russia. With their indiscriminate bombing of civilians, deliberate targeting of our surrogate forces, and now the harassment of our pilots—I was even more contemptuous of them than ever.
Fuck Russia. We’d smash them to pieces anyway.
Through the absence of any substantial political discussion or agreement by either nation, both the Russian and U.S. militaries had effectively been left to work things out on their own over the skies and on the battlefield of Syria. It was a sad fact that really reflected gross irresponsibility on the part of both Washington and Moscow. Perhaps it was a testament to the warrior ethos of both militaries that we never actually engaged one another, even with such fiercely conflicting and opposing objectives as we had in Syria.
On October 20, 2015, the United States and Russia finally signed a formal memorandum of understanding.1 The agreement stated the intent by both parties of non-aggression toward one another and non-interference in each other’s objectives in Syria. It also provided de-confliction guidance for the regulation of combat air traffic in order to avoid conflicts within Syrian airspace.
We were relieved that our respective governments had finally talked and apparently decided not to continue allowing their militaries to chest-poke one another on a faraway battlefield.
The Wolf
Compounding the already convoluted situation in Syria was our strange alliance with the Turks. It was really an alliance based largely on our need to use Turkey’s airfields and airspace, in order to forward-stage our air assets to more efficiently conduct operations against ISIS in Syria and Iraq.
On one hand the Turkish government supported our campaign against ISIS, while on the other they had their own agenda. And they viewed our strongest ally—the Kurds—as their longtime enemy. The Turks also refused to formally join our coalition, a coalition that included many European and Arab allies. To top it off, they had their own heated history with Russia so our alignment with Turkey did not help much when the Russians entered the picture.
Still, from our special operations task force, we supported Turkmen ground forces with airstrikes against ISIS as they pushed down from Turkey to take control of several Syrian border cities edging southern Turkey. Understandably, the Turks viewed ISIS’ control of those border cities as a threat to their security.
Turkish F-16s soon began supporting our strike cell, albeit on a limited basis, and we controlled them in strikes mostly against well-prepared targets because of the intense language barriers we encountered when controlling their pilots. It was all par-for-the-course in trying to strengthen a newly formed unofficial “coalition” with the Turks.
Then on November 24, 2015, the Turkish military did the unexpected. Turk F-16s shot down a Russian Su-24 strike aircraft near the Turk-Syrian border in northwest Syria over our task force’s area of operations.2 The Turkish government quickly announced that the Russian pilot had violated Turkish airspace and had ignored multiple radio warnings to return to Syrian airspace. There were conflicting accounts of the event.
The fact was we all knew that Russian jets had been carrying out strikes in Syria near the border with Turkey on a regular basis. That was nothing new, yet every time the Russians flew anywhere near the Turk-Syrian border, the Turkish military and government would complain and claim violations of their border sovereignty by the Russians. The reality was Turkey’s sovereignty probably wasn’t being threatened in the least by the actions of the Russian jet, and the Turks likely recklessly shot down that Russian Su-24 strike aircraft.
In my opinion, Turkey had thumbed its nose at its longtime foe Russia while sitting on the shoulders of the United States. I hardly believed that the Turks would have taken such a bold step against Russia if they didn’t already have their alignment with us in Syria and Iraq. In so doing, they hid behind the power and might of the U.S. military fully knowing that Russia would not retaliate against them for fear of U.S. action. It was an irresponsible move that put the U.S. in a compromising situation, even further degrading our mission in Syria.
But, then, what less could we expect from the chaos that had truly come to define America’s war on terror in the Middle East....