2115 Wednesday 26 March 2003
SHANIA refueling anchor
Above the An Najaf Province of Iraq
Innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we’ve been thinking about a problem.
—STEVE JOBS, FORMER CEO OF APPLE
The operative assumption today is that someone, somewhere, has key information or a better idea; and the operative compulsion should be to find out who has that better idea, learn it, and put it into action—fast!
—JACK WELCH, FORMER CEO OF GENERAL ELECTRIC
A Scout is never taken by surprise; he knows exactly what to do when anything unexpected happens.
—SIR ROBERT BADEN-POWELL, CREATOR OF THE BOY SCOUT MOVEMENT
General Moseley met me walking back from dinner as I came up the stairs on the night of Monday 24 March.
“Sluggo, you got a few minutes? I need to talk to you.”
“Yes, sir, what can I do for you?”
“Sluggo, the gas is in the wrong place. We need to move the tankers farther north.”
Three days into the air campaign, I knew what the general was telling me. Tankers would be moving over Bad Guy territory, into Iraqi airspace.
“I can do that, sir, but there are a lot of things we need to figure out.”
“Sluggo, I need it done now. There are nineteen-year-old kids getting shot at south of Nasiriyah. Your tanker bubbas are going to have to assume some of the risks. They cannot sit in safe airspace when fighters have too far to go to fill up and return to the target area. The tanker community is going to have to take some risks so we can protect these kids fighting on the ground.”
“When do you want this by?”
“I want it as soon as possible, Sluggo. There are plenty of fighters out there protecting you guys. Come up with a tanker protection plan, but move them into Iraqi airspace by tomorrow night.”
“We’re on it, sir.”
I relayed my conversation to Gramps, Peaches, Bart, and the Ninth Air Force tanker planner Burl. Gramps stated the obvious: it was too soon. I agreed, but the CFACC had said move, so we would move. We still didn’t have a good idea where Saddam had placed his air defense science projects. Mobile SAMs and antiaircraft guns were running all over Iraq. My fear was mobile guns and SAMs operating beneath new refueling areas built inside Iraq’s borders. A second concern was available fuel. The farther tankers had to fly to refueling areas, the more gas that would typically be transferred to receivers gets consumed to get there. Yes, we could operate near the target areas the fighters and bombers were attacking, but the cost would be that the tanker fleet had less gas to give. Many fighter and bomber pilots and WSOs in the MAAP cell didn’t initially understand the trade-off, and got mad at us for even mentioning that there would be less fuel available. Plus, the temperatures at the tanker bases were getting hotter, so fuel loads had to decrease to allow the aircraft to get off the ground.
All of us were very hesitant to move tankers into Iraqi airspace on just the fourth night of the air campaign, thinking back to Desert Storm when the Black Hole moved tankers into Iraqi airspace. Their purpose was to refuel Eagles and Tomcats that were blocking Iraqi fighters from fleeing into Iran. F-15 Eagles patrolled the “Cindy CAPs” southeast of Baghdad, while the F-14s patrolled the “Bong CAPs” northeast of Baghdad. Two refueling anchor areas were set up in Iraqi airspace to keep the Eagles and Tomcats full of gas: one near Tallil Air Base called BEAR, and another near H-2 Air Base called STRAWBERRY. One night late in the war, a Jeddah-based KC-10 refueling F-15s that had rotated out of the Cindy CAPs in BEAR had a frightening moment. Remember, none of us had ever practiced retrogrades in the aircraft. BULLDOG, the eastern AWACS, called bandits south of BEAR, possibly making a run on the Gucci Bird and blocking its escape route out of Iraq. BULLDOG committed two Eagles holding on Gucci’s wing to engage the Floggers. In a moment of total loss of situational awareness, BULLDOG told the KC-10 to turn south for Saudi Arabia, toward the engaging Floggers and Eagles. The Eagles found the offending Floggers first, blowing them to pieces. The SHAMU KC-10 from Jeddah landed safely and told everyone about BULLDOG’s call to turn south. Their story unnerved every tanker crew, and none of us wanted to go to BEAR anymore after hearing about their experience. Our concerns were probably unfounded, since every Eagle and Tomcat crew wanted to pounce on a MiG and kill it. SHAMU’s incident in BEAR made me realize that I had no idea how to protect tankers orbiting in Iraqi airspace when General Moseley asked us to move north.
Gramps, Bart, and I constructed two refueling anchors directly south of Baghdad, standard thirty-mile-wide by seventy-mile-long rectangles. I left it up to the aircrews how they used the airspace, but I still put a rendezvous control point near the northeast corner of each rectangle. Two more refueling rectangles lay directly south of Najaf and just northwest of the disputed diamond-shaped Saudi/Iraqi border area we called “the Klingon Neutral Zone.” I e-mailed the anchor areas to the Army’s MSIC to get their analysis of threats to the areas. Their report returned three hours later all yellow: SAMs could potentially engage tankers up to thirty-seven thousand feet. Both anchors’ ceilings were set at twenty-eight thousand feet. Gramps, myself, and Scott, a navigator from McConnell Air Force Base working on all airspace issues, began poring over all of the Surface-to-Air Fire (SAFIRE) events, looking to see if anyone had fired at Coalition aircraft in the southern Najaf Province. Our two refueling anchors were perfect for close air support fighters because we’d put them near An Najaf and Karbala, two places ground forces were racing toward. Scott and I had some additional fun naming these Iraqi anchors. I decreed that all refueling anchors in Iraq must receive female country-and-western singer names. The first two Scott opened in the ACO were SHANIA and REBA, two of my favorite country singers.
When all the MAAP cell planners saw SHANIA and REBA in the ACO, every fighter and bomber piled into them. Gramps and I designed two elevations for refueling in both areas: SHANIA LOW, in the twelve-thousand- to eighteen-thousand-foot block, and SHANIA HIGH, in the twenty-two-thousand- to twenty-eight-thousand-foot block. REBA was designed the same way, low and high. Slow-moving A-10s and faster RAF Tornado GR4s would refuel in the low blocks, while fast-moving fighters and ISR aircraft would use the high blocks. The MAAP cell planners tried packing all the receivers into SHANIA and REBA that they could, but Calvin made some gut priority calls.
Calvin set priorities for which strike and attack missions used SHANIA and REBA first. Everyone else had to refuel in the FISK MOA anchors. Gramps and I knew that there would need to be more refueling anchors opening inside Iraq soon, but at least SHANIA and REBA were a good start. The things we learned from opening SHANIA and REBA helped us in designing newer Iraqi anchor areas, but also, more important, set the procedures for defensive tactics when Iraqi air defenses shot at tankers. SHANIA and REBA opened on the night of Tuesday 25 March and stayed open for the rest of the air campaign. I waited to hear how often tankers were engaged in both anchors before going back to my room that night. The biggest threat remained us, so I told all the units to keep their lights on and full up, even inside SHANIA and REBA. None of the units wrote about being shot at in those two anchors. I told my counterpart, Jerry, to keep a record of all the SAFIRE events involving tankers through the night and hopped onto the bus for my room at 0030.
Wednesday night I got a frantic call from Rubber, the Sheik Isa squadron commander. One of his KC-135s, call sign TOGA 33, had been engaged by Saddam’s air defense systems seven times during its mission in SHANIA. Rubber very tersely told me, “Sluggo! You’ll be the first guy to get a tanker crew killed!”
I explained the CFACC’s story about the nineteen-year-old and his orders. Rubber wasn’t buying it. He e-mailed TOGA 33’s SAFIRE report over so we could take a look at events in SHANIA. As we read through TOGA 33’s after-action report, we found a couple of things that didn’t make sense. I understood antiaircraft fire coming from the north near Najaf—that’s where Saddam’s army lived. But some of the SAMs fired at TOGA 33 came from the south, near the Saudi border. TOGA 33 reported four missiles streaking over their heads while making a left turn at the north end of SHANIA. Could Saddam have SAMs installed close to the Saudi border, trying to cut us off? I grabbed the report and walked over to the Joint Intelligence Center, straight to Jennifer’s cubicle. Jennifer was the intelligence analyst who pored over every SAFIRE event in Iraq.
“Evening, Jennifer. I have an interesting report for you.”
“Evening, Colonel Hasara. What’s it say?”
“I moved refueling anchors into Iraqi airspace last night on General Moseley’s orders. Here’s a really discouraging SAFIRE report from Isa. TOGA 33, orbiting in SHANIA, was engaged seven times tonight. Can you find out what types of SAMs or guns are under SHANIA and REBA for me?”
“Who’s the country-and-western fan?”
I tapped my chest with my right index finger.
“Let me see what I can find out. I’m working on another project right now; can you come back in about an hour and a half?”
“Here’s the number at my desk—just give me a call when you’re ready.”
I walked out of the JIC and went back to my desk, formulating plans to defend tankers flying inside the Iraqi anchors. About an hour later, Jennifer e-mailed me asking if I could come back over. As I entered the JIC, I saw that there was a lot of activity and background noise, as analysts discussed events and cable news played on three flat-screens. I asked Jennifer what she’d found out. Her answer to SHANIA’s SAFIRE events sent a chill down my spine.
“Colonel Hasara, I have both good news and bad news for you.”
“How can there be good news and bad news about a tanker engaged by ground fire, Jennifer?”
“Easy. Saddam’s air defenses engaged TOGA 33 on only three occasions.”
“What?”
“You need to go talk to the Army in the Battlefield Coordination Detachment about the other four.”
“Jennifer, what are you talking about?”
“Sir, four of the SAFIRE events weren’t Saddam.”
“What do you mean they weren’t Saddam?”
“I think you need to find out where the Army forces are in Iraq.”
“Are you telling me there’s a potential blue-on-blue situation here?”
“I think so, sir.”
I held two different reports in my hand—TOGA 33’s SAFIRE report and Jennifer’s analysis, which I could not make sense of—both telling me SHANIA and REBA were dangerous places to refuel. I asked Bart, Wayno, Gramps, and Peaches to join me at my desk. I explained what Jennifer told me, and all of us were confused by her recommendation. Three Iraqi antiaircraft defenses engaged TOGA 33, but four events might be the US Army. We couldn’t know whether friendly fire was involved with TOGA 33’s flight until I talked to the BCD. I left for the BCD to find out what was going on. What I learned shocked not only me but also the U-2 spy plane community.
The Battlefield Coordination Detachment sat in a first-floor office just off the tanker ops desk. They were the Army’s liaison element, coordinating the ground forces’ efforts with all of us Airedales. An Army sergeant from an M109 Paladin 155-millimeter howitzer unit met me as I walked in. A few nights earlier I had given him a ride back to the compound and had learned a lot about artillery. His bros were all really happy because they were using the red bags of powder, the war bags. The Army destroyed many of their TSTs in front of the advancing troops with precision-guided 155mm rounds.
“Hey, Colonel Hasara, what can I do for you?”
“Sergeant Gonzalez, last night we moved two refueling anchors into Iraqi airspace. Tonight a tanker was engaged seven times—three by Saddam. Jennifer, the JIC’s SAFIRE analyst, told me to come talk to you about the other four.”
I showed him a printed chart indicating the locations of SHANIA and REBA. The look on his face was priceless—a look of “What the hell could she have told you?”
I handed him the chart. He studied their positions, and then looked up with an expression of horror on his face.
“What?!”
“Sergeant Gonzalez, tell me why this is a bad thing.”
He walked over to his Blue Force Tracker screen. Taking the mouse in his left hand, he narrowed the Blue Force Tracker image to the Saudi border just south of SHANIA. The Falcon View computer planning system the Air Force used for mission planning didn’t talk to the Army’s Blue Force Tracker; do you see where this is going? He narrowed the area underneath SHANIA and showed me where Big Army was operating. Both of us stared at the screen as the view zoomed in. Sergeant Gonzalez looked at my chart and moved the Blue Force Tracker over to REBA and took a long look at the Army forces beneath the anchor point. I had never thought to coordinate opening the refueling area with Big Army. I would never make that mistake again.
Big Army’s rocket forces were located at the south ends of SHANIA and REBA and fired through and over both anchor areas at targets south of Baghdad.
“Sir, our Multiple Launch Rocket Systems and Tactical Missile systems are located right here, here, and here,” he said as he pointed to many icons on the Blue Force Tracker. MLRS and ATACM icons were dispersed below SHANIA and REBA. It was time for an education.
“Sergeant Gonzalez, what is Big Army using these things for right now?”
“Colonel, Multiple Launch Rocket Systems and Army Tactical Missile systems are used to attack TSTs near Najaf, Karbala, and even south Baghdad to support the march up. Our process is to open a restricted operating zone above us whenever firing ATACMs. By regulation, we are not required to open a ROZ when firing MLRS or even Paladin 155 howitzer guns at TSTs.”
“Sergeant Gonzalez, how far and how high do these things shoot?”
“Paladins shoot about thirty-five miles, and the round tips over at twenty-seven thousand feet. MLRS fires fifty miles and tips over at around thirty-two thousand feet. ATACMs shoot over one fifty and tip over around one hundred twenty thousand feet, depending on how the crew aims it.”
I gasped.
These three Army weapon systems were shooting over all of us flying in Iraq, including U-2s and the Global Hawk UAVs. I asked Sergeant Gonzalez to print out a screen shot so I could show the humble MAAP cell pilots and WSOs upstairs. He looked at the scale of my chart of SHANIA and REBA and printed out a similarly sized screen shot. Grabbing it as it rolled out of his printer, I laid my chart of SHANIA and REBA over his Blue Force Tracker map. Holding both up to a bright light, I saw that Army MLRS and ATACM systems stretched across the southern boundaries of SHANIA and REBA. Sergeant Gonzalez and I just laughed. Four of the missiles TOGA 33 encountered came from us! Sergeant Gonzalez and I were looking at another blue-on-blue engagement, just like the Patriot shooting down the RAF Tornado GR4 a day ago.
The first person I needed to show the charts to was Randy, the U-2 liaison officer. Randy had been a navigator in the Young Tiger tanker squadron at Kadena and now worked as the U-2 planner. I told him Big Army missile systems were shooting over us. His comeback was, “Well, we’re a lot higher than you guys.”
“They’re shooting over you too, no pun intended.”
Randy’s eyes widened. He said the same thing Sergeant Gonzalez had: “What?!”
I showed him the two charts and held them up to the light. All of us learned a valuable lesson that night. MAAP cell had coordinated all our operations among the chest-beating egotistical air-breathing portion of the air campaign. None of us thought of talking with Big Army about how they prosecuted TSTs. When I told some MAAP cell folks that Army MLRS shot to thirty-two thousand feet and ATACMs up to 120,000 feet, everyone got really quiet.
My team opened four more anchor areas inside Iraqi airspace over the next week, each one coordinated with BCD before it went into the ACO. One sat in the center of Anbar Province and was named LEANN, after LeAnn Rimes; it allowed the Scud-hunting Guard and Reserve Vipers from Jordan to fill up on gas. A second anchor was located southwest of Al-Taqaddum and Al Asad Air Bases for F-15 Eagle CAPs; I named it FAITH, after Faith Hill, because you had to have a lot of faith in the Eagles to refuel forty miles south of both active Iraqi MiG airfields. The third anchor we opened near the Syrian border for strike aircraft supporting Task Force 20, a Special Operations group you will never hear of. TF 20’s air support came via F-15Es and shore-based VF-154 Black Knight F-14A Tomcats at Al Udeid. TF 20’s fighters refueled in an anchor near the border town of Al-Qa’im called MARTINA, after Martina McBride. Too many airplanes wanted to pack into SHANIA and REBA close to Baghdad, so we opened MILA east of REBA, named after Mila Mason. The Army moved their MLRS and ATACMs north of SHANIA and REBA a day later. If any tanker was shot at now, it was Saddam’s guns and SAMs.
Two nights later, Gramps and I were commiserating about more SAFIRE events under SHANIA, REBA, and now LEANN. As we were reading through the SAFIRE event report rather loudly, Oatmeal, an A-10 pilot from the 190th Skullbanger Hawg unit at Boise, perked up. I saw his head rise in my peripheral vision five desks down. As I read another SAFIRE event aloud, Oatmeal stopped me mid-sentence.
“Sluggo, are those SAFIRE events under the Iraqi refueling areas?”
“Why, yes they are, my good friend Oatmeal! Tankers are being engaged almost every night now. Some of the tanker guys are pretty discouraged about going into these areas.”
Oatmeal hollered at me, “Sluggo! Those are targets!”
He got up from his desk and walked toward me, holding a list of A-10 operating locations.
“What do you mean, Oatmeal?”
“Sluggo, tell all your tanker dudes and dudettes when they’re getting shot at to dial in WHITE ONE, the Hawg VHF threat frequency, and call it in. Tell my Hawg bubbas the location of the piece firing at them off the Baghdad bull’s-eye. Once we have their location, all the Hawgs will punch their lights out. These are the lucrative targets Hawg guys live for, Sluggo!”
“Sit down next to me here, Oatmeal . . .”
One mental checklist I learned at the KC-135 Employment School concerned the creation of new defensive tactics and procedures. I believe it was Mojo who taught us all this valuable lesson, that creating new tactics must follow a logical process. First, ask yourself what the objectives of the new tactic or process you are creating are. Second, figure out how you will know those objectives have been met; some measure of performance needs to be included. Third, are the new tactics or processes trainable? Can you teach the masses how to do it? Last—and most important—is the cure worse than the disease? There’s no reason to teach and train new tactical procedures if it kills the crews trying to accomplish them in the airplane, or if they’re so complicated that no one can understand them.
With these four steps in my mind, I asked Oatmeal to help me understand better ways to protect the tankers. He mentioned a group I hadn’t thought of who could help protect us on the ground. The plan we worked out launched search-and-rescue alert A-10s from the austere base at Arar into the deserts of southern Iraq. If a pilot was shot down, the Joint Recovery Center would launch two Sandy Hawgs to go hunt for him or her. Oatmeal and I coordinated the Sandy Hawgs patrolling under SHANIA, REBA, MILA, and LEANN with the JRC. If Oatmeal’s Hawgs needed to go cover the pickup of a downed pilot, one of the tankers would fill them back up on their way to search for the pilot and WSO or RIO. Sandy Hawgs roamed underneath the tankers twenty-four-seven, killing anything shooting through REBA, SHANIA, MILA, and LEANN. The new procedures gave Oatmeal’s Hawgs an advantage too. Rescue forces would have a head start on searching for downed pilots when they were already airborne in Iraqi airspace. I assured Oatmeal that RESCAPing Sandy Hawgs would get all the gas they needed. I e-mailed every unit that night with the new procedures.
After Oatmeal had made a secure call to his Hawg counterparts at Arar, they devised a name for the area underneath SHANIA, REBA, MILA, and LEANN: the “Pig Pen,” named after the Warthogs who were now hunting under the anchors. A-10 Warthogs roamed the Pig Pen, killing anything that moved. Based on Oatmeal’s additional tip, I took a walk over to the Special Operations Liaison Element, or SOLE. I told the SOLE’s commanding colonel about the tankers’ guns and SAMs problem and asked if his operators running around underneath the refueling anchors looked for Saddam’s air defense pieces firing at us in their spare time. The SOLE’s staff all smiled at me—oh good, more things to shoot and kill. I also gave the colonel Oatmeal’s WHITE ONE VHF threat frequency for immediate air support if Spec Ops needed their help.
The third method we implemented to sweep the Pig Pen concerned our receivers. Fighters came up in groups of two, while the second element loitered beneath the tankers looking for SAMs and guns with their infrared targeting pods or the moving-target indicator modes of their radar. When the first element had filled up, they would switch with the second behind the tanker. JSTARS began looking for SAMs and artillery pieces moving under the anchors with their long-range ground-mapping and moving-target indicator mode.
I authored special instructions changes for the next ATO distribution. The new tactics and procedures were pretty easy to understand, and asked tankers only to climb and get out of the Hawgs’ and fighters’ way. All the defense measures for protecting the tankers flying in the Iraqi anchors were implemented and sent out to the units. Everyone seemed happy with the new procedures, which needed only one small refinement to the process of climbing to the higher-block altitudes. Not one group complained about having to fly in Iraqi airspace after I told them about my conversation with General Moseley and related the story of the nineteen-year-old kids getting shot at. But the tankers remained unnerved by Saddam’s SAMs shooting at them. None were happy when I told them about the possible blue-on-blue TOGA 33 had lived through. But the plan worked better than we could have imagined. Not one SAFIRE event crossed my desk after implementation. Two reports from the Spec Ops guys did, though.
Over the weekend, a Green Beret in the SOLE asked me to come see him. One of his Spec Ops teams out in the west deserts of Iraq doing strategic reconnaissance along the main highway looking for Scuds heard a vehicle approaching their position. A Russian-made SA-8 Gecko SAM system drove down the Amman-Baghdad Highway and pulled off right in front of them. One team member carried a British Javelin antitank missile on his back, perfect for blowing up mobile SAM vehicles. They had gotten word to find, fix, and finish any antiaircraft system they saw. The soldier took the Javelin off his back, sighted in the Gecko vehicle, and squeezed the trigger. The Javelin shot from the tube and began its ascent profile so as to come down on top of the vehicle. His teammates became alarmed as he started laughing and running toward the Gecko. He screamed back over his shoulder to his brothers, “Take a picture when the missile hits! Take a picture when the missile hits!”
Just as the Javelin impacted the vehicle, one of the soldier’s teammates snapped a picture. The unshaven and unwashed man had a big smile on his face as Gecko parts flew through the air behind him. They uploaded this picture via satellite link and sent it to the SOLE to show the tanker community that Spec Ops had our back. I asked the SOLE to make copies of the picture or, better yet, to send it to me on a PowerPoint slide. I slipped the slide into my morning staff meeting brief. Later that night, another Spec Ops team found a French mobile SAM vehicle coming down a road. After shooting a thousand holes in the vehicle and flattening its tires, the team took a picture for the SOLE. Across the bottom, the team had written “SOF 2 / Iraqi SAMs 0.” Everyone in the Air Mobility Division meeting laughed uproariously when the two slides went up on the screen. I told them that this should be a lesson for all of us. We needed to be joint warfighters. All of us needed to use all the resources available to solve the complex problems we faced every day. I also told them that the person they did not coordinate with was probably the person shooting at them. I told them the MLRS and ATACM story, and everyone’s head went down as they scribbled in their notepads.
I sent a long e-mail to the KC-135 Employment School with our lessons learned for the week. In combat, just like in business, there are customers with whom we don’t coordinate, and those actions affect revenue and the bottom line. Don’t overlook resources that can help you accomplish your mission or solve a complex problem. Initially, my vision included only the fliers. We could not have survived some of these engagements, in my opinion, if we hadn’t changed the way we operated. By the beginning of the war’s second week, all Iraqi anchors were stacked high with tankers. Everyone became pretty comfortable with flying into the Iraqi anchors, and no additional SAFIRE events crossed my desk. Ground troops closed on the outskirts of Baghdad, but a typical Middle Eastern weather phenomenon was about to bring the war to a halt.
All commanders on the battlefield or CEOs in boardrooms must deal with risk and resources. We were constantly asking what resources were available to reduce the risk to tanker operations. Tankers and refueling operations were never designed to go into enemy airspace. We had to create very innovative methods of protecting tankers while operating in the Pig Pen, something that had never been done before.
I learned from developing the Pig Pen procedures that innovative ideas needed to involve agencies I had never previously thought to coordinate with. Each one of those agencies—Oatmeal the A-10 planner, Sergeant Gonzalez in the BCD—had meaningful input that refined our innovative approach to protecting the tankers. Each of the fighter planners gave me good gouge on how they employed their sensor systems to find, fix, and finish antiaircraft guns and SAMs shooting up through the Iraq anchors. Implementing these defensive procedures allowed the fighters and bombers to remain above ground troops longer, protecting them while also fighting the enemy. My team’s quick, innovative approach to defending the tankers was new and untested, like many innovations on the battlefield or in the marketplace.