An Air ForceAssociation

SpecialReport

How the world conflict transformedAmerica’s air and space weapon

© 2005 The Air Force Association

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February 2005

Dr. Rebecca Grant is president of IRISIndependent Research, Inc., in Washing-ton, D.C., and a fellow of the Eaker Insti-tute for Aerospace Concepts, the publicpolicy and research arm of the Air ForceAssociation’s Aerospace Education Foun-dation. She is also a contributing editor toAir Force Magazine, the journal of the AirForce Association. Her professional re-search interests center on joint doctrine andairpower employment in joint campaigns.

By Dr. Rebecca Grant

An Air ForceAssociation

SpecialReport

The War of 9/11How the world conflict transformed America’s

air and space weapon

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Prologue: This New War 3

Operation Enduring Freedom 4Prior Planning 4Major Combat Begins 5The Tide Turns 10Anaconda 12

Operation Noble Eagle 15Creating a Strategy 15Box: The Foundation: the Air Force’s Strategic Air Mobility Forces 16-17Permanent Commitment 18

Operation Iraqi Freedom 21Southern Focus 21War Councils 23Major Combat Operations 26The Sandstorm 30

The “Phase IV” Fight 34Theater of Mobility 34Afghan Mop-Up 35The Iraqi Nettle 36The Fallujah Model 40

Tying It Together 42What Airpower Wrought 42Beyond Jointness 43Seeking a Course 44

MapsSouthwest Asia 6The Afghan Theater 8The Gulf Region 22Iraq in Detail 24

TablesTotal Coalition Aircraft 25Combat Aircraft 28Support Aircraft 28Air Mobility Sorties 29Strike Sorties 31Strikes by Category 33Total Air Sorties 33Snapshot of Phase IV Air Operations 41

Table of Contents

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the skies over the cities, fields, and mountainsof America.

It is a war with American leadership, and yetit is also a coalition war. The flags of more than60 nations can be found at US Central Com-mand (CENTCOM) headquarters at MacDillAFB, Fla. They are represented by their soldiers,special operations forces, warships, aircraft,and supplies abroad. It is a war to prevent moreterrorist disasters of the kind seen in Bali andMadrid as well as in New York, Pennsylvania,and Washington, D.C.

This new war—The War of 9/11—has hadmany successes, but also setbacks, and it hasbeen a time of soul-searching. It is the war toshape the character of the early 21st century.

Airmen are playing a leading role in this waras they did in the wars of the 20th century. Newtactics and operational concepts in air andspace power pioneered and perfected for thiswar have altered the fighting style of joint mili-tary forces.

The war has had four distinct phases—thusfar. With the war now in its fourth year, this es-say attempts to describe, explain, and analyzethe role played by air and space power in eachof these phases.

On Sept. 11, 2001, at 0846, al Qaeda hijack-ers flew American Airlines Flight 11 into the northtower of the World Trade Center in New York City.The first response in the global war on terrorismfell to two F-15 pilots sitting alert that bright, clearmorning. A new defense of America had be-gun—and with it, a new era of challenge for airand space power.

When one thinks of the war on terrorism thatbegan after Sept. 11, individual actions cometo mind: Operation Enduring Freedom, Opera-tion Noble Eagle, Operation Iraqi Freedom, andso-called “Phase IV” stability operations in bothAfghanistan and Iraq.

Yet the series of campaigns and battles thatwere launched after Sept. 11 are military actionsin support of a single purpose. It is a war foughton many fronts, at home and abroad. To thosein the armed forces and those millions more whosupport and care for them, it is a war of vivid,unexpected places. There are the snow-cappedmountains of Afghanistan, the dun-colored cit-ies of Iraq, the dark blue waters of the North Ara-bian Sea, the heavily guarded desert bases inthe Gulf, the enclave of Djibouti in the Horn ofAfrica. The war is waged from CheyenneMountain’s command post in Colorado and in

Prologue

This New War

Long after the attack,the ruins of the WorldTrade Center stillsmolder. The Sept. 11attacks killed morethan 3,000 from theUS and othercountries.

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the idea of relying on airpower and a small con-tingent of Special Operations Forces (SOF) togo after bin Laden and al Qaeda in Afghani-stan. “After we didn’t get Osama bin Laden inTLAM strikes in Afghanistan, we started thisgame of trying to follow Osama around Afghani-stan and trying to figure out how to get a shotat him,” recalled one top CENTCOM officer.4 TheUS began developing contingency plans “to getOsama, or go in there and bust up the Taliban.”Submarines were on station in the North Ara-bian Sea to conduct a TLAM strike if bin Ladenturned up.5 However, actionable intelligencenever came through, and the whole idea re-minded some of Desert One, the disastrous1980 attempt to rescue 56 Americans held hos-tage in the US embassy in Tehran. That failedeffort resulted in the deaths of five airmen andthree marines.

The SOF and airpower option was more ap-pealing in 2001—in part because air and spacepower had progressed, and in part becauseWashington would not wait for a massivebuildup and a ground campaign. A hard lookat the real tactical options showed that it wasthe air component that was ready to go. B-2bomber crews at Whiteman AFB, Mo., went intocrew rest soon after they got word of the Sept.11 attacks. The Navy’s aircraft carrier USS En-terprise was close to the scene of action. “I waswatching CNN when I saw the second planehit the tower,” said Navy Capt. Sandy Winnefeld,commanding officer.6 “Right then I thought,‘We’re not going home.’ ” That was true. “It was

Within hours of the disasters at the WorldTrade Center in New York and Pentagon in Wash-ington, war planning was underway in the UnitedStates. The first target of American arms wasthe terror-prone regime in Afghanistan, whichhad been providing safe haven and support forOsama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorists.Going after bin Laden’s main base was no easytask. Nor was reliance on airpower the immedi-ate choice of Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, theCENTCOM chief.

The commander’s first instinct was to plan fora multi-pronged land attack relying on helicop-ter airborne assault, with Pakistan as a stagingarea. “I can’t see conducting operations insideAfghanistan without basing, staging, and over-flight support from Pakistan,” he told his staff onSept. 12.1 There was, however, a problem. “Wehad no air bases on that soil or even near thatsoil,” said Rear Adm. James Robb, inbound asCENTCOM’s chief of strategic plans and policy.2

Franks asked Secretary of Defense Donald H.Rumsfeld for 10 days to develop a course ofaction. “We had al Qaeda and Taliban target setsin Afghanistan and plans to strike those targetswith TLAMs [the Navy’s Tomahawk land-attackcruise missiles] and manned bombers,” Franksrecalled, “but CENTCOM had not developed aplan for conventional ground operations in Af-ghanistan” or for access agreements with bor-dering nations.3

Prior PlanningIn 1998, CENTCOM planners had toyed with

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1.Gen. Tommy Franks, USA(Ret.), American Soldier, p.250-51.

2. Rear Adm. James Robb,interview, Aug. 30, 2004.

3. Franks, American Soldier,p. 250-251.

4. Vice Adm. David Nichols,interview, Oct. 13, 2004.

5. President Bill Clinton, MyLife, p. 891.

6. Cesar G. Soriano, “PilotsContinue Mission to DestroyTaliban Targets,” USA Today,Oct. 15, 2001.

Operation Enduring Freedom

Four B-52H bomberstaxi for take off onstrike mission againstal Qaeda terroristtraining camps andTaliban militaryinstallations inAfghanistan on Oct. 7,2001, the beginningof Operation EnduringFreedom.

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7. Gen. Tommy Franks,Senate Armed ServicesCommittee testimony, Feb. 7,2002.

8. USAF Gen. Richard Myers,DOD press conference, Oct.7, 2001.

9. Defense Secretary DonaldRumsfeld, DOD pressconference, Oct. 7, 2001.

10. Rear Adm. JohnStufflebeem, interview, Aug.4, 2004.

11. Mark Bowden, “TheKabul-ki Dance,” AtlanticMonthly, November 2002.

only a matter of hours before they turned usaround.” Another carrier, USS Carl Vinson waspassing the tip of India en route to the ArabianGulf. For the first time in decades, the sea-basedpart of the air component became indispens-able to shaping the campaign.

With two big-deck carriers, long-range bomb-ers, refueling tankers, E-3 AWACS aircraft, andother ISR assets, America soon had enough air-power in place to quickly start operations in Af-ghanistan. The Combined Forces Air ComponentCommander (CFACC)—the “air boss”—was Lt.Gen. (now Gen.) Charles F. Wald. Wald and hisstaff quickly deployed forward to Prince SultanAB, Saudi Arabia. “P-SAB,” as it was called, washome to the Air Force’s new Combined Air Op-erations Center (CAOC).

Over the next few weeks, CENTCOM built aplan to link up US forces with Afghan forces thathad been fighting the Taliban for years. The in-digenous groups would provide the manpoweron the ground and would be assisted by spe-cial operations forces. The air component wouldgive them the firepower they needed to winagainst a more mobile and heavily armed en-emy. Franks briefed the military plan to Presi-dent Bush on Sept. 21, 2001.7 Franks’ plan gavetop priority to early air strikes and a sustainedcampaign with SOF assisting the Afghan oppo-sition. With the right kind of firepower, he argued,the Northern Alliance and other oppositionforces could drive out the Taliban and help huntdown bin Laden and al Qaeda.

Major Combat BeginsOn Sunday, Oct. 7, the President went on tele-

vision to announce the start of Operation En-

during Freedom, the code-name for the war inAfghanistan. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefsof Staff, USAF Gen. Richard B. Myers, said,“About 15 land-based bombers, some 25 strikeaircraft from carriers, and US and British shipsand submarines launching approximately 50Tomahawk missiles have struck terrorist targetsin Afghanistan.”8

Afghanistan turned out to be a new kind ofwar, but it had a familiar starting point: the gain-ing of air supremacy. The first order of businesswas to “remove the threat from air defenses andfrom Taliban aircraft,” Rumsfeld said.9 “We needthe freedom to operate on the ground and inthe air, and the targets selected, if successfullydestroyed, should permit an increasing degreeof freedom over time,” he added. Bombers andTLAMs hit suspected air defense sites and ma-jor air bases while carrier-based F-14 Tomcats,F/A-18 Hornets, and EA-6B Prowlers ensuredcontrol of the air.

On paper, the Taliban looked like anything buta pushover. It had access, in theory, to about70 MiG-21s—more than enough to causetrouble for US bombers, tankers, AWACS, JointSTARS, E-2s, S-3s, and C-17s. Said Rear Adm.John D. Stufflebeem, an F-14 pilot serving onthe Joint Staff, “Initially, there was a big fearabout the Afghanis flying to try to shoot us down,and so everything would have to go with fightercover.”10

Afghanistan’s ground-based air defenseswere not dense or sophisticated, but they couldstill be unnerving. One Air Force F-15E crewstriking targets near Jalalabad, a den of alQaeda targets, reported antiaircraft fire instreaks of white, yellow, and red.11 Navy Lt. Chris

USAF battlefieldairmen inAfghanistan, whomade do with localfood andtransportation, werekey elements in thesuccess of the aircomponent.

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Gasko, an F-14 pilot flying early missions nearKabul, watched a “string of tracers from theZSU-23s” and “hand-held SAMs coming up too,like the bottle rockets come corkscrewing up atyou.”12 He also saw “medium and heavy caliberAAA over Kabul and around the Bagram [AirBase] area” and heard reports from fellow pilotsof antiaircraft fire up north near Mazar-e Sharif.

Even so, air superiority wasn’t long in com-ing. It enabled CENTCOM to start inserting SOFunits via helicopter. The command also beganhumanitarian airdrops right away because sevenmillion Afghanis were believed “to be at risk ofloss of life” as a result of conditions inside Af-ghanistan, Franks estimated.13 Two C-17 trans-ports based in Germany flew 6,500-mile mis-sions on Night One of the Afghan war to airdropsupplies. “The fact that you’re flying into a com-bat zone cannot be ignored,” said Col. Kip Self,director of mobility operations at Ramstein AB,

12. Navy Lt. Chris Gasko,interview, July 22, 2004.

13. Gen. Tommy Franks,Senate Armed ServicesCommittee testimony, Feb. 7,2002.

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Germany, “but, if you do the right training andplanning ahead of time, you mitigate thosethreats and rely on your professionalism to getyou through.”14

With cargo and SOF aircraft operating all overAfghanistan, this was definitely a different kindof air war.

To kick start the war on the ground, CENTCOMcalled on the air component to mount a cycle ofair operations so that controllers on the groundcould call in airstrikes and clear the way for Af-ghan opposition forces to take back Taliban-con-trolled cities. It was a plan faced with many chal-lenges.

The first was the challenge of generating sor-ties. The CAOC organized tanker tracks thatwould allow fighters and bombers to enter air-space over Afghanistan and stay there for pre-designated periods, which soon became knownas “vul” periods; aircrews were “vulnerable,” oron-call for retasking, during these times. Duringa typical 10-hour mission, theater-based B-1Bsand B-52s could put in four or five hours of timeon station. USAF F-15Es and F-16s based in Per-sian Gulf nations would fly long sorties thatyielded a few hours on call over Afghanistan.Carriers in the north Arabian Sea split duties as“night” or “day” carriers, the better to keep up asteady supply of sorties over the target. Aircrewendurance was stretched to the limit. Moreover,the composition of the missions changed, too. Atfirst, airmen attacked fixed military targets suchas airfields and Taliban strong points. One of thefirst areas targeted was the “front” on the openplains north of Kabul. As many as 10,000 Talibanwere gathering there in garrison. Some on thefront lines were “arrayed with heavy weapons inrevetments in covered and concealed positions,”a CENTCOM briefer explained.15 Bombers andfighters alike delivered precision weapons on the

fixed target sites. Strikes on pre-briefed, fixedtargets continued throughout the fall.

The second challenge stemmed from targetswhich were not fixed. These emerging targets—targets whose coordinates were not known toaircrews when they launched for a mission—soon began to dominate. “There are preplannedtargets, and there is also the ability to handletargets that might emerge,” Myers said Oct. 8.16

“By the end of the first week, the pilots didn’tknow what targets they’d be striking when theylaunched,” said Vice Adm. John Nathman, thethen-commander, Naval Air Forces.17 Pilots stillstudied target folders, but they knew they werelikely to be retasked once in Afghan airspace.That meant each aircrew had to manage its owncommunications with the CAOC—generally viaAWACS—and keep abreast of tanker refuelingtimes. A Navy or Marine pilot had to keep aneye on his carrier’s deck cycle time, which typi-cally covered about 90 minutes. During this pe-riod, a deck would be “closed” to launch air-craft or be “opened” to trap aircraft returningfrom missions. Landing out of cycle was out ofthe question.

The third challenge entailed working with thecontrollers on the ground. At first, many of themwere from government agencies such as theCIA. They were often in the right place at theright time but could not compare with fully quali-fied close air support (CAS) controllers. Theirlack of familiarity with military air support pro-cedures made for some dodgy moments bothon the ground and in the air. “It was extremelyfrustrating at first,” said Navy Capt. PatrickDriscoll, an F/A-18 pilot who flew missions fromUSS Kitty Hawk.18 (This carrier had off-loadedmost of its air wing to turn itself into a floatingairfield for SOF units and their helicopters.) Ini-tially, ground controllers Driscoll encountered

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USAF’s heavybombers weremainstays in the fight.At right, a weaponsloader prepsmunitions for a B-1Bbomber for anotherOperation EnduringFreedom strikemission.

14. MSgt. Randy Mitchell,“Afghan Food DropsUnderscore Bush’sHumanitarian Pledge,”American Forces PressService, Oct. 9, 2001.

15. DOD backgroundbriefing, Oct. 14, 2001.

16. DOD press conference,Oct. 8, 2001.

17. Vice Adm. John Nathmanand Rear Adm. Mike Mullen,remarks, reported by LisaTroshinsky, “Navy Pilots SetFlying and Target Records inAfghanistan,” Navy News andUndersea Technology, Jan.22, 2002.

18. Navy Capt. PatrickDriscoll, interview, Aug. 4,2004.

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sounded like they were “nonmilitary” or, at best,inexperienced. “I spent a couple of hops justtrying to find targets that were not being prop-erly marked or properly talked on,” he recalled.The stakes were high, and so the learning curvehad to be steep. “We learned very quickly whatsort of things that we wanted the FACs [forwardair controllers] to be telling us and what theyneeded to hear from us,” said another F/A-18pilot, Navy Lt. Scott Smith.19 For “the first coupleof flights it was sort of painful, but then, afterthat, we were able to work through it and got agood idea of how we wanted to work things.”

Challenge four was what the CAOC officerscame to call “time-sensitive targets,” or TSTs.These were not the same as “emerging targets.”Part of CENTCOM’s plan was to hunt down andstrike at al Qaeda and Taliban leadership. Con-stant surveillance and multiple intelligencesources generated leads on key leaders. Most

of the targets required positive identification andapproval from a specially trained lawyer on theCENTCOM staff. Tight rules of engagementmandated by the White House to prevent col-lateral damage often ended up requiring evenFranks to check with Bush or Rumsfeld andcaused inevitable time delays. It was up to theCAOC to execute a strike. Rear Adm. John P.Cryer, a naval aviator serving as a day shiftCAOC director, described the flow of a typicalTST strike as it unfolded over a period of hours.“We were watching a safe house, vetting a tar-get through a variety of different sources,” hesaid, “until it was determined that yes, this wasthe site that we needed to hit. Then it would beour job in the CAOC to go ahead and tee upthe strike.”20 The CAOC had to find an availablefighter or bomber with the right weapons andfusing to carry out the strike while Tampaworked final approvals. As clearance came

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19. Navy Lt. Scott Smith,interview, July 22, 2004.

20. Rear Adm. John Cryer,interview, Sept. 2, 2004.

The Afghan Theater

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through “we’d go ahead and execute the strikedrop and you’d watch the survivors come out ofthe building.” If survivors tried to flee in their ve-hicles “we would follow them with Predator andthen we’d stay after them until we got every oneof them,” Cryer said. The first efforts at pursuingTSTs in Afghanistan were sometimes bumpy, butin those high-pressure cycles a new form of airwarfare was unfolding. As the War of 9/11 pro-gressed, so would the CAOC’s expertise andlevel of control.

Through October 2001, the air componentadjusted to the new demands. Critics bemoanedwhat they misperceived as a lack of progress.After just one week of combat, columnist Will-iam Arkin called the effort “sparse to the ex-treme.”21 By the end of October, University ofChicago professor Robert A. Pape concluded:“The initial air strategy against Afghanistan isnot working.”22 The critics, however, were off themark. Flexible airpower in Afghanistan was be-coming proficient at new tasks, and, in the pro-cess, air and space power were changing thenature of military operations from that of sequen-tial, phased campaigns to that of simultaneousoperations.

Senior leaders tried to find the words to ex-plain the changes. “It’s been said that those whoexpect another Desert Storm will wonder everyday what it is that this war is all about,” Frankssaid.23 “This is a different war. This war will befought on many fronts simultaneously.” Myersechoed the point. “In the Gulf War, three phasesof an air campaign went on for 38 days as wetried to set conditions with the air war,” Myerssaid in late October. “Then we had a groundcomponent that went in and finished the job. Youshouldn’t think of this in those terms.”24

In Afghanistan, air and space power were

making it possible to carry out many differentobjectives at the same time. These included theairman’s tasks—holding air dominance, extend-ing intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance(ISR) coverage, pursuing TSTs, and air-drop-ping humanitarian supplies—as well as jointtasks. In this case, the joint tasks concernedthe link between SOF and the indigenous Af-ghan opposition forces.

On the ground, a critical mass of well-trainedcontrollers was starting to use the air compo-nent to astonishing effect. From the start, Frankswas eager to have American “boots on theground” for the engagements with the Talibanand al Qaeda. “The sooner we had the teams’combat air controllers designating Taliban andal Qaeda targets for the bombers, the quickerNorthern Alliance troops could climb out of theirWorld War I-style trenches and advance on theenemy,” he said.25 The new Air Force Chief ofStaff, Gen. John P. Jumper, said it was “abso-lutely imperative here that you start with peopleon the ground” who could assess the militarysituation, identify targets, and, most of all, workwith the Northern Alliance.26

The first SOF team was inserted into Afghani-stan on Oct. 19.27 Three teams were in Afghani-stan by Oct. 26, with five more waiting inUzbekistan.28 The highly trained controllersknew how to work effectively with the heavybombers and fighters the CAOC sent their way.“They are specially trained individuals that knowhow to bring in airpower and bring it into theconflict in the right way, and that’s what they’redoing. We think that will have a big impact onthe Northern Alliance’s ability to prosecute theirpiece of this war against the Taliban,” saidMyers.29

Full 24-hour coverage over the whole coun-

Nighttime, covertinsertion andextraction of specialoperations units arethe specialty of MH-53J Pave Lowhelicopters, whichcrisscrossedAfghanistan duringOEF. The image at leftshows the standardlights-out, night-vision view of agunner at his stationin the doorway.

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21. William Arkin, “A Weekof Air War, washingtonpost.com, Oct. 14, 2001.

22. Robert Pape, “The WrongBattle Plan,” WashingtonPost, Oct. 19, 2001.

23. Kendra Helmer, “Gen.Franks, in Uzbekistan, SaysFight Against Terrorism Hasnot Stalled,” Stars andStripes, Oct. 31, 2001.

24. Gen. Richard Myers,DOD Press Conference, Oct.22, 2001.

25. Gen. Tommy Franks, USA(Ret.), American Soldier, p.289.

26. Gen. John Jumper,interview, July 23, 2003.

27. Franks, Senatetestimony, Feb. 7, 2002.

28. Bob Woodward, Bush atWar, p. 261.

29. Gen. Richard Myers,interview with Al Jazeera,DOD transcript, Oct. 31,2001.

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try was not possible but the CAOC worked withSOF teams to ensure both sides understoodwhen air support would be available. Distancesand intricacies of the missions deep into Af-ghan airspace were problems. The CAOC knewit and worked to funnel air support where andwhen it was needed most. “It was impossibleto get 24-hour coverage,” said Cryer, “so wecontracted with the SOF” to provide strike air-craft in set increments.30 Throughout the firstweek of November, airstrikes concentrated onTaliban and al Qaeda forces and military equip-ment near Mazar-e Sharif and farther south,near Kabul. On Nov. 1, 65 coalition aircraftstruck nine preplanned targets, plus dozensmore in engagement zones.31 Stufflebeem said,“ I f the Nor thern [Al l iance] is feel ing

emboldened or ready to make moves, then thatmeans that it [the bombing] has had the in-tended effect.”32

The Tide TurnsNow came the seismic shift in air warfare. The

number of preplanned targets struck gave wayto so-called unfragged targets—targets se-lected by ground controllers and delivered byXCAS (airborne alert close air support). By earlyNovember, strike aircraft were reporting moreweapons drops on unfragged targets than onpreplanned targets.33 Back in Washington,Stufflebeem watched closely for results. Moni-toring the daily reports made him think: “Wow,we’re taking a lot of risk in doing some of theseoperations, but obviously it’s paying off.”34 Re-

Members of the 11thReconnaissanceSquadron, IndianSprings AFAF, Nev.,perform pre-flightchecks on a RQ-1Predator before aNov. 9, 2001,mission. The UAVshelped provide dataand images for strikeson time-sensitivetargets.

30. Rear Adm. John Cryer,interview, Sept. 2, 2004.

31. Rear Adm. JohnStufflebeem, DOD pressconference, Nov. 2, 2001.

32. Stufflebeem, DOD pressconference, Nov. 6, 2001.

33. Stufflebeem, DOD pressconference, Nov. 2, 2001.

34. Stufflebeem, interview,Aug. 4, 2004.

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USAF mobility forcesaided strike elementsand providedhumanitarian suppliesto the Afghans. Atright, a C-17loadmaster drops theone millionth mealdelivered during OEF.

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sults came first at Mazar-e Sharif, where theNorthern Alliance was positioned to roll upTaliban forces and occupy territory. The nearbytown of Shulgareh fell on Nov. 7. On Nov. 8,Northern Alliance warlords Abdurashid Dostumand Mohammad Attah had come within 10 milesof Mazar-e Sharif, according to reports from theSOF teams operating with them.35 On Nov. 9, theNorthern Alliance claimed Mazar-e Sharif itself.

The fall of Mazar-e Sharif kicked off four im-pressive weeks of military victories which endedTaliban control of Afghanistan. On Nov. 10, theair component attacked trench lines outside ofTaloqan. “It was important for these trenches,and others like them, to be cleared to open theway for the Northern Alliance to advance,” Myerssaid.36 Taloqan fell on Nov. 11. In the west, op-position forces seized Herat on Nov. 12.

The morning of Nov. 12 also saw the begin-ning of the end for the Taliban’s control ofAfghanistan’s capital city. B-52 strikes targetedTaliban lines around Kabul in the morning. Bylate afternoon, Northern Alliance armored forceswere moving down the Old Road toward the city,with infantry sweeping through former Talibanpositions. “The Taliban appear to have aban-doned Kabul and some Northern Alliance forcesare in the city,” Myers declared on Nov. 13.37

“Last Friday the Northern Alliance controlled lessthan 15 percent of Afghanistan,” he said. “ByMonday morning they had fundamentally cut Af-ghanistan into two areas of control, but we mustkeep in mind that pockets of resistance do re-main,” he added. Some Taliban fled south towardthe sparsely populated, mountainous areas con-trolled by Pashtun tribes. “Where we can posi-tively identify Taliban as such, we are pursuingthem,” said Stufflebeem on Nov. 14.38 However,nothing changed the fact that taking the capital

was a major victory. “We in fact have the initia-tive,” Franks declared on Nov. 15.39

The use of persistent air coverage and pre-cisely controlled strikes had brought the UnitedStates its first major victories of the War of 9/11.These nonlinear, simultaneous engagements byairpower made for a rapidly accelerating cam-paign. Jumper said it was “more effective thanany kind of close air support we’d done in along time.”40 As the Army vice chief of staff, Gen.John M. Keane, later said, “those populationcenters toppled as the result of a combinedarms team: US airpower and a combination ofSpecial Forces and Afghan troops.”41 The Af-ghan air war proved the concept of pairing pre-cise, persistent airpower with light groundforces. It also demonstrated that with enoughISR, CAOC officers could track and strike time-sensitive targets. Joint integration of the air com-ponent had never been so good.

Still, obstacles remained. Communicationsacross Afghanistan’s mountainous terrain couldbe difficult. Many aircraft had voice or digitaldata links, but it was far from a fully networkedbattlespace. Problems with targeting fleeing alQaeda and Taliban “pointed out real shortfallsin the ability to push digital information,” con-cluded Adm. Mark Fitzgerald, battle group com-mander aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt.42

Those Taliban and al Qaeda remnants were tobecome an ongoing problem even after HamidKarzai became head of the interim Afghan gov-ernment on Dec. 20, 2001.

In addition, the focus of situation awarenesswas shifting from the cockpit to the CAOC—andit took time for everyone to get used to it. TheCAOC had matured significantly and had be-come the dominant node for battlespace aware-ness. No longer were the aircrews, by default,

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35. Bob Woodward, Bush atWar, p. 297.

36. DOD press conference,Nov. 13, 2001.

37. Gen. Richard Myers,DOD press conference, Nov.13, 2001.

38. Rear Adm. JohnStufflebeem, DOD pressconference, Nov. 14, 2001.

39. Gen. Tommy Franks,DOD press conference, Nov.15, 2001.

40. Gen. John Jumper,interview, July 23, 2003.

41. Kim Burger, “Interviewwith General Keane,” Jane’sDefence Weekly, Jan. 30,2002.

42. Adm. Mark Fitzgerald,interview, July 1, 2004.

Air National GuardEC-130 CommandoSolo aircraft andcrews deployed to theSouthwest Asiatheater to broadcastto the Afghansmessages about theUS war on terror andthe Taliban.

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“the smartest people on Earth about what wasgoing on in that battlespace,” commentedRobb.43 That role was now played by CAOC of-ficers. It was a major change from Vietnam, oreven from Desert Storm. Hard as it was for pi-lots to concede, an in-theater CAOC or theCENTCOM command post at headquarters inTampa, Fla., might have more knowledge of theoperational situation. The “greatest situationawareness is actually at higher levels,” Robbsaid. “And the guys in the cockpit are becom-ing farther and farther separated from the deci-sion process. That becomes frustrating, becauseyou always want to support those that are in thebattlespace who are at risk.” At the same time,he said, the overall goal is still “trying to shapedecision-making in such a way that it moves themission forward. So the decision to drop and notdrop becomes ever more complicated.”

Communications limits and tight rules of en-gagement (ROE) often made pilots believe thatthey were on a wild goose chase. The net effecton some missions, said Fitzgerald, was a “lot offrustration on the pilot’s part, because he wouldfind something out there—a tank, or a helicop-ter, or whatever—and it would take an inordinateamount of time to get clearance.”44 As much assix hours could go by, during which time the tar-get had long since become the responsibility ofanother fighter package. Still, this mild frustra-tion in the cockpits was the price willingly paidfor major operational flexibility for the CAOC andCENTCOM. “Really,” said Robb, “the mission’snot necessarily to make the guy in the cockpithappy.”45 CENTCOM was able to wage a pre-cise and tightly controlled air war with minimalcollateral damage.

The final point of friction in these simulta-neous operations concerned the difficulties ofcoordination between air and ground forces.

Through the major victories of November, SOFteams had often been the de facto supportedforce. Vast distances and virtually empty skieskept aircraft disentangled. The system, how-ever, was not perfect. It was often difficult forthe CAOC to pinpoint locations of SOF andother government agency teams. Late notifi-cations of SOF helicopter movements causeddramatic moments—especially when the air-craft in use were old Soviet helicopters similarto those the Taliban might have.

In mid-November, the mission of OEF beganto change, and that meant deploying moreground forces. At the time, Stufflebeem ex-plained: “We still have the job of finding andgetting al Qaeda. We still have the job now offinding and getting at Taliban—leadership, spe-cifically.”46 Given the new focus, “I was veryhappy to see in Afghanistan where TommyFranks created a combined force land compo-nent commander,” said Jumper of the mid-No-vember CFLCC stand-up.47 But the Army forcestrickling in from Uzbekistan and other locationswere not familiar with how the air componentoperated. Some came to OEF with their ownideas—ideas that did not always take into ac-count the Army’s dependence on the air com-ponent for everything from mobility to firepower.Lack of strong component coordination almostcost the US dearly in the land component’s firstbig battle.

AnacondaOn March 2, 2002, the coalition kicked off the

biggest ground offensive of the war—code-named “Anaconda.” As originally conceived,Anaconda was to be a raid on a concentrationof al Qaeda and Taliban forces which had re-treated and holed up in the Shah i Kot Valley ineastern Afghanistan. On Feb. 7, 2002, several

43. Rear Adm. James Robb,interview, Aug. 30, 2004.

44. Adm. Mark Fitzgerald,interview, July 1, 2004.

45. Robb, interview, Aug. 30,2004.

46. Rear Adm. JohnStufflebeem, DOD pressconference, Nov. 14, 2001.

47. Gen. John Jumper,interview, July 23, 2003.

At right, one can seeMiG fighters and acargo airplane linedup at Herat Airfield,Afghanistan. At farright, one sees thesame field after aprecision strike. Noenemy fighters cameup to challengecoalition warplanes.

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weeks before the start of combat, Franks had toldmembers of the National Security Council thatcoalition forces would “go in from several direc-tions on the ground while simultaneously insert-ing air assault forces into the objective” and takeout this “al Qaeda redoubt in the mountains southof Kabul.”48 Ten days later, the land componentcommander was briefed on Anaconda, which nowcalled for coalition SOF and Afghan forces to ringthe valley while 1,400 US troops, inserted by he-licopter, rounded up about 200 al Qaeda strag-glers hiding there.

There was a huge problem, however. No onehad told the senior leaders of the air componentabout this major new operation. Land compo-nent coordination with the air component wastardy and incomplete—and that was the just thestart of the biggest glitch to date in the War of 9/11. “We didn’t have a clue what they were goingto do,” said Fitzgerald,49 whose Roosevelt battlegroup was wrapping up a record 159 days atsea flying Afghanistan missions. The view wasechoed by CENTCOM’s current air boss, USAFLt. Gen. T. Michael Moseley, who replaced Waldin a regular rotation in November 2001. “The big-ger issue,” Moseley said, “is there was never anopportunity to orchestrate and figure out whatwas needed. Had we known this was going togo on, we would have stood up a full ASOC [airsupport operations center] and moved [thepeople] to Bagram a week or two weeks aheadof this and then conducted a set of rehearsalswith the carriers, with the bombers, with thewhole thing. And I would have forward-deployedthe A-10s for indigenous quick reactions.”50

Late notification left the air component scram-bling at the end of February to meet the Army’sneeds. All fuel and passengers had to be liftedto Bagram by air, but the land component failedto generate and deliver thorough airlift require-

ment statements. Gen. John D.W. Corley said,“We gathered up every available flying resourcethat we could in that part of the world,” includ-ing C-17s earmarked for Vice President DickCheney ’s visit to the region.51 “We moved193,000 gallons of gas between the 23rd and28th, of which zero was moved by ground,” saidthe director of mobility forces, USAF Brig. Gen.Winfield Scott.52 As a result of this lack of prepa-ration, Anaconda missed out on many of the big-gest benefits of air and space power—benefitsused to great effect just a few months earlier inAfghanistan. For example, there was no time torun a full ISR “collection deck” and then use itto attack al Qaeda hiding places before thebattle. Different controllers on the ground wentin with different equipment and training. SOFcontrollers, inserted a few days early, were notfully briefed on the plans. Startled by close airsupport strikes, they had to issue a “knock itoff” call that truncated what little initial air sup-port there was.

Worse, the final Anaconda planning somehowoverlooked the long-standing CENTCOM con-clusion that the Shah i Kot Valley and surround-ing areas actually harbored 1,000 or more alQaeda and Taliban fighters, not just a handful.As a result, the forces that landed in the valleyon March 2, 2002, unexpectedly found them-selves under fire right away. Only the quick re-actions of on-call airpower from carriers andnearby land bases prevented the day from turn-ing into a bloody disaster. As it was, botchedefforts to reinsert a SOF team on a key ridgeabove the battle area on day three were to costthe lives of a Navy SEAL and six Army Rangerswho were sent in to mount a rescue.

Fortunately the air component was able toperform as well as it had in the fall. The CAOCsupplied ground forces with persistent and le-

48. Gen. Tommy Franks, USA(Ret.), American Soldier, p.369.

49. Adm. Mark Fitzgerald,interview, July 1, 2004.

50. Gen. Michael Moseley,interview, June 25, 2003.

51. Gen. John Corley,interview, Jan. 3, 2003.

52. Brig. Gen. Winfield Scott,interview, Feb. 11, 2003.

At far left, an AC-130H Spectregunship. At left, agunner on an AC-130Spooky gunship loadsa 40 mm cannon.

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E-3 AWACS aircraftkept hundreds ofaircraft under controlin the airspace overAfghanistan. At farright, a USAF airman(right) and herCanadian counterpartoperate the E-3’sJoint TacticalInformationDistribution System.

thal firepower. Combined with smart tactical de-cisions on the ground, the close air supportswung the balance. In the end, Anaconda wasa success, but achieving it took two weeks in-stead of 72 hours, as had been advertised. Fortwo weeks, the CAOC funneled fighters andbombers into tight airspace above an area aboutnine miles by nine miles. Immediate CAS sup-plied consistent support. Total numbers of weap-ons dropped did not tail off at night. In fact, onsome days, nighttime totals were higher than daydrops. A total of 751 bombs were dropped intothe tiny Anaconda battle area in the first threedays. The intensity and precision of the airstrikestopped anything seen before, even in Opera-tion Desert Storm. Bombers were mainstays dueto their long “vul” periods and heavy payloads,and they too, experienced the push and pull ofair control. They released individual weapons asnecessary and most made multiple targetpasses.

At night, gunships under SOF control illumi-nated al Qaeda positions and drilled them withprecise and heavy artillery. Veteran Navy pilotsfrom Roosevelt, Stennis, and newly arrived JohnF. Kennedy provided more than half of the fightersorties each day. A-10s flew from Kuwait andthen moved forward to take up roles as premierCAS assets. All fighters took a turn at airborneforward air control. Predators tracked al Qaedatroops moving along roads and up through can-yons, then vectored several two-ships of A-10sand sections of F/A-18s onto the target. A coali-tion SOF controller surveying the scene after onesuch strike noted that the reinforcing troops werewiped out.

Air and land coordination improved during thebattle. One result was a list of pre-planned tar-gets generated by Task Force Mountain and theCAOC. Coalition aircraft delivered Joint Direct

Attack Munitions, GBU-12s, and even Mk 82sset to “airburst the al Qaeda into the next life,”as Moseley put it.53 Strafing, the quintessentialWorld War II action, reappeared on the 21st cen-tury battlefield. Task Force Mountain organizedmore intensive airstrikes for the final push ofMarch 9-10 to take Objective Ginger and sealoff the Shah i Kot Valley. The days of March 9and 10 were also the single heaviest days forairstrikes on terrorist positions. That was the cul-minating point. Anaconda drew to a close onMarch 16 after fresh Afghan forces helped clearthe Shah i Kot Valley. “Thank goodness for thebravery of those soldiers that we were able totake the fight to the enemy and be successfulhere,” said Myers.54 “Anaconda sought to clearthe enemy in that valley area and in those hills,”Franks said a month later, “and succeeded indoing so where many operations in history hadnot been able to get that done.”55

Some good came f rom Anaconda. I tspurred a drive to improve component coor-dination and fix procedures wherever pos-sible. This drive was led largely by the AirForce. Air Force and Army three and four-starstwice discussed Anaconda in private ses-sions. Jumper made it a personal priority toreview and standardize ground controllertraining. Moseley remained as air componentcommander for Iraq and took the opportunityto forge much closer relations with the newCFLCC, Army Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan.Moseley ’s deputy, then-Rear Adm. DavidNichols, also vouched for the change in com-ponent relationships between Anaconda andOperation Iraqi Freedom.

Never again in the War of 9/11 would theland component try to act alone. A new levelof air integration—and a new level of jointmilitary power—was now at hand.

53. Gen. Michael Moseley,interview, June 25, 2003.

54. Gen. Richard Myers,“Interview with Wolf Blitzer,”CNN, March 10, 2002.

55. Gen. Tommy Franks,DOD press conference, May24, 2002.

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During the Fall of 2001, the war in Afghani-stan held the headlines, but it was not the onlyscene of military operations. Far from it. TheUnited States Air Force was actually flying morecombat sorties in the skies over America than itwas in the Middle East. The War of 9/11 put com-bat air patrols and the distinctive roar of jet fight-ers over American cities.

The unusual air campaign that began as aNORAD response on Sept. 11 grew quickly intoa major force commitment. Navy and MarineCorps aircraft had flown sorties during the firstseveral days, but it fell to the Air Force to pickup the major new mission named OperationNoble Eagle. This new air campaign had les-sons all its own for the evolution of air and spacepower.

The first of them were rammed home withinhours on Sept. 11. Despite starting with a ColdWar defensive posture, there was plenty of ca-pacity to generate fighter and tanker sorties overthe continental US, in Alaska, and from Hawaii.Some 300 fighters were on alert, in the air, orgenerated within 18 hours of the attacks on NewYork and Washington. About 180 missions wereflown on Sept. 11. Tankers surged to support.“If you’re going to fly CAP [combat air patrol] for24 hours, they need a lot of tanking,” remarkedBrig. Gen. Paul Kimmel, Air National Guard chiefoperating officer and director of the Crisis Ac-tion Team.56 In addition to active duty tankers,18 ANG wings delivered 78 aerial refuelers—generated, ready, and flying—all on a volunteer

Operation Noble Eaglebasis.57 “Fighters and tankers were up and downall day,” commented MSgt. David G. Rafferty,who was on duty in Alaska.58

However, there were major problems.NORAD’s systems had not been designed totrack hostile aircraft across the interior of thecountry. Wide gaps existed in radar coverageand fighter communications across the coun-try, particularly in the west. As a Western AirDefense Sector controller phrased it, “we hadfighters on alert in places where we had no ra-dar coverage and no radio coverage.59 AWACSfilled in the gaps. This strange new air cam-paign also had no strategy. NORAD flew only147 sorties under the air defense mission in theentire year 2000.60 Units were mounting airborneCAPs without a central air tasking order. “Wewere in foreign territory,” said Col. Robert J.Marr, USAF, commander of the Northeast AirDefense Sector (NEADS).61 “We were used toprotecting the shores, way out overseas. Ourprocesses and procedures weren’t designed forthis.”

Creating a StrategyOne question was paramount: How do you

turn Operation Noble Eagle into a sustainablemission—with a coherent strategy?

Early on, Rumsfeld issued guidance to main-tain the CAPs indefinitely over New York Cityand Washington. He said, “We have certainparts of the country, including Washington,[where] we have aircraft in the air. In other parts

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56. Air National Guard Brig.Gen. Paul Kimmel, interview,Nov. 8, 2001.

57. Memo for the Record,“Air National Guard Input toProject Vulcan for Period 11-14 Sept 01,” Sept. 18, 2001,Charles J. Gross, ANGhistorian.

58. MSgt. David Rafferty,“Personal Account of EventsOccurring 11 Sept 01,”Alaskan Air Defense SectorResponse.

59. Maj. Sue Cheney,interview, October 2002.

60. Gen. Ed Eberhart, SenateArmed Services Committeetestimony, March 11, 2002.

61. Col. Robert Marr,interview, June 25, 2002.

An F-15 Eagle fromthe Massachusetts AirNational Guard’s102nd Fighter Wing atOtis ANGB, Mass.,flies a combat airpatrol mission overNew York City forOperation NobleEagle.

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62. Defense SecretaryDonald Rumsfeld interviewfor ABC News “This Week,”Sept. 16, 2001, DODtranscript.

63. Bob Woodward, Bush atWar, p. 111.

The Foundation: the Air Force’sOver New York City on the morning of Sept.

11, 2001, two F-15s needed a tanker. They wereon Combat Air Patrol, and they’d just witnessedthe collapse of the World Trade Center’s northand south towers. Now they were tracking suspi-cious aircraft for North American Aerospace De-fense Command.

A KC-135 from Bangor, Maine, dropped itsscheduled training mission and hurried to estab-lish an orbit at 20,000 feet over John F. KennedyInternational Airport so that one F-15 could takeon fuel while the other stayed on station over thecity. Later, a KC-10 tanker from McGuire AFB, N.J.,came on the scene and replaced the KC-135.

All across America that morning, there weresigns of how important Air Force strategic mobil-ity forces would be to the new War of 9/11. Far tothe west, the Alaska NORAD Region scrambledalert fighters and tankers to track an inbound for-eign airliner broadcasting the wrong squawk. Withtwo tankers on the UHF/HF radio relay, “we wereable to maintain communication with the fighters,even after they were handed off” to Canadian airdefenders, said USAF MSgt. David Rafferty of theAlaska NORAD region.1

From the first hours of the War of 9/11, USAF’sstrategic mobility forces have been in demandnon-stop both at home and abroad.

For Operation Noble Eagle, the Homeland De-fense Tanker Cell provided 9,589 aerial refuelingmissions flown between 9/11 and mid-January2005, plus more than 400 C-130 missions foremergency response activity.2

To take the war to the enemy, strategic mobil-

ity muscled into Afghanistan in late 2001. USAFbombers and Navy fighters depended on USAFtankers to cover the battlespace. When groundforces began to arrive at captured airfields,airlifters supplied their aviation gas, ammunition,and other requirements. C-17s offloaded gas intofuel bladders at Bagram AB, Afghanistan, thentook off, tanked, landed, and delivered more fueljust to support initial Army requirements for Ana-conda in March 2002.

The build-up for Iraq also showcased airliftersand tankers. In March 2003, the first month ofOIF, 94 percent of all C-5s and 91 percent of allC-17s were committed to worldwide operations,much of it in the area around Iraq.

Air Force Gen. John W. Handy Jr., commanderof US Transportation Command and USAF’s AirMobility Command, set teams to negotiating amodular deployment strategy and leaner logis-tics. “There were no mountains of supplies in Iraqthat you saw in [1990-91 during] Desert Shieldand Desert Storm,” Handy said.3 “You didn’t seehuge unopened containers” at the end of theconflict.

During major combat operations in Iraq, thelarge digital maps at the Joint Mobility Opera-tions Center at Scott AFB, Ill., blinked updatesevery four minutes, showing the locations of 450cargo aircraft en route to or from Southwest Asia.An extensive database tracked nearly six millionitems flowing through the distribution pipelinesevery day.

By the numbers, mobility dominated the cam-paign. “We hauled and we hauled good,” said

of the country we have them ready to take off.The set of decisions that would have to be madeas to whether or not a plane was threatening ahigh-value target in the United States are com-plicated, but the short answer is, yes, we havepeople who are prepared to do what might benecessary.”62

Random CAPs for other cities and locationswere flown nearly every day. On many occa-sions, extra 24/7 CAPs were added in responseto threat indicators or major scheduled publicevents. Scrambles continued in large numbers.In late September, Rumsfeld delegated author-ity to declare a target hostile to NORAD’s re-gional commanders. They were the com-mander of 1st Air Force, ANG Maj. Gen. LarryK. Arnold, for CONR, the continental USNORAD region, and Lt. Gen. Norton Schwartz,for ANR, the Alaska Norad Region.

From whence might come the next attack?CIA daily intelligence summaries frequentlyidentified dozens of specific threats to US fa-cilities, ranging from cities to shopping malls.63

The core of the strategy was to defend NewYork and Washington, and to make the rest ofthe country a hard target, as hard as possible.CAP placement was often driven by immediatecontingencies: a Presidential trip, specialevents, detections of increased threats tonuclear power plants, and so forth. After Octo-ber, “flights of interest” such as Middle Easternairlines flying into major US airports were addedas a possible source of the threat. The Air Op-erations Center at Tyndall AFB, Fla., was at aloss to give better information on threats to theforces executing Operation Noble Eagle. AsCol. Steve Callicutt put it, “one night it’s cropdusters, next night it’s Citations. I mean, people

1. MSgt. David Rafferty,“Personal Account of Eventson 11 Sep 01,” Alaska AirDefense Sector Response,Alaska NORAD Region.

2. Air Mobility Command,Fact Sheet, Jan. 14, 2005.

3. David Fulghum, “To Iraq in‘Chunks’”, Aviation Week &Space Technology, July 7,2003.

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64. Col. Steve Callicutt,interview, Nov. 7, 2002.

65. Bob Woodward, Bush atWar, p. 288.

66. John Curran, “NewYork’s Getting Help fromAbove,” Los Angeles Times,Dec. 2, 2001.

were just grabbing at straws.”64 (Callicutt, on loanfrom the Air and Space Command, Control, In-telligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance(ASC2ISR) Center, Langley AFB, Va., served as1st Air Force’s deputy for operations.)

In addition, Noble Eagle explicitly sought toprotect the President and the Vice President withair cover when they traveled around the US.Requests sometimes came directly from theWhite House to the operations floor. “One night,we got a call at 11 o’clock from the White House,and we were ordered to be on station by six thenext morning,” recalled Callicutt. They got a CAPin place by 0600, which they did by tasking Can-non AFB, N.M., to pull alert out of home station(in addition, Cannon had assets deployed nearDallas at the time.)

On one particular day in early November2001, Rumsfeld briefed the President that nine

CAPs were in place, protecting nuclear reac-tors, nuclear weapons storage and productionfacilities, and “high priority landmarks rangingfrom the White House to Wall Street to tall build-ings in other cities such as Chicago, to Disneyamusement parks.”65 New York and Washing-ton, D.C., were constantly capped. For the pi-lots, it was a mission they were determined todo well. “I’ve seen those films of the World TradeCenter and the towers coming down, and I don’twant to see that happening again,” said Maj.Steve Ziomek, an F-16 pilot.66

By the end of 2001, many were feeling thestress on combat capabilities. Nearly 30 siteswere now on alert status—a big change fromthe seven sites before Sept. 11. MaintainingCAPs over cities without two or more basesnearby was a recurrent problem. For example,as a major population center, Atlanta was on

Secretary of the Air Force James G. Roche.4 Tank-ers and airlift accounted for 56 percent of the AirForce’s 24,196 sorties flown from the start of thewar on March 20 (local Baghdad time) throughApril 18, 2003.5

“You just do your mission,” said C-130 pilotMaj.Dan Keneflick of the Minnesota Air NationalGuard’s 133rd Airlift Wing.6 “You realize you’re avery small piece in a very huge puzzle.”

Handy announced that Air Mobility Commandon April 8, 2003, hit a peak by flying 575 strate-gic missions. “That’s not counting missions insidethe theater of operations,” he said.7

US Air Force tankers flew 6,193 sorties duringthe main phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom andoff-loaded 376.4 million pounds of fuel. Although149 KC-135s and 33 KC-10s were deployed forOIF, the pace of operations kept tanker crewsbusy. KC-135 pilot Capt. Richard Peterson at the321st Air Expeditionary Wing described OIF as anonstop cycle of “fly, crew rest, and time to goagain.”8

Nearly every combat aircraft depended onUSAF tankers to reach a target—or return fromone. “Not a single bomb gets dropped, not asingle air-to-air engagement happens, or missileis fired unless tankers make it happen,” said Col.Cathy Clothier, commander of the 401st Air Ex-peditionary Operations Group.9

Mobility units continued to fly essential mis-sions in support of “Phase IV” stability opera-tions—despite new dangers. “We are routinelyshot at,” Handy said. In Iraq, a C-17 was hit inDecember 2003, a C-5 in February 2004.10

CAOC Air Mobility Division planners continu-ously reviewed airfield data, the situation withenemy forces, and aircraft self-protection sys-tems to help contain risk. “By mission and bydestination we make preparations for what theyneed” for self defense, said Brig. Gen. MarkZamzow.11

“Mobility operations have allowed coalitionforces to project power halfway across the globeand sustain our military and support personnel,”said Lt. Gen. Walter Buchanan III. “They are theunsung heroes in the fight.”12

As of Jan. 14, 2005, strategic air mobilityforces had flown a total of 37,154 missions insupport of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.Military and Civilian Reserve Air Fleet trans-ports moved 2,076,652 passengers. By AirForce calculation, this was the third largest air-lift ever, after the Berlin Airlift of 1948-49 andthat of Operation Desert Shield/Desert Stormin 1990-91.13

The demand for mobility muscle never goesaway, in peace or war. Air Mobility Commandput a Tanker and Air l i f t Contro l E lement(TALCE) in Thailand to help coordinate reliefflights after the Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami. Di-rected by the TALCE crew, airlifters flew 83strategic missions from Dec. 29 to Jan. 25,2005, moving 1721 passengers and 2,886short tons of supplies.14

“We could not do what we do in the UnitedStates military and as a nation without our greatairlifters,” said CMSAF Gerald Murray. “Our air-lift is what makes us a global power.”15

Strategic Air Mobility Forces

4. Secretary James Roche,interview, July 1, 2003.

5. USCENTAF, “OperationIraqi Freedom: By theNumbers,” April 30, 2003.

6. MSgt Chuck Roberts, “C-130 crews keep the suppliescoming,” Air Force News,April 16, 2003.

7. Harry Levins,“Transportation Command’sMission Tops Total From ’91War,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 10, 2003.

8. MSgt. Chuck Roberts,“Operation Iraqi Freedom,”Airman, May 2003.

9. MSgt. Chuck Roberts,“Operation Iraqi Freedom,”Airman, May 2003.

10. John Tirpak, “The AirliftGap,” Air Force Magazine,October 2004.

11. Brig. Gen. Mark Zamzow,interview, Dec. 23, 2004.

12. Maj. David Honchul,“Airpower Critical to OEF’sFirst 1,000 Days,” ACC NewsService, July 23, 2004.

13.Air Mobility CommandFact Sheet, Jan. 14, 2005.

14. AMC Fact Sheet, Jan. 25,2005.

15. TSgt. Carrie Bernard,“CMSAF: Our Airlift is whatmakes us a global power,”62nd Airlift Wing PublicAffairs, Jan. 19, 2005.

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every CAP list, but the nearest Air Force bases(such as Eglin AFB, Fla., or Shaw AFB, S.C.)were far away. A forward deployment to Dob-bins ARB, Ga., eased the situation.67

The War of 9/11 was taking a double toll onair assets—at home and abroad. Tanker pilotswere pulling duty both for Noble Eagle and forEnduring Freedom. Some pilots in the 319th AirRefueling Wing at Grand Forks AFB, N.D.,racked up 150 hours in just 25 days during thatbusy fall. Normally, it would have taken them sixmonths to accumulate the hours.68

NATO AWACS deployed to the US for the firsttime in October 2001, but, even still, the com-bination of Operation Noble Eagle and Opera-tion Enduring Freedom imposed a heavy bur-den. “We lost about 80 percent of our continu-

ation training,” said retired Brig. Gen. BenRobinson, who commanded the AWACS 552ndWing.69 Fighter forces in the active, Guard, andReserve components also felt the strain. “It’staking a toll on the aircraft in that it’s really build-ing up the flying hours on them—much moreso than we would have done under normal con-ditions,” Lt. Gen. Michael Zettler, deputy chiefof staff for installations and logistics, said inJanuary 2002.70 “The troops are flying CAP af-ter CAP because right now the national leader-ship is asking us to do that,” Gen. Hal M.Hornburg, the commander of Air Combat Com-mand, said in mid-February 2002.71 “But ourreadiness is suffering because what these folksare being asked to do doesn’t prepare themfor what we may ask them to do tomorrow orthe day after tomorrow.”

Permanent CommitmentThere was no doubt that Noble Eagle was part

of a permanent shift in national defense strat-egy. No more would the country’s critical loca-tions be left unguarded. The pilots flying theCAP missions were ready to do whatever it tookto prevent another Sept. 11. Col. Mike Cosby,commander of the New Jersey ANG’s 177thFighter Wing, Atlantic City Arpt., N.J., said: “Ican assure you, every one of them would ex-ecute that decision without question. Would theyhave nightmares about it? Of course theywould.”72 Costs in money, manpower, and air-craft fatigue were beginning to add up. Accord-ing to one estimate, the nonstop CAPs cost asmuch as $200 million per month.73 Officials es-timated that more than 13,000 men and women

participated in ONE activities on a day-to-daybasis.74 In the War of 9/11, there was no end insight to the need to increase air defense capa-bilities. However, it was time to find a sustain-able strategy for the long haul.

The sorties for Noble Eagle declined afterpolicy decisions in April 2002 returned the re-sponse posture to a steady-state level. Linkedinterior radar coverage and communications,graduated response levels, and a better listingof critical assets made it possible for NobleEagle to decelerate.

Under the new plan, the ONE focus becamecritical national sites such as nuclear powerplants and major cities. Instead of flying ran-dom CAPs as was the case in the fall of 2001,the Air Force dealt with these sites as a whole.Five different alert levels allowed the force to

67. Task Force EnduringLook interview with Brig.Gen. Larry Arnold.

68. David Castellon,“Homeland Defense, WarStress KC-135 Wings,” AirForce Times, March 25,2002.

69. Bruce Rolfsen, “Ready orNot,” Air Force Times, March4, 2002

70. Adam Hebert, “DODWeighs Air Defense Optionsas Patrols BecomeUnsupportable,” Inside theAir Force, Jan. 25, 2002.

71.Rolfsen, “Ready or Not,”Air Force Times, March 4,2002.

72. Linda Kozaryn, “AirGuard Fighters Protect U.S.Skies,” American ForcesPress Service, Feb. 21, 2002.

73. Hebert, “Noble EagleWithout End,” Air ForceMagazine, February 2005.

74. Gen. Ed Eberhart, SenateArmed Services Committeetestimony, March 11, 2002.

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A North Dakota AirNational Guard F-16and an active duty F-15from Langley AFB,Va., fly CAP over theWashington, D.C.,area.

An Air Force ReserveCommand KC-135Efrom Beale AFB, Calif.,gets ready to refueltwo California AirNational Guard F-16sfrom Fresno during anOperation Noble Eaglemission over the SanFrancisco area.

adjust to varied threats. For example, aircraft onground alert could be positioned to reach criti-cal asset sites in 20 minutes. Under the newNoble Eagle strategy, there was more flexibilityto put more CAPs in place and reposition fighter,tanker, and airborne control assets. This was thenew, steady-state phase of air sovereignty.

In May 2002, the number of fighter sortiesaveraged fewer than 100 per month for each ofthree sectors. Tanker sorties dropped, too. Aspike in the July-August 2002 period brieflybrought the busy Northeast Air Defense Sector’stotal fighter sorties to just under 200 per month.However, this was still far below the levels of 550-750 per month for NEADS in the fall of 2001.“The fighter wings have returned to a normal

training cycle,” Col. David Rhodes at Air Com-bat Command’s new Homeland Security Divi-sion said in July 2002.75

Still, there was a heavy impact on taskedunits. A GAO report released in August 2003found that Air Force fighter units performing do-mestic combat air patrols were “inhibited fromexecuting the full range of difficult tactical ma-neuvers with the frequency that the Air Forcerequires.”76 GAO said that some fell short ofmeeting training standards in the previous year.

Since then, NORAD has refined its proceduresfor air defense, and Noble Eagle has become apermanent commitment for airmen. NORAD be-gan working with the new US Northern Commandthat stood up on Oct. 1, 2002, with USAF Gen.

75. Bruce Rolfsen, “FighterWings Returning to Pre-Sept. 11 Readiness,” AirForce Times, July 29, 2002.

76. Elizabeth Rees, “GAO:Domestic Air Patrol MissionErodes USAF Training andReadiness,” Inside the AirForce, Aug. 15, 2003.

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Massachusetts AirNational Guard F-15sreturn to their homestation at Otis ANGB,Mass., after a NobleEagle sortie. U

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Ralph E. Eberhart as its first commander. The airsovereignty mission of NORAD fell under North-ern Command’s wider mission of homeland de-fense, which includes protection of waterwaysand military assistance for civil response in theevent of disaster. Formalizing the relationshipsstrengthened homeland security.

Flexible response levels were working. “Wehave options such as increasing our fighterpresence, both alert and airborne around thenation; layering our air defenses with bothground and air assets; and deploying otherpeople and assets as directed by the Presidentor Secretary of Defense to support lead federalagencies,” said a NORAD statement.77

By March 2003, the airmen of Noble Eagle hadlogged more than 27,000 sorties. By July 22,2004, that total number had climbed to 35,000sorties.78 At the end of 2004 it reached 38,800,with a total of 1,800 scrambles since 9/11, ac-cording to MSgt. John Tomasi of NORAD.79

Air sovereignty has also been recognized asa mission dominated by the Air National Guard.The posture provides for 18 full-time air defensesites—17 ANG and one active duty—up fromseven sites before Sept. 11, 2001, noted a re-programming document that shifted funds in2004. These sites are to be staffed with dedi-cated aircraft and personnel, allowing ANG toassume the air sovereignty mission and pro-vide a steady state alert posture with fullyequipped squadrons.80

America will never be vulnerable to attack inthe same way it was on Sept. 11, 2001. Improv-ing air sovereignty is a clear step forward. Adm.Timothy Keating, who became commander ofNORAD and NORTHCOM in November 2004,told NORAD and NORTHCOM personnel:“You’ve built a solid base for integrated home-land defense, and our nations are well-posi-t ioned to face chal lenging and evolvingthreats.”81

77. NORAD statement onrelease of 9/11 CommissionReport, July 22, 2004.

78. NORAD statement.

79. MSgt. John Tomasi,NORAD public affairs, Jan. 6,2005.

80. Cynthia di Pasquale, “AirSovereignty Alert becomespermanent Guard Mission,”Inside the Air Force, July 16,2004.

81. Adm. Timothy Keating,NORAD change of commandremarks, Nov. 3, 2004.

21

82. Michael Gordon, “CheneySays Next Goal in US War onTerror is to Block Access toArms,” New York Times,March 16, 2002.

83. Gordon, “UN InspectorsPrepare for Iraq,” New YorkTimes, April 8, 2002.

84. Bob Drogin and MarkMazzetti, “Only Hussein HadFull Picture,” Los AngelesTimes, Oct. 7, 2004.

level of operational risk in order to assure stra-tegic gains depended directly on the ability ofair and space power to make good on OIF nomatter when and how it started.

Operation Iraqi Freedom took the use of mod-ern air and space power to a new level of pre-cision, intensity, and effectiveness. This was thebiggest single application of air and spacepower yet in the War of 9/11, and it came inthree waves: the prewar destruction of Iraq’sintegrated air defense system; the major joint-force combat operation, which unfolded fromMarch through early May 2003; and postwarstability operations, which have been going onever since.

Southern FocusIn March 2003, just before the start of major

combat operations in Iraq, the world press wasawash with speculation and learned commen-tary about whether the war would feature a hugeopening air campaign, à la Desert Storm in1991. However, the real strategic issue waslargely misunderstood, and the point of all ofthe speculation was by that time almost moot.

It is true that, among CENTCOM planners,there was a spirited debate about the size,shape, and duration of any air operations thatcould be used in advance of a ground thrustinto Iraq. What was more noteworthy, however,was this: Coalition airmen had been in actionagainst Iraqi targets since mid-2002. The ob-jective was to carve up Iraqi air defenses, un-der strict rules of engagement, and ensure thekind of air dominance needed to begin a majorjoint campaign on short notice.

With the Afghan campaign winding down andorder returning to domestic air defense opera-tions, the Bush Administration shifted its focusto another menace: Dictator Saddam Husseinof Iraq. In March 2002, during the last days ofAnaconda, Vice President Dick Cheney said:“Our next objective is to prevent terrorists, andregimes that sponsor terror, from threateningAmerica or our friends and allies with weaponsof mass destruction.”82 No one doubted that hewas referring to Saddam, a ruthless tyrant withnuclear ambitions.

It had been almost three years since Saddamhad thrown out the last United Nations inspec-tors sent to Iraq after Desert Storm with the mis-sion to find and eliminate Iraqi WMD programs.The post-9/11 world wondered what sort of ar-senal Saddam had left and whether any of hisformerly large research programs were still ac-tive. The truth may never be known. What wasmost relevant by the spring of 2002 was that un-certainty about Iraq was mounting, and that, toBush, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, andothers, the uncertainty was intolerable. “I madeup my mind that Saddam Hussein needs to go,”Bush told a television interviewer.83

Saddam appeared genuinely unaware of hisperil. He “had not realized the nature of theground shift in the international community,” saidCharles Duelfer, head of the CIA’s Iraq SurveyGroup.84 However, the new American determina-tion to unseat Saddam and change the regimein Iraq did not add up to clear military plans. Itwould take 11 more months, with many last-minute adjustments, before Operation Iraqi Free-dom began. Having the freedom to accept that

Operation Iraqi Freedom

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Southern Focushelped lay thefoundation forcoalition airdominance duringOperation IraqiFreedom. At left, twoF-15E Strike Eaglesfly over the Iraqidesert, ready to strikeIraqi air defenseelements.

22

85. Gen. John Jumper,interview, July 23, 2003.

86. Jumper, July 23, 2003.

87. Rear Adm. James Robb,interview, Aug. 30, 2004.

88. Ret. Gen. TommyFranks, American Soldier, p.388.

89. “Leaflets Warn Iraq Notto Target Allied Jets,”Washington Post, Oct. 4,2002.

90. John Tirpak, “Legacy ofthe Air Blockades,” Air ForceMagazine, February 2003.

91. Robb, interview, Aug.30, 2004.

things,” including reconnaissance and surveil-lance.87 “In other words,” he said, “we updated allthe targets. Aircrews knew southern Iraq very wellas a result of Operation Southern Focus.” Franksdeclared to members of the National SecurityCouncil in August 2002: “We want to continue touse response options to degrade the Iraqi inte-grated air defense system. If it ever comes to war,we’ll want their IADS as weak as possible.”88

The Iraqis employed tricks like keeping track-ing radars out of attack range but moving mis-sile batteries up to firing positions. “They’ve beendoing this for quite a long time, and they’ve got-ten pretty smart at it,” said Maj. Gen. Walter E.Buchanan III, the Southern Watch commander.89

Southern Focus proved to be a success.CENTCOM calculated that Iraq fired at the coa-lition aircraft nearly 500 times in 2002 and drewroughly 90 retaliatory attacks.90 “The air threathad been essentially neutered throughout, upto the 33rd [parallel], probably higher than that,”Robb claimed.91 That gave CENTCOM “a pretty

Job one—air superiority—was well in hand.For more than a decade, coalition airmen hadenforced Operation Northern Watch and Opera-tion Southern Watch “no-fly zones”—air exclu-sion zones—in Iraq’s north and south. In early2002, Moseley saw the need to press harderagainst Iraq’s air defenses. So, too, did Jumper,who said, “I had been bugging them in the Tank[the name for the secure Pentagon meeting roomused by the Joint Chiefs of Staff] ‘Now is the timeto start breaking these guys down. We ought tobe taking some bold steps.’ ”85

In June 2002, Franks approved the initiativeand launched the actual operation, code-namedSouthern Focus. “That really opened the door,”Jumper recalled. With the new guidance, the no-fly zone fighters “were able to aggressively goafter command and control and the surface-to-air-missile sites that had been there for a longtime” and “just take those out of the fight.”86

CENTCOM’s Robb said that the CAOC staff“took Southern Watch and tuned it to do several

The Gulf Region

Prince Sultan AB

● Shaikh Isa AB

Incirlik AB

● Thumrait AB

● Masirah AB

● Seeb Airport

● Tehran

●

Saudi Arabia

Iraq

Turkey

Iran

Afghanistan

Yemen

Oman

Syria

UAE

Qatar

Pakistan

al Udeid AB●

Bahrain

Kuwait

● Riyadh

● Baghdad

Damascus ● Tikrit

● Mosul● Kirkuk● Bashur Airfield

●

●

Tigris River

EuphratesRiver

Jordan

Arabian Sea

Mediterranean Sea

Red Sea

Persian Gulf

Ankara●

Amman●

Gulf of Oman

Israel

Lebanon

23

Army Gen. TommyFranks, head of USCentral Command,meets Brig. Gen. RickRosborg, commanderof the 379th AirExpeditionary Wing,at a base inSouthwest Asia.

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92. Col. Gary Crowder, DODbriefing, March 20, 2003.

93. Gen. John Jumperremarks to National SpaceSymposium, April 10, 2003.

94. Ret. Gen. Merrill McPeak,“Leave the Flying to Us,”Washington Post, June 5,2003.

good start on the air part of it [the overall inva-sion]” well before March 2003.

According to the Air Force, coalition aircrewsdropped 606 bombs on 391 targets duringSouthern Focus. At the peak of Iraqi attacks,Saddam’s forces were firing more than a dozenmissiles and rockets per day at coalition forces.On one day, Iraq fired 15 SAMs. The pace ofcoalition responses picked up in the final threeweeks before the start of major combat opera-tions. During that time, coalition pilots in the no-fly zones flew 4,000 strike and support sorties.The flights not only cut down Iraqi radars, airdefense guns, and fiber-optic links, but alsoenabled the coalition to map out the fiber-opticnetworks and wiring that provided the Iraqis cen-tralized command and control. Surveillance air-craft, for example, carefully noted evidence ofconstruction or repair of the air defense network.

Just hours before the declared start of the waron March 20, 2003, Col. Gary L. Crowder, chiefof Air Combat Command’s strategy, concepts,and doctrine division, estimated that Saddamhad, by that date, effectively ceded “about two-thirds” of his airspace to coalition forces.92

Jumper said: “We actually flew about 4,000 sor-ties against the integrated air defense systemin Iraq and against surface-to-air missiles andtheir command and control.”93 As Jumper drylyadded, “By the time we got to March, we thinkthat they were pretty much out of business.”

Southern Focus was a critical factor in thesubsequent success of the coalition ground ef-fort. Retired Gen. Merrill A. McPeak, who wasUSAF Chief of Staff during Desert Storm, wasone who saw the significance of “the war beforethe war,” as many called it. “It’s incorrect to saythat, unlike Desert Storm 12 years before, therewas no independent air campaign in advance

of the jump off of our ground forces from Ku-wait,” he said some weeks after US forces en-tered Baghdad.94 “Because of this aerial prepa-ration, Iraq’s air defenses stayed mostly silent,and our aircraft were able to begin reducingopposing ground forces immediately.”

War CouncilsThe stepped-up air activity during 2002 and

early 2003 put the CAOC on a wartime footingfor the enormous joint and combined militaryeffort that was about to be hurled at Iraq.

The new war with Iraq—often called “GulfWar II”—pitted a different coalition against achanged enemy. Republican Guard divisionsdefending Baghdad, though not as well-equipped or trained as they had been in the1991 war, were still the strong point of the con-ventional force. More importantly, Saddam hadassembled irregular fighters in Iraq’s major cit-ies to quell popular uprisings and enforce hispersonal control. These irregulars offereddeadly surprises both in major combat opera-tions and afterward.

Air and space power’s first contribution to thefight lay in underwriting the flexibility of the planfor how—and when—to actually start theground invasion.

Moseley, the combined forces air componentcommander (CFACC), aggressively pursued in-ternal process changes to better position theair component for the coming battle. He wanteda CAOC with better joint service representation,smooth channels for SOF coordination, and adetailed plan for the worst-case scenario: per-petual urban close air support operations inBaghdad. At the same time, he began prepa-rations for a second CAOC in another state inthe region.

24

95. Vice Adm. David Nichols,interview, Oct. 13, 2004.

96. DOD background briefingon targeting, March 5, 2003.

Quiet increases in manning levels throughoutthe region soon brought the CAOC’s key ele-ments to combat status. The majority of all se-nior positions were double-manned due to therequirements of 24-hour operations. Some weretriple-manned. Joint service staffing increased.In the most important staffing decision, Moseleybrought back his OEF Navy deputy, Capt. DavidC. Nichols, for a return engagement. The finalresult was thorough integration. One example:Each of the three CAOC directors—two USAFbrigadier generals and one RAF air commo-dore—had two Navy captains as deputies.

Another major, post-Afghanistan change atthe CAOC was a reform of the time-sensitive tar-get process. “We had a TST process where de-cisions were made in the joint fires coordinationcenter, which was really the CAOC,” saidNichols.95 He added, “None of the ROE stuff,none of the decision-making on time-critical or

time-sensitive targets was an issue in OIF.” Po-litically sensitive TSTs such as leadership tar-gets, terrorist sites, and suspected WMD sitesgot their own category. As a CENTCOM spokes-man explained, “the President, Secretary [of De-fense], and General Franks have a very goodagreement [that] only those key targets have tobe elevated” and for other targets.96 “We allowthe battlefield commanders to make those de-cisions” with pre-established rules, he said.

Having on hand a flexible, fine-tuned supply ofairpower was essential to the war effort, not leastbecause the shape of OIF was hard to determineat that stage. The preparation of the coalition ac-tion was nothing like the response to Iraq’s 1990invasion of Kuwait; for one thing, there had notyet been a firm political decision to go to war. Plan-ners had to be prepared for many options.

Five main factors shaped and channeled thejoint planning effort.

● al Jaber AB

Iraq

● al Salem AB

Kuwait

● Baghdad

● Tikrit

● Mosul

● Kirkuk

● Bashur Airfield

Tigris River

Euphrates River

Saudi Arabia

Iran

Syria

Jordan● H 3

● H 2

● Kuwait City

●

Tallil Airfield ●

Nasiriyah

●Basra

Umm Qasr

al Faw

●●

Najaf ●

Karbala ● ●al Kut

EuphratesRiver

Turkey

Iraq in Detail

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97. Adm. Timothy Keating,interview, Oct. 14, 2004.

98. Gen. Michael Moseley,interview, July 24, 2003.

99. Col. Duane Jones, TaskForce Enduring Lookinterview, June 2003.

100. Jones, TFEL interview,June 2003.

First, as with the defeat of the Taliban in OEF,any operation in Iraq would have to accomplishregime change. Saddam had to go.

Second, WMD was regarded as a major con-cern. Senior CENTCOM officials fully expectedSaddam to use what he had when his back wasto the wall.

Third, Franks wanted to encircle Iraq with amulti-front war, moving ground forces rapidlyfrom the north, west, and south.

Fourth, the start date would be uncertain. Withthe UN engaged in a debate over the need for thewar, the Bush Administration was not ready to fullycommit itself. That hesitancy compelledCENTCOM to develop a sheaf of plans coveringboth a rapid start to the war, potentially kicked offby Iraq itself, and a generated start, which wouldpermit more of a phased flow of coalition forces.

Fifth, it would be a joint operation. In the wakeof Anaconda, said Keating, who led OIF mari-time forces, Franks was “quite serious about ourintegration.”97 He added, “He would haveweeded us out individually had we not been will-ing disciples.”

Taken together, uncertainties about timing,regional bases and force levels meant a jointcampaign in Iraq was going to depend heavilyon air and space power to ensure victory under

any conditions. Moseley used 2002 to rehearseaspects of the war, from the urban CAS plansto the Scud suppression missions slated for thewestern deserts. Moseley quoted the wisdomof the legendary Col. “Moody” Suter, a founderof Red Flag: “You’re only surprised by [what]you don’t think about.”98

Backing up the combat force was the Air Forcemobility machine. A logistics sustainability assess-ment summit convened in August 2002 at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, worked through the issuesof how to sustain a war with Iraq, with fewer basesavailable than in 1991. “We met there for a week,”said Col. Duane Jones, head of CENTAF logistics(A-4).99 “CENTAF told the rest of the Air Force lo-gistics community what we thought the plan wasand how we thought we could execute it.”

The chain began back in the United States,where the mobility forces were called upon toprovide global reach. Active, Guard, and Re-serve forces at dozens of bases did their partsto form the air bridges to transport people, ma-teriel ,and aircraft to the theater. Westover ARB,Mass., was one such base. “Westover acts asan air bridge,” said Lt. Col. John Metz, chief ofthe war and mobilizations plans branch at AirForce Reserve Command headquarters.100 “Af-ter aircraft leave the base, the air bridge con-

Total Coalition Aircraft

900

800

700

600

500

400

300

200

100

0

863

408372

138

20

Num

ber

of A

ircr

aft

The air armada in theGulf comprised 1,801combat and supportaircraft.

(Charts in this study arebased on US Central AirForce’s “Operation IraqiFreedom—By theNumbers,” publishedApril 30, 2003.)

Fighter Bomber SOF ISR C2 Airlift Tanker Other TotalUSAF 293 51 131 60 22 111 182 13 863Navy 232 0 0 29 20 5 52 70 408USMC 130 0 0 0 0 0 22 220 372Army* 0 0 0 18 0 0 0 2 20Allies 80 0 14 11 4 10 12 7 138

*Does not include helicopters.

USAF Navy USMC Army* Allies

26

101. Col. Duane Jones, TaskForce Enduring Lookinterview, June 2003.

102. Vice Adm. DavidNichols, interview, Oct. 13,2004.

103. Nichols, Oct. 13, 2004.

104. President Bush,Address to the Nation, WhiteHouse transcript, March 17,2003.

105.Nichols, briefing, Oct.15, 2004.

106. Nichols, interview, Oct.13, 2004.

107. DOD press conference,March 21, 2003.

tinues basically as a group of tankers or ‘flyinggas stations’ in the Atlantic.” There were newallies in Europe, too, reflecting NATO’s expan-sion. The 40th Expeditionary Group set up anair refueling operation for KC-10s at CampSarafovo, Bulgaria.

Harder to handle was the base availability situ-ation near Iraq, which continued to shift up tothe last minute. Three weeks before the start ofthe campaign, there were still several locations“that we knew we needed and that we weren’tat,” said Jones of CENTAF.101 Relying on experi-ence from Afghanistan, CENTAF logistics opera-tions laid plans to move some supplies fromseaports by ground transportation.

An outline for major combat operations wasin place by January 2003. During that month,service Chiefs reviewed the plans in Washing-ton. Commanders at wing and squadron levelmet to “chair fly” the air campaign. Carriers in-chopping to CENTCOM flew key staff ashore forbriefings from 5th Fleet. Liaison officers set upshop. For example, USAF Maj. Gen. Daniel P.Leaf landed at the Combined Forces Land Com-ponent Commander headquarters as Moseley’spersonal envoy.

The January plan took advantage of the workdone by airmen in Southern Focus. It called forthe air campaign phase to last for 16 days, tobe followed by 135 days of major combat op-erations to seize Baghdad. Privately, Frankshoped for something even more dramatic.

February saw collapse of the final attemptsto work out a compromise with Iraq through theUnited Nations. By early March, war was immi-nent. On March 14, Franks held a commanders’huddle at his forward headquarters to make lastminute changes in the war plan. He now optedfor a short, sharp opening air war, lasting not forweeks or even many days. The air component

and SOF units were to attack for 96 hours, withfull ground operations to begin after that.

“The decision was made,” said Nichols,Moseley’s deputy.102 Franks told his commandersthat, “on D-day and D+1, we’re going to expandthe no-fly zone essentially into northwestern Iraq,”said Nichols.103 That would start the counter-Scudfight out west with SOF supporting the air com-ponent. D+2 was to be “A-day,” with a huge batchof strategic targets to be struck by aircraft andTLAMs. Twelve hours later the ground war wouldstart. The compression of the plan was actually avote of confidence in what the air component hadalready done to reduce Iraq’s air defenses—andwhat it could do to Iraq’s ground army.

Major Combat OperationsOn March 17, 2003, Bush issued an ultima-

tum. “Saddam Hussein and his sons must leaveIraq within 48 hours,” he said.104 “Their refusalto do so will result in military conflict, com-menced at a time of our choosing.”

The air component was already at a combattempo. After March 7, the air component aver-aged more than 1,300 sorties per day through thebeginning of the war on March 20 [local Baghdadtime.]105 It was a “Herculean effort to plan and man-age execution of this many sorties as we wereheaded into the war,” said Nichols.106 The cover-age made it possible to insert SOF teams in thenorth, west, and south and carry out other shap-ing actions. “Early battlefield preparations” onMarch 19 included airstrikes on radars in west-ern Iraq and near Basra in southern Iraq. Attacksalso neutralized artillery in the Al Faw peninsulanortheast of Kuwait,” said Myers.107

Then CENTCOM began to receive reports ofdestruction of Iraqi oil wells. It was imagery ofburning wells that convinced Franks to kick offthe war early. “We saw an opportunity to achieve

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USAF’s KC-135tankers were thebackbone of the airoperation. Shown atright are sevencoalition fighterstaking turns for aerialrefueling from an AirMobility CommandKC-135R. At top (fromleft) are an F-15E,South Carolina ANGF-16CJ, and RAF GR4Tornado. Tanking is asecond F-15E. Atbottom, just below theF-15E is an F-117. Nextin line is an F-16CJand finally an RAAFF/A-18 Hornet.

27

108. USCENTCOM pressconference, March 30, 2003.

109. Gen. Michael Moseley,interview, July 24, 2003.

110. Task Force EnduringLook, Operation IraqiFreedom: Volume Two,Decisive Combat Operations,Chapter Two, “Air Warfare,”2003.

111. Vice Adm. DavidNichols, interview, Oct. 13,2004.

one of our operational objectives, which was toprevent the destruction of a big chunk of the Iraqipeople’s future wealth,” he said.108 A handful ofIraqi missile launches reaffirmed the need to act.

It was the kind of decision that could only bemade with full confidence in the air component’sability to counter anything the Iraqis might throwat the coalition. As Moseley said, the “land com-ponent was concerned about having itself inthose cantonment areas [in Kuwait] just parkingand just receiving fire. I agreed. I told Dave [Lt.Gen. David McKiernan, the land force com-mander], ‘Let’s get you out of there.’ ”109 The ArmyV Corps, First Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF),and British forces bound for Basra moved steadilyacross the line of departure in Kuwait and intoIraq just before midnight local time on March 20,2003. The air component shuffled targets to ac-count for the early advance of ground forces andre-roled some scheduled sorties, changing themto close air support missions.

Soon, the air component was engaged in fiveair wars, the prosecution of which demonstratedtwo facts about air and space power. The firstwas its ability to harmonize five distinct opera-tions to achieve unified effects. Second was theeffectiveness of air attack against ground tar-gets, whether in deep shaping operations or inclose air support missions.

Three of the five air wars had the air compo-nent in the lead. These were not independentoperations; they were all orchestrated to carryout Franks’ objectives. However, they were ex-ecuted primarily by the air component (often in-cluding TLAM strikes launched from ships andsubmarines at sea.) Airpower took the lead in:

The air dominance fight—a continuation of theprewar activity, with emphasis on airfield inter-diction. With forces moving all over Iraq, this was

no time to risk even minimal activity by the Iraqiair force. Counter-air strikes accounted for 40percent of air targets over the first two days buttapered to 28 percent in the period March 21-24 and down to 15 percent by March 25, anaverage that held for the rest of OIF.110

The west fight—in which SOF forces sup-ported the air component’s killbox-by-killboxcontrol of prime Scud launch territory. As DeputyCFACC Nichols put it, this was a “Presidentialtasking.”111

The strategic attack—in which coalition airforces took on preassigned targets selected todegrade Iraqi military command and control andotherwise weaken the regime. Opening attacksstruck at 59 separate national headquarters,command and control centers, and VIP resi-dences. Regime security and support included104 targets such as intelligence services, se-curity facilities, Special Republican Guards fa-cilities, Ba’ath Party Headquarters, and knownFedayeen facilities. The aim was to jolt com-mand and control but also to weaken the orga-nizations most responsible for imposing terroron the Iraqi people. The air component attacked112 communications targets consisting of cableand fiber optic relays, repeater stations, ex-changes, microwave sites, some television andradio transmitters, antennae, and more. Infra-structure such as electric power and oil indus-try targets were not on the target list.

The other two air wars supported counterlandoperations by forces of the US Army and theUS Marine Corps.

The first of these is frequently called the northfight. Of the five air wars, the north fight hadperhaps the most twists and turns at the start.Plans had called for the introduction of the USArmy’s 4th Infantry Division into the northern

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The air boss, USAF Lt.Gen. (now Gen.) T.Michael Moseley,arranged “rehearsals”of missions such asurban close airsupport and Scudhunts. Heeding thelessons ofAfghanistan, heworked closely withground forcesthroughout majorcombat operations inIraq.

28

112. Thomas Ricks, “MyersDepicts War on Two Fronts,”Washington Post, March 5,2003.

113. Vice Adm. DavidNichols, interview, Oct. 13,2004.

114. Rear Adm. JohnStufflebeem, interview, Aug.4, 2004.

115. USCENTCOM pressconference, April 2, 2003.

116. MSgt. Scott Elliott, “C-17Crews Describe ParatroopDrop,” Air Force News,March 28, 2003.

117. Elliott, “C-17 CrewsDescribe Paratroop Drop.”

118. Louis A. Arana-Barradas, “Bashur or Bust,”Airman Magazine, July 2003.

part of Iraq, through Turkey. Then Turkey beganto waffle on whether it would permit passage tothe US forces. “In any case, there will be a north-ern option, with or without Turkey,” Myers insistedon March 5.112

Ultimately Turkey did not permit ground troopsto open up a northern front, but Franks stillwanted action in the north to distract Iraq’s regu-lar Army and Republican Guards stationed there.“That left us with about a thousand SOF troopsin the north, supported by two carrier air wings,to fix 11 Iraqi divisions,” said Nichols.113

Like Afghanistan, the task was to keep strik-ing power on call at the right times and get it tothe right places.

In the end “we only did about five days’ worthof servicing the master attack plan and just hit-ting targets and just very quickly shifted to sup-porting these teams on the ground,” saidStufflebeem, who was now in command of theUSS Truman battle group.114 From there on, thetask involved delivery of “directed fires morethan traditional close air support,” he said.

On March 26, the north fight expanded. Fif-teen Air Force C-17s departing from Aviano AB,Italy, dropped Army paratroopers and theirequipment on a soggy, 7,000-foot runway atBashur in Kurdish-held northern Iraq. The for-mation of airlifters spread out over 100 miles tospace out each aircraft’s time over the dropzone. The airdrop was the largest since Opera-

tion Just Cause in Panama in 1989, and it wasintended “to provide additional combat powerto the special operations forces that had alreadyinserted themselves into Kurdish-held territory,”said Air Force Maj. Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr.115

Heavy equipment dropped first. Then camethe troops. “It was quite a feeling to see all thatstuff exit the aircraft then close the doors andescape out of there,” recalled MSgt. ChrisDockery, a C-17 loadmaster.116

“Once you get into the area, people really getfocused,” said C-17 pilot Col. Bob Allardice,who led the first night’s drops.117 “When thedoors open, you can hear the roar of the troops.There are 100 airborne troops, standing up,stomping and yelling, getting psyched up. Thenthey run out of the back of the jet.”

Parachuting in with the 173rd Airborne Bri-gade were airmen of the 86th Contingency Re-sponse Group from Ramstein AB, Germany.Their mission: get the airfield up and runningas soon as possible. “There was no other wayto get Air Force boots and eyes on the groundto assess the situation and prepare to receiveaircraft, said Maj. Erik Rundquist, security forcescommander for the group.118

The next day, more C-17s started ferrying inadditional members of the 2,000-man brigadealong with Bradley Fighting Vehicles, ammuni-tion, and other equipment and supplies. Withthe 173rd on the ground, the way was clear for

Fighter Bomber SOF Total

USAF 293 51 131 475

Navy 232 0 0 232

USMC 130 0 0 130

Army* 0 0 0 0

Allies 80 0 14 94

ISR C2 Airlift Tanker Other Total

USAF 60 22 111 182 13 388

Navy 29 20 5 52 70 176

USMC 0 0 0 22 220 242

Army 18 0 0 0 2 20

Allies 11 4 10 12 7 44

Combat Aircraft

USAF(51.0%)

USMC (14.0%)

Allies (10.1%)

Navy(24.9%)

*Does not include helicopters.

Support Aircraft

USAF(44.6%)

Navy(20.2%)

USMC(27.8%)

Allies (5.1%)Army (2.3%)

In OIF, the Air Forceprovided 51 percentof the combataircraft. Most of thetanker, airlift, and ISRaircraft came fromUSAF units.

29

119. Navy Lt. Melanie Lynch,interview, July 22, 2004.

120. Navy Lt. GeoffreyBowman, interview, July 22,2004.

121. Center for ArmyLessons Learned, “On Point:The US Army in OperationIraqi Freedom,” May 26,2004.

122. Gen. Michael Moseley,interview, July 24, 2003.

a series of attacks beyond the Kurdish-controlledgreen line and toward Irbil, Kirkuk, and the Sunnistrongholds of Mosul and Tikrit.

Pilots worked a wide variety of targets undercontrol of the 173rd and SOF and coalition FACs.Assisting ground controllers was the No. 1 priorityand the biggest challenge. One F/A-18 pilot, NavyLt. Melanie Lynch, an Afghanistan veteran aboardthe carrier Roosevelt, said that “coordinating withthe ground FACs presented a challenge in thatyou wanted to do it right, you didn’t want to screwit up, you didn’t want to hurt any friendlies.”119

Those controllers tasked coalition airmen in thenorth fight to a variety of targets. “Anything fromtroops in the open to vehicles to even some build-ing,” said Navy Lt. Geoffrey Bowman, an F/A-18pilot aboard Harry S. Truman.120 Both precisionweapons and strafing were popular with theground controllers. “Probably 70 percent or so ofmy flights I came back without bullets,” Bowmansaid.

By the first week of April, coalition forces onthe northern front were picking away at a net-work of bunkers and Iraqi forces near Irbil. Thenon April 6 came a pitched battle at DebeckaRidge. A platoon of Iraqi T-55 tanks backed withtwo platoons of mechanized infantry and moretroops in trucks attacked straight up the road indaylight toward a concentration of SOF andPeshmerga, the Kurdish forces. SOF membersaimed Javelin antitank missiles at the T-55s. They“destroyed the Iraqi supporting weapons eitherwith the own mortars or by calling in CAS,” ac-cording to an official report.121

Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away, the aircomponent was engaged in the biggest of allthe air wars—the so-called south fight.

The V Corps and I MEF moved up from Ku-wait in phases. First came the rapid drivethrough southern Iraq. After nearly a week’spause due to a sandstorm and planned logis-

tics replenishment, both columns resumed at-tacks to defeat the remaining Republican Guardforces blocking the approaches to Baghdad.Then, beginning with the “thunder run” on April5, Army and Marine forces entered the city fromopposite sides to link up and complete theirswift conquest of the capital. Coalition forceswere in full possession of the city by April 9.

The strategy emphasized speed over every-thing else. “The mission here is get to Baghdadto demonstrate to the world and the neighbor-hood that he [Saddam] is incapable of defend-ing himself, and we will be in that capital city,”Moseley said of Franks’ intent.122 It took a mightyeffort from the air component to make the rapidfall of Baghdad possible.

The CAOC dedicated the lion’s share of strikesorties in OIF to counterland operations acrossIraq. Many sorties went deep to strike Republi-can Guards forces. Others responded to imme-diate tasking of ground controllers engaged infirefights. The effect was twofold. Airpower reg-istered devastating blows on Iraq’s best forcesas they attempted to hold or reposition aroundBaghdad. At the same time, the marines on theright, for example, used coalition airpower topin down Iraqi divisions on their eastern flankwithout delaying their “march up” to Baghdad.The air component also had to provide on-callairpower to counter irregular forces as well ascontinue the deep shaping operations. On their300-mile dash to Baghdad, US forces were notstopping to defeat Iraqi regular—or irregular—forces in detail.

The irregulars—the so-called “SaddamFedayeen”—proved more vigorous than ex-pected. To be sure, there were hints about therole irregular forces might play. For example,Saddam reacted to the December 1998 USairstrikes by strengthening internal control mea-sures and conducting “minor movements” of ir-

USAF (45%)

USMC (18%)

Navy (27%)

Allies (10%) Fighter Bomber Total Percent

USAF 8,828 505 9,333 45.0%

Navy 5,568 0 5,568 26.9%

USMC 3,794 0 3,794 18.3%

Army 0 0 0 0

Allies 2,038 0 2,038 9.8%

Total 20,228 505 20,733

Strike Sorties

The Air Forceprovided nearly halfthe fighter sorties andall the bomber sortiesin OIF.

30

123. Gen. Anthony Zinni,DOD press conference, Dec.21, 1998.

124. Gen. Tommy Franks,USA (Ret.), AmericanSoldier, p. 486.

125. Michael Gordon, “USArmy Starts Push onRepublican Guard,” NewYork Times, March 24, 2003.

126. Franks, AmericanSoldier, p. 499.

127. CAOC interviews,December 2004.

128. Center for ArmyLessons Learned, “On Point,the United States Army inOperation Iraqi Freedom,”May 26, 2004.

129. “On Point, ... ,” May 26,2004.

130. Franks, AmericanSoldier, p. 503.

131. USCENTCOM pressconference, March 28, 2003.

132. Lt. Gen. James Conway,I MEF commander, DODbriefing from Iraq, May 30,2003.

133. Marine Corps Maj. RichHilberer, interview, March 12,2004.

regular forces for counterinsurgency operations.There were “units dedicated to this,” said Ma-rine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, CENTCOM com-mander at the time.123

In 2003, CENTCOM put the total numbers of ir-regular forces at about 40,000. Little was knownabout their command and control structure. Frankssaid that, prior to OIF, “at no point had I thoughtthese forces would be moved into the south to fightas guerrillas.”124 Yet that was just what happened.“Thousands of fedayeen fighters, who wear blackuniforms or civilian clothes, are now in the south-ern zone, according to American estimates, andhave produced the largest American casualtiesso far,” noted a New York Times reporter.125

The SandstormThe air component was shaping the fight

ahead and helping to hold off irregular attacksin the rear when a massive sandstorm in theperiod March 25-26 put the entire force to amajor test. “I could taste the dust on the rim ofmy coffee cup,” said Franks of the afternoon ofMarch 25, 2003.126

The air component had the lead for deepshaping operations. Land forces had not closedwith the Republican Guards. They did not haveenough artillery with them to do the shaping, andattacks with Apache helicopters had failed mis-erably. Continuing the pressure ahead—andprotection over the lines of communication—wasvital. Fortunately, the CAOC had plenty of ad-vance notice of the storm’s effects from the so-phisticated work of combat weather teams. Infact, airmen turned the sandstorm period into a“JDAM-fest,” as one planner called it.127 Use oflaser guided bombs dipped while expenditureof Joint Direct Attack Munitions soared. Somesorties were cancelled due to weather but, byresorting to synthetic aperture radar for JDAM,

planners ensured the overall intensity did notdiminish. The level of effort for the air compo-nent was still on the upswing.

One appreciative unit was the 3rd Regimentof the 7th Cavalry, which began its mission tosweep around the town of Najaf from the southon the morning of March 25 and fought con-tinuously for 60 hours in the sandstorm’s “nega-tive illumination,” as one soldier called it.128 Theregiment had artillery backing, but later re-corded that “CAS had provided the lion’s shareof support, with 182 sorties” during theirbattle.129 “The bombardment that lasted from thenight of March 25 through the morning of March27 was one of the fiercest, and most effective,in the history of warfare,” Franks said.130

The land component was completing its op-erational pause and logistics replenishment asthe sandstorm cleared. Air strikes after thesandstorm “ramped up to about 1,000 sorties aday against those formations. They got nopause,” said Moseley in the July 2003 interview.Said a CENTCOM briefer on March 28, “Whatwe see in many formations of the RepublicanGuards is some effort to try to reposition inter-nally within their defenses.”131

Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, the IMEF commander, said, “While we were station-ary, we were, in fact, attacking with our air, takingmaximum advantage of intelligence, surveillance,and reconnaissance capabilities to determinewhat the enemy was that we faced.”132 Air sup-port was so steady that US marines used it tocontrol bypassed Iraqi units on their right flank.They did not pose a threat because the MEF hadkill boxes open all along its frontage and down onone side. “We didn’t want to have to go over thereand fight those guys, so we blew ‘em up with air-planes,” said Maj. Rich Hilberer.133

Airpower provided an efficient tool for stifling

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When a majorsandstorm hit, keyairborne and space-based sensors keptworking, and fightersand bombersmounted shatteringair attacks on asurprised RepublicanGuard.

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enemy maneuver and keeping marines on themarch. Iraq’s 10th Armored Division and theBaghdad Division of the Republican Guard gotnonstop attention from the Marine Corps air wingand other coalition assets. The Iraqis, as it turnedout, “were either dead, happy to remain station-ary and a long way from their vehicles, or theywould desert,” said Brig. Gen. John Kelly, as-sistant commander of the 1st Marine Division.134

Coordination was not perfect. Early problemscaused the Air Support Operations Center at VCorps to be overwhelmed by the number of sor-tie requests sent its way. In fact, more than 625sorties designated for V Corps were divertedelsewhere, mainly to the Marine Corps sector.Another slip came when V Corps placed its firesupport coordination line (FSCL) very far forwardto accommodate a shaping attack by Apachehelicopters on a Republican Guard unit. It wasa stark demonstration of failure—and a waste ofjoint airpower, with fixed-wing sorties blockedout. The “attack of the 11th Aviation on theMedina Division did not meet the objectives thatI had set for that attack,” said Army Lt. Gen. Wil-liam S. Wallace, the V Corps commander.135

USAF’s Leaf, with the land forces commander,said that the decision “cost us basically a fullnight of fixed target strikes inside the FSCL.”136

The Apache fiasco compelled the writers ofthe after-action report from V Corps’s lead unit,the 3rd Infantry Division, to recommend that theFSCL be placed closer in because the officersat V Corps “demonstrated their inability to man-age said battlespace” and “CFACC [the air boss]is better prepared to engage targets to effec-tively shape the battlefield versus V Corps useof Corps CAS.”137

Still, when land forces resumed their advance,it was evident that the air component had doneits job well. Despite concerns at CENTCOMabout how to track the effect of airstrikes, V

Corps forces advancing out of Karbala did in-deed find that airstrikes had “destroyed or se-verely degraded” most of the Republican Guardforces.138

The Medina Division of the Republican Guardprovided a dramatic case in point. Later analy-sis showed that 1,817 air attack sorties in the VCorps area against the Medina Division had de-stroyed the following:139

■ 191 of its 215 tanks■ 203 of its 401 artillery pieces■ 40 of its 41 air defense systemsAirpower had the same effect on the other

Republican Guard divisions. Marine Corps Gen.Peter Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefsof Staff, said on April 6, “Of the six RepublicanGuard divisions, which are their main fightingforce, two are assessed to be totally destroyed.The remaining four are assessed that about onehalf of their tanks, artillery, armored personnelcarriers have been destroyed.”140 JCS ChairmanMyers said the next day: “Republican Guard di-visions have only been able to conduct sporadicattacks on our forces. Of the 800-plus tanks theybegan with, all but a couple of dozen have beendestroyed or abandoned.”141

A postwar assessment only added to the evi-dence of a massive airpower victory. In the VCorps area, airpower had destroyed:142

■ 46 of 153 surface to surface missiles■ 424 of 843 artillery pieces■ 421 of 660 tanks■ 107 of 859 other armored vehicles■ 76 of 159 air defense artillery systems■ 1,144 of 2,000+ military vehiclesThe destruction of a full 64 percent of tanks

in Iraq’s prewar inventory was a record. It out-stripped airpower’s destruction of 26 percentof Serbian tanks in 1999 or the 41 percent ofIraqi tanks before the start of the ground war inDesert Storm.143

134. Brig. Gen. John F. Kelly,“Tikrit, South to Babylon”Marine Corps Gazette,February 2004.

135. Rowan Scarborough,“General Tells How CellPhone Foiled US Attack inIraq,” Washington Times,May 8, 2003.

136. Maj. Gen. Daniel P. Leaf,interview, June 27, 2003.

137. Third Infantry Division(Mechanized) After ActionReport, Operation IraqiFreedom, p. 108. Found atglobalsecurity.org.

138. Center for ArmyLessons Learned, “On Point,the United States Army inOperation Iraqi Freedom,”May 26, 2004.

139. Charles Kirkpatrick,“Joint Fires as They WereMeant to Be: V Corps and the4th Air Support OperationsGroup During Operation IraqiFreedom,” (Arlington, VA:The Institute of LandWarfare, AUSA, October2004), p. 10.

140. Marine Corps Gen.Peter Pace, NBC Meet thePress, April 6, 2003.

141. DOD press conference,April 7, 2003.

142. Kirkpatrick, p. 12.

143. Allied Force data is fromSACEUR press conference,Sept. 16, 1999. OperationDesert Storm data is fromDOD, “Conduct of thePersian Gulf War,”(Washington, DC: 1992), p.140.

Strikes by Category

(78.4%)

(9.0%)

(7.2%)

(4.2%) (1.2%)KI/CAS 15,592

Regime 1,799

Counterair 1,441

WMD 832

Fixed targets 234

Total 19,898

KI/CAS Regime Counterair WMD Fixed Targets

The air componentdevoted anoverwhelming amountof its effort—some 78percent—to supportof ground forces.These were called “killbox interdiction/closeair support,” or KI/CAS missions.

32

Counts of equipment destruction, alone, didnot provide an adequate measure of airpower’sbattle effects, however. The air attacks broke theRepublican Guard divisions as fighting forma-tions. The official Army report on this phase ofOIF concluded, “Evidence suggests that thehigh rate of desertion among Iraqi units can bedirectly attributed to strikes by fixed- and rotary-winged aircraft.”144 There was no better testimonyto the success of airpower in support of groundforces in the south fight.

For airmen, there was much to be gleanedfrom the new techniques of air and space poweron display in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

They saw that the power of the air componentshaped the joint campaign. Airpower had doneit before—at Normandy, in the Southwest Pacific,in Desert Storm, and in Afghanistan. This time,though, the slate of tasks was wider and theperiod available for action was compressed. Theability of the air component to control enemy ma-neuver, degrade Iraqi command and control,and pursue time-sensitive targets, as well ascontrol western Iraq and provide firepower for asecond-front diversion in the north, was a leapahead in simultaneous operations.

The end result was flexibility that allowedcommanders to accept more operational riskto ground forces when it served higher strate-gic objectives, such as pre-empting the wan-ton destruction of Iraq’s oil fields or getting toBaghdad fast. Operational risk was hedged bythe known ability of the air component to spotand control Iraqi maneuver against the coali-tion spearheads. Airpower likewise backed upthe plan to bypass southern cities and Iraqitroop concentrations such as those to the rightof the marines. It ensured that the feint-and-attack strategy at various critical points wouldsucceed on the desired timetable. Once in

Baghdad, soldiers and marines had a highlycoordinated supply of airpower on call for ur-ban close air support.

They also saw the power of component coor-dination—”jointness.” What had been a seriousflaw in Anaconda the year before had beeneliminated and turned into a focus of achieve-ment in Iraq. Coordination among the compo-nents and the services enabled CENTCOM tobring all the advantages of air and space powerto bear on the joint fight.

By any measure, this third campaign of theWar of 9/11 marked a high point in air controland interdiction of enemy maneuver forces. Sostrong was the performance of the air compo-nent that the Army offered up effusive praise.“Time and again during OIF, airmen intervenedat critical points on the battlefield,” said an offi-cial Army report.145 Staff officers at V Corps saidthat, during the campaign, they received “thebest, most efficient, most effective, and mostresponsive air support the Air Force has everprovided any US Army unit.”146

The so-called “killbox and keypad” systemof battlespace management across Iraq al-lowed airmen and controllers to use sophisti-cated techniques that sped up strike responsetimes. Among them were SCAR—strike coor-dination and reconnaissance—a marine-coined term with a tip of the hat to the killerscouts of Desert Storm. The system placedstrike aircraft in a designated area to identifytargets and then direct other incoming strikeaircraft to the target.

At the CAOC, the automated deep opera-tions coordination system (ADOCS) set up asoftware network of key players to sort andmanage target selection and deconfliction.“Now think about a digital battlefield withADOCS or any other systems that you can use

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144. Center for ArmyLessons Learned, “On Point,the United States Army inOperation Iraqi Freedom,”May 26, 2004.

145. “On Point, ... .”

146. Charles Kirkpatrick,“Joint Fires as They WereMeant to Be: V Corps and the4th Air Support OperationsGroup During Operation IraqiFreedom,” (Arlington, VA:The Institute of LandWarfare, AUSA, October2004), p. 1.

At the top, an A-10Warthog pilot headsin with cannon firing.Crew chiefs—one AirGuard and oneactive—join forces toprepare an A-10 in theGulf Region for itsnext mission.

33

to turn a killbox on and off at the speed of light,”Moseley said.147 “You can go black. You canbring it back. You can bring parts of it back.”Fine-grained control of the battlespace createdsuperior coordination.

Increased coordination between the CAOC’sintelligence-reconnaissance-surveillance divi-sion and combat operations directors on theCAOC floor led to better real-time targeting up-dates—as when a Global Hawk unmannedaerial vehicle (UAV) fed to airborne bomberssynthetic aperture radar pictures of revettedRepublican Guards. Much of the increase in tar-geting accuracies could be attributed to per-sistent—and innovative—employment of ISRassets. Systems from the medium-altitude

147. Gen. Michael Moseley,interview, July 24, 2003.

148. Rear Adm. James Robb,interview, Aug. 30, 2004.

Predator UAVs to Joint STARS to the high-alti-tude U-2s proved their flexibility in adapting todemands for persistent ISR.

That in turn led to improved operational re-sults such as the drastic reduction in collateraldamage. “Drive around Iraq and you’ll findbuilding after building after building with asingle hole in the roof,” said Robb.148 This cam-paign was done “with absolute minimal collat-eral damage,” he said.

For Iraq, and for airmen, the end of majorcombat operations certainly didn’t bring theWar of 9/11 to a close. To paraphrase Win-ston Churchill, it was not the end, or the be-ginning of the end, but it was the end of thebeginning.

Air Force aircraftturned in nearly 60percent of thecoalition’s 41,404sorties. USAF notablydominated the strikeand mobilitycategories of sorties.Data do not includeSpecial OperationsForces, Armyhelicopter, andcoalition sovereigntyflights.

Fighter Bomber Tanker Airlift TotalUSAF 8,828 505 6,193 7,413 22,939Navy 5,568 0 2,058 0 7,626USMC 3,794 0 454 0 4,248Army 0 0 0 0 0Allies 2,038 0 359 263 2,660Total 20,228 505 9,064 7,676 37,473

Total Air Sorties

Army (0.6%)Allies (7.4%)

USAF(58.4%)

Navy(21.6%)

USMC(12.0%)

C2 ISR Rescue Other TotalUSAF 432 452 191 182 1,257Navy 442 357 0 520 1,319USMC 75 305 0 320 700Army 0 269 0 0 269Allies 112 273 0 1 386Total 1,061 1,656 191 1,023 3,931

Total Sorties 41,404

Air Mobility Sorties

Tanker Airlift Total Percent

USAF 6,193 7,413 13,606 81.3%

Navy 2,058 0 2,058 12.3%

USMC 454 0 454 2.7%

Army 0 0 0 0

Allies 359 263 622 3.7%

Total 9,064 7,676 16,740

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80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

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2.7%

12%

3.7%

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Mob

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Sor

ties

USAF Navy USMC Allies

The Air Force wasoverwhelmingly thedominant factor in airmobility in the IraqWar.

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149. President Bush remarksfrom USS Abraham Lincoln,May 1, 2003, White Housetranscript.

150. DOD briefing, April 30,2004.

151. Brig. Gen. MarkZamzow, interview, Dec. 23,2004.

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The “Phase IV” FightWhen Bush declared an end to major combat

operations on May 1, 2003, he told US forces:“The tyrant has fallen, and Iraq is free.”149 He wasalso, however, implicitly announcing one of themore difficult and uncertain steps in warfare: theswitch from combat to a murky post-combatperiod of activity, “Phase IV” stability operations.

The term “stability operations” was new. It wasimported into joint warfighting as a result of anArmy doctrine change in the mid-1990s. Thechange reflected lessons from combat inPanama and Bosnia, where continuing conflictafter regime changes had been a major prob-lem. In joint military parlance, “Phase I” com-prises preparation for combat, “Phase II” cov-ers initial operations, “Phase III” is decisive com-bat, and Phase IV is a time of re-stabilization.

In Afghanistan as well as Iraq, American forcesfaced sporadic challenges from diehard irregu-lars and fanatic terrorists trying to prevent estab-lishment of successor regimes and stability. It wasa challenge the military was determined to meet.“Our strategy is fairly simple,” said Army Gen.John Abizaid, who replaced Franks as CENTCOMcommander in mid-2003.150 “We will stabilize Af-ghanistan. We will stabilize Iraq.” By mid-2003,66 nations and a quarter of a million forces in theregion were engaged in the task.

As the struggle to stabilize Afghanistan andIraq intensified, air and space power proved in-valuable in dealing with a volatile situation onthe ground. The Air Force’s airmen refined tech-niques for close air support, urban operations,and counterinsurgency. The air component’s jobwas to provide air mobility, extend coverage forISR, and keep up a blanket of on-call CAS tai-lored to the needs of ground forces in Afghani-

stan and Iraq. Intensive consumption of ISR, re-finement of precision weapons employment, theuse of airpower for shows of force, and tight,networked integration with joint forces were justsome of the developments that marked a newphase of airpower evolution.

Theater of MobilityThe movement and resupply of forces for sta-

bility operations across CENTCOM’s vast the-ater relied on air mobility.

Airlifters, tankers, and several dozen aerialports formed a triad to “provide the means toget cargo and people in the air,” said Brig. Gen.Mark R. Zamzow, the CAOC’s air mobility direc-tor.151 C-130s formed the backbone of a highlyorchestrated intratheater airlift. On a typicalday, the CAOC reported that USAF C-130s hadflown 126 airlift sorties in Afghanistan, Iraq, andthe Horn of Africa, moving 2,000 passengersand 465 short tons of cargo. Coalition partnerssuch as Britain, Korea, Japan, Australia, andCanada contributed their own airlift sorties.

The C-130 was a stellar performer, saidZamzow. Its primary function was moving pas-sengers. “We can haul 50 to 60 passengers”at a time in the C-130, said Zamzow, and thenuse the C-17s to focus on “massive amountsof cargo.”

US Transportation Command supplied two tofour C-17s at all times under CAOC manage-ment for the theater to meet CENTCOM’s highmobility requirements. The C-17s routinely con-tributed up to 30 percent of the intratheater lift.

The CAOC’s air mobility directorate also fre-quently tapped C-17s stopping over from stra-tegic missions to augment cargo capacity. They

US Army forcesseized SaddamInternational Airportand renamed itBaghdad InternationalAirport. USAFairlifters, such asthese C-130s, beganbringing in vastamounts of supplies.

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would stay “for several extra days … to focuson theater airlift and cargo along with the C-130sthat are already here,” said Zamzow, who notedthat it was “more economical to use the C-130for passengers than for the cargo.”152

Passengers for intratheater airlift came from all-service troop deployments—from AEF rotationsto the Army’s rest and recuperation program. Alltold, “that’s about 35 percent of what we do,”Zamzow said of the passenger airlift mission.

CENTCOM also depended on the CAOC tosupply aeromedical evacuation. An average ofthree to four aircraft per day moved patients ei-ther within the theater or to hubs for transport todestinations such as Germany. In 2004, theCAOC moved more than 13,000 patientsthroughout the theater.

Within the CAOC’s air mobility section, repre-sentatives of CENTCOM’s Joint Patient Move-ment Requirements Center sat nearly back-to-back with the aeromedical control team and re-quirements cell, coordinating immediate dis-patch of aeromedical evacuation when needed.At all times, the CAOC had on alert an aircraftspecifically designed for aeromedical evacua-tion, said another officer.

The air component had a fixed number of the-ater airlifters and tankers deployed, so flexibil-ity rested on careful planning. For combat op-erations, the US could shift the focus where ap-propriate, said Zamzow.

Tankers kept strike aircraft on station. Typi-cally for stability operations, the Air Force putmore than two million pounds of fuel a day inthe air with its tankers. “We have specific tracksthat we send them to, depending on where thewarfighter wants us to put fuel in the air,” saidZamzow. Other factors, particularly weather inthe region, required special attention, but theCAOC kept the supply of airborne fuel steady,

with a tanker surge capability available forevents such as the October 2004 elections inAfghanistan. USAF in 2004 flew more than12,000 refueling sorties, transferring some 720million pounds of fuel to 45,000 receivers, ac-cording to the CAOC.

Close cooperation with the Army and MarineCorps was key to setting and meeting require-ments.

Afghan Mop-UpIn Afghanistan, the job of the air component

was to maintain stability alongside multinationalforces. The hunt continued for al Qaeda andTaliban remnants along the eastern border andat other locations. There were occasional ter-rorist raids targeting coalition forces, often re-quiring rapid air strikes or action by teams onthe ground. The air component continued to flysorties in support of ground stabilization opera-tions in 2002, 2003—even during Iraqi Free-dom—and 2004.

The Combined Forces Command, Afghani-stan (CFC-A) positioned teams of regular Army,Marine Corps, SOF, and foreign coalition forcesaround the country. Troop presence there oftentopped 20,000. Patrols sought out al Qaeda andTaliban diehards near Gardez, Kandahar,Oruzgan, and other hotspots.

Yet, the troop levels were relatively low forpolicing a population of 28 million in an areajust slightly smaller than Texas. The reason, inpart, was the air and space power that backedup these relatively light ground forces. TheCAOC put in place an air support structure di-rectly responsive to the needs of ground forces.Bases in theater made a big difference, too. Be-ginning in late March 2002, after Anaconda, A-10s that deployed to Bagram became the pri-mary CAS asset in Afghanistan. From Bagram,

152. Brig. Gen. MarkZamzow, interview, Dec. 23,2004.

The Chairman of theJoint Chiefs of Staff,USAF Gen. RichardMyers (left), andDefense SecretaryDonald Rumsfeld givereporters at thePentagon an updateon the global war onterror.

36

an A-10 could log three hours of on-station timein one of the areas assigned by the CAOC. B-1B bombers operating from other bases in theregion also provided on-call support.

However, full, 24-hour coverage was not fea-sible, a fact which made close component co-ordination vital. The CAOC handled the relativescarcity of strike, ISR, and mobility assets bycareful scheduling. “In Afghanistan, you aremore actively scheduling the times for thoseparticular assets because they are more limitedthan they are in Iraq,” explained Lt. Col. KenTatum, a CAOC combat operations director.153

The regular supply of airpower made it pos-sible to give the mission of stability operations torelatively light forces in relatively few parts of thelarge country. “While it takes ‘boots on the ground’to win a counterinsurgency fight,” said Army Lt.Gen. David Barno, Coalition Forces Commander,Afghanistan, “it takes airpower to move, supply,and protect those boots on the ground in a coun-try like Afghanistan.”154 Through the last threemonths of 2004, for example, airmen flew a per-week average of 66 ISR sorties and 137 strikemissions. On Oct. 8, 2004, a typically busy day,a B-1B expended three JDAM weapons and A-10s strafing in support of troops in contact nearOruzgan, Tarin Kowt, and Deh Rawod.

However, dropping bombs was by no meansthe only task for airmen. Show-of-force missionsbecame a major task in Afghanistan duringPhase IV. “We do those on a regular basis,” saidCol. Ben Bitler, a CAOC officer.155 In fact, theCAOC began to track and record these kinds offlights as it recorded sorties flown and ordnanceexpended. The low-level flights by fighters andbombers served one of two basic purposes: toshow interest through presence, or to instill fear.

Lt. Col. Timothy L. Marceau drew a distinc-tion between a presence mission and show-of-force mission. With aerial presence, he said, the

main intent was to demonstrate airpower wasavailable and to reassure friendly ground forcesand civilians.156 The presence mission was anantidote to intimidation. Being “seen and heard”was often the right move. On other occasions,however, it was important for the air componentto be seen, heard, and felt. “There are timeswhen we want to get down low,” explainedMarceau. Rattling windows and filling eardrumswith jet noise could have a powerful effect. Thatwas the show of force mission—one step shortof employing ordnance. When insurgents knewaircraft could have lethal impact, the effect wasstrong.

This new form of presence had an impactduring Afghanistan’s elections. Airmen flew adozen show of force missions on election dayover Afghanistan, said Maj. Gen. Norm Seip,the deputy CFACC.157

He said, “Airpower played a complementaryrole to what was being done on the ground” toprovide security at Afghanistan’s 4,000 pollingplaces.

In sum, modern airpower supplementedground forces in a way that enabled the coali-tion to keep down the size of deployments toAfghanistan and still carry out the mission. “Air-power from all the services—intelligence-sur-veillance-reconnaissance assets, mobility air-craft, close air support and space systems—have given ground forces in Afghanistan theability to operate in smaller units and respondquicker with more accurate weaponry than atany other point in history,” Barno said.158

The Iraqi NettleContending with the aftermath of regime

change in Iraq was a far different proposition.CENTCOM was not truly prepared for it. The com-mand had produced meticulous plans for virtu-ally every aspect of Gulf War II—up to the planned

153. Lt. Col. Ken Tatum,interview, Dec. 23, 2004.

154. Army Lt. Gen. DavidBarno, statement, Dec. 28,2004.

155. Col. Ben Bitler,interview, Dec. 23, 2004.

156. Lt. Col. TimothyMarceau, interview, Dec. 23,2004.

157. Maj. Gen. Norm Seip,interview, Dec. 24, 2004.

158. Barno, statement, Dec.28, 2004.

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USAF’s Combined AirOperations Center inSouthwest Asia usesits sophisticatedsystems to coordinateair strikes.

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taking of Baghdad. It focused on decisive com-bat, not the end game. Without a clear decisionto go to war, it was hard to make firm plans for theoccupation, according to US officers. At best,CENTCOM kept Phase IV requirements in mindwhile planning and conducting Phase III.

“Our number one Phase IV objective,” notedCENTCOM’s Robb, “was to not have a humani-tarian crisis.”159 He said US planners “tried not tocreate a lot of refugees, tried not to put a lot ofpain and suffering on the people, tried not to cre-ate a medical catastrophe. Don’t let the water becontaminated. Don’t let the rivers get flooded byblowing the dams. Keep the power plants up. Sothe best work we did in Phase IV was probablythe preparation, within Phase III, to not rubble-ize the stuff we needed in Phase IV.”

That worked, but it was not enough of a strat-egy. Iraq was a nation in political and physicaldecay. Soon the coalition ran into huge post-combat problems. Water, sanitation, and elec-trical utilities were dilapidated and on the vergeof collapse. “I see us certainly dealing with Iraqfor quite a period of time and really hoping thatthat continues on a path toward stabilization,”Jumper said in July 2003.160

Iraqi irregulars—and probably some of theRepublican Guards who were thought to have“melted away” from the battlefield—had not beendefeated in detail. The blindingly fast campaignopted out of an attrition phase before the groundwar and left no time for proper mopping up.Weapons and trained soldiers were everywhere.Through fall 2003, Ba’ath remnants and Islamicirregulars carried out a disorganized but danger-ous series of retaliation attacks on individual USmilitary personnel trying to keep the peace.

By the beginning of 2004, it was apparent thatOIF had decapitated Saddam’s regime but leftsome body parts strong and intact—especially

in the Sunni heartland north and west ofBaghdad. Ba’athists who dominated the gov-ernment bureaucracies and army wanted to re-claim their privileged and lucrative position inthe nation. A variety of Muslim terrorists soughtto inflict a bloody defeat on the US forces sta-tioned there.

The War of 9/11 had morphed again—thistime, into a strange new type of conflict. Forairmen, it pitted new techniques of persistence,precision, and awareness against age-old chal-lenges of local resistance. The insurgents werehighly unpredictable. During OIF’s major com-bat phase, Wallace, the Army’s V Corps com-mander, noted his surprise at the Iraqi tacticsat Nasiriyah. “He [the enemy] was willing to at-tack out of those towns toward our formations,when my expectation was that they would bedefending those towns and not be as aggres-sive,” Wallace said.161 Those were, by and large,the same forces the coalition now faced in sta-bility operations.

Almost by definition, the struggle for controlof Iraq was an urban battle. Cities were politi-cal centers of gravity—the real objective—andIraq’s 16 biggest cities contained 70 percent ofthe population. The new challenge for the aircomponent was to bring its power to bear onthe spreading counterinsurgency and do it in ademanding urban environment. The key was toextend persistent ISR across all of the country’shotspots and build up a level of situation aware-ness that gave some form to the shadowy in-surgent networks. By tracking key leadershiptargets, the CAOC put the time-sensitive-target-ing process into the service of a highly sophis-ticated manhunt.

The air component turned its attention to anunprecedented task: learning all it could aboutthe insurgents’ leadership and command and

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159. Rear Adm. James Robb,interview, Aug. 30, 2004.

160. Gen. John Jumper,interview, July 23, 2003.

161. Lt. Gen. WilliamWallace, DOD live briefing,May 7, 2003.

ISR assets such asthis RC-135 RivetJoint, under thewatchful eye of aUSAF security forcesguard, contributed topersistent battlefieldawareness.

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control network to give the coalition some ad-vantages for war in the urban jungle. For this,the air component had powerful weapons—per-sistent ISR, network-centric collaborative toolsfor joint planning, and a sophisticated array oflower-yield weapons ready to be delivered byfighters, bombers, and UAVs.

Early battles in areas of Baghdad, Najaf, andFallujah marked 2004 as a year with new testsfor air and space power. “The situation is vola-tile,” acknowledged Buchanan, who had takenover Moseley’s job as CFACC in the summer of2003.162

Under Buchanan, the CAOC began a con-certed effort to diagram entire cities and to piecetogether the key elements of the insurgent net-work. Techniques used earlier for TSTs were re-fined and combined into a different type of aircampaign. ISR was the major ingredient. “Re-ally, SIGINT [signals intelligence] was our big-gest cue as far as identifying what particularhome a bad guy was occupying at the time,”said Bitler.163 “Predator became important dur-ing the execution phase because those wereeyes on target in the CAOC where we’re tryingto orchestrate the strike,” he said.

Surveillance had to be full-time. Persistent ISRwas important, particularly with “a determinedadversary” projecting “a low signature,” said Lt.Col. John Johanson, director of the CAOC’s ISRDivision.164 Nor could the CAOC afford gaps thatmight let key data slip through the collection net-work. Constant ISR was required, he said, lest“collection gaps create a collection bias” thatcould skew the overall assessment and charac-terization of the enemy network. It took long- orultra-long-dwell ISR to pull it off.

Counterinsurgency operators turned out to bevoracious consumers of ISR. Data on the mix ofISR and strike sorties reflected this phenom-enon. In the major combat operations of 2003,

the ratio of strike sorties to ISR sorties flownwas more than 12:1. In the second half of 2004,however, it averaged just over 2:1.165 “The pay-off is the ability to watch a target,” Johansonsaid.166

As intelligence streamed in, the CAOC reliedon special software to build the raw target datainto multiple steps in a coordinated campaign.This software tool let multiple players participatein the target nomination and vetting process, saidTatum, and it was fast and reliable.167 Next, thesystem took inputs such as weather, GPS accu-racies, and airspace control measures, layeringthe structure needed for coordinated strikes. “Itdoes coordination on the one hand and it alsodoes deconfliction on the other hand,” Tatumexplained. Early and quick collaboration de-creased the potential for fratricide, too.

Now, CAOC officers were able to view insur-gent leaders and command and control pointsdiagrammed as a series of pre-planned, ap-proved targets, down to mensurated coordinates.Still, this wasn’t static air tasking. The CAOC kepta firm grip on the latest ISR inputs up to and dur-ing strike execution. Sensors often gave near-immediate damage assessment feedback. It wasa continuously changing type of campaignagainst the insurgent targets, requiring steadycontrol and continuous orchestration.

As always, the desire to avoid collateral dam-age was a major factor in planning. Collateraldamage estimates in Fallujah, for example, re-quired particularly careful attention becausemany individual houses had common walls. Ul-timately, if troops were engaged, the decisionson what to strike belonged to the on-sceneground commander. Ground commanders work-ing with the air component sought to use theleast amount of force possible.

By summer 2004, the CAOC was ready tocarry out the air component’s battlespace shap-

162. Lt. Gen. WalterBuchanan III quoted in BruceRolfsen, “Troop Strength toHold Steady for 2005,” AirForce Times, May 31, 2004.

163. Col. Ben Bitler,interview, Dec. 23, 2004.

164. Lt. Col. John Johanson,interview, Dec. 23, 2004.

165. CENTAF, “OIF: By TheNumbers,” April 30, 2003.

166. Johanson, Dec. 23,2004.

167. Lt. Col. Ken Tatum,interview, Dec. 23, 2004.

An Air Force ReserveCommand HC-130refuels a Reserve HH-60G Pave Hawk overIraq. USAF rescueunits are a key part ofSOF teams inSouthwest Asia.

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ing as a series of highly selective strikes againstinsurgent targets around Fallujah (and other re-bellious cities.) Johanson reported, “We beganon the first of July with our first strike against theterrorist network in Fallujah and continued to ex-pand it outward as we had persistent ISR overFallujah 24 hours a day literally for severalmonths.”168

One of the air component’s major efforts cul-minated on Oct. 14, 2004, Johanson said, “whenwe hit five major facilities associated with theterrorist network.” These strikes were not abouttonnage or numbers of sorties flown. Their ef-fect was proportional to the high quality of thetargeting data compiled over the summer, andthe flexible real-time execution.

Accounts of the strikes themselves showedhow airmen were making tactical decisions toshape the attacks in real time. In late Augustand early September, planners shifted to tak-ing out buildings identified as insurgent strongpoints. One particular house on a walled lot at-tracted attention and made the target list of in-surgent network sites. Then, as Predator waskeeping watch to cue a strike, air officers no-ticed that “all the bad people” were sitting out-side “in a ring around a small campfire,” saidTatum.169 It was as though they knew the housewas a target—but thought they might be safeoutside. Targeteers were able to dial up newmensurated coordinates for the backyard “invery short, single-digit minutes,” said Tatum,and execute the retargeted strike. “The houseitself was hardly damaged,” he added.

Insurgents were usually unaware of howclosely they were being watched by airbornesensors. “We’ve seen people setting up mortars,and actually located improvised explosive de-vices, and were able to prevent somebody withweapons from being able to shoot or injure any

of our troops,” said a USAF Predator sensoroperator, Capt. Catherine Platt of the 17th Re-connaissance Squadron, Indian Springs AFAF,Nev.170

Such was the case during another memorablestrike in September. The CAOC pulled final veri-fication from multiple signals intelligencesources that they had picked up “some signifi-cant bad guys.” Sensors tracked vehicles com-ing in and out of the target area—a compoundwith two small buildings, surrounded by a wall.It had been watched for some time, long enoughto verify its importance, to run the required col-lateral damage estimates, and mensurate co-ordinates. With the signals data in hand, CAOCofficers waited for the insurgents to show up.One strike aircraft was inbound to attack the tar-get when video showed the key individual ofthe insurgent group getting in a vehicle anddriving off. “We aborted right before the attack,”said Bitler.171

But this chess game was not over. Predatorfollowed the insurgent target all around Fallujahas the CAOC watched, until eventually the ve-hicle returned to the compound again. “By thetime they closed the gates, weapons were inthe air,” Bitler said. Was the strike a success?“Absolutely,” he said.

The net result was extreme precision and anew tool in the air component’s arsenal. Bitlersaid, “We were typically killing these guys intheir sleep and unknowingly. ... It was all basedon some pretty solid intelligence. In time, air-craft could destroy a standard building, about40 feet square, and remove that one concretestructure without really doing major damage orinjury to the neighbors’ homes and families.”

Tatum reported, “We were able to go in and,piece by piece, start breaking up that wholeinsurgent network, their command and control

168. Lt. Col. John Johanson,interview, Dec. 23, 2004.

169. Lt. Col. Ken Tatum,interview, Dec. 23, 2004.

170. “Predator TV: Eye in theSky Protects Soldiers in Iraqand Afghanistan,” CBS-11News KTVT Dallas/FortWorth, Nov. 5, 2004.

171. Col. Ben Bitler,interview, Dec. 23, 2004.

USAF’s high flyingGlobal Hawkunmanned aerialvehicle helped thecoalition achieve apersistent “picture” ofthe battle space.

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structure as well as their personnel, so that theywere in somewhat disarray as the troops weregetting ready to march in.”172

This was a new capability for air and spacepower. The air component proved it could do agreat deal to target individual thugs. The rea-son was advances in technology and opera-tional-level command and control. The combi-nation of persistent ISR, on-call strike aircraft,and the combat ingenuity of those at the CAOCproduced results that can only be described asstunning.

The capability would soon be put to a supremenew test in a second assault on insurgent sitesin Fallujah.

The Fallujah ModelWhat put Fallujah in the coalition crosshairs?

The town of some 500,000 Iraqis, situated 35miles west of Baghdad in the “Sunni Triangle,”was a hotbed of anti-US activity right from thestart of Phase IV. Tribal loyalties, intense nation-alism, xenophobic dislike of foreigners, and ahistory of smuggling created friction when coa-lition forces occupied the city in late April 2003.A strong mix of Ba’athist fugitives and foreignterrorists mingled and made common causeagainst the coalition.

In April 2004, US forces actually had stagedan attack against the Fallujah insurgents. It fea-tured 1,300 forces from the Marine Corps’ I MEF,with some Iraqi participation. Marines sur-rounded the city and teams made forays into itin an attempt to locate “bad guys” and draw outinsurgents. AC-130 gunships targeted specificsites and marines called in precision strikesagainst buildings harboring terrorists. After a fewdays, however, CENTCOM backed off as a re-sult of political pressures and fears of high ci-vilian casualties.

Close air support got generally high marks.“I was on the ground in Fallujah in April ‘04,and there were quite a few lessons learned, allreally kind of positive on what the CAOC cando for you,” said Lt. Col. Greg Harbin.173 “I gotin trouble a couple of times. It never took morethan five minutes to get an airplane overheadto help us out.”

Still, there were areas for improvement. “Wetook a lot of lessons learned out of that to applyto the November offensive in Fallujah,” said Maj.Eric Grace, an officer in the CAOC.174 One wasto shape the battlespace. Another was to seekadvance coordination with the ground forces. Athird was to increase the level of tactical air sup-port. “One of the huge successes of Fallujah IIwas the ability to pre-plan it and get one playbookto all,” said Grace. The playbook consisted inpart of exact coordinates for about 800 Fallujahbuildings. It was distributed to ground command-ers, air controllers, and air crew members.

Air component representatives also put theirheads together with Marine planners a fewweeks before the new operation. The pre-plan-ning enabled airmen, said Grace, “to studyFallujah, get the graphics, get the imagery, andELINT [electronic intelligence] to coordinate it,pre-planned, with the Marines.”

The decisive battle for Fallujah began on thenight of Nov. 7, 2004. Lead elements of a10,000-member-strong coalition and Iraqi forceseized a hospital that doubled as a known in-surgent base of operat ions. Aircraft hi tpreplanned targets—such as barricaded insur-gent sites—then shifted to on-call response.

Once in Fallujah, marines and soldiers ben-efited from the carefully planned air support.The playbook made possible quick-responsestrikes, generally in “single-digit minutes,”noted Tatum.175 It also let soldiers and marines

172. Lt. Col. Ken Tatum,interview, Dec. 23, 2004.

173. Lt. Col. Greg Harbin,interview, Dec. 23, 2004.

174. Maj. Eric Grace,interview, Dec. 23, 2004.

175. Tatum, Dec. 23, 2004.

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stand off slightly from main targets. The domi-nant CAS in use was Type 2, when a controllercan see neither the aircraft or target and directsthe aircraft based on intelligence. Most build-ings in Fallujah were only a few stories tall so “itwas tough to get a bird’s-eye view” especiallywith buildings two or three blocks away, Harbinobserved.176 At night, especially, the close airsupport tended to be Type 2 CAS.

An important advantage was the wide avail-ability of the GBU-38. When this 500-poundJDAM arrived in theater in quantity in the fall of2004, i t quickly became one of the aircomponent’s top weapons for use in the urbanenvironment. CFACC Buchanan commented thatit would “give us the reduced collateral damageof a smaller weapon, while at the same time theprecision that you get with at GPS-guidedweapon.”177

Use of the GBU-38 provided a weapon withlower targeting collateral damage potential andeliminated the occasional uncertainties thatcropped up in laser-guided bombs. “This was theright weapon for the job,” said the F-16 lead pilotwho flew the first GBU-38 mission on Oct. 4.178 “Ifwe used any bigger [type of] bomb, we wouldhave caused unnecessary damage,” he said.

For ground troops in contact, the lower-yieldprecision weapons meant “we don’t have tobreak contact with the enemy,” explainedHarbin.179 “With that kind of precision and thatkind of yield you can keep the enemy in sight,keep them fixed, while Air Force destroys theirposition. That’s what GBU-38, and laser-guidedMavericks, Hellfires, etc. allow you to do.”

That in itself was a revolution because it gavethe coalition marines and soldiers greater con-trol over the engagement. “Type 2 allows you tokill enemy before a force on force fight,” saidHarbin. That, he believed, would ultimately“save lives on the ground.”

In the view of Marine Corps Col. Mike Regner,the I MEF chief of operations, the precision—fromair and land—was unprecedented. “I am respon-sible to the commander on precision targeting,”Regner said.180 “Is this like Vietnam? Absolutelynot. Vietnam had Hue City, and that was leveledand there wasn’t precision targeting, and theydidn’t secure it in the amount of time that we’vesecured” Fallujah, he said.

After it was over, Capt. Paul Wood from theCAOC master air attack plan cell was one of ateam to survey bomb effects on the ground inFallujah. “At one of the sites there was a mina-ret located approximately six or seven feet orso away from a mosque,” Wood recalled.181 “Theaircrew was able to strike the minaret and es-sentially just damage the paint on the mosque,”Wood said. “It actually looked like precisiondemolition to me.”

In eight days, Fallujah was “secure”—mean-ing 100 percent of it was passable for coalitionand Iraqi forces, although sporadic fightingcontinued. By month’s end, it was clear of mostinsurgent resistance. Many of the estimated2,000 insurgents in Fallujah were killed, and thesafe haven vanished. Moreover, the terroristslost control of an important logistical site. “Be-sides being a safe haven for leadership com-mand and control, Fallujah was a center formaking the improvised explosive devices (IEDs)that were being produced and used in otherparts of the country to attack the coalition,” saidAir Force Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, deputy com-mander of CENTCOM.182

Evolution in airpower—both technologies andtactics—changed the calculus for insurgencyoperations in the urban environment. The newmodel of urban operations added to the marginof superiority for forces on the ground and tookthe pursuit of major targets to new levels throughpersistent ISR and on-call strike.

Daily coalition airsorties in fall 2004hovered between1,600 and 2,000, withemphasis on airlift

176. Lt. Col. Greg Harbin,interview, Dec. 23, 2004.

177. Michael Sirak,“Interview: US Air Force LtGen Walter Buchanan,”Jane’s Defence Weekly, Sept.29, 2004.

178. Capt. Mae-Li Allison,“Airmen use GBU-38 incombat,” Air Force News,Oct. 4, 2004.

179. Harbin, Dec. 23, 2004.

180. Marine Col. MikeRegner, DOD operationalupdate on Fallujah, Nov. 15,2004.

181. Capt. Paul Wood, CAOCforum, Dec. 23, 2004.

182. Lt. Gen. Lance Smithquoted in “Zarqawi’s City ofDeath,” Washington Times,Nov. 29, 2004.

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An airman marshalsan E-8C into position.The performance ofJoint STARSbattlefieldmanagement aircraftduring the sandstormhelped produce aturning point in thewar.

Tying It TogetherIn the War of 9/11 the performance of air and

space power has been nothing short of remark-able. Precision and persistence are taken forgranted. So is flexible mobility, from strategicairlift to theater surges. Air and space-based ISRprovided by everything from small UAVs to so-phisticated satellites has fed heavy consump-tion of intelligence in many forms. At the centerof it all, the CAOC has come into its own as aweapons system. The fine-tuned level of controlover battlespace shaping and air support in ur-ban areas in 2004 demonstrated that fact.

From the beginning, success has dependedon a series of joint operating concepts built onthe framework of air and space power. The warhas proven several concepts debated in the1990s—and before—and taken them to new lev-els of proficiency in execution.

What Airpower WroughtOperation Enduring Freedom led the way.

“The first thing we did was set conditions to be-gin to take down the tactical air defense and allof that,” said Franks.183 “The next thing we didwas set conditions with these Special Forcesteams and the positioning of our aviation assetsto be able to take the Taliban apart or fractureit.” On Sept. 11, 2001, the Northern Alliance inAfghanistan was neither cohesive nor effective.Nor did it have the power to take on Talibanforces that overmatched them by a two to onemargin. The success of Operation EnduringFreedom was a long shot until persistent air-power came into play. All the money in the worldcould not have broken the trench lines at Kabul

or protected opposition forces from counterat-tacks en route to Kandahar. That was a job forthe air component.

Operation Noble Eagle started at the sametime and has now become a vital new missionfor national security. The ability to adjust alertpostures and prepare to counter new threatssuch as cruise missile attack are hallmarks of amajor, permanent mission.

In Operation Iraqi Freedom, the air compo-nent started an early air campaign to increaseair superiority over the southern approaches toBaghdad. It gave the joint force the flexibility tojuggle the start of full-scale ground and SOFoperations to take advantage of final politicaldecisions and pop-up tactical opportunities.The air component was there to mitigate opera-tional risk to the spearheads driving north. Ittook on the Republican Guards in deep shap-ing and provided the insurance policy of closeair support to rear lines of communication wheninsurgent attacks began. Air and SOF controlledthe western desert. With the 173rd Brigade andKurdish forces, they established a northernfront. All the while, the air component handledthe tasks of maintaining air dominance and strik-ing at selected strategic targets, particularlythose associated with Iraqi military commandand control. As they neared Baghdad, coalitionforces fell under the umbrella of multilayeredclose air support, provided with a level of pre-cision and responsiveness not seen before inmodern warfare.

In the Phase IV fights, air and space powerin all its forms proved to be equally important.

183. Gen. Tommy Franks,DOD press conference, Nov.15, 2001.

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USAF’s strategic and tactical air mobility unitswere essential for coalition operations. Aerialmedical evacuation surged and responded asneeded. Tankers kept the on-call strike aircraftready to fight over Afghanistan and Iraq. By2004, there was even more progress in the blendof ISR and precision, and it turned the air com-ponent into an even more effective tool for thetough challenges of stability operations. Urbanwarfare in Fallujah and other cities saw the aircomponent display its abil it ies both as abattlespace shaping tool and as a support force.Phase IV Stability Operations, proved to be justas dependent on the products of air and spacepower as were decisive combat operations.

Every commander will want to be able to callon the capabilities that have been demonstratedin the War of 9/11.

For example, hunting terrorists and other time-sensitive targets is now a major feature of war-fare, and it is a task made possible, to a greatextent, by flexible air and space power. The aircomponent (and higher headquarters) madesubstantial progress in the three years from theearly TSTs such as the attacks on Mullah Omar’scompound in Afghanistan to the orchestrationof battlespace shaping in Fallujah with Hellfiremissiles aimed over a wall and under a carportroof to strike a target.

Close air support that exploits sensor links isanother indispensable combat tool. From Ana-conda to Fallujah II, the changes in air supportto ground forces have been significant. Ongo-ing operations in Afghanistan proved the point.“Our multiple systems allow us to see our en-emy, array forces to respond, and guide themto a precision point for accurate engagement,”

said Barno, the Combined Forces Command inAfghanistan.184 “We can talk with A-10s or B-1swith a wide array of communications capabili-ties from space-based systems, reducing theneed for ground-based relays,” he added.“Never has a ground-based force been so en-abled and so interconnected to air capabilitiesin an interdependent way—it’s a given for anyoperation we run in the country, from platoon tobattalion.”

None of this would be possible without reli-able global mobility. Across the CENTCOM the-ater, USAF air mobility (with some coalition as-sistance) moves thousands of passengers aweek and delivers urgently needed supplies.Theater schedulers borrow strategic C-17airlifters to augment requirements. Tankers sup-port all operations and give fighters and bomb-ers the persistence required, even with moreairfields now in use in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Beyond JointnessExcept for the harsh experience of Anaconda,

the War of 9/11 has been mostly a model ofjointness. Appreciative comments—and hardstatistics—from the Army reflect an understand-ing and acceptance of the air component’sbattlefield role that is probably greater than atany point in recent years and perhaps greaterthan at any time since the end of World War II.

Lessons now taken for granted on the battle-fields of the War of 9/11 are poised to be solidi-fied in joint services concepts, although someare still not completely or accurately reflectedin the views of the Pentagon and Washington’sdefense establishment.

There are major implications for national mili-

184. Lt. Gen. David Barnostatement, Dec. 28, 2004.

An airman atSchriever AFB, Colo.,runs through achecklist of GlobalPositioning Systemsatellite operations.Space power is acritical forcemultiplier. Air ForceSpace Command hadabout 1,000 spaceoperators inSouthwest Asiaduring the height ofOIF.

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tary strategy. First, while it is the joint force thatwins the fight, there are many unique and indis-pensable capabilities provided by air and spacepower. Air and space power formed the essen-tial architecture to make possible the strategicoutline of the multifaceted war. That architectureis composed of sensors, mobility units, and strik-ing forces, and it was these capabilities that pro-vided the wherewithal for the swift thrust into Af-ghanistan, the immediate surge in air defenseof North America, the complex and ever-chang-ing war in Iraq, and the back-alley knife fightsencountered in Phase IV operations, in both Af-ghanistan and Iraq.

At the operational level, the War of 9/11 hasproven that air is the prime tool for shaping deepoperations and supporting counterland opera-tions. This is not a new lesson. It was learnedover New Guinea and Normandy and again atAn Loc and later still at Khafji. To be sure, it de-pends on advance coordination and procedures,but the role of airpower in controlling the groundbattle reached a new level of importance.

The character of the air component itself haschanged. The identity of an aircrew or airplanehas begun to matter less and less to planners.Beginning with Afghanistan, what mattered mostto controllers on the ground and CAOC opera-tors was the range and type of weapons aboardan aircraft, the strength and sophistication of thedata links, and the remaining “vul times” of air-craft in the battlespace. Operation Iraqi Free-dom saw even more blending of the air compo-nent elements. A case in point was air supportfor I MEF, which came from many sources be-yond the Marine Air Ground Task Force’s ownorganic aircraft. The flow of coalition strike sor-ties, preplanned and not, far exceeded anythingthe Marine Corps air planners thought the CAOCwould give them. “Not very long into it, westarted to get a whole lot of stuff coming in fromCFACC in real time or near real time and shiftedover to support our efforts,” said Hilberer.185 “Theamount we ended up getting from CFACC wasway more than we ever expected.”

To the controllers and forces engaged inground combat, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps,and coalition strike aircraft were all part of theflow. Controllers could pick and choose amongthem by the munitions and pods they carried.Many aircraft, from USAF F-16CJs to Navy S-3s,performed dedicated, doctrinally distinct roles.However, the firepower of the air component hasblended together during the War of 9/11. Sepa-rate aviation fiefdoms and doctrines meant littleor nothing compared to the power of centrallydirected air support. One major operational les-son of the War of 9/11 is that future planning for

airpower—from doctrine to equipment—shouldconsider the needs of the joint force and resistbreaking air into “penny packets” as new op-erational concepts come into play.

For the air component as a whole, the War of9/11 opened new realms of collaboration withSOF units. It has led to wholesale re-evaluationof close air support. As much progress as theair component made, the greater lesson was atimeless one: the necessary interaction of thecomponents. Moseley, the air boss in two wars,put it in these words: “The most powerful les-son in all of this is you don’t win wars by landpower. You don’t win wars by sea power. Youdon’t win wars by airpower. You win wars by theorchestration of the effects brought to bear bythose components.”186

Seeking a CourseAirmen have fought the War of 9/11 with new

equipment and old, with tried-and-true tactics,and with innovative procedures. However, thestress on the force is undeniable. “The nationdepends on its tankers for global reach. Not justthe Air Force,” Jumper pointed out.187 SinceSept. 11, “we’ve seen a 33 percent increase inthe number of hours that we’re putting on ourtanker force in order to sustain operationsaround the globe,” he said.

Recapitalization of this war-winning force isnot optional, it is essential. Networks, sensors,and weapons are important but so are plat-forms. Without recapitalization, the nation runsthe risk of degradation in its ability to fight thenext battles of the War of 9/11 or to meet other,possibly larger, challenges as they arise in thisdecade and beyond.

Coupled with recapitalization is transforma-tion. New systems such as the F/A-22 fighterrepresent an investment in future air and spacepower—and the future of the nation. For all thetactical and operational innovation, the air com-ponent depends on major force investment andnew technologies to sustain the level of perfor-mance now demanded from it.

The War of 9/11 came upon America by sur-prise. Its first engagements, like many of its sub-sequent victories, depended on investmentmade by previous generations every bit asmuch as on the innovation and skills of today’sairmen. One major lesson of the War of 9/11 isthat this past investment was sound and paidoff in the clutch. The watchword for the future isto continue to back that reliance on air andspace power with smart planning, training, andequipping. Upcoming generations deserve noless—whatever the future may hold.

185. Marine Corps Maj. RichHilberer, interview, March 12,2004.

186. Gen. Michael Moseley,interview, July 24, 2003.

187. Gen. John Jumper,Defense Writers Group, Dec.14, 2004.

This report is made possiblethrough the donations ofAFA members. To supportthis program and others likeit, contributions can bemade to the AerospaceEducation Foundation onlineat www.aef.org.

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