How it can be
USAFE INTELLIGENCE IN DESERT STORM
A calm voice over the telephone in the middle of a tension-filled night
Major Pat Duff calling from the Tactical Fusion Center at Boerfink, Germany, to the Wing Operations Center (WOC) at Incirlik, Turkey, telling aircrews preparing to launch the initial attacks into Northern Iraq what they could expect from Iraqi air defenses.
Two men sleeping under a table in the J-2 office at Inclrlik
Completely exhausted after 36 straight hours of non-stop work on the first day of DESERT STORM, SSgt Jimmy Ayala and Capt Ike Eichelberger were grabbing two hours of sleep, oblivious of their commanding general standing astride their sleeping forms while studying their map. Using just one telephone and their own prodigious imaginations and talents, they had just coordinated two composite force efforts by giving pre-mission tasking to RC-135 intelligence collection aircraft providing support to night and day attack packages, and had provided update tasking during the missions by ca11ing Greece and the UK to get uplinks to the RC-135 crews.
Instantaneous recognition and direct action without supervision
TSgt Kevin Ridgway in the early morning hours at Ramstein saw a piece of information which told him that an Iraqi comms facility had been relocated to a new area. Knowing that this piece of information would not get to Incirlik very quickly and additionally recognizing that, by itself, it would seem inconclusive to anyone not as intimately familiar as he was with the operations of an integrated air defense system (IADS), he called the Incirlik WOC to recommend a new aim point for the comms target. Wing intel at Incirlik, knowing the facility was scheduled for reattack within hours, but also knowing TSgt Ridgway was THE EXPERT, ran to squadron ops and directed an F-16 flight to the new aimpoint just as the crews were walking to their jets. TSgt Ridgway was correct; the facility where he said it was, the F-16 crews destroyed it.
These are three images of USAFE Intelligence during DESERT STORM. That they all refer to operations out of Incirlik is instructive because Incirlik was the home of Joint Task Force Proven Force, and it was through Proven Force that USAFE Intelligence was able to provide the kind of combat support it had prepared itself to do.
Three aspects of combat support stick out of these three examples.
First is training
Over the past several years, USAFE Intelligence had been pushing hard to practice methods of rapid dissemination of critical intelligence. Daily support of the air defense Sector Operations Centers in NATO's Central Region had conditioned Pat Duff and his crew to recognize enemy air activity and to be able to predict when and how an enemy would react. Experience in Red Flag and in USAFE's periodic electronic combat Regular Training Missions (RTMs) enabled Ike Eichelberger to tie together RC-135 intel collectors with E-38 AWACS, EC-130 and EF-111 airborne jammers, and with cross border penetrators--be they air superiority F-15s, attack F-111s or F-16s, or Combat Search and Rescue forces from Special Operations Command. An RC-135 crewmember himself, Jimmy Ayala knew what the crews needed to be told, knew how to get to them, and knew that if he kept, trying, he'd find a way to get through even in the absence of on-scene ground-to-air comms. Kevin Ridgway had studied the toughest IADS systems in the world, those which had been in place in the former East Germany, and had found ways to defeat them. Additionally, he had participated in five Rapid Targeting Capability Europe (RTCE) exercises oven the past several years and knew that it's no good knowing something unless you provide that data rapidly to someone who can do something about it.
Second is communications and knowing how to use them
Equipped and trained to fight an in-place war, USAFE intel found itself having to support a fighting force at the end of a very long supply line, operating in a totally new theater of operations. However, the comms structure set up to provide ops and intel data to Central Region-based USAFE intel facilities was robust enough and flexible enough to be refocused on Iraq and to provide USAFE intel as good as realtime picture of the Northern Iraq Theater of Operations (NTO) as was available anywhere. Additionally, USAFE intel had always known that support to Europe-based flying units required dedicated comms and had, accordingly, equipped all USAFE main operating bases with the Intratheater Intelligence Communications Network (IINCOMNET) to provide direct links between force level fusion centers and wing intel staffs. Incirlik was thus equipped and was thus able to communicate directly back to supporting intel staffs in Germany.
Third is initiative
Years of hard, realistic training in the European Theater had conditioned USAFE intelligence personnel to the seriousness of their tasks and to the vital impact that timely, accurate intel can provide for successful combat operations. Not having had to contend with the pressures of ORIs or TACEVALs, USAFE intel had nonetheless learned to stress itself by participating in NATO Command Post Exercises such as WINTEX-CIMEX, in interactive war games such as ACE-89, and in the RTCE series of exercises where real Soviet/Warsaw Pact forces had been tracked and notionally targeted. Individual and collective responsibility had been internalized to such an extent that when the time for action arrived, no one had to be told what to do--they just did it.
But how did USAFE intelligence get to where it was on 17 January 1991? What had it done during DESERT SHIELD and what would it do during DESERT STORM? The remainder of this chapter will hit some highlights of what was a complete team effort.