The Commander, U.S. Naval Forces, Central Command, and Commander, 5th Fleet spoke on 8 May at the Pentagon with the Naval Institute’s Fred Schultz and Fred Rainbow. He talked about the naval aspects of prosecuting Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom.
Proceedings: How did you coordinate air operations in Iraqi Freedom?
Vice Admiral Keating: Rear Admiral David C. Nichols, who is the commander of the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center [NSAWC] at Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada, was the deputy JFACC [joint force air component commander] for Enduring Freedom at Prince Sultan Air Base [Saudi Arabia]. He worked with the JFACC, [Lieutenant] General [T. Michael] Moseley's staff, and an augmentation team of 101 people, about 50% reservists and the rest from the weapons schools and the fleet. So we had a visible presence in key leadership positions. We had some Navy billets, but primarily they were purple [joint] billets fully integrated with the CAOC [combined air operations center].
Proceedings: So was it kind of an ad hoc augmentation?
Vice Admiral Keating: I wouldn't call it ad hoc, because the planning was very detailed and coordinated between the 5th Fleet and the 9th Air Force in determining who we were going to send and what their qualifications were. If they didn't have the qualifications, we got them the schooling they needed to augment. The reservists were a big hit because they were from the 2nd and 3rd Fleet staffs, and they are JFACC trained. So they are very process-smart in the manning of the CAOC. The fleet brought in the experts from the weapons schools and NSAWC, as well as fleet units.
Proceedings: Having the Navy there on that team clearly was a lesson learned from Desert Storm. What other lessons were drawn from this most recent combat?
Vice Admiral Keating: This was a different war, perhaps obviously, but for some not-so-apparent reasons. It was joint war fighting at the highest form of the art I've ever seen. The component commanders working for General Tommy Franks [Commander, Central Command] had spent about a year formulating this plan.
So there was understanding, friendship, familiarity, and trust among all the services and special forces working for General Franks. He did, in my view, a remarkable job of engendering that friendship, camaraderie, and trust. In fact, he insisted on it. The operation developed and unfolded a little differently than we had planned, but there was no service equity infighting—zero. Joint warfare unfolded differently than we thought it would, but because of the extensive planning and speed and agility represented, the change in the execution plan didn't matter. We were able were able to keep up with the rapidly dynamic and changing war in ways that were, in my experience, unprecedented.
I was just bragging on how joint a war this was, but from the naval perspective, the CNO [Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Vern Clark] had told me early on that I would have anything at my disposal to present to General Franks. So there were five carrier strike groups, more than a dozen submarines, scores of surface ships, military sealift command ships, and amphibious task forces east and west, all of which deployed and arrived in theater ready, well before the war started. It was remarkable.
Proceedings: What tasks did General Franks assign to you, and did you accomplish all of them?
Vice Admiral Keating: I believe we did accomplish all the tasks, which included providing operational fire on call when directed—sea-based, air-based, submarine-based. Another task was to maintain open sea lines of communication. It was not an insignificant effort, because it was not just the Iraqi threat. We had—and still have—a terrorist threat, and we are still very concerned about it. We think the al Qaeda network in particular is reduced in scope and capability, but we had to worry about that a lot, so we were escorting all ships through those particular transit points.
We had to be prepared for environmental challenges, too. We had to be prepared to handle the dumping of oil into the Arabian Gulf, which Saddam Hussein had done in years past. It didn't happen this time because of aggressive offensive operations, but we had to be prepared to handle it anyway. We were watching Iran very carefully, and in diplomatic and political circles we made sure the Iranians knew this war wasn't against them. We were conducting leadership interdiction operations in the North Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Oman, and the Red Sea, looking still for terrorists who might be making good their escape by sea. At the height of the war, we had 175 ships in our AOR [area of operations], 65 of them Coalition ships. Incidentally, some of them were French and some of them German. So in spite of those clear and obvious diplomatic challenges, we still had a broad Coalition supporting Operation Enduring Freedom-not Iraqi Freedom but Enduring Freedom.
Proceedings: So French and German units continued to participate in Enduring Freedom while Iraqi Freedom proceeded?
Vice Admiral Keating: Correct.
Proceedings: Obviously, you were prepared for various contingencies. What things did the enemy do that were not in the plan?
Vice Admiral Keating: Perhaps more glaring is what they didn't do. They did not launch a single fixed-wing sortie. In terms of a defensive counter against our naval forces, we were very much surprised at that and don't know exactly why they didn't. They did not launch any cruise missiles at naval forces, thank goodness. That was at least partly, if not largely, because of a very aggressive counter-cruise-missile campaign.
There was no mass movement of Iraqi citizens across borders, which we had been worried about, no dramatic civil unrest, and no environmental disasters. They had rigged explosives at several oil fields, but they were not able to torch them off. Did the information operations campaign that General Franks executed have some influence here? You bet! We dropped millions of leaflets, and we made extensive broadcasts from all assets. How do you know that what we told them not to do is the reason they didn't do it?
Proceedings: What effect did weather have on air operations?
Vice Admiral Keating: Very little. We saw the same pictures you saw from the embedded reporters about the horrible conditions those poor guys and gals on the ground were enduring. But we did not dramatically decrease the total airborne sortie rate during the bad sandstorm in late March. We had sensors to which weather is irrelevant and weapons that don't care about the weather. That does not mean that it didn't impact us at all, but we were still flying more than 2,000 sorties a day.
Proceedings: There were a couple of reports of some exciting landings on the carriers with very little visibility.
Vice Admiral Keating: The weather was challenging at times, but we were still able to find and kill the Republican Guard.
I'm not aware of the intel yet that tells us why their aircraft didn't fly. We were sure ready for them. And that was a very high priority for General Franks himself to the air component commander. Do not let them fly. If they do, you have to kill them. So that requires a certain apportionment of airborne assets. We had fighters in the air 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We targeted the airfields very heavily, cutting the runways, making sure they couldn't take off. And we continued to retarget them.
Proceedings: After you cut the runways on the first sweep, were any attempts made to reconstitute them?
Vice Admiral Keating: If we thought they'd try to fill in a runway, we'd put another bomb in the same crater. When I got to go to Baghdad I saw a crater on the main runway about ten meters wide. The water in the bottom was 14 feet deep. It was the result of two 2,000-pound JDAMs [joint direct attack munitions]. The first one gets through the concrete, the second one goes in deeper and blows up. You're not going to fill that hole overnight. There is a picture of it that'll water your eyes.
Proceedings: We understand tankers were at a premium. What should the Navy do to address this issue in the future?
Vice Admiral Keating: The Navy is addressing it. The CNO has his S-3 Sundown program. The S-3s were very important to our organic tanking capability. But with the F/A-18-E/F, the Super Hornets, we have an organic tanking capability that is better suited to our mission than is the S-3. The Hornet can do mission tanking. It's the same jet. It can carry five tanks of gas with a buddy store for the old tanking mission that some of us grew up doing. So these jets flew right up into Iraq with four Hornets with them, gave them each gas, flying the same profile. It's the same airplane. And they can carry ordnance.
Proceedings: How many F/A-18s did you have to divert to support that kind of mission?
Vice Admiral Keating: I don't know how many F/A-18s we had to divert. In the early days of the war, there were some tanker challenges that led to some jets not prosecuting their targets in a few cases. The only ones of which I am aware, guys had to go in and get a squirt of gas in one of the Kuwaiti bases to go back to the ship. But those I think were very limited. The CAOC got a lot better at the tanker management plan after the first few days of the war. Early on, we also brought some F/A-18s from the USS Nimitz [CVN-68], which was headed to the Gulf. We flew them off Diego Garcia to the USS Abraham Lincoln [CVN-72] and got to where we were passing about a half-million pounds of gas organically a day in addition to the five million we were getting from big-wing tankers.
The tanker issue has sparked a lot of controversy. The differences between Desert Storm and this operation were significant. In Desert Storm, we had 346 tankers at five bases, the best tanker bases in the world. They were all filled with large pipelines to sustain those tankers. At the start of this war we only had 160 tankers at 15 bases and the infrastructure to feed them was by trucks. So we eventually ramped up to 200 tankers.
Everybody asked, "Where are all the tankers?" Quite frankly, there was a dramatic difference from how we remembered it in the past to the challenges that confronted us here. And that's the tanker story that people tend to forget. It was basing and infrastructure to feed the tankers that drove the air war, and we had to apportion appropriately.
Proceedings: Did you preposition any carrier aircraft in Kuwait?
Vice Admiral Keating: No. But we had P-3 maritime aircraft in Kuwait and Bahrain.
Proceedings: And the P-3, as it did in Afghanistan, played a big role?
Vice Admiral Keating: Huge. Major General Jim Mattis, U.S. Marine Corps, [Commanding General, 1st Marine Division] will tell you that he had P-3s overhead his Marines at all times as they were going from Basra to Baghdad, and he regarded that as essential to his ability to prosecute his campaign. And P-3s in other parts of the country were helping special operations forces.
Proceedings: How did you integrate the E-2Cs [Navy electronic reconnaissance aircraft] with AWACs [Air Force air warning and control systems] and JSTARS [joint surveillance/target attack radar systems]?
Vice Admiral Keating: Very effectively. There were times when so many airplanes were in the battle space that there were just too many jets for those normal missions handled by AWACs. So, almost on the fly—no pun intended—the role of some forward airborne command and control just migrated to the E-2 guys, a role for which they are well suited. But in joint warfare, that mission is typically fulfilled by AWACs. But there was absolutely no degradation in mission effectiveness, and in fact, it was an improvement, because it allowed us to get more jets into a power projection role instead of holding south or north of the fight, waiting for a particular target.
Proceedings: How concerned were you about mines, and how would you rate our mine countermeasure operations?
Vice Admiral Keating: Very concerned, and big success. This is another of those things that didn't happen. It was a very close thing, though. In the hours leading to the commencement of offensive operations, Coalition assets in the North Arabian Gulf found commercial tugboats carrying mines. They were about ready, we think, to begin seeding the water in the North Arabian Gulf with mines. When we found these boats we thought maybe our worst fears were likely to materialize now.
We had four minesweepers that are permanently employed in Bahrain, and the British had given us four or five assets, so we had a fairly comprehensive surface mine warfare capability. We also brought over the dolphins, the marine mammals that are the best systems known to man for finding mines submerged in the silt on the bottom. So we had our triad, and we had trained extensively. We worried a lot, and it turns out we did find some mines in the water. We were able to clear the waterway to Umm Qasr in about 72 hours to our satisfaction. We were prepared for a number of eventualities.
Proceedings: How can you relate recent and current operations to the CNO's "Sea Power 21"?
Vice Admiral Keating: About 62,000 sailors ended up in our AOR. They were ready, and they could project sustainable power at long range. We used sea basing extensively for amphibious operations. We ended up with more than 20 amphibious ships. That's how almost 16,000 Marines got to the AOR. We also had broad communication capability and full integration of Coalition ships. I think this operation completely validated his strategy, and it certainly did nothing to run contrary to his investment strategy.
Proceedings: How will the success in Iraq affect future basing flexibility for the 5th Fleet?
Vice Admiral Keating: There has been a naval presence in Bahrain for more than 50 years. As you know, we are not a sea-based numbered fleet. We are shore-based in Bahrain. It is obvious when we deploy, because we go away. We also have a fairly small staff at 5th Fleet headquarters. We come and we go; we don't have to ask permission for basing, we don't have to ask permission for overflight, necessarily; we don't have to ask for much in terms of shore-based resources. That's the beauty of sea power. That's "Sea Power 21"—capability and capacity—two things not lost on our Gulf Coast Council allies.
Proceedings: So you don't see a bigger footprint in the region with the less hostile environment in Iraq?
Vice Admiral Keating: Smaller. Much smaller. Again, this is one of the wonderful things about seaborne capability. We had five carrier battle groups, and then the Nimitz joined us, so we ended up with six, four in the Gulf and two in the eastern Mediterranean. I called Buzz Moseley and said, "It looks to me like the requirement for all these power projection assets is gone as the war is in its final hours and minutes," and he said, "I agree." So I called General Franks, after checking with the CNO, and said, "I believe we can let these carrier battle groups go home," and he said, "I agree." We had submarines that came into the AOR, shot their Tomahawk cruise missiles, and left. Nobody knew. So the naval footprint in the AOR is now decreasing dramatically, all of it without fanfare or commotion.
Proceedings: What if you would have had the littoral combat ship? How would you have employed it?
Vice Admiral Keating: We would have used it probably in the same ways we used our frigates. In parts of the Gulf the water is not so deep, so on some missions the bigger Aegis platforms simply could not get in close enough. We also did some escorting of ships in fairly shallow waters, which a littoral combat ship could have done.
Proceedings: Some of the Coalition forces are concerned about their ability to keep up with U.S. technology. What is being done about that?
Vice Admiral Keating: Well, they can't, in a lot of areas. Nobody else is flying as many fixed-wing aircraft. The French, the Italians, and the Spanish have carriers, but they just don't have the capability of our big decks, nor do their jets have the capability. The British are shooting Tomahawks. I think in that respect they are right with us, but they just don't have the volume of fire that we can bring.
Communication is a challenge. We are very good at communicating around the world instantaneously on secure nets. Our allies just don't have that same capability. We are working hard to bring them along through the Coalition-Wide Area Network, but it's a challenge, because the networks are not cheap to install and they're not cheap to maintain. So we're giving them as much as we are able. But their aggressiveness and their capability help offset these shortfalls.
For example, the Japanese are helping us in the north Arabian Sea. They have cruisers, and they have an oiler that is giving gasoline free to the Coalition. We've taken $60-70 million of gasoline from our Japanese allies. So in ways that are not so technologically attractive but are fundamental to the way we fight, the Coalition forces are helping us in a very big way.
Proceedings: How would you rate the success of the Department of Defense's embedded journalists on the battlefield and on board ships?
Vice Admiral Keating: On board ships I can tell you it was great. The reasons are several. It gave the journalists an opportunity to spend some time with U.S. sailors, certainly our best assets. And it gave those journalists an opportunity to develop a very deep understanding of how good these kids are. For the shore-based group, it gave these folks, men and women alike, a very real taste of life as an Army or Marine infantryman. It also gave us good real-time intelligence, which was helpful.
Proceedings: What were the challenges attendant to this?
Vice Admiral Keating: Certainly, we worked hard under General Franks's direct guidance to make sure these folks understood the rules going in. To my knowledge, at least from the naval side, the rules were observed, and it was a helpful situation for us.
Proceedings: How well did the major news outlets tell the naval story?
Vice Admiral Keating: I think very well. I'm not aware of anything that was said or captured on film where we went, "Oh man, that's way off!" or "It's just flat wrong!"
Proceedings: What aspects might they have missed, if any?
Vice Admiral Keating: After a while you can only show so many catapult shots. You can only show so many Tomahawks coming out of the tubes. Naval forces can sustain that volume. All five carrier groups sustained a very high tempo of operations, without a single day off for maintenance from the 20 days leading up to the war and the 25 days of the war—about a 45-day stretch at a high tempo rate. That's a difficult thing for the media to capture. But eventually, it gets to be not such a hot story anymore. And then there's the very precise nature of this particular war. An F-14 going off the catapult is one thing. The ability to put its ordnance—three different bombs onto three different targets, three different aim points widely separated, miles and miles apart—that's a difficult thing to capture with just a picture of an F-14 launching.
Proceedings: Have we missed anything that you would like to communicate to the readers of Proceedings?
Vice Admiral Keating: Just one comment. If I had to characterize the planning and execution of this operation in one word, the word would be speed. I've been at this for decades, and I have never imagined an ability to do so many things so rapidly. The land forces moved so forward so fast that in one day we had to do six different versions of the air tasking order. This was over in less than four weeks!