U.S. Marine Corps F/A-18Ds armed with laser-guided bombs and Sidewinders proved a deadly combination during Operation Allied Force. The two-seat crew concept was one of the keys to flexibility as the squadrons adapted to various missions.
In late May, 24 U.S. Marine Corps two-seat F/A-18D Hornets deployed to an austere air base in a country that no U.S. tactical aircraft had ever operated from—and six days later were hitting enemy targets around the clock.
From 28 May to 10 June, Marine All-Weather Fighter-- Attack Squadron (VMFA[AW])-533 and VMFA(AW)332 flew 220 combat missions expending 152 tons of ordnance in support of Operation Allied Force. Detachments from Marine Aircraft Group (MAG)-31, Marine Wing Support Squadron (MWSS)-273, Marine Air Control Group-28, and Marine Aviation Logistics Squadron-31, a total of 840 Marines including the Hornet squadrons, conducted operations from the former Warsaw Pact base at Taszar, Hungary.
Expeditionary Air
Prior to our arrival, the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Army were using Taszar as a staging facility for personnel and equipment flowing into and out of Bosnia-Herzegovina, but no Hungarian aircraft were operating there. When the decision was made to commit the Marine Corps F/A-18Ds to Operation Allied Force, most of the NATO air bases were filled chock-to-block with aircraft. An advance party from MAG-31 scoured southern Europe and found Taszar to be the best location.
Although Taszar had an 8,200-foot runway suitable for F/A-18D operations and a tactical air navigation (TACAN) system that permitted instrument approaches in bad weather, it initially lacked several features needed for 24-hour combat operations. Most important, we needed to link with the Combined Air Operations Center at Vicenza, Italy, to receive the air-tasking order (ATO) and mission planning coordination cards. Sprint, the commercial telephone company, was servicing Taszar and all requests for communications links seemed to require company action. (If you're fortunate, a commercial firm will be there for you, too, when you need a telephone.) Command-and-control communications is a topic that requires a paper of its own.
We needed more fuel trucks; ultimately ten refueling trucks prepositioned in Norway for the air-landed Marine Expeditionary Brigade were shipped in. Arresting gear, although not a requirement, was nice to have for emergencies and wet runways. Within the first week of operations, MWSS-273 had departure-end M-21 arresting gear installed, and a second set of M-21 installed by the second week. As it turned out, the arresting gear became a major safety factor as high-gross-weight landings in heavy rain showers became routine.
Brown & Root, the U.S. construction company that built so many runways in Vietnam during the war, was responsible for facility construction and improvement, and built floored hard-back tents for work spaces-a considerable improvement over the usual general-purpose tent pitched in the proverbial mud hole. The company made our eyes water with its capability to produce top-quality facilities and operate a mess hall second to none.
Taszar had a small contingent of U.S. Air Force air traffic control personnel and weather forecasters, but Marines augmented them to ensure 24-hour operations. Military police from MWSS-273 provided flight-line security for the base, which was only 50 miles from the Serbian border, while MAG-31 Marines defended the headquarters area.
Flight Operations
F/A-18Ds performed a wide variety of missions during Allied Force including deep air strikes, forward air control (airborne) [FAC-A] close air support, aerial reconnaissance, strike coordination and armed reconnaissance, and antiair warfare. Many of our air crews were concerned about our ability to exploit the F/A-18D's capabilities to perform well in a wide variety of missions—the jack-of-all trades, master-of-none scenario. Although we made mistakes, overall the crews adapted well to whatever tactical situation presented itself; because the F/A-18D is a two-seater, no single individual had to master everything—we could share the load. Crews proved capable of filling holes in the ATO on missions ranging from direct air support to suppression of enemy air defenses.
Airborne Forward Air Control
By the time the F/A-18Ds flew their first missions into Kosovo on 28 May, the Serb military had hunkered down to escape destruction by allied aircraft. From the air, even using binoculars, Kosovo appeared to be empty of all human life; 50% of the houses were destroyed or without roofs. No movement except for an occasional truck could be detected on roads. Effectively, the Serbs and their military equipment remained hidden in tree lines, inside civilian houses, under bridges, or in mountain tunnels; any military targets in the open were probably decoys. Restrictions on minimum altitudes and the types of authorized targets made it difficult to destroy an enemy who had no requirement to shoot, move, or expose himself. Although aviation no longer was destroying large numbers of enemy targets, air power proved effective in that the enemy in Kosovo could no longer effectively employ his forces.
The hallmark of Marine aviation is providing air support for ground forces. Over Kosovo, however, aviation needed support from the ground. Air had fixed the enemy in place, but to complete its destruction required support from counter-battery radars, forward air control teams, artillery marks and illumination, and the close-in eyeballs and tank-killing weapons of attack helicopters. The Serbs were lucky they were spared an assault by ground forces, which would have forced them to expose themselves.
The following describes a typical night FAC(A) mission using night vision goggles (NVGs) that lasted six hours and included four air-refuelings.
Shortly after we arrived on station, the airborne battlefield command-and-control center (ABCCC) passed us grid coordinates of a Serbian artillery site that was reported to be firing on U.S. troops. Grid coordinates were passed using Have Quick (a frequency-agile net); they had probably been forwarded from U.S. counter-battery radars attached to Task Force Hawk located in Albania. Obviously, we wanted to destroy this target quickly, but we were frustrated.
Minimum altitude restrictions, as well as NVG and F/A18D forward-looking infrared radar (FLIR) limitations, made detection of a camouflaged enemy at night difficult at best. We could see with the naked eye the intermittent muzzle flashes of artillery firing from Kosovo into Albania, but the targets could not be pinpointed with enough accuracy to ensure that we did not mistakenly bomb civilians or even U.S. troops. Ultimately, an Air Force FAC(A) in an A-10 illuminated the area with multiple infrared (IR) flares, detected an artillery site, and ran a section of Marine Hornets on it. The FAC(A) appeared to be conducting reconnaissance by fire, and then figuring that if he received antiaircraft artillery (AAA) in return, the shooters must be bad guys. Two F/A-18Ds dropped two 500-pound bombs, and the Serbs were done firing for the night. The target may or may not have been hit or destroyed, but apparently just the knowledge that air was poised to strike shut down every Serb artillery position along the border with Albania.
Dedicated peacetime training against realistic targets would have helped us—as would an embedded Global Positioning System (GPS), IR flares, and an advanced FLIR.
- Present training usually pits air crews against a target they have seen multiple times on local training ranges. At the Combined Arms Exercises at Twenty-nine Palms, California, realistic hulk targets are usually placed in the open where air crews can identify them readily. We should train instead against realistic targets that are camouflaged, and possibly located near or within urban areas or within tree lines. If you want to kill a camouflaged artillery site, you have to know what it is going to look like on the FLIR.
- With GPS, we probably could have found the artillery with little difficulty, and we certainly would have been a lot more confident that we were putting our bombs into the right spot (Kosovo and not Albania).
- Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron (MAWTS)-1 tested IR flares in 1995, but the fleet does not have any. The U.S. Air Force has them: they killed the target and we did not. The fleet needs them.
- The present F/A-18D FLIR has a four-power magnification in narrow field-of-view, which is inadequate to detect and identify military vehicles and equipment from altitudes above the shoulder-fired SAM/light AAA threat. An eight-power capability would be better.
The Combined Force Air Component Commander (CFACC) at Vicenza, Italy, labeled these FAC(A) missions when they were actually closer to strike control and reconnaissance (SCAR) missions. No friendly U.S. ground forces were in Kosovo, and obviously the indigenous civilians did not closely coordinate with U.S. air-to-ground attack missions. The intent, I think, was to make sure that U.S. aircraft did not drop ordnance on Kosovo indiscriminately. Attackers had to confirm target identification, and this was the FAC(A)'s responsibility.
Deep Air Strikes
These missions were the ones we wanted. If you got one, you could count on dropping your ordnance and hurting the enemy. We flew such missions throughout Serbia against bridges, radio towers, ammunition storage facilities, and oil refineries with great success. The best weapon was the 1,000-pound laser-guided bomb (LGB), which typically guided to a direct hit even when delivered level from high altitude. There appeared to be some debate at the highest command level about what had higher priority: military equipment in Kosovo or the Serbian infrastructure in mainland Serbia. What the correct strategic answer is I cannot say, but here is the way it turned out: In short order, we destroyed a great number of targets in Serbia with a few direct air strike missions; we did not destroy much of anything in Kosovo even after a large number of FAC(A) and close air support missions. An oil refinery that covers four square miles is not too tough a target—but a camouflaged tank is another matter.
One other topic of debate was why Serbian surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) were allowed to survive through 78 days of air war. The SA-3 is a relatively immobile SAM, yet Belgrade had adequate numbers of SA-3s to continue to disrupt strikes through the closing days of the war. You had to wonder why your assigned target was a storage facility for military uniforms instead of the known SA-3 site you had to fly over en route. How we were hurting the Serbs by blowing up their uniforms I'll never know.
As opposed to what the Cable News Network was broadcasting, strikes into Serbia did not go unopposed. Although a well-planned strike route into Belgrade one day might result in zero SAM launches, the next day's strike might see four or five missiles launched against a single division of aircraft. Strike routing around known threats, and Serbian capability and willingness to employ SAMs made the difference between a boring, ho-hum flight, and one where you were just glad to get back.
Air Force F-16CJs suppressing enemy air defenses (SEAD) were relatively ineffective in the reactive mode. If you got shot at by a SAM, you were pretty much on your own in terms of defeating it. The suppression aircraft orbited far enough away from the SAMs that their ability to detect launches combined with the time of flight of the high-speed antiradiation missile (HARM) exceeded the time required for the SAM to kill the targeted aircraft. Lesson here: Strap a HARM or two onto some of the strike aircraft so that you can protect your own package.
Combat Air Patrol
F/A-18Ds were assigned various combat air patrols (CAPs) throughout the theater. They were manned normally for four hours at a time, but not a single Serbian MiG was launched during MAG-31's time on station. Fighter pilots are frequently accused of spending too much time training for the air-to-air mission. Whatever the truth of that contention, in this fight you killed the enemy primarily on the ground, not in the air. Air crews competed for strike missions and a chance to drop some 1,000-pounders, not for who got to drill holes in the sky waiting for the one Serbian MiG pilot dumb enough to thumb his nose at NATO.
Even so, there is a reason to train to the air-to-air threat. The F/A-18 is a strike fighter capable of destroying aircraft in the air. In addition, it has the capability to self-escort which acts as a force multiplier reducing required CAP aircraft and tankers. Every Hornet that flew into combat carried two Sidewinder air-to-air missiles and at least one Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM). Apparently, Serbian MiGs and helicopters stayed on the ground because they did not like the odds posed by missile-armed NATO tactical fighters operating under NATO's Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) control.
Mission Planning
This was one of the unusual aspects of Operation Allied Force. In training, one experienced aviator typically serves as the mission commander for strike planning and is responsible for everything ranging from target area tactics, to fuel planning, and air-defense suppression. During Allied Force, a mission planning cell staffed with a liaison officer from each squadron serving in theater was established at Aviano Air Base, Italy. Only designated mission commanders could fill the billets, and they did the hard work. The cell planned and coordinated virtually the entire mission—strike routes, tanking plans, push times, marshal stacks, times-on-targets, and air-defense suppression. Crews got a coordination card that listed call signs of all aircraft participating in the strike, radio frequencies, code words, identification friend-or-foe (IFF) squawks, the marshal plan, the tanking plan, and the air defense suppression plan.
In addition, planners provided strike leads with a black-and-white map with the strike route, targets, and suppression CAPs plotted. All that individual element leaders had to do was show up two or three hours prior to the brief, pick up their mission coordination cards, and figure out the target area tactics. Since the mission planners determined the effectiveness of the strike, and maybe whether or not you get shot down, it made sense to send them the best we had. Overall, the system worked.
Results
Positioning 24 of the world's finest strike-fighters and 840 hard-charging Marines 21 minutes from Belgrade signaled NATO's deadly intent. The two-seat F/A-18D is a fine aircraft adaptable to many missions—and because it is a two-seater, there are enough sharp fliers to master the myriad of missions it is capable of flying.
Lieutenant Colonel Tissue, a naval aviator, is a staff officer at Special Operations Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida. He served as the Executive Officer of VMFA(AW)-533 during Operation Allied Force.