For your reading pleasure I'll leave this story and a few pictures from a mission I flew in DS.  It's written to given the lay person some ideas of what a mission is like and enough details for the military folks to appreciate.


Today is the 33rd Anniversary of the start of Desert Storm. Those of us in Turkey followed close behind the first wave coming out of the south.  On Veterans Day several years a high school friend asked me to tell her a story from my time in the service.  I wrote this out with the helpful comments of my mentors Colonel's Dave Skakal and Tom Faust.  This story will give you some insight on the planning and execution of a modern combat sortie.  This particular story is about a friendly fire incident I was involved in.  

These events occurred in mid to late February 1991 in Northern Iraq during Operation Desert Storm. I was leading a two-ship sortie of EF-111's in support of an 80-plane attack package attacking Republican Guard Units of the Iraq Army. My mission that night was to provide SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defense) against several SA-2 and mobile SA-6 surface to air missile (SAM) systems around the target area to protect USAF F-111 and B-52 aircraft as they attacked the Iraqi Army Units.

A typical night strike mission would start around 5pm. I would wake up from sleeping all day, collect my crewmate and flight members and we would head to "hard ops". It is hardened concrete bunker that was our base of operations. I would go to the mission planning cell and see what the target was for the nights mission. The Mission Planning Cell was a group of pilots and navigators whose job was to develop the overall attack plan. After that I would go down to maintenance and talk with them about the condition of our aircraft and find some dinner. Then the mission planning started. It would take about 4 hours in total. This encompassed viewing the overall mission and then planning how we would support it, our individual formation briefing and then an overall mission brief for the 80-plane attack. After the overall brief we had a few minutes to ourselves. One of my personal rituals was to sanitize my uniform. We took off all our patches and name tags, anything that could identify our unit or where we might have come from. We only had our USAF ID cards and a "Blood Chit" with us. A Blood Chit is a numbered piece of paper with an American Flag on it and a message written in several languages promising reward for helping the American pilot that has it. Each one was serialized, and the number associated to the issued pilot. I would then take all my personal items and give it to our intel officer. She would promise to hold it for me, and I promised I would return in a few hours for it. It was a game we played. She and I both knew the risks, but they went unspoken. After that I would go to life support to get dressed for flight. I would put on my G-suit and get my helmet. I would then put on a winter flight jacket and don my survival vest. The vest had various items that would be handy to have if I had to eject from the plane. It included two day/night flares, flashlight, Gyro Jet Flare Gun, signal mirror, whistle, strobe light with IR (infrared) filter, compass, PRC-90 Survival Radio, several packets of water and a M9 sidearm (Beretta 92FS 9mm handgun) and two spare magazines.  We would then step to our planes and get them ready for takeoff.  We launched that night from Incirlik AB Turkey around 0100 hours. It was about a 50-minute flight to the Turkish Iraqi border at an altitude of 23,000 feet and our normal cruise speed of 450 KTAS (Knots True Air Speed) (518 MPH). As we approached the border, we double checked a line on our maps that was marked FEBA (Forward Edge of the Battle Area). Past this point there are no friendly troops on the ground and little to no risk of attacking friendly ground forces. This is a critical reminder to us to preform our "Fence Check." We armed our chaff and flare systems, turned on our defensive ECM (Electronic Counter Measures) systems, turned off our exterior lights and otherwise made the plane ready to respond to any threat and do our mission. As we crossed "The Fence" I accelerated my plane to my planned combat speed of 540 Knots (621 MPH). This will give us the best performance and better maneuverability against any potential threat. At this point in tonight's mission, I turn the Master Radiate Switch to "ON" and commence our Offensive Operations against the Iraqi Early Warning Radars that are trying to locate the attacking forces I am trying to screen.  DENY, DECIVE and DEFEAT was our MOTTO. To perform my mission that night I was flying a flight orbit that looked like a stretched-out bow tie. It ran east and west across the width of Iraq. This is an important detail as the story unfolds (see the attached picture).

All the pieces were in place and the attack began. It was another typical combat mission much like many of the previous ones. About 30 minutes into the attack things changed radically. I was on the western leg of my orbit at 22,000 feet when the AWACS (Airborne Early Warning and Control) called out on the tactical radio frequency "High speed BOGEY" and then gave his bearing and range from "The Bullseye". The Bullseye is a point in space that we can use to reference position on an unsecure frequency so as not to give our current position away yet let everyone know where we are talking about. A BOGEY is an unknown aircraft. My EWO (Electronic Warfare Officer) sitting next to me said that position was near us. I start scanning outside in that direction and increased our speed from 540 to 600 Knots (690 MPH). The F-15s north of us start scanning their Air-to-Air Radars in that direction looking for the unknown aircraft. I was now at the end of my orbit leg and started a turn to the north. When I was pointed north one of the F-15s pointed south called out "radar contact 1000 knots closure". This meant the combined speed of the two aircraft was 1000 knots (1150 MPH). As I continued my turn to the east, the F-15 pilots called out that the Bogey was now maneuvered to "The Beam". This is interpreted as a defensive maneuver an Iraqi aircraft would do to try to avoid detection. For a better understanding of this Google "Pulse Doppler Radar Notch." By making our relative velocity as close to zero as possible we would have been well positioned to attain velocity gate pull off and not be seen by his radar.
At this point the AWACS called out the bogey as a "bandit", a confirmed "bad guy." The F-15 pilot locked his radar on the bandit. My RWR (Radar Warning Receiver), a very high-tech radar detector like the one you have in a car, started yelling at me that someone had a radar lock on me. Now everything is starting to make sense. In the heat of the battle the AWACS lost track of me and then called me out as the unknown aircraft. This is a mistake on their part and should be easy enough to sort out. I called out "Buddy Spike" you have Ghost Lead locked up. You are targeting a friendly. Ghost is my callsign for the night and Buddy Spike is the term we use when a friendly aircraft has targeted a friendly aircraft. No one would listen to me. They are blind to what was going on. I left this radio frequency and went to another one and spoke to a different controller on the AWACS. His job was to watch me specifically. I told him to "knock this shit off." He told me they are too busy to talk to me because of the bandit. I yelled at him that you have me targeted as the bandit. He would not listen to what I was saying. I went back to the tactical frequency again and told them they had the wrong aircraft targeted. No one would listen. We had a special altitude to go to if we believed we were in distress and in danger of being engaged by a friendly aircraft. We called it the "Sanctuary Altitude." I went to that altitude and called out what I was doing and to not shoot. There are extremely specific rules about how to do all of this. It is referred to as ROE (Rules of Engagement). Well, that night the F-15 pilot and everyone on the AWACS threw the rule book out the window and I was about to pay the price for it. You are not supposed to shoot anyone at that altitude unless you have a positive EID (Electronic Identification). There are lots of ways to do this that I cannot discuss but for the sake of this story they were all throwing the rule book out the window.

Things were not looking good for our EF-111 crew and we were about to get shot out of the sky by our own aircraft and there is nothing I could do to stop it. Well, I was not going down without a fight, so we started to configure the aircraft for an emergency descent to the ground. I was getting ready to push the nose of the plane in a 30 degrees dive, engage full afterburner and go as fast as the plane would fly trying to avoid the missile shot that I know is about to come.

Then divine intervention occurred. Fortunate for me a National Reconnaissance Asset happened to be in the area (Google "RC-135 Rivet Joint") and he made the following radio call on Guard (the emergency frequency we monitor). It truly was like the voice of God calling from on high. "THIS IS VACUUM ON GUARD. HEY AWACS ARE YOU GOING TO LET THAT F-15 SHOOT THAT EF-111? VACUUM OUT". The Rivet Joint callsign is Vacuum. As you can imagine all hell broke loose at that point. The AWACS called the F-15 off from the attack and I did not have to dive for the ground. I was happy about that because the Anti-Aircraft fire that night was intense and if the missile did not get me the bullets might have.

So, after I take a few moments to compose myself I got rather snippy on the radio. I matter of fact told the AWACS controllers and the mission commander that if they were not going to follow the ROE on how to tell the sheep from the goats then I was going the fuck home. My wingman that evening was my Squadron Commander and I asked if he was coming or staying. He said he agreed with me and we left the battlefield. At this point the entire mission had gone so sideways that it was cancelled, and we all went home.

When we got back to Incirlik the face to face debrief got a little ugly. The result was the AWACS controller crew, and the F-15 pilot lost their Mission Ready status and the F-15 pilot was sent home. I drank several beers and went to bed. Got up the next day and flew another combat mission the following night.

Combat is dangerous. The modern battlefield is lethal, and shit can go sideways fast especially when you follow the rules and others do not!

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TLDR, but I was at Incerlik in 1970. Nice place.

OST for later

That was awesome.

Thanks for sharing.

Thank you for the story.

33 years?   Holy shit.  I'm old.

Huh. When my dad flew F-16s during the nineties over Iraq, after DS, he described an incident while escorting  EF-111s where they again got called out as the threat, but there were cooler heads that day than in your mission.

Thank you for sharing. I remember watching the start of the invasion on TV at school.

Damn scary.

Thanks for sharing OP & glad it worked out!

JTF PROVEN FORCE at Incirlik AB.  The Army was under GO1, the USAF wasn't until the ground war started.

The USAF was also on per diem, even the plebs in tent city.  The day the ground war started the expeditionary wing was tied in knots over whether to declare field conditions or not... Which would have cut off their per diem.

Thanks for sharing OP.  Thank God Vacuum got it sorted ot for ya!!

Yep. My wife was sitting outside of the SAC General’s office when DS/DS was going on.  She was in the AF, and was the general’s secretary. She said once “ The Storm” kicked off, Offutt AFB was hopping.

That was an awesome read, thanks for sharing!  And glad that you were not shot down.

Thanks for sharing. Stuff like this makes this place great.

Bet you could have squeezed out diamonds that night. Thanks for sharing.

Thank you for sharing your story. As a guy on the ground there, the air assets above us were very reassuring.

ETA: This was very early, maybe December 90. We were prepping the tracks to get painted, near Camp 15.

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Tag

Cool story. Thanks.

At around that time I was somewhere in the desert of Saudi Arabia guarding EPW's. We could hear the bombs going off in the distance.

33yrs goes by fast.  I remember being a young airman and watching some of the first shots of the war being fired (cruise missiles from the Red Sea).  A month later I was happy to discover it was anything but “the mother of all wars”.

We had business cards made up.

"Proven Force Limited a division of Desert Storm Incorporated "

I remember being on der Diem the entire time.  It was both good and bad.  Good that I got the money, bad in that is was damn hard to find food.  I was flying strike mostly in the middle of the night so when I was up the officers club was closed.  I usually ate at the snack bar the line maintenance guys had set up.  When we got back in the morning we would go to the enlisted dining hall for breakfast because the O club wasn't open.  We could go there but had to pay a surcharge I think of 65¢

Awesome.

Brings back memories… like the F-4 Wild Weasel that took a HARM shot at one of my unit’s B-52’s.   Good thing it was trying to hit the India Band radar (the gunner’s Search Radar) and impacted just above the turret.  Took out the drag chute and most of the gunner’s electronics but only peppered the tail.  The aircraft made it to Jeddah but needed new seat cushions for the ejection seats.  Silver Star for the pilot and DFC’s for the rest of the crew.  It took quite a while to get it fixed enough to limp it back home.  The F-4 guys never had a good explanation of how a SAM radar could travel at 340 knots.

Cool picture.  Glad you made it back.

That's some serious fog of war shit.  My best friend was a Weasel in DS.  I'll have to ask him about that story...

Thanks for retelling your story.  Glad you survived!

Immediately subscribed.

Sounds about right.

Kinda funny to me that conflict happened when it did. Right when a whole bunch of old equipment was being retired and new stuff was just coming online.

So they threw it all into the fire.

There's a story that sticks in my mind about F-15s that made record flights to their new base when they landed they needed to hoist the pilots out of their cockpits. Reportedely they did well. But being carted around in a wheelbarrow on day one makes for quite an image.

You and me both, but those were good times.

I remember the trading cards.

I was in 1st grade so we didn't watch it in school but I was all about it. Even then I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Now about that per diem!

I got to Diego Garcia in August and flew the last B-52 out the following May.  Everybody was on field conditions.  At least the Navy Mess was fairly good.  Only place I’ve ever been where you could eat chicken for 4 meals a day.

Plot twist on the WW story - the Buff pilot had previously flown F-4’s!

Thanks for the story.    I was an old guy  taking night classes at a college by Fort Hood.  One night a woman was running down the hall screaming "the bombing started, the bombing started".  There was much crying and tears in my class.  Many were wives of active duty over there.  One husband, and Apache pilot didnt come home.  Sad time. Glad you came home.

About a year ago an old Vietnam veteran stopped by my house and told me that he was cleaning out his house and wanted to know if I wanted these.
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AmericanaPipedream was selling those a year or two ago. I almost pulled the trig on a box, but the price was a little too steep for the nostalgia kick.

You can have them. Pm me where to send them.

I knew you were in trouble the moment you said you started your turn and the Eagle driver simultaneously called out that the Bogey was putting him on the beam.

seems like yesterday

Thank you OP, posts like this are why ARFCOM is still a pretty cool place.

I have some of those in the attic.

Has it been that long!!? We had one of our squadron's jets shot down on the last day, but the pilot, Capt. Bill Andrews, survived, was caught by the Iraqis, and beat up.

It certainly does.  I remember watching the first night of the Air War in high school. The team was going to have pizza at a local joint and watch video someone had shot of us finally beating a hated rival, but then CNN had something else in store...   I certainly couldn't believe, then, that I'd have at least two more lifetimes after that day to live.  You just don't think that way as a young man.

Sparkvark, I'm not asking overtly (mainly because I don't think you give out recipes for such questions), but why not try some of the jamming techniques against the Eagle's radar as a last resort?  He'd be flinging Sparrows at you, and he'd need to maintain lock all the way to impact, as I understand how that system works. I'd think a Sparkvark could put out a truly immense amount of energy at those two, and that might have better odds than just diving for the ground.  But, as is obvious from my prior posts in .mil aviation threads, it's not like I know what I'm talking about. Thanks, and I'm glad you did better than those Blackhawk guys did, many years later in a similar situation.

Our unit went to Zhako, Iraq for Op Provide Comfort to help the Kurds in the mountains after being in Kuwait and southern Iraq.
I found a shit load of Iraqi Dinars on Hwy 8. When we went to Incirlik,  I met up a bunch of AF pilots that were bitching about us in the south getting all kinds of bring back stuff.
I was selling them dinars from the Highway to Hell for $20 each. Didn't matter the denomination.  $20 per bill. I think I came home around $4500.

I have a small stack of about 8 or 9 of those packs.

What a incredible story,Thank you.I can’t imagine how puckered up you must have been.

I was a junior in high school. We had one teacher brainwashing us, telling us we were all about to be drafted. We all went home and watched it on CNN when they still had news.

Thanks for the writeup OP.

54th Engr Bn (C)(M), 1AD

OUTSTANDING POST. Thank you OP!

Wow! Thanks for sharinf

1-17-91

Night before graduation as an M1 tanker from One Station Unit Training at Ft. Knox, KY.  Nervous times but my ultimate orders sent me to South Korea where we heard about all the big tank battles that happened later.

You guys got me the National Defense Ribbon for my Class A's (participation trophy)

Good story and glad you made it home.

It's amazing to me how quickly complacency can set in in aviation. I had to risk my job calling out massive safety issues in northern Iraq in 2022.

Confirmation bias, cascading errors, plain old incompetence... I'm guilty of all of it too, but it's up to us to nip it in the bud

Glad you made it out okay, OP. Great story