‘I want to congratulate each and every one of you for your performance in Operation Iraqi Freedom. You are demonstrating for all the world to see that the United States has the greatest naval air power in die history of the world. Hostilities are still in progress, but Iraq has been liberated. Our president and country called upon you for your courage, dedication, and skill. You responded with precise, persistent combat air power. We have seven aircraft carriers and air wings deployed in response to OIF. Each aircraft carrier is a sovereign piece of American territory-collectively, the most potent striking force ever assembled, and in working jointly with our allies, a remarkable testimony to our flexibility and capability’.
Vice Admiral Mike Malone made this announcement to the Naval Air Force. In June 2003, Commander Naval Air Forces Pacific aptly summarized what the US Navy contributed to OIF. In the early phases of the fight, naval aviators performed more than 1000 sorties; by mid-April 2003, this number had risen to more than 6500 from aircraft carriers in the theater. These included strike and dose air support (CAS) missions in no less than 64% of the cases. All of this was made possible by the dedication of one fewer aircraft carrier/air wing, the USS Nimitz (CVN-68) and CVW-11, who arrived in the Northern Arabian Gulf (NAC) near the close of the conflict than they had during Operation Desert Storm in 1991.
Strictly adhering to the current US Navy mantra of ‘quality, not quantity, the effectiveness of ‘the aircraft sent into combat in 2003 more than made up for any shortfall in numbers in comparison with the force sent to help free Kuwait 12 years earlier. The employment of smart weapons such as the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), Joint Stand-Off Weapon (JSOW), and new generation laser-guided bombs (LGBs). combined with better tactics and more versatile aircraft, allowed the Navy to make a greater contribution to ‘Gulf War II’ in comparison with its efforts in Desert Storm. Driven by the USAF’s outstanding use of smart bombs dropped from multi-role aircraft such as the F-15E and F-16A/C during the latter conflict, the Navy invested significant sums of money in the 1990s on technologies that ultimately ensured ‘one weapon, one target destroyed’.
Rear Admiral Pac Walsh, a veteran of Desert Storm and the current commander of Carrier Strike Group Fourteen, and the previous commander of Carrier Air Wing One outlined the reasons why the Navy was compelled to alter its strategy in combat.; ‘In the Cold War blue water Navy, we caught ourselves to work autonomously. This was because we did not expect to have allies fighting alongside us in any conflict with the Soviet Union. We expected to use their infrastructure and their bases, but we never dreamed that they would take up arms and fight alongside us. The real lesson the Navy learned in the 1991 conflict with Iraq was what you can do when you work with an ally, whether it be in the joint ranks or the Coalition ranks. We had not put together architecture prior to that which would allow us to become more effective in our unilateral operations. Prior to 1991, we worked pretty much autonomously in the Arabian Gulf.’
Naval aviators like Rear Admiral Walsh were astounded by the imagery being shown to them on television screens aboard the ship as the Navy’s carrier-based armament and systems likewise reflected its Cold War attitude;
‘Like all naval aviators involved in Desert Storm, I was astounded by the TV pictures released by the USAF of precision munitions striking targets. We had nothing like this in the fleet. Part of our problem in this area was in the way we traditionally evaluated our mission success. Our strike aircraft were bereft of the equipment that allowed such vivid imagery of bombs hitting targets to be brought back to the ship in real time for post-mission analysis. We had to rely on a dedicated reconnaissance platform for this imagery- F-14s carrying TARPS (Tactical Aerial Reconnaissance Pod System) in Desert Storm. The Tomcat could not capture imagery of bombs actually hitting targets as was the case with the USAF’s laser-guided smart bombs. We had no way of conducting” real-time” bomb hit/bomb damage assessment.’
The legendary F-14 Tomcat, despite being a useful reconnaissance platform, was the aircraft that proved to be the most useless during Desert Storm as a direct result of the Navy’s Cold War tactics. The ten Tomcat units that were sent into action had no choice but to resign themselves to primarily flying combat air patrols over the NAG, hundreds of miles south of the real action in Iraq. The aircraft was designed exclusively as a fighter-interceptor and was tasked with repelling waves of missile-carrying Soviet bombers hell-bent on sinking US Navy carriers. Additionally, the F-14 crews didn’t see much fighter action because the Iraqi Air Force was reluctant to attack naval ships.
Because the Navy had not developed the necessary systems and practices required to integrate carrier air groups as part of a joint air component command, Tomcats were kept out of the action. The strict rules of engagement (ROE) that would have enabled F-14 operators to engage aerial targets autonomously using only their onboard sensors could not be overcome as a result. They instead relied on controlling platforms like USAF E-3 AWACS aircraft to give chem their authorization to fire.
As long as the ROE conditions were satisfied, fighters with Beyond Visual Range air-to-air missiles, such as the AIM-7 Sparrow and AIM-54 Phoenix, could fire their weapons at a great distance without worrying that any nearby friendly aircraft would be shot down. The USAF F-15 pilots were able to identify an enemy aircraft using all the ROE criteria from within their own cockpits before shooting it down. Contrarily, the F-14 lacked the hardware and software necessary to satisfy all ROE requirements, which forced its crews to rely on outside clearance before engaging. Thus, the Eagle pilots were tasked with taking down 35 aircraft in order to defeat the Iraqi Air Force.
According to a veteran Tomcat RIO, the inter-service rivalry was another important factor in the F-15’s victory in Desert Storm. According to him, there was a lot of parochialism in the deployment of the F-14 and F-15 CAPs. Because the USAF’s E-3 AWACS were in charge up north, the Eagles were able to score the kills. Even Navy personnel would be called off and then Eagles would be brought in for easy pickings. These stories may just be the rantings of angry Navy pilots, but based on what witnessed in OIF, there is at least a grain of truth to them.
The years following Desert Storm were difficult for the Navy’s fighter community, with eleven frontline Tomcat units being decommissioned as a result of the jet’s constrained mission capability and exorbitant flight-hour expenses. The premature demise of another Grumman “Ironworks” provided a reprieve for the F-14 just as it appeared that its oceangoing days were numbered. Due to excessive maintenance costs and what was thought to be the A-6 Intruder aircraft’s disappearance from duty in the post-Cold War era, the all-weather, long-range bomber was abruptly removed from service.
The Navy suddenly found itself confronting a scarcity of tactical carrier aircraft to carry out its global “policing” mission with the Intruder on the cusp of retirement and the Tomcat seemingly following in its footsteps. Although the Navy had not specified this mission requirement, Grumman had built the jet with the ability to drop bombs when the F-14 was created in the late 1960s. The Tomcat had only been used as a fighter for the first 20 years of its fleet life, with the photo-reconnaissance function being added in the early 1980s.
The fighter community, which was in risk of being completely decommissioned, sought to diversify in order to survive. Seeing that the A-6’s former position as an all-weather precision bomber was now unoccupied, a push was made to pair the F-14 with some sort of bolt-on targeting pod.
Although senior naval officers understood that the F-14 would not be a viable fighter/attack platform without a precision weapons delivery capability, experiments with gravity bombs hung beneath standard Tomcats had begun as early as November 1987. In the fall of 1994, Commander Naval Air Forces Atlantic successfully lobbied for modest funding in order to purchase an “off-the-shelf” targeting pod instead of developing a whole new system for the Tomcat. Martin Marietta’s AAQ-14 LANTIRN (Low Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infrared for Night) pod, which has been used successfully in battle, was the equipment of choice.
Working with a meager budget, the Tomcat community successfully connected the digital pod with the analog F-14A/B with the help of a number of defense contractors, and by March 1995, a test aircraft provided by VF-103 was dropping LGBs with the help of LANTIRN. The findings of this preliminary analysis were astounding, with the Tomcat crew outperforming similarly equipped USAF F-15E and F-16C in terms of infrared imagery and bomb accuracy. The first fleet-capable LANTIRN pod was handed over to VF103 at NAS Oceana on June 14th, 1996.
‘The Cat is back’, Secretary of the Navy John H. Dalton stated during the ceremony scheduled to commemorate the event.
The fundamental LANTIRN system was changed into the US Navy-specific LTS (LANTIRN Targeting System) configuration to provide an unsophisticated bomber like the F-14 with precise targeting capabilities. The LTS significantly enhanced the targeting pod for Tomcat use while removing the navigation pod from the two-pod LANTIRN system. Line-of-site cueing and weapon release ballistics were delivered to the Navy pod using an inbuilt GPS and inertial measurement unit.
In comparison to his counterpart Weapon Systems Officer in USAF aircraft, the RIO’s cockpit display was far larger, allowing for superior apparent magnification and target recognition. Unlike its USAF configurations, the LTS carried out all weapon release calculations and gave the aircrew release cues that it had produced. A masking avoidance curve display, a north direction cue, and eventually lasers with a range of 40,000 feet were also included. During Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), the latter was especially helpful in enabling F-14 aircrews to use LGBs above probable threat system heights and excelled in Afghanistan’s mountainous terrain.
For any target found on the FLIR, the LTS created coordinates as a pseudo-reconnaissance asset. T3 (Tomcar Tactical Targeting), a later software upgrade, improved the precision of the coordinates generated by the LTS and enabled the first rudimentary TACAIR onboard creation of coordinates appropriate for GPS-guided weapon employment (UDAM, JSOW, and CBU-103 WCMD). During Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), a T3 LTS-equipped Tomcat produced coordinates for a B-52 that dropped the CBU-103 WCMD (wind-corrected munitions dispenser, or, more simply, a GPS-guided Rockeye cluster bomb) from a height of almost 40,000 feet. Every day, after the initial truck had been destroyed by the Tomcat with LGBs, these weapons scored direct strikes on a convoy of vehicles that had stopped.
But that was all in the future because the F-14/LTS partnership had not yet been tested in battle as of June 1996. Nine months earlier, in a sign of things to come, two F-14As from VF-41, aboard the USS Nimitz (CVN-68), dropped LGBs (designated by F/A-18s) on an ammunition dump in eastern Bosnia on September 5, 1995, as part of Operation Allied Force. This gave the Tomcat a brief opportunity to demonstrate its value in the “mud moving” business.
Since Desert Storm, combat operations by F-14 crews have been conducted nearly exclusively in the NAG, with the exception of brief campaigns in the Balkans and Afghanistan. Following this conflict, a No-Fly Zone was established over southern Iraq, and Navy Tomcat crews supervised these areas for 12 years. Following Desert Storm, the first of these zones was created in an effort to provide protection from President Saddam Hussein’s forces to the Kurdish population in northern Iraq. As part of Operation Provide Comfort, the whole Iraqi airspace north of the 36th parallel was initially covered. Resolution 688 of the UN Security Council authorized this mission.
On August 26, 1992, Operation Southern Watch (OSW), a No-Fly Zone, was established with UN support as Shi’ite Muslims in the south started to experience persecution as well. On the same day, the United States, Britain, France, and Saudi Arabia formed the Joint Task Force-Southwest Asia (JTF-SWA) to direct the management of OSW. OSW saw US, British, and French aircraft enforcing the Security Council mandate that prevented the Iraqis from flying military aircraft or helicopters below the 32nd parallel, which was increased to the 33rd parallel in September 1996. This operation, like the one in the north, was officially titled Operation Northern Watch (ONW) on January 17, 1997.
The formidable carrier battle group, under Fifth Fleet’s command (which had been established in July 1995 as a member of the unified US Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversaw operations in the region, was the US Navy’s main contribution to OSW. An aircraft carrier would typically be stationed in the NAGC at all times, and during a typical six-month deployment, vessels would dedicate about three to four months to OSW. With assets from the USAF and RAF stationed ashore at bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and other regional allies, ships from the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets alternated “standing the watch” to share the policing responsibilities in the No-Fly Zone.
The initial mission of OSW was to prevent the oppression of the Kurdish and Shi’ite communities by imposing a No-Fly Zone, but it soon became clear to the Coalition that the Iraqi Army could handle any disruptive forces in either the north or the south without the need for Air Force involvement. The US-led Coalition gradually adjusted the focus of its ONW/OSW mission as a result of its frustration at not being able to defend the people it had inspired to rise up and remove Saddam’s regime in 1991. As a result, starting in the middle of the 1990s, the teams doing these surveys began to focus more and more on systematic monitoring of Iraqi military operations in the area.
By December 1998, the US government had cited the need to safeguard Iraq’s neighbors from any potential assault and to assure the admission and safety of UN weapons inspectors as justification for maintaining ONW/OSW.
Even though it was not a long-range fighter, the Tomcat turned out to be a valuable tool in OSW. Similar to Desert Storm, JTF-SWA was able to observe Iraqi military operations every day in good weather thanks to the F-14’s TARPS capability.
Although the TARPS mission was seen as a necessary evil by a number of dyed-in-the-wool fighter crews, it nevertheless enabled the Tomcat community to make a concrete contribution to the daily enforcement of OSW. The TARPS missions also tended to be far more eventful than the typically mundane and boring Combat Air Patrols that were the ‘bread and butter’ sorties of the F-14 units in the NAG in the years prior to the arrival of LTS-equipped aircraft.
Experienced Tomcat pilots would also be quick to note that the absence of the Iraqi Air Force from the No-Fly Zone for more than ten years was unmistakable evidence that the several thousands of CAP missions performed during that time were successful from the perspective of JTF/SWA.
Throughout OSW, the actual characteristics of a typical No-Fly Zone mission remained largely the same, with the majority adhering to the following standard pattern. Due to the operation’s established routine and the development of secure email between JTF-SX1 A’s Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) and the air wing on the carrier in the NAG, shipboard mission planners typically received a general outline of the Air Tasking Order (ATO) ‘frag’ (tasking) about 72 hours before it was scheduled to be flown.
More information would be sent to the ship as each day went by, until 24 hours before the package was scheduled to launch, when its participants had a detailed plan of where they were going, what they were doing, and what role other supporting assets were playing that had been dispatched from shore bases.
On the day of the operation, the assigned crews (five Tomcats would be committed to the evolution, with four actually flying the mission and the fifth launching as the airborne spare) would begin their OSW briefing around two and a half hours before takeoff. Every person embarking on the mission would typically attend this air wing-wide meeting. After this, the F-14 aircrew would return to their own squadron-ready room and perform the division brief that was pertinent to their role in the operation. This brief lasted for 15 minutes and continued for 30-45 minutes.
The crews then divided into smaller groups for individual briefings where they talked about things including in-flight emergencies and what to do during a single aircraft mission. The participating units would essentially transition from “back row,” “mid-level,” to “micro view” during this procedure.
When compared to shore-based OSW assets, one of the air wing’s main benefits was that all mission components received a face-to-face briefing at the same time. When on a cruise, Air Wings would talk in-depth about various mission profiles and operational advances almost every day. Also, the Navy was now able to run larger packages into Traq. Contrarily, USAF groups briefed individually before coming together to help one another when they approached the “Hox,” as the Coalition aircrew referred to the southern No-Fly Zone.
Tomcat crews would “feer on the deck” with their jets 45 minutes prior to takeoff, by which time the aircraft was fully fueled, the pylon-mounted armaments, or TARPS pod, had been secured, and all systems (apart from the engines) were operational. When the jer was pre-flighted at deck level for 10 to 15 minutes, the radar intercept officer (RJO) would board and start checking the avionics and radar systems.
The air wing’s Air Boss, who oversees the flight deck, would yell “starts away” when there were 30 minutes left before launch, and the aircraft were fired up. The five Tomcats would be released once everything was in working order, and they would then be marshaled in a certain order to one of the ship’s four catapults for launch.
After safely leaving the carrier, the pilot would use the aircraft’s radar in air-to-air search mode to locate the duty canker rather than “breaking communications” by speaking on the primary control frequency known as Strike to request a steer from an AWACS controller. Once he had found the tanker, he would wait in line with the other aircraft formating off its left wing until it was his turn to cycle through and “cop off the Tomcat’s ample ranks. After finishing the refueling, the pilot maneuvered the jet hack into place, but this time off the right wing of the tanker.
The air space would return to the carrier at this point if all four of the primary aircraft had tanked successfully and all the mission-crucial systems – weapons, radio, radar homing, and warning receivers and avionics – were functioning correctly.
The majority of striking groups were then split into two smaller packages once they arrived at the station to address any Periods of Vulnerability (known simply as vul time to naval aviators).
Instead of sending in enormous formation objects that tended to get in the way of each other, this tasking was simpler to complete when dealing with smaller divisions of aircraft. The first group would start its vul time, leaving the second package on station for a little period of time before it, too, was committed. The first group included a portion of Tomcats that were only used as fighters (pre-1997), fighter-bombers, or in the TARPS role. This strategy was used and there was a brief time of overlap between the two packages.
Each package had a designated vu! time in the ‘Box’ according to the ATO and each of these slots had been meticulously worked out by JTFSWA’s CAOC. This Saudi Arabian organization develops a daily ATO for Coalition members (both naval and shore-based aviation assets) and was in charge of all No Fly Zone mission planning. It was a routine operating procedure to prevent the planes from flying “over the beach” if the package failed to reach southern Iraq during its scheduled delivery time.
After entering the “Box,” the planes continued on predetermined trajectories until they reached the designated patrol station in southeast Iraq. While completing an OSW mission, crews maintained regular communication with one of the four Air Traffic Control agencies. One of these would be in a combat information center on board a US Navy AEGIS class cruiser in the NAG, another would be in a specially constructed radar control center in Kuwait close to the Iraqi border, a third would be in the “big wing” tanker that was supporting the package, and the fourth would be in an orbiting E-2 or E-3AWACS. All TACAfR elements in the “Box” were kept up to date by these controllers on the mission’s progress by the Iraqi defenses.
It was usual for F-14 sections to double cycle during OSW missions due to the Tomcat’s enormous range. Throughout the duration of the sortie, Roth jets would remain within the “Box,” while the Horner section they had entered remained on station for as long as the fuel on the jets allowed before being replaced by two more F/A-18s. When the pilots of the latter aircraft announced that they required fuel, the Tomcats would finally take off with the second section. As a result, the F-14s essentially remained in the air for twice as long as the Hornets, all while using only one rank of fuel.
With the mission completed, the Tomcats would go ‘feet wet’ back over the NAG and head south along pre-planned routes to a tanker. The latter would be either a USAF KC-10 or KC-135, a RAF VC10 or Trisrar, or two organic’ S-3 Vikings that had sortied with the strike package from the carrier and then stayed on station over the NAG, awaiting their return. Cycling through the refueling procedure once again, topping off their tanks at about 500 lbs above what was needed to land back aboard the ship, the aircraft would overfly the carrier, proceed back into marshal and then wait for their turn to recover.
Once the operation was finished, the Tomcats would return to the NAG “feet wet” and move for a tanker in the south using pre-planned routes. The latter would be either a USAF KC-10 or KC-135, a RAF VC10 or Trisrar, or two organic’ S-3 Vikings that had sortied with the strike package from the carrier and then stayed on station over the NAG, awaiting their return. The aircraft would repeatedly refuel, topping off their tanks at a level around 500 pounds beyond what was required to land back aboard the ship, fly over the carrier, make their way back into range, and then wait their time to land. Depending on whether a target was bombed during the patrol, an average OSW operation lasted four hours or less.
The book “US Navy F-14 Tomcat Units of Operation Iraqi Freedom” by Tony Holmes is available to purchase here.