KOSOVO
In March 1999 the battle group on routine forward deployment to the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean joined with NATO forces and mobilized for Operation Allied Force, attacking usurping Serb forces in Kosovo. Facing an arsenal of antiaircraft artillery, air-to-air missiles, and tactical fighters, all representative of first-line Russian weapons technology, the carrier Theodore Roosevelt’s air wing of F-18s, F-14s, and A-6s flew more than thirty-one hundred combat sorties for more than half of the campaign’s total without the loss of a single aircraft.
OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM
In the reaction of the United States to the September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, the indispensable value of the aircraft carrier as a principal instrument of national power reached its height. It was only because of the readiness and flexibility of the carriers, which were on station, routinely deployed to the western Pacific and Indian Oceans, that the swift and powerful military reaction to this act of terrorism was possible. The nation’s response to this surprise attack had to be immediate, forceful, and punitive to those responsible, with a minimum of collateral casualties. At stake was the United States’ reputation as the world’s superpower as well as deterrence of future terrorist attacks on the U.S. homeland.
To put conventional ground forces into Afghanistan to pursue and destroy these rebels would require fully developed port facilities and a buildup of major staging bases. This would take much too long for a swift and incisive reprisal. That meant an attack directly from bases at sea.
On 21 September President George W. Bush approved the concept of Operation Enduring Freedom, a campaign that would use Special Operations Forces on the ground supported by U.S. air power. That those aviation assets would have to be primarily carrier-based was clear. Fighters would be needed to gain control of the airspace in the battlefield area. The enemy was known to have Soviet-made fighters and surface-to-air missiles. These had to be destroyed before the vulnerable transport helicopters, carrying the SOF troops, could be committed. The first requirement of the campaign was to “remove the threat from air defenses and from Taliban aircraft.” The ground campaign would not proceed until air superiority had been achieved. There were no land bases in the theater available to U.S. fighters. Only Navy carrier-based F-14s and F/A-18s could be placed within range of the intended battlefields.
How to deliver the Special Operations Forces with their helicopters and equipment into the theater remained a pressing concern. The normal procedure would have been to use commercial sealift ships. This, though, would require modern port facilities, but there were none with access to land-locked Afghanistan. So the Navy carrier Kitty Hawk was used as a transport and operating base for the invading forces. In fourteen days, the SOF component, Task Force Sword, consisting of twenty helicopters, six hundred troops, and 860,000 pounds of ammo and equipment, was loaded on board, and the Kitty Hawk was underway at flank speed for the Arabian Sea.
After the first two days of combat, most of the fixed targets suitable for cruise missiles had been eliminated. The Air Operations Center’s highest priorities became the Navy strike fighters, backed up by small contingents of B-1s and B-52s based in-theater. The ready availability of the F/A-18s, and their ability to attack emergent targets assigned after arrival on station, made them particularly useful in the fluid ground situation. A total of six carriers and four Marine expeditionary groups formed the core of the Navy’s contribution to Enduring Freedom. It was the Navy’s carriers, with their special military capabilities, that actually enabled the National Command Authority to employ the concept of operations that proved to be so successful in Enduring Freedom. By March 2002, the Taliban had been defeated.
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM
Operation Iraqi Freedom began on March 21, 2003, when Naval Aviators flying from carriers helped to usher in a new era in tactical warfare, an increase in military capabilities ranking with the introduction of jet aircraft or stealth technology. Contributing to the “shock and awe” of the initial air strikes of the Iraqi Freedom campaign deep into Iraq were five aircraft carriers operating in the Mediterranean and Arabian seas, launching air wing — sized formations into the night to deliver bombs and missiles against key military targets in the Arab capital with a precision and effectiveness never before achieved by tactical combat aircraft.
This was history being made. It would be the first battle of a campaign in which precision guided bombs and missiles would be used by aircraft against the enemy to the virtual exclusion of unguided bombs. The attack on Saddam Hussein’s sprawling capital deep in the heart of Iraq, defended by rings of surface-to-air missile batteries and waves of protective fighters, was the first battle of Iraqi Freedom. Nine out of every ten of the munitions carried by U.S. Navy and Air Force aircraft during this war were precision guided.
This was not the first time that airborne guided weapons had been used by American tactical aviation, but it was the first time that they had been employed almost exclusively in such a massive aerial bombardment campaign. The second historic aspect of this air campaign was the use of carrier aircraft at night, in numbers, formations, and tactics that previously could have been employed only in daylight operations. This was a significant breakthrough. Until now, the night had belonged to the unconventional forces, the irregulars, the guerrillas, and the terrorists. That is where their small numbers and furtive tactics gave them the advantage. It was American technology that reversed this situation with the Night Observation Device, or NOD, goggles worn by the pilot or infantryman, which turn night into day.
In the 1992 Gulf War the planners figured on flights of aircraft carrying multiple loads of unguided munitions to ensure the destruction of single enemy targets. In Iraqi Freedom, one tactical fighter had the capacity to destroy multiple targets, one target per guided bomb dropped. In Iraqi Freedom, when night vision goggles could be made available to most of the engaged troops on the ground and all of the tactical pilots in the air, a real breakthrough in close air support was realized. The ground observers not only could detect the movement of personnel in their area but also were able to identify them as fighters or civilians and locate their presence with an accuracy that was usable for the guidance of airborne guided weapons.
Airborne guided munitions, combined with night vision — equipped observers on the ground, have made the tactical fighters of the Navy, Marines, and Air Force, along with Army and Marine helicopters, weapons of choice in combating insurgents and terrorists. With a thirty-foot accuracy and three-hundred-foot destructive radius, seldom is more than one guided bomb needed to eliminate the enemy. In these cases the target is fleeting rather than fixed, and only air-launched weapons are truly effective. It would take an hour for a cruise missile to arrive from a ship at sea, and by then an enemy raiding force could have made their attack and dispersed. The aircraft-delivered bomb, however, arrives with no warning and collateral damage to homes in the neighborhood is a minimum.