Returning to the wardroom at 2315, they discovered that mess specialists had pulled out all the stops…in the form of hot ham-and-cheese-melt sandwiches and a small mountain of French fries. Soon you could feel the energy and morale level of the group change as they munched their way through the coordination problems that had plagued their briefings. As the group broke around 0100 to get some sack time, I wandered down to the LFOC to see how things were going. During the evening intelligence briefing I'd noticed some disturbing trends in the air campaign, and I wanted to talk to John Allen about them. I wasn't the only one to pick up on this situation. In fact, by the time I found Allen, Colonel Battaglini had already started to deal with it. He had called Allen and the ACE commander, Lieutenant Colonel "Peso" Kerrick, for a short talk, and at their invitation I joined them.
Directed by the JTF-11 staff aboard Mount Whitney, the air campaign against the Red forces had so far been a mixed affair. While the Koronan naval forces had been decimated, their air force had suffered less than 30 % attrition in over two days of operations. Worse yet, the simulated force of Exocet-armed Mirages and Super Pumas was making a nuisance of itself, and had just scored a hypothetical hit against the nuclear-powered cruiser South Carolina (CGN-37). Though the missile warhead was assessed to have been a "dud," the battle group commander was extremely upset. Predictably, he was demanding better protection for his ships. What happened was the JTF-11 staff had allowed their air units to be drawn into a personal duel with the Koronan air force, and were failing to keep up with their operational objectives. For instance, several planned air strikes against ground targets had yet to be executed. And this meant that on Friday morning Lieutenant Colonel Allen's BLT might walk into a fight against a force that overmatched his in armor and artillery, and was dug in on the very objectives he was required to take. While Battaglini, Allen, and Kerrick put together a plan to deal with this situation, I headed back to my own stateroom, wondering how all these "friction" elements were going to effect what was happening in less than twenty-four hours on the North Carolina coast.
USS Wasp, 50 nm/91.4 km West of Onslow Beach, 0600 Hours, July 20th, 1995
At 0630 the next morning, I was sitting across from Lieutenant Colonel Allen, and he was showing a thin smile; he had gotten some sleep, and things were looking decidedly better than the previous night. For starters, his R&S teams were reporting in and finally delivering the kind of targeting data he needed to knock back some of the Red forces. In addition, the JTF-11 ground component CO, General Keane, seemed to have finally "persuaded" the JTF-11 staff to remember some of his mission objectives, and there had been air strikes against the planned targets ashore. There were also some excellent results from the surveillance of Red force's garbage. John Allen wasn't the only one looking on top of the world. All around the mess area, you could feel new energy. The 26th had just eighteen hours until the invasion… and there was a feeling that they might pull it off.
By 0900, the officers' mess had been reconfigured to support the mass confirmation briefing for the invasion. It was set to begin when the ground and other component commanders, who were flying over from Mount Whitney, made their appearance. The ground CO for JTF-11 was General John M. Keane, the commander of the Army's famed 101 st Air Assault Division. "Sadly," he didn't exactly make it — another example of "friction." After the simulated Exocet attack on South Carolina the previous evening, the fleet AAW coordinator was convinced that he needed to provide a tighter defensive screen for the JTF-11 naval forces. So he upped the alert level and ROE of the picket ships armed with surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) to "Warning Yellow — Weapons Hold," meaning that attack by enemy air units was expected. A Blue ship detecting a confirmed unfriendly aircraft should shoot it down immediately — the equivalent of shooting first and asking questions later. When the SH-3 Sea King helicopter carrying the component commanders and their staff flew from Mount Whitney to Wasp, its electronic Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) transponder was mistakenly turned to the Off position. One of the escorting picket ships therefore shot it down with a simulated SAM. If the ship's AAW coordinator had been at a lower alert level, he would probably have taken the time to check the JTF-11 Air Tasking Order to see if the helicopter was a "friendly." But in his desire to avoid a strike by hostile forces, he screwed up seriously. The result: When the various commanders and their staffs arrived on Wasp, they were greeted with the news that they were "dead." They were notably unhappy by the time that they arrived in the officers' wardroom as simulated corpses.
The briefing began, and things went considerably better than they did the night before. The plan for the invasion of the Kartunan homeland was clearly laid out: At 0000 hours (midnight) that night, elements of the 26th MEU (SOC) would land inshore from Onslow Beach and along the New River inlet. The key to success was the capture of a causeway bridge and several strategic road junctions. This was to be accomplished in some innovative ways. Whidbey Island and Shreveport would be landing their armored task force in the inlet. The task force would use the AAVs as riverine gunboats to dominate this natural barrier through the middle of Camp Lejeune. Following them up the inlet would be a rifle company in the rubber raider craft. The company would take the northern part of the inlet. Another company would then be landed inland by helicopter to block the approaches to the landing beach near the point of the inlet. When this was done, the rest of the heavy equipment would be brought ashore on the LCACs.
As this operation proceeded, the 1/325th from the 82nd Airborne would parachute onto an airfield a few miles/kilometers inland, to provide a base for follow-on fly-in units. This would be followed by a helicopter insertion into a LZ to support the amphibious landings. There would also be a series of deception operations — such as the temporary unloading of the portable toilets into a dummy LZ — to encourage the Red forces to believe that the landing would be occurring at the easternside of the training area. With luck, the Red forces would be drawn there. By the way, don't laugh at the portable toilets scam. Even though we were in a "war," EPA and DoD regulations about waste disposal still applied.