Viper Pilot_ A Memoi..

eckoning with Iraq. The Air Force closet had been cleaned out, so to speak, and
almost all of the older weapons and jets had been retired. What was left was
considerably streamlined and there were a lot fewer of us around to fight. The
technological advances had evened this up but it was left to us to make the most of
these advantages.
Iraq was a relatively simple theater for combat, and the terrain, at least from the
air, was fairly permissive. Mountains were only in the far north and east. The far
west, near the Jordanian and Syrian borders, was a morass of twisted wadis and
rugged low hills. Most of the population was concentrated in Mesopotamia, the
land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
So it makes sense, defensively, to protect the large important focal points rather
than the entire country, and this is precisely what the Iraqis did. The cities of
Kirkuk and Mosul in the north, Baghdad in the center, Nasiriyah and Basrah in the
south were all heavily defended. There were dozens of fortified rings for smaller
towns or military complexes, and mobile SAM systems could be anywhere. In fact,
the Iraqis had over eight thousand mobile SAMs, not including the thousands of
shoulder-launched MANPADS that any soldier could carry. These complimented
and overlapped the four hundred larger SA-2s, SA-3s, and SA-6s. Anti-aircraft
artillery estimates were in the tens of thousands.
The big stuff was centered around important cities to protect airfields, train
stations, communications nodes, and other vital bits of infrastructure. Tracking
information from surveillance radars, air traffic radars, and long-range search
radars was all brought together in an Integrated Air Defense System (IADS) called
KARI. In theory, this would tie all inbound radar tracks on people like me together
into a consolidated air “picture.” Based on this, the Iraqi Air Defense Commander
would then parcel out the interception and targeting responsibilities to the
appropriate Iraqi SAM and fighter units.
There were several problems with this. First, KARI was designed by the French,
who, though first-class vintners, are usually hopeless as warriors. Ask the Germans
or the Vietnamese or the Algerians. Second, Iraqi systems didn’t handle jamming
very well, and Americans are masters of electronic combat. We could, and did,
blank out entire sectors so the Iraqis couldn’t see what was coming. Many of our
initial targets were long-range search radars that could detect us crossing the Saudi
border. We would also destroy telephone relay stations, cell towers, and all other
forms of communications equipment. It’s a basic concept in any fight: punch out
their eyes and mouth so they can’t see to react or call for help.
The Russians, who trained most of the Iraqis, are very centralized in their