Americas Defense Meltdown - IT Acquisition Advisory Council

Col. Robert Dilger & Pierre M. Sprey • 151to the world: almost 300 women and children were killed. This ended the bombardmentof Baghdad. But there was another, less publicized lesson. Iraqi military activitieswere unaffected when the strategic bombing of Baghdad ended. Militarily, thecessation appeared to be a nonevent – just as in North Vietnam.After the Khafji incursion, the war saw many further examples of the need formultipass lethality in close support and tactical interdiction. For example, two A-10pilots, Capt. Mark Salmonson and Lt. John Marks, were credited by ground observationwith killing 23 tanks in a single encounter using the 30-mm cannon. 75 On Feb.27, 1991, the Iraqi rocket force assembled 20 Scud mobile missile launchers with theplan to swamp the Israeli Patriot SAM missile defense against Scuds. An Air Forceforward air controller with a Special Operations Force (SOF) observer team deepinside Iraq spotted the SCUD launchers en route to their launch site. Two A-10s werecalled in. Using their cannon, they destroyed all 20 Scuds and their mobile launchers,as verified by the ground observer team. 76Right after the war, the Air Force and other analysts praised the F-117 for itszero-loss performance while at the same time damning the A-10 for its losses. Somepertinent facts were omitted. Night was a much safer combat environment than day,and the F-117 flew only at night. Two squadrons of A-10s flew at least as many nightsorties as the F-117. Their losses were the same as the F-117’s: zero. F-111Fs also flewat night and also had no losses.The A-10s and the F-117s flew in both the first Gulf war and the next war in Kosovoin 1999. The day-flying A-10s suffered a total of four losses in both wars. 77 The nightflyingF-117s suffered two casualties, both to radar missiles in Kosovo. 78 The importantpoint is the number of sorties flown and the overall survival rate. (See Table 5.)Table 5. Combined Losses First Gulf War and KosovoAircraft Approximate TotalSorties Flown Both WarsLossesLoss Rate/SortieF-117 2,600 2 1/1,300 sortiesA-10 12,400 4 1/3,100 sortiesThe A-10 had a per sortie loss rate less than half that of the F-117 in the combinedcampaigns. It will never be heard from official U.S. Air Force channels that the A-10swere twice as survivable as the F-117s by this more meaningful measure, but in fact,they were.In many thousands of daytime missions, the A-10 suffered three losses to infrared(IR, heat seeking), man-portable missiles. The aircraft brought the pilot home after