More Than Courage (44 page)

While it is true that heat and flame unleashed by an explosion ignites flammable material, burns exposed flesh, and can blind, it is the blast that does the serious killing. The chemically generated energy of a detonating device creates a shock wave that radiates from the point of impact in all directions. Human beings who are close enough to this can be literally torn to pieces. War stories that speak of men being blown to bits are not fabrications. They are grim fact.

Farther out, the expanding shock wave hits a human like a moving brick wall, smashing bones, pulverizing organs, and peeling away soft tissue. The effectiveness of any explosive device is defined in terms of the radius in which 50 percent of all exposed 340

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personnel are killed by this shock wave. While some people cheat this mathematical fact of life by being lucky enough to have some form of protection that shields them from the direct effects of an explosion, others find they are victims of their circumstances.

When an explosion occurs within an enclosed area such as a bunker or room, the force of the blast hits the restricting walls and reflects back toward the point of origin, magnifying the effectiveness of the explosion and making kill ratios of 100 percent very achievable.

Accompanying this invisible force is overpressure. If the shock wave is analogous to the surface of a brick wall, overpressure is akin to the effect that the same brick wall would have on a person if it fell upon them. It is a crushing force, one capable of overwhelming the internal pressure of a man's eyeballs and squashing them. The air is literally squeezed out of the lungs, only to be filled by superheated air as the force of the blast wave passes on and releases its invisible grasp of the victim's chest. Other internal organs such as kidneys, liver, and heart are compressed or ripped from their internal moorings. The skull is crushed,^eaving its contents to ooze out like the yoke of a smashed egg.

If the shock wave is the most deadly aspect of an explosion, the wounds created by the fragmentation of the delivery device and debris picked up and tossed around by the event are the most visually stunning. At the instant of detonation the explosive's container as well as the electronic components and propulsion system used to fly the device to the target are all torn apart and dispatched along the leading edge of the shock wave. These fragments, popularly known as shrapnel, rip, shred, gouge, and pierce any human who is not lucky enough to be under cover. Ranging from microscopic to chunks of red-hot metal the size of a man's fist, these fragments pepper the victim with all the indiscriminate randomness of a shotgun blast. If a person is close enough, death through bleeding can occur in mere minutes. Farther away, these jagged and irregular missiles embed themselves in any exposed flesh. If not removed carefully or in time, the razor-sharp edges of the frag MORE THAN COURAGE

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ments that have managed to burrow in or around human organs can continue to gouge new wounds or aggravate old ones every I m time the victim moves on his own or is shifted about by others.

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The men and women of the United States Air Force and Navy who direct and deliver these agents of mayhem and death never see the true effect of their efforts. The most they are privy to are two-tone video images dispatched by sensors in the devices themselves or recorded by other aircraft that have been assigned the duty of "painting" the target with an invisible laser-aiming dot.

The role of the pilots of the manned bombers and the computers guiding unmanned bombers ends when their screens are lit up by the flash of an explosion. Sometimes the manned bombers will linger in the area for a few minutes to. assess the effectiveness of their attack. More often than not this bomb-damage assessment, or BDA, is done by others using space-based platforms, high-level recon flights, or by monitoring electronic and voice traffic on selected enemy command-and-control nets.

When the BDA has been complied it is reported up the chain of command, using the aforementioned terms. Thus a Syrian air defense battery that had lost half of its launchers, equipment, and personnel can be said to have been neutralized. To the men who ordered the strike and those who carried it out, a vivid description of physical carnage or exact body count is unimportant.

To some this antiseptic way of waging war is a mockery and distasteful. The more vehement antiwar crowd even goes so far as to claim that it is a convention used by policy makers in the United States to hide the truth of what its nation's military is actually doing to the enemy. While there have been times when these notions have been correct, the terrible truth is that it must be that way. Twenty-first-century America has given birth to a generation of politicians and media pundits who believe that America can actually wage war without the loss of a single taxpayer.

This fantasy has forced the military into a corner that requires it to wage war at long range using technology to supplant the human whenever and wherever possible.

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This is not all bad, for even the practitioners find it necessary to insulate themselves and their people from the grim, gory facts of their own handiwork. Otherwise many of the men and women who fly strike missions, push buttons to launch cruise missiles, and direct unmanned drones would never be able to do so a second time, for not all wounds suffered in a battle are physical and not all scars can be seen with the naked eye. Wars are won by force of will, by those willing to do whatever is necessary to win. Very few of our nation's sons and daughters have the psychological makeup that would allow them to go toe to toe with their foe and hack them to death for hours on end, in the same manner that was expected of ancient Sparta's youth. Even an elite soldier belonging to the 3rd of the 75th Rangers has a psychological point beyond which he cannot go and still be expected to return emotionally and mentally safe and sound. If there is one thing we have learned from Vietnam, it is that American fighting men are not automatons, machines with a "kill" setting that can be switched on and off without consequences.

As the transports bearing Harry Shaddock's Rangers lumbered on toward their objective, the men and women of the Air Force and Navy went about carrying out their assigned tasks of clearing a path for those slow-moving aircraft. The first in were unmanned bombers with short wingspans and an overall length of little more than thirty feet. Under the cloak of the electronic warfare barrage unleashed against air-defense systems and command-and-control networks these drones penetrated Syrian airspace undetected.

With unerring mechanical precision they honed in on those targets that were deemed to be too risky for manned bombers. Augmenting these technological marvels were cruise missiles, the ultimate Kamikaze.

The difference between the two forms of remote-control warfare is subtle yet important. A cruise missile is a complete package MORE THAN COURAGE

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that contains a means of propulsion, a guidance system, a targeting system, and the warhead itself. Once a cruise missile is programmed and launched, it flies off to its target where the entire package is thrown against it, rocket motor, navigational computer and all, making it a nonrefundable commodity. The unmanned bomber, on the other hand, is exactly like a conventional bomber in that it is a delivery vehicle equipped with an engine, navigational aids, and a fire-control system designed to deliver a detachable payload. Once the payload or bombs have been expended the aircraft returns to its home base where it is served and rearmed with more bombs. More often than not these are good old-fashioned general-purpose bombs or GPUs that can weigh anywhere between 750 and 2,000 pounds. To turn a dumb GPU

into a precision-guided weapon requires the addition of fins that allow it to glide and a guidance system designed to fly the bomb into its designated target using a laser-designated point of impact, radar homing, or GPS-assisted targeting. Both cruise missiles and unmanned bombers are capable of achieving the same results of attacking enemy targets without needing to use highly trained American aviators. Only the unmanned bomber can do so repeatedly and far more cheaply. Whereas a cruise missile can cost as much as $1 million a pop, a 2,000-pound Paveway GPU with all the trimming costs no more than $50,000.

This first wave of unmanned attack aircraft and cruise missiles was directed against known air-defense acquisition radars and surface-to-air missile batteries.- This sort of mission is referred to as SAM suppression. Destruction or neutralization of these assets opens the way for follow-up attacks by manned attack aircraft aimed at eliminating enemy air defenses that the Syrian high command have held back and hidden from visual or electronic detection. These manned SAM-suppression strikes are flown by a unique group of aviators known as Wild Weasels.

When a sensor aboard the E-3A AWAC, an electronic warfare aircraft, identifies a new threat the controller aboard the E-3A 344

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charged with monitoring and orchestrating all SAMsuppression missions contacts the nearest flight of Wild Weasels and hands off the new target to them.

One of the first such missions occurred even before the last of the cruise missiles and unmanned bombers had finished their attacks. From out of nowhere an air-defense target-acquisition radar lit up and began tracking one of the cruise missiles. With a speed that defies description this event was reported to half a dozen different aircraft and operations centers scattered throughout the region. From his station aboard the E-3A, the SAMsuppression controller assigned the new target an alphanumeric designation before checking on the status and location of the Wild Weasels. The pair of aircraft he opted to dispatch to hit this new target were two F-18s from the USS Ronald Reagan. After contacting the commander of the F-18s by voice, the SAMsuppression controller transferred data from his station directly into the fire-control system of the F-18s via an electronic data link. Once the F-18 pilots acknowledged that they had a good copy of all the necessary target information, the SAMsuppression controller wished them luck and sent them on their way.

Anxious to achieve a kill even if it were of an unmanned cruise missile, the Syrian air-defense battery commander kept his acquisition radar on far too long. This allowed the Naval aviators assigned to silence his radar more than enough time to acquire the radiation being emitted by the acquisition radar and launch a pair of AGM-88 HARM missiles in the "range-known" mode.

Sensors within the missiles themselves picked up the hostile radar, memorized its location just in case that radar was switched off during their approach, and began to make their way to it. When the HARM missiles reached the Syrian air-defense battery, their high-explosive warheads detonated, showering the entire unit with small prefragmented steel cubes that were designed to inflict maximum damage to the radar unit itself as well as other vulnerable equipment co-located with the target-acquisition radar. In the process of ripping apart the delicate electronics and mechanical MORE THAN COURAGE

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devices of the battery, this rain of destruction also inflicted a fair number of casualties among the soldiers who were manning the site, causing the entire command to lose interest in the cruise missile that they had been tracking.

With Syrian air-defense units either destroyed or neutralized, the way was clear for the next wave of manned aircraft to come in.

Unlike the strikes against the SAM sites, which were wide ranging, these new attacks were specifically aimed at neutralizing or suppressing those Syrian ground troops and their controlling headquarters that had the potential of interfering with the 3rd of the 75th Rangers once they were on the ground. In some cases cluster bombs were released over the motor pools of those Syrian units. By destroying their transportation the Air Force and Naval aviators took entire Syrian units out of the picture.

Not all Syrian soldiers were so fortunate. Eight companies of infantry and one reinforced tank company were located at the military airport where the 3rd of the 75th was scheduled to land, along the route of advance DeWitt's Company A would be taking, or at the prison itself. These units as well as the battalion command posts to which they reported, and the regional headquarters that controlled all military operations in the area, had to be eradicated. To simplify this task it was decided to hit them as soon as the air offensive opened, while the bulk of the personnel assigned to those units were still in their barracks. Failure to strike at that time would allow the Syrians to scatter and deploy, making the chore of inflicting casualties on them using air power alone all but impossible.

In achieving this goal, the Air Force and Naval aviators assigned to carry out these attacks were aided by the Syrians themselves. The wail of air-raid sirens and the distant rumble of bombs hitting air defense facilities made little impression on the sleeping Syrian infantrymen and tankers. They had heard all of this before and had become quite used to these nocturnal visits.

Most had long ago reached the conclusion that they made poor targets. Few believed that the Americans would waste sophisti 346

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cated bombs, or risk their expensive aircraft, by attacking the barracks of a lowly infantry company. Other than a grunt or groan of disgust from men roused from their sleep by the first wave of attacks, no one stirred much.

This complacency came to an abrupt end when laser-guided bombs smashed their way through the upper floors of the barracks buildings. It was only then that a handful of the startled Syrians realized just how badly they had miscalculated their odds.

Unfortunately, by the time this terrifying thought was able to take hold, the two-thousand-pound GPUs used for these strikes had burrowed their way deep into the heart of the building. In all cases there was a slight pause, maybe one or two seconds after initial impact before the delayed-action fuses activated. Syrians who had been sleeping on the lower floors died quickly from the actual blast. Those who had bunks on the upper floors were killed either when their building collapsed on them or later when multiple wounds and the inability of comrades to reach them in time took their toll. Raging fires that swept through the rubble took the remainder. In this manner, a couple of dozen aircraft managed to kill or mortally wound more than a thousand Syrian soldiers within a span of five minutes. This achievement, coupled with the suppression of the Syrian air-defense system and the crippling of military command-and-control networks set the stage for the main event of the night: the assault of the 3rd of the 75th Rangers.