Tomahawk (49 page)

“What are the percentages we're actually going in? We plan and plan, but—”

“I know what you mean, but that's out of our hands. All we have is the directive to build a viable strike.” Grady pulled out one slide. “The analysis guys have come up with three major target complexes.

“Number one: the Tripoli area. Three targets there. Murat Sidi Bilal. It's a naval base, but there's a frogman school we think trains terrorists, too. The Bab al-Azizyah Barracks. That's a command center, and Mu'ammar lives there sometimes; we might luck out. And the Tripoli airfield, where he has his strike aircraft based.”

“I thought it was illegal to assassinate heads of state.”

“You're right. That was a little … pleasantry, if you will. If we're directed to go against one of those targets, the most likely means of attack will be F-one elevens. That's the only aircraft the Air Force has that can do a precision night strike. All-weather, night and day, low-level attack.”

“Air defenses?”

“Heavy, and tied together with good early warning and command and control.”

“Where would these F-one elevens come from?”

“England.” Grady went on without acknowledging Dan's look of surprise. “Complex number two: the Benghazi area, on the east of the Gulf of Sidra. Possible targets there: Benghazi barracks, another terrorist command center, an intelligence compound, and the Benina military airfield. Our idea right now is to hit those with A-sixes and -sevens from
Coral Sea
and
America”

Dan studied the rest of the slides. “How'd the Air Force get plugged into this, anyway? Can't the carriers hit both target sets?”

“Admiral Kidder tried to set it up that way. The Joint Chiefs put them in.” Grady hesitated, then added, “Apparently someone thinks the Navy's been hogging the limelight with Kidder's raids across the Line of Death, down in the Gulf of Sidra. The Air Force wants a buildup to forty wings. If we bomb Libya alone, there's gonna be a natural question in Congress—”

“I get it. The budget.” A bitter taste, but he knew now this was how it was done. He put his finger down to the
south, far from the sea. “What's this? The third target set?”

“That's Sidi Garib. A new fertilizer plant.”

“A fertilizer plant?”

“That's what the Libyans say it is. What we find interesting is that special military-only roads have been built across the desert to it, access is restricted, and it has the same level of antiaircraft and surface-to-air missile protection as Khaddafi's home barracks. The consensus is that it's actually a chemical weapons production complex. And not far from completion, either.”

“Jesus.”

“Right. If he gets nerve gas, we're gonna really have problems. If we do a strike, it would be a golden opportunity to take this out at the same time. We're going to have to do it sometime, and once it starts up, an attack would smear a plume all across the Mideast.”

Dan studied the slide. “What's the scale on this thing?”

Grady got up and went to the safe again. This time he came back with a map that showed everything, down to the watering holes.

“You're right, the trouble is, it's two hundred miles inland. He put it there on purpose. The other two target complexes are on the coast. That means we could hit them both at once. That would work, you'd have horizontal separation. But if they also task us with a mission that deep in the interior—”

“You can't go at the same time, because your planes will have to overfly the coast.”

“Right, and you can't hit it later, because the defenses will be at full alert.”

“So what's the plan?”

“Right now, the only idea on the table is to route a separate strike element of F-one elevens around to the west. They'd have to overfly Tunisia and cross the western border here”—Grady's pencil point dotted a remote area of desert—”then head east to hit the plant. Downside of that, one, we don't know if the Tunisians will go along. The French and the Spanish have already turned us down on overfly rights, so why should the Tunisians give us permission?

“And two, even if they did, you're looking at a twenty-hour mission. It's six thousand miles round-trip from England to the Libyan coast as is. You extend that, you're going to have exhausted aircrews going against a heavy defense. We went to the Forty-eighth Tactical Fighter Wing on that, to get their opinion. They didn't sound enthusiastic.”

Dan studied the map. The area Grady had indicated was marked sand, silt, and gravel. It was absolutely flat except for the hills around Sidi Garib itself. He remembered stories of B-17s that had come down in the Libyan desert and not been found till forty years later. “Plus, if they have to punch out in there, there's no way we can rescue them.”

“That's right. So now you know why you're here. The ten hundred briefing will put you face-to-face with the planners. I'll leave you the warning order and these charts. Anything else you'll need?”

He tried to think. It wasn't entirely out of left field, but to have it looking up from his plate was something else. “Uh, you got anything more detailed on this chemical plant? Overheads, or layout?”

“I can get something from J-Two for you. They'll scream, but I'll get it. Anything else?”

He couldn't think of anything else he needed except about two weeks, but he didn't have that. He had two hours. Finally, he just asked where the coffee was. Grady took him out for a refill, then escorted him back. The captain told him if he needed anything to call the lieutenant. Then he excused himself and closed the door.

Two hours later, he stood on a dais in the Fishbowl, holding his handwritten notes. Behind him were six big situation-display screens. He shuffled his papers on the briefing stand, trying to keep the butterflies down. He took a sip of water and cleared his throat.

At 1010, there was a stir. He lifted his eyes to the balcony, but it was still empty.

The Fishbowl was an enormous room with sallow stucco walls and the same acoustic tile on the ceiling as the interrogation room at D.C. Homicide. It had two lev-els,
not unlike a small opera house, but here the floor was filled with desks and display terminals instead of an audience. The audience that counted here was in the balcony.

Another stir, and a procession of uniforms filed forward from the low-ceilinged J-2 spaces. Three flag officers with stars or gold shoulder boards trailed by staffers. They climbed a spiral staircase to the upper level, disappeared for a few seconds, and then reappeared as heads only, looking down at him.

The briefing spots came on, equatorial-brilliant suns. He gave it another moment, till the three-star, who should be the deputy CINC, turned from a remark to the man next to him. He raised a hand, and Dan took that as the signal to begin.

“Good morning, General Auer, other members of the EUCOM Staff. I'm Lcdr. Dan Lenson of the Joint Cruise Missile Project Office. I'm here in response to a question addressed to Admiral Niles by General Stahl in London two weeks ago. That question was: ‘What have we got in the bag that can help me strike Libya?' Admiral Niles asked me to brief you on the BGM-one oh nine Tomahawk land-attack cruise missile.”

He'd given this opening brief many times before. The slides flicked smoothly up, showing the missile, its variations, launch platforms, guidance, and typical mission profile. Next came a grease-penciled graphic he'd produced that morning, tallying the TLAMs available in the Med: the load-outs on
New Jersey
and the two submarines. He hoped the silence from above was a sign of attention. He segued from that to the plan he'd generated hunched over Grady's desk.

“The BGM-one oh nine is not intended to replace or obsolete manned aircraft, either Air Force or Navy. It's a force multiplier that can lend a synergistic advantage to the mix. The most appropriate use in the Prime Needle strike scenario is as follows.” He crossed the stage and pointed at the chart that came up on the middle screen.

“Tomahawk flies at a lower altitude and has a smaller radar signature than either the F-one eleven or the A-six. However, its warhead weight is limited. For that reason,
it should not be used against the principal targets of this raid—camps and training facilities.

“Tomahawk's optimal employment is as the first element across the coast in the defense suppression mission. It should be targeted on the early warning radar sites, on air defense sites such as the SA-five radar site at Sirte and the central air defense bunker outside Tripoli. Destroying these three to five minutes before the first aircraft reports ‘feet dry' will give the maximum—”

The first interruption. It came from the second row, behind the flag officers. The voice was dry, skeptical. “Are you saying it's accurate enough to hit a radar?”

“Yessir.”

“We have Shrike and ARM to take out radar sites.”

“Yes, sir, but Tomahawk doesn't need a plane to carry it. Also, we don't need a radar output in order to guide in.”

He couldn't tell if they bought it or not, so he went on. “My second recommendation is that if we are directed to strike the chemical complex at Sidi Garib, we hit it with TLAM alone. The missile should be highly survivable at night across that terrain. I've done a preliminary run-through with rules of thumb we've developed from attacks at Tonopah. Based on that, we should target between six and ten rounds against the complex.”

“Exactly how much explosive are we talking about?”

A question from the front at last, from an Army general. The chief of staff? Dan said, “Each TLAM carries a thousand-pound warhead. Ten of them would be five tons of explosive.”

“We can multiply, commander.”

Laughter from the back row. “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir,” Dan said.
Asshole,
he thought.

“One F-one eleven-F carries twelve five-hundred-pound Mark eighty-two Airs.”

“Yes, sir, but we can target TLAM more closely than they can lay iron bombs. We've been hearing about pinpoint bombing for a long time. Now we've got it.”

The icy silence from above told him how welcome that remark had been. To hell with it, he was sick of putting
spin on things to make people happy. On the other hand, his orders were to sell the system.

Sell a bright and shiny new weapon….

A voice was saying, “How does it stack up against a laser-guided Pave Tack toss?”

“I can't make comparisons with other systems, sir. All I can say is that we have a circular error probable right now of less than fifty feet. With that kind of accuracy, we can target against individual process towers, control centers, and the power plant building. Let me also point out that we won't be risking any pilots. Sidi Garib is heavily defended, and the crews would be hitting it at the end of a very long flight.”

A different voice from the rear, a Chuck Yeager drawl: “Can you guarantee a TOT? Time ovah target?”

“We can.”

“To how close?”

“To twenty seconds,” he told them. “The course computer can adjust speed and flight time. Actually, it's better than scheduling an aircraft strike. Aircraft, you have to leave clearances in space and time between attacks so you don't have collisions. But you want missiles to arrive simultaneously, to saturate the defense.”

A different voice said, “What's your PD on the chemical plant?”

“Probability of damage, sir? That's a tough one.” He did an off-the-cuff analysis, going from vulnerable dimensions metrics through munitions effects to expected lethality. He concluded, “Some of those numbers are still theoretical. But based on the intel I've seen on the installation, I think we can shut it down for at least two to three years.”

Silence from above, then: “What you're sayin' is, all us attack jocks might as well put in for early retiahment,” the Yeager voice said.

Chuckles, and he saw Auer turn his head, smiling, and make a remark. But when he faced forward, he was grim again. Dan answered the question: “No sir, this system's only suitable for a mission you can plan ahead of time, against a fixed location. Mobile targets, fast-breaking situations,
it's going to be a long time before we can build something like that into a computer.”

There were a couple more questions; he thought he handled them well. Now he felt relaxed. He felt as if he could stand up here all day long and take hostile questions.

But finally the deputy CINC stood. The others leapt up. “Thanks for the brief, Commander. You make a good case for your system.”

“Yes, sir.” Dan went to parade rest, holding the pointer parallel to the deck.

The others made as if to leave, but Auer lingered. “I just wanted to add, no prejudice to you, but we've heard this presentation before.”

“About Tomahawk, sir?”

“No. But every few years, someone comes up here and tries to sell us some gee-whiz new standoff system. Unfortunately, every time we bite, we get burned. Effective precision munitions that operate in a battlefield environment have not yet arrived. Maybe they will one day. But even then, they won't be cheap, and the enemy will come up with countermeasures. The only foolproof targeting mechanism is the human eye. It's true—putting live guys over the target means we have to accept the possibility of loss. But the Air Force's job, I'm sure, like the Navy's, is to get the mission done.”

Dan remained silent, since this seemed unanswerable except by saying flatly that the general was wrong. He didn't know much about flag officers, but he knew they didn't like to hear that.

Auer went on, “We don't entrust major missions to untried systems. For a couple of reasons. Here's one you don't seem to have considered. What if one of these missiles crashes out there in the desert?”

“I'm not sure I follow you, sir.”

The general said patiently, “What if one crashes and the Libyans recover it? Then they hand it over to the Soviets, and you have a whole new technology compromised.”