From my arrival in Qatar in February until my departure in April, I spent approximately 70 days in what was classified as a combat area.\u00a0 During my entire stay I never experienced fear for my life, either in the air or on the ground.\u00a0 Our base was on a peninsula in the Persian Gulf, relatively distant from the fighting in Iraq and low even in potential terrorist threat.\u00a0 Prior to the outbreak of hostilities, a small civilian aircraft had approached the airfield undetected, much to the chagrin of the Patriot batteries ringing the base.\u00a0 During the war, the presence of a light aircraft near the base was the cause of the only increased threat condition during our stay.\u00a0 The base rapidly went from MOPP 0, a protective posture where no chemical protection gear is worn, to MOPP 4, where full gear\u2014heavy overgarments, boots, gas masks, and gloves\u2014is required.\u00a0\u00a0Whatever it was that approached the base turned out to be no threat, and there were no further reactions while we were there.\u00a0 In fact, a few days before I returned home they brought the base out of “lock-down” and allowed us to leave the base to see the local area.\u00a0 So our home was a fairly safe one, particularly when compared to the airbases further north that came under fire from SCUDs and other missiles and were in a MOPP 4 fairly frequently.\u00a0 Our route to and from the combat area was also a safe one.\u00a0 While we flew along the gulf we were in range of several other neutral countries, but we could virtually walk along the Navy sea craft from Qatar to Iraq.<\/p>\n
The true threat only began once in Iraq, and even then the threat was minimal.\u00a0 Years of sanctions and the effectiveness of our anti-radar weapons had made most of their defense systems and operators work with limited efficacy.\u00a0 Our primary threat was unguided anti-aircraft artillery (AAA, or “triple A”) and ballistic (unguided) SAMs, which were really no threat at all given the low probability that an aircraft and the threat would coincidentally end up in the same piece of sky.\u00a0 This is the same belief from previous wars that an aircraft would be downed not by a dramatic surface-to-air intercept but by a “golden BB.”\u00a0 The AAA was only effective at lower altitude and the Iraqi gunners had demonstrated no ability to damage or down any coalition aircraft.\u00a0 I had seen my first AAA barrage while flying an OSW sortie on 18 March; while impressive as a glowing fireworks display, it was also obviously being randomly sprayed into the air by gunners hoping to get lucky.\u00a0 With AAA such a minor threat, no enemy air force, and SAMs virtually unused, our combat flights took on the air of training sorties with the caveat that the remote golden BB\u2014which we could do nothing about\u2014might find us.\u00a0 Some pilots even considered the American defenses a higher threat than the Iraqi ones; US Patriots had shot down twice as many coalition aircraft as had the Iraqis.<\/p>\n
The F-16CJs would often be assigned to protect a specific strike package or asset, which could be anything from slow moving A-10s to the silent, swooping B-2s.\u00a0 Early in the conflict some flights, like the A-10s and the British Tornadoes, specifically requested SEAD before they entered their target area.\u00a0 Others, like B-1s and B-2s, would often “accept” the SEAD coverage but would generally plan on entering their strike zone even if the CJs could not provide protection, relying on their self-protection systems or stealth as their primary means of defense.\u00a0 A few days into the war it became evident that the SAMs would be a little menace.\u00a0 A few pot shots had been taken at various aircraft but no missiles had even been guided through an engagement; since the radars were staying off, they were a little threat, and the radar-killing SEAD platforms had little at which to shoot.\u00a0 The surface threat was so low, in fact, that our squadron soon stopped outfitting our flights solely with HARMs.\u00a0 Our role of suppressing SAMs was being so underutilized that we began to fly mixed elements, with one aircraft carrying HARMs and the other bombs.\u00a0 It was only the necessary reassurance of the presence of SEAD support to the coalition packages that prevented us from totally switching from HARMs to bombs.<\/p>\n
The Realities of War<\/strong><\/p>\n Occasionally other events reminded us of the reality of the risk we faced.\u00a0 While headed into the tanker track on one sortie I observed two bright explosions just north of us near our altitude:\u00a0 Patriots had intercepted a missile inbound to a Kuwaiti base.\u00a0 The sorties also took on a more serious tone when aircraft went down; the coalition lost aircraft to maintenance, pilot error, and US Army Patriots.\u00a0 In March a British Tornado was shot down by a Patriot while on approach to land.\u00a0 In April an F-18 was shot down, again by a Patriot.\u00a0 An F-15E\u2014whose unit was stationed at Al Udeid with us\u2014was also lost in April. \u00a0When emergency events occurred, pilots did go above and beyond to attempt to rescue and protect those on the ground.\u00a0 We also attempted to provide as much assistance as possible to the other coalition members and services.\u00a0 My flight was tasked during one sortie to provide SEAD coverage to a US Army deep helicopter strike.\u00a0 We covered our assigned period and then continued to monitor the general area.\u00a0 Though we never observed any radars on air, the Army experienced tremendous ground fire and severely damaged several helicopters that night.\u00a0 When one helo made frantic emergency radio calls, my flight and virtually every other one on frequency offered assistance through AWACS.\u00a0 The next day we saw two captured helicopter crewmen on CNN.\u00a0 With those few exceptions, the vast majority of our sorties were routine, and hardly more dangerous than those we practiced in the skies over our home base.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Result of a Mortal Threat–or Lack Thereof<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n The majority of our sorties carried a similar threat to the training sorties we accomplished on a nearly daily basis. \u00a0While the low level of risk may have made our families feel better, the lack of real danger, with few harrowing or life-threatening events, actually had a restraining affect on a Christian’s ability to talk about God.\u00a0 In the military there is the oft-quoted phrase that “there are no atheists in a foxhole” because the mortal threat forces even the most unbelieving men to acknowledge a Supreme Power.\u00a0 The majority of fighter pilots, though, did not experience any mortal threat, but felt as though they were at the “big show” and therefore accomplishing the “fighter pilot dream.” \u00a0This had the regrettable effect of reinforcing the godless lifestyles and attitudes of the pilots, rather than drawing men to God as they faced their own mortality.\u00a0 I made no secret of my Christianity and before every sortie I prayed for protection, that we would do our jobs well, and that ultimately the glory would go to God.\u00a0 My flight lead throughout most of the conflict was a self-described atheist.\u00a0 He joked that we’d know it “got bad” when I started drinking and he started believing in God.\u00a0 It might be unfortunate that it never did get that bad.\u00a0<\/p>\n The invasion was completed in relatively short order, though the war itself would continue for some time in the form of an insurgency.\u00a0 Since the Iraqi military no longer posed a SAM threat to coalition aircraft, our unit was one of the first to go home.\u00a0 Though not pristine, our unit had done its job and done it well.<\/p>\n Return to<\/em> God and Country<\/a>. From my arrival in Qatar in February until my departure in April, I spent approximately 70 days in what was classified as a combat area.\u00a0 During my entire stay I never experienced fear for my life, either in the air or on the ground.\u00a0 Our base was on a peninsula in the Persian Gulf, relatively distant from the fighting in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[13,52,2],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fighter-pilot","tag-aircraft","tag-iraq","tag-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nGo to<\/em> ChristianFighterPilot.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"