INCIRLIK AB, Turkey — After a late-April sortie, Capt. Tom Seymour climbed out of his F-16CJ with an air of relief.
“I didn’t get shot at, but I was about the only one who didn’t, from what I heard,” Seymour said as he did a brief visual inspection, and then signed the defense-suppression weapon back to the maintainers.
All of the missiles — two anti-radar, two air-to-ground and two air-to-air — remained on his jet, just as they were when he left Incirlik Air Base three and a half hours before.
At Incirlik’s Combined Air Operations Center, the U.S. colonel who calls the shots in Operation Northern Watch engagements acknowledges that Iraqi air-defense units fired at patrolling aircraft but U.S and British planes did not retaliate.
Air Force Col. Maury Forsyth, 44, is ONW’s combined forces air component commander, or CFACC (pronounced SEE-fac.) As commander, he has tactical control of all of ONW’s air power.
If Forsyth did not personally decide to leave the Iraqis alone, then that day’s mission commander flying above Iraq used Forsyth’s governance.
So why didn’t U.S. planes shoot back?
“Because Saddam doesn’t play fair,” Forsyth said.
ONW pilots did not retaliate because Saddam Hussein places his radar, anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles next to civilians. Saddam knows ONW commanders hate “collateral damage,” military-speak for dead civilians.
To strike back, Forsyth said, is a simple calculation of risk vs. reward in a battle to maintain the status quo — keeping Iraqi fighters and helicopters from flying north of the 36th parallel and attacking Kurds on the ground.
Could his planes wreak havoc on Saddam? You bet.
“If my country said, ‘Go take him out,’ I could. Just like we did in 1991,” Forsyth said, referring to the U.S. decimation of Iraqi forces during the Persian Gulf War.
Would he like to wreak havoc on Saddam? You bet.
“No one who ever got shot at hasn’t said, ‘Heck with this, let’s unleash the hoards,’” he said.
Will he wreak havoc on Saddam? Not until someone higher up the chain of command tells him to.
And there seems to be little chance of that order coming.
Last week, media reports stated that Gen. Joseph Ralston, the commander in chief of the U.S. European Command, recommended to the Bush administration that ONW patrols stop.
Troubled by escalating attacks against no-fly sorties, military officials are considering stopping regular patrols in favor of responding to Iraqi aggression, the reports stated.
Although ONW officers say they have received no indications of changes, the ONW no-fly mission now is often a “hold your fire” mission.
Coalition aircraft have returned fire 60 times in the 250 or so times Iraqi anti-aircraft have fired at them since 2000, Forsyth said. That’s one out of every four times.
Coalition jets have fired on Iraqi positions five times this year, including an exchange on April 30 near Mosul, the largest city in northern Iraq. This, at a time when — according to ONW officials — it appears that attacks on coalition aircraft have increased.
A few pilots are vocal about their frustration.
“You don’t know how badly you want to shoot back,” said one pilot with the 90th Fighter Squadron, sitting in the rear of the ready room.
However, Forsyth’s only frustration seems to be that he can’t talk more about what he and ONW personnel do and how they do it.
Forsyth is wound up tighter than an eight-day clock, nearly dancing in his office swivel chair as he tries to talk about his mission without delving into classified rules of engagement and intelligence.
Imagine a guy who looks like a pro golfer, is as engaging as an inspirational speaker, and has the mind of a whiz kid, and you have Forsyth.
He has been CFACC for almost 18 months, and he brings serious warrior credentials to the job. He’s flown fighters for 22 years — the F-4, the F-15 and the F-16. He has a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. He’s on his second rotation into the no-fly mission in its various manifestations since it began as Operation Provide Comfort in 1991.
Basically, Forsyth spends his days playing a subtle multi-dimensional chess game with Saddam, where the rules change every now and then just to keep it interesting. And it’s a match he clearly relishes.
When 40 or more ONW planes, known as packages, fly to northern Iraq, he has what he calls a “God’s eye view of each mission, courtesy of AWAC” warning-and-control aircraft. And as the mission’s commander, he has more to contend with than Saddam’s caprices.
He has to watch the weather.
He has to watch the support craft. If a tanker drops out, he has to figure out a way to make certain that the package of thirsty planes has enough fuel for missions that run a minimum of 800 miles roundtrip.
He has to keep an eye on who is where as planes pack into airspace over a piece of land about the size of Delaware.
“You can see a lot of moving parts,” he said.
During a mission, “I try to do the best I can to anticipate what Saddam’s moves are going to be” — when he’ll light up planes with radar, where he’ll fire, Forsyth said. “We do this on our terms. We try to never let him dictate the terms” and seduce pilots into striking targets too near population centers.
Tactically, “I can tell you that I spend a lot of time looking for trends” in a deadly serious match of wits that he calls “unbelievably intellectually stimulating.”
Forsyth, like other coalition commanders over the past decade, have watched Saddam’s moves in baffled amazement, “saying, ‘Why in the world would he do that?’” he said.
Why did Saddam mount what looked to be an offensive against Kurdish forces in Ba’idrah?
In December, about 800 Iraqi soldiers massed outside Ba’idrah, a Kurdish stronghold about 27 miles north of Mosul, then backed off.
Forsyth said he believes the Iraqis withdrew because ONW planes were flying overhead.
Though not a conventional war with a clear way to victory marked, Operation Northern Watch effectively has saved lives and kept the Iraqis at bay, Forsyth said.
Forsyth’s position is that it clearly has done what it was meant to do. Saddam is not massacring his own people, as he’s done so often during his 22-year dictatorship.
“We’ve contained him,” Forsyth said.
But he seems less sure about whether ONW has, or can, win the propaganda war.
What would happen if ONW started losing pilots and crews? he asks. How would the public react? It seems to be not a rhetorical question, but an attempt to solicit feedback from a casual observer, feedback that is nonexistent in this operation that U.S. policy makers rarely discuss, and that the public knows virtually nothing about.
Forsyth said he feels “a huge obligation to mothers and fathers of the nation’s treasure” to protect his forces.
But, he adds, the mission “is not to not lose people.”