Dan Hampton - Viper Pilot

By the Iraq War, the offensive, hard-kill mentality of some of the Wild Weasel squadrons made the difference. We went after critical command-and-control nodes, radars, and SAM sites with hard ordnance right from the beginning. HARMs were used to maybe make the Iraqis duck a bit, but the threats were killed with precision munitions and cluster bombs—not suppressed. We were allowed to do this by officers in leadership positions who didn’t presume to dictate weapons and tactics to us. All they wanted were results, and how we got them was up to us.

The 77th Fighter Squadron alone killed more than fifty SAMs and vital air-defense components with hard bombs, CBUs, Mavericks, and the cannon. These included SA-2s, SA-3s, SA-6s, and ROLANDs. Twenty-eight radars, thirty-seven Triple-A pits, and eight surface-to-surface missiles were also knocked off. Of course, we did other things, too. Forty-six aircraft and helicopters were destroyed on the ground along with sixty-five tanks, trucks, and armored personnel-carriers. So, if we’d succumbed to the HARM suppression-only mind-set advocated by some, how many friendly aircraft might have been lost? Amazingly, there were several CeeJay units that hadn’t embraced the concept of destruction of enemy air defense. They largely spent their war thirty miles from the action, at 30,000 feet, and brought their HARM missiles home each day.

No, thanks.

A MONTH LATER, THE GAMBLERS LEFT PRINCE SULTAN and never returned. On the way home, we stopped over for a night at Lajes Air Base in the Azores Islands off the Portuguese coast. The Air Force support folks and their families gave us a real American cookout—hamburgers, hot dogs, and margaritas. It was heaven. We ate and drank, thrilled to be alive and happy to be going all the way home the next day.

I’d survived another war.

I knew that, occasionally, in later years, paths would cross again, and those of us who knew the Elephant could talk about it. The combat bond is like no other, and there’s really no way to explain it. But for now, I knew, all was well. So, as an afternoon rain squall popped over the rolling green hills, I lay down in the cool grass, let the rain fall on my face, and smiled.

Endgame.

SEVEN MONTHS AFTER THE GAMBLERS WENT HOME, Saddam Hussein was pulled from a filthy spider hole on a farm outside Tikrit. It wasn’t even a mile from the SAM we killed on April 13, and when I heard the news, I wondered if he’d been there at the time and seen the action. His two barbaric sons and a grandson were killed that July, and Saddam followed them on December 30, 2006. Hung up by his scrawny neck until his eyes bulged, his bowels let go, and he died.

Winning that war was a foregone conclusion. When the American military is turned loose and allowed to fight, we prevail. Yet it would take eight more years before the last American combat troops came home. There were no more MiGs or SAMs to contend with, no Iraqi armor or set-piece battles; but it remained a war—and a particularly nasty one at that. Caught between vacillating peacetime leadership and ambiguous, shifting political goals, the U.S. forces still adapted, overcame, and rolled out of Iraq with their banners flying at the end of 2011.

As for the Weasels, the battle continues. While the Air Force shrinks under budget cuts, and as the tremendous cost of the F-22 and F-35 programs seek justification, there is a continuous push to combine missions. Think of it as a one-size-fits-all approach. Now don’t get me wrong, I believe single-mission aircraft are a ridiculous waste of resources. However, just as absurd is the notion that plinking away at map coordinates with smart munitions is Weaseling.

Then there’s the problem of mentality. With a decade of permissive skies over Afghanistan and Iraq, some flawed conclusions are being reached. The love affair with stand-off weapons and unmanned aerial vehicles are perfect examples. Once again, those who are too old or who were never good enough for combat continue to advocate the replacement of manned aircraft. These are the same guys who said we’d never strafe and we’d never drop bombs on SAM sites. But combat pilots know that as long as ground troops are fighting, they’ll need close air-support and Weasels.

Ask any infantryman.

I also know that UAVs, in their present form, would never survive in any threatening environment with MiGs or SAMs or Triple-A. When generals began insisting that fighters fly escort for the things, then we were at the edge of the abyss. We went over into the abyss when the Air Force made a noncombat officer the Chief of Staff.

Not too long ago, a Predator “pilot” tried to write himself up for an Air Medal —it didn’t happen, but a lot of fine fighter pilots threw up at the thought. What’s next? A Purple Heart for carpal tunnel syndrome?

Be that as it may, I’m not opposed to any solution that kills SAMs. Fixed sites are relatively easy. Naval bombardment, cruise missiles, or even Special Forces teams with satchel charges are all options for killing those types of SAMs. Wild Weaseling, to most of us, is a special mission done on the fly against unknown and unplanned mobile SAMs. Often reactive, it’s over very quickly. Too rapidly to be coordinated through the net-centric, space-based, convoluted virtual world promoted by cyber desk-jockeys. That doesn’t work, since the threat has killed and moved by that time. There will always be a critical need for an aggressive, lethal Wild Weasel right up front in the action. The point is, we won against Iraq because we were prepared to do battle with a superpower. I fervently hope we don’t train in the future to fight a lesser threat and get whacked by a well-armed China or Russia.

AFTER OUR STOPOVER IN THE AZORES, WE ARRIVED HOME AT Shaw AFB in the late afternoon, and despite the fatigue of the flight, we joined together as four-ships to fly overhead in close formation. Pitching out, I remember looking down at the green fields of South Carolina and the crowd waiting for us on the flight line. I knew it was my last war, and I was content. I was happy to be alive and it was good to be home. Home is the best of things to a man in combat. More than just a safe haven, it symbolizes a place where good things happen. Where you don’t wake up drenched in sweat from a nightmare or roll into a ditch because mortars are falling on your head. Home is safe.

Weeks later, after the flags were put away and decorations received, we tried to reconnect as best we could. Of course, the lessons were put into briefings, all the numbers quantified and lectures presented, but nothing really changed. Pilots moved on to other assignments. Several became generals, some left for airline jobs, the National Guard, and some, like me, retired. I always wanted to try island living, so I went off to the Caribbean and bought a big sailboat. Several men who I thought would never get married now have wives and kids. Others, who had perfect families, seemed like they would never split up—and they did just that. At least two are now dead, killed in another war on another continent. Regardless of how my brothers ended up, they’re frozen in my memory as I last saw them, and in that sense, they’ll live forever.

The summer following the war, I met a middle-aged woman during a Fourth of July parade. Her son, a young Marine, had been killed in Nasiriyah on March 24, 2003. I could see her gamely trying to take some meaning away from the fireworks, the band, and all the uniforms. We quietly talked for a few minutes as the parade passed by, and I told her about that day as I’d seen it. I think she was grateful to see someone who had physically been nearby when her boy died. I don’t do platitudes and couldn’t attach significance to her loss, but I did tell her that the Iraqis lost that battle and that I’d made them bleed for her son. I don’t know if it was the right thing to say, but she smiled through her tears as she walked away.