Down a small hall (created by plywood sheets) and to the right was a small room occupied by the Scud targeting section. Inside, pictures of fixed Scud launch sites were pinned to the wall. Also on the wall were maps showing Scud storage areas, Scud support facilities, factories, and the plants where Scud fuel was manufactured.

Because the missiles were moved out before the war started, once the fixed sites and the storage and production facilities were hit, there was nothing more to do but allocate sorties to Scud-hunting (A-10s by day, and F-15Es and LANTIRN Pod-equipped F-16s at night). As a result, the Scud targeting section turned out to be only partially useful.

A side story: Scud fuel was stable for only a limited time, and once it became unstable, it couldn’t be used. The Black Hole planners therefore figured that if the fuel production factory was destroyed, the Iraqis would have to stop shooting Scuds roughly three to four weeks afterward. In due course, the factory was bombed in the opening days of the war; but it appears the Iraqis didn’t follow the technical data, because they fired Scuds for the next six weeks.

Across the hall was the KTO (Kuwait Theater of Operations) Room, also containing many maps. Here Sam Baptiste and Bill Welch put together the effort to hit the Iraqi Army.

Behind it was the room occupied by the Air Superiority section, headed by Glenn Profitt, where Wild Weasel schedules and EF-111/EA-6 support were planned and put into the ATO (Profitt had taken over from Lenny Henry in October). As it turned out, once the war started, air superiority was attained faster than expected. And so work in this section, as in the Scud section, soon became routine, and the team became quickly unemployed.

Lastly, there should have been an “interdiction section” (that is to say, an “isolating the battlefield” section). To Chuck Horner’s later regret, there wasn’t. The reason not deserves an explanation. Let’s let him give it:

In our doctrine, we assign air to attack targets. When these targets are associated with the enemy air defense, our missions are called counter air. When these targets are in close proximity to our friendly ground forces, our missions are called CAS. When these targets are associated with whatever supplies the war effort, our missions are called air interdiction (that is, using air to interdict fielded forces from their support, logistics, command and control, reinforcements, movement, letters home, etc.). Other doctrinal missions include air superiority and nuclear strike (there is not a doctrinal mission called “strategic attack”).

Now, what do we call bombing a secret police headquarters that supports the evil regime? It isn’t counter air. It isn’t CAS. It isn’t interdiction (although we have to file it under that mission area now). So what is it?