Joint Force Harrier Read online

  Commander Ade Orchard RN

  JOINT FORCE HARRIER

  with James Barrington

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  Acknowledgements

  Follow Penguin

  To the families, friends and loved ones of all those who fight for their country, for they are the ones who truly endure the fear and uncertainty of war

  Joint Force Harrier is a personal account of life in a front-line squadron. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Royal Navy or Her Majesty’s Government

  Commander Ade Orchard has received no payment for telling his story in Joint Force Harrier. All income that he would have been entitled to will, instead, be shared equally between the following two charities:

  Combat Stress – The Ex-Services Mental Welfare Society

  www.combatstress.org.uk

  Royal Navy Historic Flight

  www.royalnavyhistoricflight.org.uk

  Learn more about the Royal Navy at

  www.royalnavy.mod.uk

  List of Illustrations

  The late, lamented Sea Harrier FA2.

  800 Squadron returns. The re-commissioning order from CINCFLEET.

  800 Naval Air Squadron re-commissions at RAF Cottesmore in Rutland.

  The re-commissioning cake listing the squadron’s long list of battle honours.

  My new office.

  The new 800 NAS livery adorns the side of a Harrier GR7 fuselage.

  HMS Illustrious at sea.

  Take-off is optional, landing is obligatory.

  800 NAS in its element.

  Red Sea Rig.

  800 NAS engineers begin work on an engine change.

  Ready for take-off.

  An armed GR7 accelerates down the flight deck.

  Lift off. A GR7 captured at the moment it takes to the air.

  The jet climbs away en route to the Omani bombing ranges.

  Members of the squadron check and pack their new kit.

  Disembarking from the RAF Tristar at Kabul.

  The Navy’s here.

  It’s not much, but for the four months of the det, this was home.

  Burger King.

  Here I’m enjoying a coffee with Hoggy, one of my more junior pilots.

  A Russian-built Ilyushin Il-76.

  A USAF C-130 Hercules.

  The next big thing. A Predator UAV.

  The United Nations Mi-26 Halo.

  The squadron’s engineers worked round the clock to keep the Harriers flying throughout the det.

  The bomb dump.

  The route to and from the bomb dump was well worn. Over the course of a four-month det we dropped over 100,000 lbs of ordnance.

  ‘Bombheads’ – naval armourers – load a 540 lb dumb bomb on to the outboard pylon of a Harrier.

  Pre-flight briefing.

  The stencils sprayed on to the side of the jet give a pretty clear indication of the intensity of the operations flown by the squadron in Afghanistan.

  The safety tags are removed from a 1000lb Paveway II laser-guided bomb before take-off.

  Yours truly, just before climbing in to the cockpit.

  With the jet chained to the ground, the squadron engineers run a high-power engine test.

  The office – the instrument panel of the Harrier GR7.

  The view from the pilot’s seat, which clearly shows the position of the Head-up Display (HUD).

  The ridges surrounding KAF seen through the HUD with a C-130 and Mi-24 in the foreground.

  Taxiing out.

  Filling up. A Harrier takes on fuel from an RAF TriStar tanker.

  Self-portrait.

  We always hunted in pairs.

  Loaded for bear. A GR7, armed with CRV-7 rockets and bombs, en route to Helmand, ready to support troops on the ground.

  KAF from the air.

  RAF Regiment patrols that pushed the Taliban back from the perimeter led to a significant decrease in the number of rocket attacks on KAF.

  A 3 Commando Brigade mortar team in action.

  Here I am getting it all out of my system with a compact ‘mini-me’ machine gun on the KAF ranges.

  Downtime. A few members of the squadron relax over coffee at Tim Hortons.

  Celebrating 2,500 hours with an alcohol-free ‘near beer’ during the otherwise dry det in Afghanistan.

  The view from the cockpit at 30,000 feet.

  The view from above.

  This picture graphically demonstrates the difficulty of identifying the target based on directions from the ground.

  There are groups of people of either side of the bridge. Is it a firefight or a Sunday market?

  Cyborg – the cumbersome sets of Night Vision Goggles gave their wearer an outlandish appearance.

  The view through the NVGs.

  Santa’s got a brand new sleigh.

  When the scramble bell rings, the alert crews drop whatever they’re doing and run to the jets.

  On alert. A Harrier, armed, pre-flighted and ready to go, sits on the hangar, waiting for the scramble bell to ring.

  Scramble. A GR7 gets airborne on another GCAS mission.

  Wingman. A great portrait of one of the Harriers.

  Flares fired from the Harrier’s belly were our best defence against the threat from heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles.

  A GR7 breaks right, high over the mountains.

  A job well done. I spoke to the squadron on our last day in Afghanistan to acknowledge the success of the det.

  Something to remember us by.

  Picture credits: All pictures that appear in Joint Force Harrier are believed to be copyright of either the authors, Crown copyright or www.800.org.uk. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders. The publishers will be glad to rectify in future editions any errors or omissions brought to their attention.

  Prologue

  Kandahar Province, Afghanistan

  ‘Four Five, Four Six. Looks like your jinx is still working, boss,’ Dunc Mason radioed.

  ‘Don’t you start,’ I snapped. I was in charge, but all of my pilots seemed to be getting a lot more action than me. And they really enjoyed reminding me of it.

  We’d been airborne for nearly an hour, cruising at 20,000 feet waiting for trade. The first part of the sortie had been very quiet and I guessed I would – yet again – be returning to Kandahar Airfield with the bombs still under my wings. But at that moment, as so often happened in Afghanistan, everything changed in a matter of seconds. A new voice cut through on the radio.

  ‘Recoil Four Five, this is Crowbar. TIC Charlie declared. Position Eight Seven Charlie Quebec, keypad five.’

  There were Troops in Contact – under fire – and we were the cavalry. ‘Eight Seven Charlie Quebec, keypad five’ told us how to find them – based on the normal latitude and longitude system that divides up the surface of the planet into oblongs. Each oblong was then divi
ded into boxes, and each box given an alphanumeric code. Each of these then had a theoretical telephone keypad overlaid on it. ‘Keypad five’ put them right in the centre of the box.

  ‘Recoil Four Five, roger,’ I replied.

  I turned the Harrier north and pushed the throttle fully open with my left hand, checking that Dunc – my wing-man, Squadron Leader Duncan Mason – was still with me. As always, the adrenalin flowed as we increased speed. In these circumstances we never knew what we were going to find.

  One of the first things we had to do was to sort out enough airspace for us to make our attack. With the Harrier pretty much flat out at over 500 knots, I quickly checked my map, then called Crowbar – the RAF Tactical Air Control authority at Camp Bastion.

  ‘Crowbar, Recoil Four Five, requesting airspace Eight Seven Charlie Quebec two two zero to the deck and Eight Six Charlie Quebec, keypads three, six, nine.’

  ‘Recoil Four Five, Crowbar, approved. Contact is Jaguar Zero One on Olive One Two.’

  ‘Jaguar’ was an American Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC) and ‘Olive One Two’ the code for his designated radio frequency. I punched it into my radio.

  Because communications quality with them was usually poor, I’d received the call from Crowbar on a non-secure radio, but as soon as we were heading in the right direction I switched to the secure frequency to talk to the troops on the ground.

  We were approaching the designated position when I raised the JTAC.

  ‘Jaguar Zero One, Recoil Four Five.’

  ‘Recoil Four Five, Jaguar Zero One. Ready for fighter check-in.’

  He needed to know what he had heading his way.

  ‘Jaguar Zero One, Recoil Four Five. Flight of two UK Harriers. Playtime is ninety minutes. Recoil Four Five has thirty-eight rockets and two 540lb bombs, one impact and one airburst. Recoil Four Six has two 1,000lb laser-guided and GPS-guided bombs. All aborts will be in the clear.’

  Over the secure radio we didn’t need to use abort codes. He could simply tell us exactly what he wanted us to do.

  ‘Estimate ninety seconds to overhead your position,’ I finished, ‘and we’re approaching from the south.’

  ‘Recoil Four Five, roger. Stand by for SITREP. We’re a combined Afghan National Army and US patrol, and we’ve been out for three days. We’re on the high ground east of the river and taking fire from the western side. The nearest other friendlies are two clicks downriver, and all friendlies are east of the river.’

  ‘Recoil Four Five, copied.’

  It was all vital information, part of the ‘talk-on’ – the passing of the targeting and attack data to us in a situation report by the JTAC. Our highest priority was to ensure we avoided causing any casualties to our own side, so finding out exactly where the ‘blue’, or friendly, forces were located was crucial. And as the patrol had been out in bandit country for three days we knew they were probably already low on ammunition.

  ‘Roger,’ came the reply. ‘Look ahead for the river. To the east of it there’s a small area of high ground with scattered vegetation, and a track leading across it. That’s where we are. We’re taking heavy machine-gun fire from the tree-line on the west bank, and we’re pinned down. We can’t go forward or back because there’s no cover either side of our position. Until the bad guys are taken out, we’re stuck here.’

  And he didn’t need to add ‘and get here as quickly as you can and sort this out’. That was perfectly clear from the tone of his voice.

  ‘Roger. Understand you’re on the high ground east of the river, hostiles engaging you from the wood on the west side. Confirm.’

  I knew that was exactly what he’d just told me, but when you’re about to drop high-explosive heavy ordnance within metres of your own side, it’s essential to know precisely where they are. Every member of the armed forces dreads being involved in a blue-on-blue incident and so we checked, double-checked and then checked again.

  ‘Confirmed.’

  ‘Roger, overhead now.’

  As I broke into a hard turn, I looked down into the cockpit of the GR7. The altitude indicator seemed to swing on to its side as I was pushed deep into my ejection seat. Below me was a small river and on its east side, just as the JTAC had described, was an area of high ground. Directly facing it was a tract of trees and thick undergrowth, and that was obviously where the insurgents had set up their ambush.

  From the enemy’s point of view, it must have looked like a pretty good spot. Although the coalition forces held the high ground, which should have given them a slight tactical advantage, the terrain and the position of the Taliban attackers meant that the coalition troops couldn’t descend safely in any direction. They were effectively trapped on the hilltop, which was why they’d called for air support.

  The situation was clear-cut and easy to resolve. We knew both where the friendly forces were located and exactly where our targets – the Taliban – were holed up.

  ‘Recoil Four Five, Jaguar Zero One. Type Two control, and we’ll take the five-forty airburst.’

  ‘Roger.’

  As always, the JTAC on the ground made the decision. Essentially he’s delivering the attack himself, and the Harrier and its pilot are simply extensions of his weapon system. For this attack, against a soft-skinned target like a gang of Taliban, he’d gone for the lowest-yield weapon we carried, apart from the CRV-7 rockets, and chosen the 540lb airburst bomb. The right choice, I thought.

  But although the JTAC effectively owns the weapon, that does not preclude negotiation between him and the pilot, because it’s conceivable that the aircrew might be aware of something that he isn’t; civilians in the target area perhaps. Or the JTAC might have overestimated the distance between himself and the Taliban and be placing friendly forces in danger if the pilot attacks without checking all aspects of the target and terrain. I was satisfied that we knew exactly where the target was and that the friendly forces were over 800 yards clear of where the weapon would explode, so they were well outside the risk distance.

  Dunc and I quickly carried out our checks. We cross-referred our ID of the target to ensure that the three of us – the JTAC and both pilots – were all looking at the same thing. Then we did the same thing with the weapon, double-checking the type, the fusing, the attack height and direction alongside details of the counter-measures programmes we’d have running during the attack to protect us from attack.

  ‘Laser fires,’ Dunc said.

  ‘Roger.’

  I pulled the control column further to the right, driving the Harrier into a hard 4G right-hand turn and glanced down to check my switch selection and target information. And I needed to confirm that Dunc’s laser targeting pod was illuminating the correct spot. It was.

  An optical sensor in the aircraft’s nose-cone detected the reflection of the laser from the target and slewed a television camera towards it. Inside the cockpit, my screen displayed a clear video image of the target. Right in the centre of the screen were the cross-hairs, and right in the centre of these was the exact spot where the laser energy was pointing. Excellent.

  ‘Four Six, Four Five. Good spot.’

  With my left hand on the throttle, I began to set up the bomb release.

  And then, in the instant that I looked up from the television display of the laser spot tracker, the massive white bulk of an Mi-24 helicopter suddenly filled my forward view, barely yards away.

  I had less than a second to react. My Harrier was turning right, straight towards the UN transport helicopter – the wrong way to go. Immediately and instinctively I flick-rolled the Harrier’s wings to the left and carved down and away from the big Russian chopper. That meant I lost sight of it, but I was right out of options.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ I muttered, as the sudden change in direction tried to throw me all over the cockpit.

  The Mi-24, NATO reporting name Halo, which had been a little above me and on a reciprocal heading, seemed to have come out of nowhere. And with a closing speed between us of
well in excess of 400 knots, it was far too close for comfort.

  ‘Watch out! There’s a bloody helicopter right in here with us!’ I radioed Dunc, who at that moment I couldn’t see, watching my mirrors as the whale-like chopper chugged past me.

  Focused on the attack, neither Dunc nor I had seen the thing approaching. But, in our defence, we had been busy.

  It shouldn’t have been anywhere near us. Not above a notified firefight area – all TICs were routinely notified to all airborne aircraft. And the Halo’s crew should have then stayed well clear.

  Whatever it had been doing there, the urgent evasive action I’d had to take had comprehensively cocked up my attack, and that irritated me because I knew that delays in delivering weapons could mean lives lost on the ground. All I could hope was that the coalition troops were well dug in and could hang on for a couple more minutes.

  When I’d joined the Royal Navy, I’d expected to spend my career flying jet fighters off the deck of an aircraft carrier at sea. Bashing around over the dusty plains of Afghanistan dropping bombs on a bunch of heavily armed insurgents wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind. But here I was. Having lost the opportunity to attack on the first pass, I had no option but to go round again. Still angry, I turned away from the target area to set myself up again for another attack. I rolled in again and began my bomb run.

  1

  ‘It’s late,’ I needled the RAF officer standing next to me.

  ‘Your watch must be wrong,’ he replied, glancing down at his own.

  Any debate about the timing of the RAF’s new Typhoon meant a jibe from a Royal Navy pilot was inevitable. The truth was, though, that for all the traditional rivalry between the Navy and the RAF, we were now working together much more closely than we ever had in the past.

  It was a beautifully sunny day in the tiny Midlands county of Rutland. RAF Cottesmore was heaving with top brass from both services. The Chief of the Air Staff was rubbing shoulders with the First Sea Lord and the Commander-in-Chief Fleet, and there were too many two-, three- and four-star officers to count. Virtually all the members of the Navy and Air Force Boards seemed to be there. Then there were all the families, and finally the press, both general and specialist, because it was clearly going to be a big news day. Jane’s Defence Weekly, Air Forces Monthly and most of the other military and aviation publications had sent reporters and photographers to witness the three separate but interrelated events.