Joint Force Harrier Read online

  Nothing could be further from the truth. Air-to-ground combat is complex and challenging, and can be quite brutal, and that’s what some air defenders still find difficult to grasp. Some of the Sea Harrier pilots, in learning to fly a new aircraft, struggled a bit because, while they might have been able to maintain a good 3D picture and work out in their head what was going on forty miles from their present position, they found it a considerable challenge to operate with the pinpoint precision necessary for ground attack.

  They needed to grasp the fact – and quickly – that the soldier on the ground, the man we mud-movers were there to support, had an engagement range of around fifty to a couple of hundred yards, because that was what his weapons were optimized for. He wouldn’t give a toss about what was happening forty miles away, or even four. A pilot could be the best 3D picture builder in the world, but in ground attack the only thing that mattered was whether or not he could deliver a rocket accurately within perhaps seventy-five yards of his own friendly troops, or a bomb within 500 yards.

  And in Oman, taking part in Exercise MAGIC CARPET, we were reminded that even the most reliable of weapons can sometimes develop faults that produce unexpected results. The squadron accepted an invitation to drop weapons on the Ramlat As Sahmah range in Oman and, with a single exception, they all landed precisely where they were supposed to. The odd one out was a Paveway 2,000lb laser-guided bomb that failed in flight and ceased responding to directional guidance. Far from impacting the target, it drifted well off course, ending up almost on the edge of the range boundary, and the outcome could have been disastrous. It was a sharp reminder to us that smart munitions are only smart when they work as advertised. We all knew very well that if a big 2,000lb high-explosive bomb went awry in Afghanistan it could be catastrophic.

  When the squadron returned home to Cottesmore from ‘Lusty’ our entire focus shifted to preparing for Afghanistan. With the concerns raised by senior Royal Navy officers very much at the forefront of my mind, I was determined that my squadron would be ready in all respects for the task ahead. But our preparations sometimes took an unexpected turn.

  ‘Bit of a bloody cheek, this, isn’t it?’ I heard one of my pilots remark.

  In getting us ready to do battle with the Taliban, the powers that be decided we needed to go camping to prove that 800 NAS could operate while living in tents. This ignored two facts. First, many of our pilots and maintainers had already worked in Afghanistan as part of the RAF squadrons in which they had essentially served their apprenticeships in JFH. Second, at Kandahar we would be operating from a large, well-equipped airfield where the only tents we would find would be the rubberized hangars used for aircraft maintenance.

  I had mixed feelings about this training exercise myself. When 800 Naval Air Squadron was recommissioned it was a brand-new military unit with no history of having operated in such conditions. The counter-argument to this was that the day before 800 NAS was called into existence it had been – to most intents and purposes – 3 Squadron RAF, a fully operational front-line squadron with entirely adequate experience of all aspects of Harrier operations.

  On balance, I think it was probably right to insist the squadron have a combat-ready work-up before going away on front-line real-world operations less than a month later. When a new squadron is formed it doesn’t automatically have the experience and skills to go off to war immediately, and he clearly wanted to make sure he was signing off on a unit that was fit and competent in all respects.

  The irritation felt by some members of the squadron was that the squadron was due to deploy to Afghanistan for a four-month stint – four months that included Christmas 2006 – and, three weeks before the personnel left for a very active war zone, the RAF top brass had decided it would be a good idea if they spent a few days living in tents in the middle of nowhere.

  But at least it was going to be a whole-station exercise, what’s known as Sector Level Training, in which everybody is involved, and that made us feel slightly better about it. Or, rather, that was the original plan. As the exercise date approached, it began to look as if the only people who would be ‘playing’ were going to be the members of 800 NAS. One of the RAF squadrons was already in theatre and the other, because of the pressure on the whole Harrier force, wasn’t available. My efforts to explain their absence from the fun to the guys in the squadron were met with the usual scepticism. It began to look as if we were being placed under the microscope by the RAF, and some of the squadron members had their noses put out of joint about that.

  In the end the exercise was de-scoped slightly. It was conducted on the base itself, RAF Cottesmore, rather than halfway up some mountain in Wales or somewhere equally bleak and remote, and fortunately it lasted just a week and a half. The squadron moved into a city of tents and began running an extensive series of training exercises that involved practising classic field operations of the sort that used to be carried out in Germany. And while the exercise scenarios bore no resemblance whatsoever to the conditions we were about to encounter in Afghanistan the important point about such activities is that they allow the command to test people in a slightly austere and inhospitable environment under a certain amount of time pressure, and with some sleep deprivation thrown into the mix, to see how effectively their decision-making processes function in those circumstances.

  On the last day of the exercise it sounded as if the Third World War had broken out on the airfield. The Directing Staff simulated that the deployed operating base occupied by the squadron was being attacked and they had arranged a huge firefight. The number of blanks fired that day must have numbered in the thousands. All around me people were loading full magazines of blanks and firing their weapons at anything that moved and most things that didn’t.

  Great for relieving any pent up frustration, if not particularly useful for anything else except scaring the birds. That said, the constant clatter of semi-automatic weapons again served to focus our minds on the realities of the forthcoming deployment. It was just days now until we’d arrive in theatre.

  4

  The sun streaming through the aircraft windows woke those few among us who had, against all the odds, managed to snatch some sleep during the long flight out to Kabul.

  Just after six in the morning, Afghanistan time, the doors of the old RAF TriStar opened and we stepped down on to the cracked concrete and into a beautiful, warm sunny morning beneath crystal-clear skies. But we weren’t going to be on the ground long. Ushered into a handling area, we were processed like walking pieces of baggage. The structure was a big rubberized hangar filled with long, cheap pine tables, presided over by an aggressive Army logistics sergeant who barked out orders in a ‘don’t mess with me, sonny’ tone of voice. To almost everybody’s surprise, the sergeant was a woman, though you had to get pretty damn close to her to tell for sure.

  In fairness, the place was packed full of people, many of whom had never been to Afghanistan before and had little clear idea about where they were supposed to go or what they should be doing. With that sort of chaos, it probably needed someone like her at the helm.

  As we waited to board the Hercules for the last leg of our journey, I sat in a corner of the handling area, surrounded by squadron personnel, most of them lying snoring on camp beds, and inevitably began thinking about the pre-mission briefings and the task facing us. And, of course, my mind drifted to those who might be looking out for our failures rather than for our successes.

  In truth, the comments my fellow Royal Navy officers had relayed to me were a matter of very real concern. I had every faith in my personnel, and was quite sure that each man and woman in the squadron had trained thoroughly and would do his or her very best to ensure that everything ran as smoothly as possible. But, for all that, there was no denying that it would be the first time many of them had operated in Afghanistan, or indeed in any war zone.

  I’d tried to brief them as comprehensively as I could on what they could expect to find, and I’d ensured that the
y had attended all the required lectures and collected the correct kit. That was the easy part. Yet I was still worried that something would happen at Kandahar that would catch us off-guard. Some event, or even a chain of events, that would negate all our careful planning and training at a stroke.

  The squadron motto was ‘Never Unprepared’ but suppose we didn’t come up to scratch? Naturally the responsibility would be mine: when you wear a commanding officer’s hat that’s where the buck stops. I knew I would have to be extra vigilant about absolutely everything that happened, good and bad, so that I could take any remedial action as quickly as possible.

  Just as the TriStar had been when it left Brize Norton, the trooping flight Hercules to Kandahar was pretty full. As well as the 800 NAS personnel, the passengers included some of the people we would be working with in theatre and protecting, so there were quite a lot of Royal Marines sitting and standing in the back of the aircraft. About sixty per cent of United Kingdom troops deployed to Afghanistan during this period – October 2006 to January 2007 – weren’t Army but Royal Navy and Royal Marines, the latter from 3 Commando Brigade.

  Comfort was never the strong point of the ubiquitous C-130 Hercules. There’s a long-standing joke in the military that its manufacturer, Lockheed, solved the noise problem by keeping it all inside the aircraft, and within five minutes of getting airborne I knew exactly why the story had started. The noise inside the hold was deafening, and vibration from the four turbo props throbbed through the aircraft. The seats were metal-framed webbing seats that offered about the same level of comfort as a plank of wood. It made your average charter flight seem like the lap of luxury.

  As the big transport passed top of climb and settled down at its cruising level, I think everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Yes, we knew that the aircraft had excellent self-protection systems and that the pilots had done the trip dozens of times before, but it was still good to know that the aircraft was now out of range of any SAMs the Taliban were likely to have.

  I’d recognized one of my fellow passengers immediately. Major Nick Williamson had been on the Advanced Course with me at the Staff College at Shrivenham in Wiltshire, and as soon as the Hercules levelled out I decided to go and have a word with him. I looked round, checking that everyone in the squadron was OK, then unbuckled my seat belt and walked to the back of the aircraft, where I’d seen Nick standing.

  ‘Oh, hi, Ade,’ he said. ‘What’re you doing here?’

  ‘This lot’ – I pointed at the ranks of people reading, talking or trying to sleep in the webbing seats, many of whom looked frighteningly young to me – ‘are most of 800 NAS. We’re relieving IV (AC) Squadron at Kandahar’ – the ‘AC’ stood for Army Cooperation – ‘it’s our first time in theatre as a squadron, and we’ll be out there for the next four months, including Christmas.’

  ‘You drew the short straw, obviously.’

  I nodded. ‘I suppose we did. So what’s your story?’

  ‘I’m OIC designate of Z Company, 45 Commando – an aggressive manoeuvre group.’

  ‘Sounds like fun,’ I offered.

  Nick grinned at me. ‘That may not be exactly the right word,’ he said. ‘We’re going to be doing regional engagement stuff, trying to track down the Taliban in their home territory, plus the usual convoy support and other proactive tasks. It’s probably going to be fairly bloody.’

  A white-faced marine got up from a seat just in front of us and squeezed past.

  ‘He must be bloody desperate,’ Nick said, as the man vanished behind a hanging tarpaulin. The Hercules’s sanitary facilities are pretty basic. Just behind where we were standing was a lavatory bowl connected to a stainless-steel pipe, the output from which led God knows where. There was no cubicle or door, just a tarpaulin screening the bowl.

  As we chatted, the aircraft’s manoeuvres repeatedly caused the tarpaulin to swing to one side or the other, revealing an embarrassed squatting trouser-less figure, with each appearance greeted by hoots and whistles from his mates. It was better than crouching at the edge of the ramp and crapping into space, but that’s the best you could say about it.

  For obvious reasons we moved away slightly to stand right at the back of the aircraft by the raised ramp where there are two dispatcher doors, one either side, and both fitted with windows that gave us a good view of the ground thousands of feet below.

  As we chatted there was a sudden loud thud that sent a huge shudder through the airframe and a double flash of light either side of the aircraft that we could both see clearly through the window.

  ‘What the fuck was that?’ said Nick, grabbing at a handhold and staring, transfixed, out of the window.

  For the briefest of instants I was certain that we’d been hit by a missile, or at the very least had suffered a near-miss. But the Hercules seemed unaffected, flying straight and level and, despite the clearly agitated passengers in the hold, none of the aircrew seemed in any way concerned.

  Moments later I realized what had happened. One of the aircrew had been testing the IR decoy flares in preparation for the aircraft’s arrival in Kandahar, which was then a much more dangerous place than Kabul.

  Deep in conversation, Nick and I had missed the warning from the crew. And so missed the opportunity to spread the word to our people. Instead, the whole episode just scared the crap out of everyone.

  Nick was particularly irritated. He was quite happy at the prospect of facing the Taliban on their own ground, but the idea of being blown out of the sky before he even got to Kandahar didn’t appeal at all.

  But it served as another reminder that we were already in the middle of a war zone – and heading for one of the most active parts of that zone. It was very much a ‘buckle up, Dorothy, we’re not in Kansas any longer’ moment.

  Back in my seat, I glanced around at the squadron personnel, some of whom I’d known for years, others whose faces were comparatively new to me, and wondered exactly what would be waiting for us on the ground at Kandahar.

  Before we landed, everyone suited up with their body armour. Like the take-off, the descent was tactical, which meant quite violent. The idea is that, in order to confound potential attacks, the pilot tries not to present a stable picture of the aircraft at any stage of its approach. So he mixed steep descents with hard turns until he finally plopped it down on the runway.

  For squadron personnel used to operating from British airfields, our first sight of Kandahar through the windows of the C-130 was something of a revelation. On both the runway and the taxiway we immediately noticed that the place was covered in rocks and stones – not a friendly environment in which to operate aircraft with powerful jet engines. The problem was that the sweepers were fighting a losing battle. The condition of the taxiways and hard standings was so bad that for every stone they swept up, another got knocked out of the concrete. At the same time the airfield was so busy that trying to attend to the problem was difficult.

  The runway had been fully resurfaced, but all of the taxiways were in very bad condition, the concrete crumbling and breaking up. This was at least partially because of the big transport aircraft that parked on them. Kandahar has a single main runway and an outer taxiway but, because the runway had been rebuilt by the Russians during their long but ultimately unsuccessful occupation of the country, it also had short linking taxiways running from the runway itself to the perimeter taxiway in a kind of herringbone pattern. These were designed as high-speed offshoots, to allow landing aircraft to clear the runway as quickly as possible to allow other fighters or bombers to land or take off behind them.

  The offshoots made convenient parking slots for heavy transport aeroplanes like the C-17 Globemaster III, mainly because these aircraft were so big that few of the hard standings could accommodate them easily and manoeuvring such massive machines in relatively confined spaces could create problems. The standard procedure was to park the C-17s facing the runway, then use reverse thrust to back the aircraft out of their parking slots on to the perimeter t
axiway, before moving round to the take-off position. It was the reverse thrust that seemed to do most of the damage to the surface.

  Even as our Hercules taxied in, heading for the tactical hide, a section of hard standing surrounded by the ubiquitous international containers, the cargo hold was already warming up, and when the ramp dropped, a flood of heat rushed in through the rear of the aircraft and hit us in the face. This blast furnace of air was the classic welcome to the hot, dusty desert, that and the crystal-clear sky, marred somewhat by thick black smoke belching from the engines of an ex-Russian transport aircraft taking off from the runway close to where our Hercules was parked.

  At last 800 NAS had arrived in theatre, and instantly created another ‘first’, being the first Royal Navy fixed-wing squadron to deploy to landlocked southern Afghanistan, as well as being the first RN squadron to operate the Harrier GR7, the ground-attack variant of the AV-8B Harrier II, the legendary Harrier Jump Jet, from an airfield inside a war zone.

  We climbed out of the Hercules to find a group of guys from IV (AC) Squadron RAF waiting for us on the hard standing, all very pleased to see us because we were there to replace them and that meant they were going to get home in time for Christmas. They had several vehicles available, and helped our personnel transport their stuff to the accommodation area and get settled in.

  Wing Commander Ian Duguid, the Officer Commanding IV (AC) Squadron, was there to meet me. ‘Squid’, as he was known, reminded me of a terrier, but he was easy to get on with and told everything like it was. About anything to do with warfare he was very businesslike and efficient. We jumped into his jeep and he drove me to the opposite end of the airfield, where the Harrier detachment was accommodated. And on the way we did a little tour of the airfield to help me get my bearings.