The Third World War - The Untold Story (15 page)

By the beginning of 1985 a regular surveillance pattern had been established in the Central Region of Europe. One
Sentry
from the NATO squadron was always aloft near Venlo on the German-Dutch border; a second from the USAF flew over Ramstein; and a third, also from the NATO squadron, patrolled to the west of Munich in Bavaria. Stand-by aircraft were held on fifteen minutes’ readiness. Their racetrack patterns were flown at over 25,000 feet. The serviceability of
Sentry,
based on a well-tried type of aircraft, had always been better than that experienced by new generations of aircraft and by 1985 COMAAFCE could confidently expect a daily 80 per cent serviceability rate from both the USAF and the NATO units. Moreover, with a four-man flight crew, additional to the thirteen men manning the equipment, extensive crew space, in-flight cooking and in-flight refuelling, each
Sentry
could extend its normal six-hour patrol time by several hours if necessary, which afforded great advantages.

From 1983 onwards,
Sentries
in both NATO and USAF squadrons had been built with almost identical equipment. The original computer speed had been increased threefold and the storage capacity fivefold. The
Sentry
computer could now process an incredible 1.25 million operations per second and, if necessary, could communicate with up to 98,000 air and ground users by the joint tactical information distribution system (JTIDS), a digital communications system resistant to ECM. Not surprisingly, in the early years of deployment the technical capacity of the aircraft had tended to outrun the imagination of those responsible for its operation, while there were many who considered its introduction into service premature and its technology potential excessive. In 1981, however, a separate subordinate NATO AWACS Command had been established at Maisieres near Brussels and an Allied staff had worked steadily both to exploit its functions more fully and to integrate
Sentry
operations with those of the British AEW
Nimrod.

Sentry’s
first and most obvious role was to look out for intruders into NATO airspace. Hitherto, low flying
Floggers
or
Fencers
could be detected only at some 30 miles’ distance by the scattered mobile forward radars close to the inner German border (IGB). Now that aircraft at any height could be clearly identified at least 200 miles away, and if flying at 5,000 feet or above, 300 miles away or more, the practical implications for NATO’s air defences were startling. Warsaw Pact aircraft could be observed taking off from bases anywhere in Eastern Germany, for example, or from others half way across Czechoslovakia, or as they were flying close above the Baltic waves beyond Bornholm. Aircraft climbing to a high-transit flight level could be detected in eastern Poland and all the way across Eastern Europe as far as the Soviet border. Instead of three or four minutes’ warning of a surprise attack,
Sentry
could give an air defence sector headquarters, like that at Brockzeitel not far west of Dusseldorf, up to thirty minutes’ warning.

That was not all. Additional wiring had been asked for in the eighteen NATO aircraft to incorporate electronic support equipment, the peacetime euphemism for what was required to gather electronic intelligence. In 1983, after extensive debate in the Western Alliance, funding had been provided for this equipment to be installed. Thereafter, for the next two years, data on Warsaw Pact command and control procedures, surveillance radars, SAM guidance wavelengths and even individual Warsaw Pact aircraft call signs and pilot voices had been assiduously collected and fed into the system’s data banks. Indeed, the problem was not the accumulation of data, but the constant pressure on over-stretched NATO ground staff to ensure that it was all categorized, processed and fed into the seemingly limitless capacity of the new generation of computers. Perhaps, as some thought, there was too much of it all.

The Warsaw Pact, of course, was well aware of
Sentry’s
potential, publicized proudly as it was in the regular editions of Western military aviation journals. And, indeed, they had in 1982 deployed their own IL-76C
Cooker
to perform much the same function.

Under
Sentry’s
long shadow, the Warsaw Pact air forces had tightened signals discipline considerably, sought to decrease their air crews’ dependence on ground control and accelerated the introduction of their own digital secure communications links. Increasingly, Warsaw Pact squadrons were deployed back to central USSR for periods of intensive operational training unobserved, but there was now no way to maintain squadron effectiveness in Eastern Europe, or exercise their surface-to-air defences, without adding to
Sentry’s
data bank. There had been, not surprisingly, a determined attempt by the Soviet Union to mobilize public opinion in the FRG against the modification of the Geilenkirchen base to accommodate these aircraft. This had failed in 1982 in the face of patient and well-reasoned explanations by the Federal German Government of
Sentry’s
enormous contribution to deterrence. One thing was sure. Quick and violent counter-measures against the system could certainly be counted on if war came.

In the spring of 1985 the
Sentries
began to detect small but significant changes in Warsaw Pact air activity. SU-24
Fencers
had been stationed in eastern Poland for four years, steadily replacing both MiG-21
Fishbeds
and, latterly, early marks of SU-17
Fitters.
The bulk of the
Fencer
squadrons, however, had remained at bases in the eastern Ukraine, in the Kiev Military District, or the Baltic Military District. In January 1985 regular rotations of the USSR-based squadrons began first to eastern and then to western Polish airfields.
Sentry
quickly detected the changing voices and call signs of the new crews, who were obviously very experienced. In May and June reconnaissance sorties by
Foxbat
G, equipped with sideways-looking and synthetic-aperture radars, and digital information instantaneous downlinks, were greatly increased along the IGB and were duly noted by the
Sentries.

Throughout the spring the weapons range at Peenemunde in the GDR was used round the clock by
Flogger
Gs and Js during the day and by
Fencers
at night.
Sentry
could track both medium-level approaches to the range and the actual ground-attack procedures. This information was added to all the other indicators available to the Western allies which suggested steadily increasing Warsaw Pact military activity.

In mid-July the major Warsaw Pact exercise began which was to be used as cover for mobilization.

By 2359 hours on 3 August, the
Sentries
had watched five regiments of
Hind
E gunships deploy, as part of the ‘exercise’, to forward bases 30 miles from the IGB. Two regiments of SU-25
Flatfoot
ground-attack aircraft had returned to their major bases north of Leipzig, which placed them in range of both the area around Fulda and the north German plain. More significantly, the intensity of the jamming now rapidly increased. Only spasmodic attempts had ever been made to jam the
Sentries’
surveillance radar before. Triangulation from the three
Sentries
constantly on station quickly pinpointed the sources of the jamming as eight AN-12
Cubs
operating in their ECM mode, cruising some 100 kilometres beyond the IGB. However, because of the narrow beam width of the Westinghouse AN/APY-1 radar installed in the E-3A
Sentries
and its low side-lobe characteristics, the effect on the AWACS’ radar screens was negligible and their effectiveness remained high.

The
Sentries
were not the only targets for the jammers: below and in front of them were the inviting targets of the NATO ground radars - static, still in process of modernization, and highly vulnerable both to direct jamming and to side-lobe penetration. One after another these reported to their sector commanders that their medium- and high-level surveillance was becoming impaired, despite rapid switching through the frequencies available to them. The effectiveness of Soviet
Click
jammers, long suspected, was now being confirmed.

It was at 0315 hours on 4 August, 25,000 feet over Ramstein in the Federal Republic, that the radar operators of the
Sentry
aircraft E-3A 504826 of 965 Squadron, detached from Tinker to USAFE (United States Air Force Europe), first saw twelve blips appear on their screens, crossing eastern Poland at 35,000 feet, apparently from the central Ukraine on a westerly heading, at a speed of just under Mach 2. Within seconds they were also spotted by the
Sentries
over Venlo and west of Munich and identified as
Backfires.
All data were flashed immediately down to COMAAFCE’s battle staff. The Ramstein, Wildenrath (RAF) and Neuburg (FRG) battle flights were immediately scrambled and climbed away to their intercept positions, still well west of the IGB. The
Backfires
crossed the Polish frontier into the GDR but then broke formation and in six pairs fanned out on headings in an arc towards Hamburg in the north and Bavaria in the south. All twelve were maintaining radio silence.

Then, while still 50 miles inside Warsaw Pact territory, they banked steeply and within a few seconds one after another inexplicably turned back towards Poland. The senior controller in 504826 began to express his surprise, speaking in a somewhat relaxed tone on his secure encoded downlink to his colleagues in the bunker 30,000 feet below. As they listened his voice suddenly stopped, and at the same moment the steady, friendly IFF (identification friend or foe) signal from 504826 which was being received by the two other
Sentries
abruptly disappeared. As subsequent events showed, even if the USAF crew had heard the warning shouted by the Dutch ECM operator in the Venlo
Sentry
there was little they could have done .

It should be recalled that one important modification to the original E-3A
Sentry
had been the fitting of hard points under the wings and fuselage which could carry chaff dispensers and air-to-air defensive weapons. Chaff comprised strips of metal foil exactly cut to simulate and amplify a given wavelength. A cloud of these would give the same response as an emitter on the same wavelength, and thus act as a decoy to attract a homing missile. At the same time as the electronic support measure (ESM) refit in 1983, and in a rare example of refusal to spoil a ship for a ha’p’orth of tar, NATO had also funded provision of these chaff dispensers. The USAF had taken a little longer to be convinced that the E-3A might not always see its attacker and be able to avoid him. Consequently, not all their AWACS carried this kind of protection. It was the misfortune of the crew from 965 Squadron that their aircraft that night had not yet been modified.

Lieutenant De Groot in the Venlo
Sentry
saw on his screen the
Backfires
suddenly turn for home. He guessed at once why. They would use their stand-off anti-radiation missiles, which had a range of 150 miles, and these would home on the radars of the
Sentries
and destroy them. Without waiting for any order from his commander he hit the chaff dispenser key and simultaneously shouted his warning. The well-drilled Italian ECM operator in the Bavarian
Sentry
heard the warning and immediately reacted in the same way. A few seconds later each of these two
Sentry
aircraft was rocked violently as Soviet anti-radiation missiles exploded harmlessly several hundred feet behind and below them in the cloud of drifting metal foil. The third
Sentry,
unprovided with chaff, was less fortunate. The missile struck. The seventeen US AF crewmen of the E-3A
Sentry
of 965 Squadron, far from their Oklahoma home base, became the first airman casualties of the Third World War. The wreckage of the aircraft fell over a wide area in the woods of the upper Mosel valley. The missile had ripped off the radome from the stricken
Sentry’s
mainframe and the aircraft had disintegrated.

The
Backfires,
however, had attacked not just the three
Sentries.
Each
Backfire
probably carried at least two anti-radiation missiles. They also destroyed six ground surveillance radars and damaged two others between Hanover and Mannheim. Yet, because of the rigid rules of engagement imposed by NATO on its air forces, they were able to return unscathed to their Ukrainian bases. The war had begun, but NATO airspace had not yet ‘officially’ been violated.

The crews in the two remaining
Sentries
had no time either to applaud the initiative of the Dutch officer or to grieve for their lost colleagues. On the encoded voice-link the clipped tones of the British duty commander, the air vice-marshal acting as deputy in COMAAFCE’s bunker, instructed both aircraft to adjust their patrol racetracks to cover the gap left by the Ramstein E-3A until the relief aircraft could come on station. The Venlo
Sentry
turned south, the Bavarian north; surveillance across the IGB was uninterrupted. At Geilenkirchen, the NATO
Sentry
on fifteen minutes’ stand-by was scrambled; at 0329 hours it climbed away, turning south to replace 504826.

The wisdom of placing all such high-value assets under the direct command of COMAAFCE was thus clear from the outset of the war. There was now much to survey. As the
Backfires
turned for home, swarms of blips began to appear on the
Sentries’
radar screens, as, in accordance with well-publicized doctrine, the longer-range offensive Warsaw Pact aircraft prepared to punch through NATO’s air defences in the area already partially blinded by the
Backfire
attack. Five years before, NATO forces would have had no way of identifying the main axes of the air threat until it struck across the IGB. Now, the
Sentry
controllers could watch the formations massing in much the same way as forty-five years previously hazy RAF radars had watched the
Luftflotten
assemble over the Pas-de-Calais. But in 1985 the controllers were assisted by the micro-processor. Warsaw Pact jamming was largely filtered and almost entirely limited to two or more azimuth bearings on the narrow sweeping beam. The keyboards rippled and details of aircraft type, height, speed, heading and numbers were flashed by the computers to the fighter controllers below. The information was there in abundance.