A Sample Feature From Aviation News

Stealth Rescue – a night to remember

Only one Stealth aircraft has ever been shot down and Flt Lt JK Wynn, a Fighter Allocator aboard an RAF Boeing E-3D Sentry AEW.1 at the time, recounts the events one night during the Kosovo conflict when he heard the Mayday call from the F-117A Nighthawk and then had to co-ordinate the pilot’s rescue.

Main picture: A Lockheed Martin F-117A Nighthawk similar to aircraft s/n 82-0806/HO, which was shot down during the Kosovo campaign in 1999. (Photo, Lockheed Martin).

Above : How The Daily Telegraph on March 29, 1999, reported the shoot-down of the F-117A. Locals are pictured dancing on part of the wreckage from the downed aircraft.

ON Saturday March 27, 1999, we were on station over NW Bosnia and Croatia. There was a high level of tasking and I had been given an additional Weapons Controller. We also had Captain ‘Flash’ Gordon, USAF, an experienced Fighter Allocator, who was interested to see how we operated.

Our radar was detecting the numerous aircraft which were flying within the Tactical Area of Operations, as well as the many civilian airliners flying around its boundary. We could use our IFF system to interrogate the aircraft to work out who was who – each aircraft had been allocated a unique IFF code. By manually comparing what we saw on our mission displays with the Air Tasking Order strips we could identify one formation from another. Fortunately for us, the E-3A at present on station had already done this and we were automatically receiving all his track symbology via the secure digital data-links, courtesy of our Links Manager. Although the radar display was very busy it was relatively easy to interpret. My problems would arise from the comms, simply because there were so many channels to monitor.

Each mission crew member had a comms panel which gave access to four radios plus a UHF Guard radio. Additionally, for our internal chat among the crew, we had a further three secure mission nets and an insecure maintenance net. Faced with the potential of being bombarded with nine different sources of information, the management of one’s comms was essential to a successful mission. The knack of monitoring the comms successfully was the ability to sort out the essential from the desirable, and not to allow oneself to become distracted by relative trivia.

The Tactical Directors of the two E-3s had negotiated a time for an official hand-over of all duties, when both crews would perform the necessary computer switch actions for us to take control. The Tactical Director commenced a final roll-call among the crew to confirm all systems had remained serviceable to go on-station. Any last minute hang ups and there was still time to delay the hand-over.

No, everything was fine, and the Communications Operator commenced a countdown. At the agreed time, we went on all the radios and confirmed that we now had control – and then they were gone. Their silence spoke volumes. They had had a very busy mission and were glad to be going home.

Above: A Fighter Controller aboard an RAF Boeing E-3D Sentry AEW.1. (Photo, RAF).

We rapidly took over the tasks while continuing to develop our situational awareness. Nevertheless, we saw almost exactly what had been briefed three hours previously. The Adriatic and Bosnia swarming with aircraft, and the F-117As heading to their tankers with all their support and escorts – one thing you can definitely say about the USAF, they do not do things by half. I knew that all my three Weapons Controllers (WC) would have to work up to, and often beyond, their capacity. Inevitably, when working under such extreme pressures, mistakes would be made, but another of my important tasks would be to monitor my WCs and offer advice, guidance or the occasional bollocking when and as required. To err is human, and I too was certainly not immune from making mistakes. Hopefully, whenever this occurred, someone in the crew would notice and have the confidence to say so. Then, it was up to me to have the integrity to recognise the error, correct it, and try not to repeat it again. Everyone was showing a high degree of professionalism and goodairmanship.

We were not the only E-3 on-station. Way to the south was another who was as busy as ourselves. She was controlling all the Nato assets going into Kosovo, as well as numerous AAR towlines which resembled bees’ nests as the fighters scuttled back and forward to their tankers to suck many tonnes of fuel. I spoke to their Fighter Allocator, established a game-plan for the evening, and left him to his busy tasks.

Above: An F-117A rolls-out after landing at Aviano AB in Italy at the height of the Kosovo bombing campaign in 1999. (Photo, USAF).

Stealths inbound

We had only been on station about 30min but it was already very busy and would get busier still once the F-117As, supported by their various escorts, headed south-east from their tankers in Hungary towards their targets around Belgrade. There was no sign of any MiG activity but the secure comms net was alive with details of the Belgrade SAM defenses as they began radiating in preparation to defend themselves against the incoming Stealth Fighters.

All was going well when at 1944Z the ‘smoke-detector’ sounded:‘MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY. This is VEGA 31, I have been hit by ****, stand by’. I immediately responded to his MAYDAY call on the Guard Frequency and awaited any subsequent call, while simultaneously alerting the crew and asking the TD to relay the call to the Combined Air Operations Centre (CAOC).

At 1945Z, VEGA 31 called again and said in his very calm American drawl ‘MAGIC, this is VEGA 31, I am abandoning my aircraft’. No sooner had he finished his transmission then we heard his emergency locator beacon sound on the Guard Frequency, confirming he had indeed ejected and was now tumbling through the dark night air to an uncertain fate. What had promised to be a very busy night had just gone into hyper-drive, and we were right in the middle of it!

Our calls over the SATCOM net to CAOC were also monitored by various agencies in the USA, as well as tens of other units within the Tactical Area of Operations. It was only human nature that people wanted to help, but there was a great danger that too much chat on the circuit would prevent the correct units from talking to each other. A simple request from our TD to the CAOC for a ‘ziplip’ was replied to by CHARIOT in CAOC. God had spoken and the noise level was immediately reduced to a workable level.

My next task was to ensure this was a genuine emergency call. It sounded good, but UHF Guard is an open channel and an American accent is easy to imitate. If this had been an exercise and we had received what seemed to be a real MAYDAY, we would have made a call on the Guard frequency to terminate the exercise and all the aircraft would immediately have gone home. This would have allowed us to resolve the problem without too many distractions. Unfortunately, we did not have that luxury because we had to deal with the emergency while continuing with the live Operation. The last thing we wanted was for the Serbians to spoof us into becoming distracted from all the events going on around us.

The call-sign was definitely VEGA 31. I had not previously heard this particular call-sign but this was hardly surprising. Firstly, it was physically impossible for me to monitor all my controllers’ frequencies; and secondly, I had been more involved with the bigger picture issues, leaving my WCs to deal with the specific details. Not wanting to become distracted, I gave everything to ‘Flash’, who spent the next five or ten minutes going through his mass of paperwork. We soon established just who VEGA 31 was – a Stealth Fighter! My immediate thought was: just where is he? Not only was he stealthy to the Serbians but to us too. Not a great start to the evening.

This process may appear to have been fairly elongated, but it was not. Only about 30sec or a minute had elapsed since his ejection. Whilst I was dealing with this problem the TD and Captain had already liaised with each other and our aircraft was about to break orbit and head east to get better comms and radar coverage of the Belgrade area. Our movement would also put us closer to a Serbian air base and its inherent dangers, but at this stage the crew executives had to make a military judgement, balancing risk against the new task. We made the right move.

The power output from small emergency radios is very low, and the range is therefore probably limited to 50 miles. We were way beyond this, and even with our repositioning to the east we never again spoke to VEGA 31. However, his escorts were much closer and they eventually established comms with him.

The author, a Fighter Allocator, was on board an RAF Boeing E-3D Sentry AEW.1, similar to this one, and co-ordinating the air campaign for Operation Allied Force the night the F-117A was shot down. (Photo, Sgt Rick Brewell, RAF).

For the rest of this article please see the February issue.