国家地理:Wings Over The Gulf 波湾战机 - 5

Threat posed by Iraq's Scud 1 ballistic missiles. Militarily, Scuds 2 were insignificant 3. But politically, Scud attacks on Israel and Saudi Arabia could have torn the coalition 4 apart. The political importance of hunting down the Scuds was so great that the best aircraft on hand was assigned to the task. That plane was the brand-new F15-E fighter bomber 5. Though technically 6 still in testing, F15-Es were rushed into combat when the Gulf 7 War erupted. 48 were deployed 8 to Saudi Arabia. The reason for this haste was that the E was simply too powerful a plane not to use.

A dual-role fighter, the F15-E has the air-to-air combat capability 9 of the F15-C, plus the ability to fly night bombing missions in bad weather at altitudes as low as 200 feet, while carrying 24,500 pounds of ordnance 10. In keeping with the Eagle's no-expense-spared history, the F15-E is equipped with the finest weapon system available. The heart of the system is the same radar 11 in every F15, the APG-70. When used in the bombing role, this powerful radar gives pilots sharp views of the targets, no matter what the weather. F-15s were the only planes in the Gulf that carried fully 12 functional 13 LANTIRN pods. The Low Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infrared 14 for Night system lets the Eagle fly across featureless terrain 15 without navigation aids. It also contains a target tracker and a laser designator. The E's two crewmen have a bewildering array of instruments to monitor. The front seater flies the airplane and guards against air-to-air threats, while the weapon system operator in the back seat monitors four screens with up to 23 different displays.

"From very long distances you can locate things on the ground that look just like a picture that you take from overhead satellite. And they are photograph-capable and you need very low squint 16 angles to do that so I don't necessarily have to be at a high altitude. I can be down at 300 or 500 feet and get very much the same picture I would if I cruise over 25,000."

F15-Es worked closely with two planes carrying Grumman's brand-new Joint 17 Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System, known as JSTARS. JSTARS scans the ground, day or night and in all weather conditions. It can detect and target virtually every object that falls in the path of its radar. Controllers relay this information down to ground commanders, who decide who and what will attack the targets. Unfortunately, on radar a Scud carrier looks like any other large truck. Scud launchers were usually detected after they had fired a missile.

"What turned out to be different the way we originally envisioned was the need to go in and find mobile Scud targets. That one had taken a lot of our time. I would guess that probably about 50%-52% of the missions that we flew over there were done in Western Iraq looking for mobile Scuds and associated equipment."

F15-Es patrolled the Iraqi border, ready to attack Scud sites. On the ground, British and American commanders went deep behind enemy lines, looking for Scuds, and calling in air strike when they found them. But Iraq had over 1,200 Scuds and the vast size of the region made finding them extremely difficult. Their very lack of sophistication made them easy to set up and fire. And their mobility 18 made them easy to hide.

"We believe that they adapted their tactics to the threat, which, for them, was the threat of being obliterated by