Without the bells and whistles,
Prowler still plays pivotal role in ONW mission
By Terry Boyd, Turkey
bureau
Terry Boyd / Stars and Stripes
Nearly a dozen people stand by at Incirlik Air Base, Turkey, as maintainers attend to a
faulty valve on a Navy EA-6B Prowler before a mission last month. |
INCIRLIK AB, Turkey — In the old days, when pilots flew planes
by the seat of their pants, newspapermen would have described an aviator like Navy
Commander E.T. “Skipper” Allen as “dashing.”
He has a pilot’s swagger, tempered by his affable personality.
He flies a plane from the old days — a 30-year-old jet that has none of the modern
fly-by-wire technology.
But hardly an anachronism, his Navy EA-6B Prowler has allowed U.S.
combat strategists to shift to building their tactics around electronic wizards rather
than relying solely on gunslingers and brute force. Allen’s black-box magic allows
for a new kind of lower-risk war.
His plane allows risk-adverse U.S. policy makers, who seem to have a
zero-tolerance for casualties, the ability to observe and confront Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein nearly every day.
Allen has spent his entire 19-year career flying Prowlers, a weapon
that few others have, and no one other than U.S. aviators are likely to get.
Allen’s eyes sparkle when he ticks off the wondrous things his
four-man Prowler crew can do to Saddam that no other aircraft in the United States
military — or anyone else’s — can.
“We can blind his eyes and deafen his ears,” and in doing
so, protect all the other aircraft flying a mission, he said. “We build a sanctuary
in time and space where the good guys can go in and get back out.”
Allen and company build that sanctuary in the sky by jamming Iraqi
communications equipment and command-and-control nodes with the Prowler’s multiple
electronic countermeasure equipment.
In addition to attacking Iraq electronically, they can literally
destroy its radar with HARM missiles that neutralize Iraq’s surface-to-air missiles
and anti-aircraft fire.
Terry Boyd / Stars and Stripes
A giant Navy EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare plane prepares to taxi to Incirlik Air
Base's runways in Turkey. |
They can (with a good old paper pad and pencil) keep track of where
all the other 40 or so aircraft are during a mission, while talking to them and to
orbiting AWAC planes via encrypted radios.
This list goes on — though much of it is classified — so
Allen just flashes his Errol Flynn grin and sums up what’s inside his Prowler.
“It’s got cool stuff in it,” he said.
The vintage EA-6B — don’t leave home without it.
“No one goes in [to combat] without a Prowler,” said Allen,
who commands four Prowlers in Electronic Attack Squadron 133.
Stealthy planes might be the sexiest technology at the moment, with
the Air Force using the fly-by-computer F-117s in its television recruitment campaign. But
Allen makes a pretty good argument that his Vietnam-era Prowler has revolutionized U.S.
air tactics.
And he still is very much a pilot, flying a mechanical plane. Instead
of the pilot monitoring a digital cockpit, the Prowler has “gauges with dials,”
Allen said wondrously. “They’re old. They’re way old.”
Allen estimates that the airframe they’re flying now has 9,000
hours on it, and perhaps 2,000 carrier landings. But the rest of the plane is a platform
for the latest and greatest in digital jamming equipment.
Because of that, and its four seats, the Prowler is
“unique,” he said.
Air forces around the world have dumbed-down versions of almost every
U.S. military aircraft, but they don’t have the Prowlers and never will, Allen said.
“It has a capability we’re not willing to share — even with our
allies.”
There are 100 EA-6Bs in the U.S. inventory. Only 20 are the Block 89
Alphas, the most advanced version.
And of those 20, “I own four of them right now,” Allen
said.
A Navy pilot in an Air Force operation, Allen shares his Prowler with
Air Force Maj. Serge Bernier Ramos as his co-pilot.
Bernier also is an electronic counter-measures officer, who spends
his time in the air jamming radars and communications, as do Navy Lt. Mark Cziernejewski,
call sign “Irish,” and Navy Lt. j.g. Glen Switts, call sign “Alvin.”
Why a mixed crew?
Simple, says Bernier. Sometimes you need Air Force officers who
“speak Air Force” to help Navy crews fit into what is essentially an Air Force
operation.
And they certainly must fit, for the quiet, precise Bernier makes no
bones about what they do for a living.
“We fly combat missions,” he said. “When you fly into
another country, and they try to shoot you down, that’s combat. They may call it a
low-intensity conflict. I call it combat.”
Allen says that when muzzles flash on the ground and rounds burst the
air, “voices in the cockpit go up an octave or two.”
Yet, at the end of the day, he and his crew look back at all the
multiple jobs and danger as “fun,” he said.
“It definitely beats my ground job,” Switts said.
In addition to being electronic countermeasures officers, each
crewman has ground responsibilities.
Cziernejewski is the line maintenance officer. Bernier is an ONW
tactics officer.
“And in our spare time, we fly tactical missions,”
deadpanned Allen.
Which is what seems to make him happiest.
Walking around his plane in its hangar while another Prowler prepares
to taxi to the runway, he playfully tapped its AGM-88 HARM missile.
Allen smiled, and over the roar yelled, “When you fire one of
these at night, it’s awesome!”
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