The Art of Strafing By Richard B.H. Lewis

ODERN fighter pilots risk their lives Mevery day performing the act of strafing, which to some may seem like a tactic from a bygone era. Last Novem- ber, an F-16 pilot, Maj. Troy L. Gilbert, died strafing the enemy in Iraq, trying Painting by Robert Bailey to protect coalition forces taking fire on the ground. My first thought was, “Why was an F-16 doing that mission?” But I already knew the answer. In the 1980s, at the height of the Cold , I was combat-ready in the 512th Fighter Squadron, an F-16 unit at Ramstein AB, Germany. We had to maintain combat status in air-to- air, air-to-ground, and nuclear strike operations. We practiced strafing oc- casionally. We were not very good at it, but it was extremely challenging. There is a big difference between was “Gott strafe England” (“God punish flight controls and a 30 mm Gatling flying at 25,000 feet where you have England”). The term caught on. gun. I have seen the aircraft return from plenty of room to maneuver and you In the I of St. Mihiel, combat with one engine and major parts can barely see a target, and at 200 feet, Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker once strafed of a wing and flight controls blown off. where the ground is rushing right below eight German pieces, each Unquestionably, the A-10 is the ultimate you and you can read the billboards drawn by a team of six horses. Horses strafing machine. screaming by. and wagons scattered everywhere, the Strafing in other fighter aircraft, The only aircraft required to strafe great pilot later recounted. The physical though done more and more often, is in the was the A-10, and for damage was not great, but the disruption extremely dangerous. To be effective good reason. It was the only aircraft of the horse train worked. on the battlefield, a pilot must be able built to endure the hazards of strafing Among World War II strafing aircraft, to perform low-altitude passes in the against Warsaw Pact forces. We have few if any were more effective than face of the enemy. Each party is blazing all seen aircraft in the movies, diving at the American B-25 Mitchell bomber. away at the other. In fighter aircraft other the ground, guns blazing, while people In the Pacific, it was used frequently than the A-10, the pilot must make very on the ground are running to take cover. on treetop-level missions against Japa- low passes if he is to deliver accurate That’s not how it really is. Once the nese airfields and shipping, with great fire from the gun. Doing this, though fighter enters the low-altitude environ- impact. In both World War II and the it might sound easy, requires intense ment, the pilot is subject to multiple , 12.7 mm guns were the concentration. This is critical if the pilot threats; he faces not only surface-to-air real workhorses. The 20 mm gun has is to avoid flying through the up-thrown missiles and anti-aircraft artillery but been the of choice for most debris from exploding targets or flying also handheld heat-seeking missiles and US fighters over the past 50 years. Its into ground objects. automatic gunfire. key attributes have been its high rates For most fighter pilots, strafing well In “No Man’s Land”—that is, below of fire and muzzle velocity. in combat is no simple task. Holding 5,000 feet—the chances of being hit go During the , we lost large wings level while tracking a target for up astronomically. However, for many numbers of aircraft, many as a result more than 10 seconds is considered aircraft, the limitations of the gun require of getting down low and in the range too predictable for enemy fire. One the pilot to fly lower, below 1,000 feet, of lethal fire. This made it a priority to has to visualize the point in the bat- if he or she hopes to consistently hit the build a ground dedicated tlespace where one needs to be to start target. When you get down that low, bad to . the strafing pass, and yet still maintain things can happen. The design of the A-10 is unlike awareness of the target’s location. This The Pentagon defines strafing simply any other aircraft. It was built with un- dual task can best be carried out using a as “the delivery of automatic fire paralleled emphasis on simplicity and five- to 15-degree dive angle. Altitude, by aircraft on ground targets.” The term survivability. For instance, it features a airspeed, and wind direction must also itself has an interesting pedigree. It is titanium “bathtub” to protect the pilot be considered. derived from the German word “strafen,” from direct hits from armor-piercing and Imagine yourself flying down a large meaning, “to punish.” In , high-explosive projectiles in sizes up to funnel that ends at the target. One finds a popular German Army catch phrase 23 mm. Beyond that, it has redundant lots of room to maneuver at the top of 54 AIR FORCE Magazine / July 2007 the funnel; you can do that and still hit The same thing happened in Balad, debate about whether we should take out the target. However, at the bottom of the where we found people going to get that gun. I’m glad we didn’t, because, in funnel, you run out of maneuver room. roadside supplies. We have been combat trials, we have already had gun One needs to place the aircraft’s aiming using the gun against single persons who kills. The gun was required to complete symbology short of the target such that have been planting improvised exposive the mission. it drifts up to the target as the gun comes devices. You’ll have an individual with a Even so, the F-22, like all other within firing range. It is difficult to keep truck, and a couple of other individuals; fighters, can strafe when it has to. And the gun sight on the target for more than you’ll see them get out and move around, it will probably have to. Few would two seconds while flying at 552 mph. trying to dig a hole, and you’ll bring in have thought, 20 years ago, that the One can’t just stare, zombie-like, at the an F-16 or an F-15E, or maybe an A-10, F-15E would one day play the role target. This causes target fixation, which and you’ll use 20 or 30 mm and go kill of classic strafing machine. Yet the can become a fatal experience. them. If you have troops in contact, or Strike Eagle did a great job strafing We know from Gilbert’s death what you have individuals in buildings, you al Qaeda fighters during the March Painting by Robert Bailey such concentration can cause. (See do the same thing. 2002 battle on Takur Ghar, one of the “Aerospace World: F-16 Pilot Awarded Some pilots are expanding the strafing main engagements of Anaconda. Of the DFC,” June, p. 14.) The official envelope, so to speak. Earlier this year, course, it should be noted that the F- accident report blamed the accident the Secretary of the Air Force, Michael 15E pilot had long, deep experience on Gilbert’s “channelized attention,” W. Wynne, told this story: “About a year flying the A-10. which was “manifested by his desire ago, our F-15 airmen were thinking about The F-35 Lightning II fighter, which to maintain a constant visual positive how they could execute night strafing. is set to enter service in 2013, has a identification of targeted enemy ve- It seemed hard, maybe undoable. Last special gun, better for strafing ground hicles, and subsequent target fixation month, I learned it was being done in targets than the gun found in the F-22. on these vehicles.” These circum- daily ops in the fight. ... Actually, it is The F-35 is specifically designed to stances, the report went on, caused the now called easy.” The F-15 community have the sensors and weapons needed F-16 pilot “to begin and then press his had programmed F-15 simulators at to support ground operations. It will attack below a recoverable altitude.” Seymour Johnson AFB, N.C., where go deep, but it will also thrive in On Gilbert’s second strafing pass, he CAS engagements. Its gun will carry came in at an extremely low altitude “Enemy troops 75 meters special shells powerful enough to and simply could not recover. He flew penetrate armored targets, unlike the the airplane into the ground. away. ... I need guns only!” F-22, whose gun ammo is specially Then there is the risk of being brought designed to blow up an airplane. The down by the “Golden BB”—the single, F-35’s gun will be a weapon of last lucky but lethal shot that finds its mark. you could, through practice, work a resort, though, because of the extreme That risk exists for virtually any fighter night strafe from “hard” to “easy” in a vulnerability of the pilot during a whose cockpit can be easily penetrated matter of months. strafing mission. by ground fire. That is why, after the A-10s probably will be here until they With the advent of small, low-col- pilot has strafed the target, he pulls up fall out of the sky, but can they always lateral-damage weapons, the tactic of hard. A wings-level pullout, producing at get the job done when our ground troops strafing may well begin to fade out least four Gs in two seconds, is required call 911? They cannot be all places, all once more. Weapons boasting 10-foot for survival in most cases. the time. The A-10 will sometimes be too accuracy allow a pilot to reliably drop We’re using the gun quite a bit in the slow to respond across large areas and it ordnance close to our troops, but with Iraq and Afghanistan operations. The is vulnerable to SAMs and enemy fight- scant risk of fratricide. Such weapons fighters are using lots of 20 mm off F- ers. That is why all of USAF’s fighters can get much closer to a target than is 15Es and F-16s and 30 mm off A-10s now train for strafing. Often, our ground the case with strafing. These weapons to hit ground targets. Why is that? For troops are in desperate situations and could fill the strafing niche. individuals, the gun is probably one of are so close to the enemy they are in Of course, strafing often happens for the most accurate weapons, with the danger of being hit by friendly weapons. fighters like the F-16 when A-10s are least collateral damage. That 20 mm In Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan, not available or when all other ordnance will end the bad guy’s life, but stray for instance, USAF combat controller has been expended. There will always rounds will just drive into the ground, SSgt. Gabriel Brown, under fire, called be a possibility that you have to protect and that’s it. out to approaching F-15E pilots, “We that guy on the ground with your last In Iraq, the adversary uses both road have enemy troops 75 meters away. ... I bullet. That part of the job will never networks and riverine networks. There need guns only!” (See “The Airpower of completely disappear. ■ have been a number of occasions where Anaconda,” September 2002, p. 60.) boats have been identified carrying I don’t see the F-22 doing much insurgents on the Tigris and Euphrates strafing; its mission is to hit the targets Richard B.H. Lewis recently retired as Rivers, and we’ve used 20 mm and 30 mm in denied airspace at strategic loca- an Air Force major general. He flew the guns to destroy those boats. A moving tions in front of our ground troops. Its F-4, F-16, and F-111, and served as target is hard to hit with a bomb. With gun is optimized to shoot down enemy assistant to the director of campaign plans during Operation Desert Storm. a gun, it’s no big deal. In one instance, aircraft. Usually the gun is needed for In the period 2002-06, he was program the enemy was getting ready to move air-to-air combat because you are inside executive officer for the F-22 fighter. people somewhere to do something the minimum range of an air-to-air mis- He is now an executive of Burdeshaw later that night, but we removed them sile or it is the only weapon left. In the Associates Ltd. This is his first article for from the fight. development of the F-22, there was a Air Force Magazine. AIR FORCE Magazine / July 2007 55