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Desert chase
By Wolf Blitzer
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- When the Iraqis shot down an unmanned U.S. Predator drone over southern Iraq this week, the message was clear to U.S. fighter pilots who fly over the area on an almost daily basis. The real Iraqi goal is to shoot down an U.S. plane with a pilot or two on board. "You know, they have been trying for 10 years to shoot down an airplane," U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Dale Waters told me. "I think we have been very lucky. We haven't lost one. We keep a lot of great air crews up there doing the mission. We have good intelligence. So I think we do it smart. But it's never zero risk." That risk was dramatically underscored earlier this month. Two U.S. fighter jets took off from the Prince Sultan Air Base that morning for what they thought would be a routine patrol over the so-called no-fly zone in southern Iraq. But as they entered Iraqi airspace, they saw something unusual. An Iraqi jet fighter had taken off from a base outside Baghdad and was heading toward the no-fly zone as well. The U.S. planes gave chase. The Iraqi plane, then already in the no-fly zone, headed toward an area where U.S. reconnaissance had earlier detected Iraqi SAM, or surface-to-air missile batteries. It was what U.S. pilots call a SAM-trap. The Iraqi strategy was to lure the U.S. planes over the SAMs where they would be vulnerable. In order to avoid getting shot down, the U.S. planes headed back to Prince Sultan Air Base. The Iraqi plane flew back to its base as well. U.S. Air Force Capt. Rob Novotny was one of the pilots involved in the SAM-trap. "We are fairly well trained," he told me. "We've been doing this for 12 years. And we're used to their games and their attempts to lure us in there. And we know pretty much, well in advance, what they are trying to do." I asked him if he thought the Iraqis were trying to get pilots to fly over areas where they would present more realistic target. "I would say they are trying to get us in a position where some of their surface-to-air threats could be more of a factor," he answered. "But you knew that going into this?" I pressed. "Yes," Novotny said, "We did." I continued, "So you just make a U-turn and go back?" "Well," he said, "we avoided those areas. Absolutely." U.S. Air Force Maj. Paul Matier was also one of the pilots involved in the incident. I asked him what it was like to witness such a highly unusual development, to see an Iraqi jet in the sky. "It was exciting," he said. "I have to tell you I thought I would be more nervous when it happened, but I wasn't. The training took over when it happened. We had good communication from some of our other assets up there -- that that guy was flying. And we did what we needed to do." Maj. Matier summed it up. "They're shooting real bullets," he said. "They are not shooting BB's at us. There's real bullets, there's real missiles. We have to be ready in any event to deal with that kind of threat." "Right now, we're here. It's the only place in the world where U.S. forces are being shot at on a regular basis." For these U.S. pilots, a war against Iraq has already begun.
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