Secrets of War

Transcript of interview #S3290B

http://www.secretsofwar.com/experts/hopkins2.html

Following are the raw transcripts of an on-camera interview conducted in 1997 with Mr. Robert Hopkins for "SECRETS OF WAR."

Please keep in mind that these transcripts are truly "raw" and thus have not been edited or checked for spelling and accuracy.

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DOCU-MEDIA

SHOW 15

INTERVIEW WITH: HOPKINS

TAPE: S3290

DECEMBER 5, 1997

TRANSCRIBED BY: ZEDLAR TRANSCRIPTION & TRANSLATION (AB)

M But they didn't seem to be arching toward us or away from us and they kept climbing straight up. And shortly thereafter we all realized, hey, we, we've actually seen some scuds being launched. We're realizing that uh, we had a unique opportunity. Uh, the navigators and I tried to pinpoint their estimated launch position. Uh, the other crew members on board offered what they had to give us a more precise location. And we relayed that information to uh, the A-WAX controller and then passed it on directly to F-18 Strike Eagles and aircraft like that that could then go to the approximate location and attempt to destroy the launchers. And we thought at the time that they had been very successful. We patted ourselves on the back. We said hey, that's great, you know. Got those, those mud hens in there to, to bend up all that iron and metal. And what we now know is that the F-18s or whatever aircraft did strike something uh, it's a great credit to the crews that they were able to do that under such short notice and under technical limitations. But what they hit clearly was not mobile launchers. And as far as I recall, the scuds went on to uh, either uh, Darahn or Rihad.

Q Good. Now let's uh, talk about the, the (unintelligible) developed these hi-tech means that would take out there (unintelligible) control nodes, but we (unintelligible) Sadam was always been able to communicate with his forces (unintelligible) Iraqi military to some degree.

M Absolutely. We had prepared for many years to fight a battle against the Soviet Union's best and most powerful weapons. And once it became clear near the, the late portions of the cold war that it wasn't just going to be the red threat, but what we call the grey threat. French equipment, German equipment. Again, the United States was very much focused on the hi-tech, the most capable threat out there. And what Sadam Husain did was unequivocally genius by going in the opposite direction. When it became clear that either jamming elements or counter radar measures would destroy his communications facilities or his radar facilities, he would put troops on bicycles or in Toyota pickup trucks with a hand written message to be able to drive around to batteries, to command and control nodes and say, here are your orders. It was slow. It was reasonably inefficient but it was non-interceptable, it was non-exploitable, and most of all, it could not be jammed. So unless you were very luck and got that guy in the pickup truck or on the bicycle, the message got through.

Q Great. (non-interview dialogue)

M During the Vietnam War, one of the major contributions are the RC135, but through the M model, under a program known as combat apple, which is uh, recently become declassified, we've learned a great deal about its efforts. Uh, the personnel on board the RC135 would monitor Vietnamese radar controllers and fighter intercepter pilots. And you could actually hear their commands, take off, turn left, pursue your target at this location. And the combat apple personnel would then take that information and relay it in real-time to the F-4's or the F-105's, perhaps even the B-52's that were engaging in strikes. And then that information to be used to allow the hunter to become the hunted. And obviously, the same thing is true with early warning radars. If the North Vietnamese were using particular radar frequencies, the reconnaissance equipment, the electronic equipment on board the RC-135's could identify specifically which frequencies and allow easier jamming capabilities. A number of MiGs were shot down, pilots rescued and many pilots and missions saved as a direct result of that. And I think that's one of the most unsung but vitally important contributions of the RC-135 community.

Q Great.

M As an aside, I think one day we may discover that the North Vietnam's greatest ace, known only as Colonel Tu(?), may well have been a Soviet pilot.

Q Really? That's fascinating.

M And I talked to um, Representative Pat Cuningham and uh, I asked him, hey, you shot him down. Who do you think he was? And I have showed him some documents, I did an article for Journal of Military Aviation on this, and he said to this day the uh, people who have the radio transcripts of the North Vietnamese ground to air communications between Colonel Tu and his controllers will not release those to him, even though, A, he's now a member of the House of Representatives and a distinguished member of congress. Nor when he was the commander of uh, one of the Navy top gun equivalents there at Miramar. They said, you don't have a need to know. And it may be interesting and truthful to find out in the long term that uh, Colonel Tu was a Soviet pilot.

Q Interesting. Uh, okay. Um, you told me about being- the first time you got on an RC and looked at it or what were your first impressions?

M Well growing up around the RC community as a youngster, I saw the airplanes for many years and they always had a mystique. And even after I got into the Air Force um, there was a strong pull to come to the RC-135 community. And seeing the airplanes from the outside envisioning all kinds of things about what was going on inside. And I have to admit, my first visit inside an RC-135 (unintelligible) was a real disappointment because there were banks and banks of computers monitors, screens, keyboards and it was just empty. It was blank. It was a dark experience and a real let down. But once the power was on and the electrons were running uh, the capabilities were not only impressive, I would say that they were overwhelming. Not only that this was on board an airplane, but the ability to integrate this information from station to station and with other assets, as I mentioned earlier, through programs like TIBS and others, which gives the entire battle community an accurate, almost real-time assessment of what's going on. And that is extraordinarily impressive.

Q And would you say that, that the development of JSTARS(?) was an attempt to duplicate this capability for the ground commanders?

M I would say it was less to duplicate the rivet/joint capability than to duplicate A-WAX capability. The two JSTARS airplanes parked on the ramp right next to us in Rihad during the Gulf War, and I had the opportunity to tour both of the aircraft. They actually orbited just above us. There was not much airspace left and they were told if you want to play, you've got to play high. So they did and it was amazing what they accomplished with people who were a few weeks earlier civilians working for Grump and Melbourne(?) or whomever and had suddenly been made majors in the Air Force and, and told that the war is going to take care of them if, if something comes up where we're all in the Air Force now. And the airplane, the capability worked with us, it went with us so that they saw on the ground what A-WAX saw in the air. And the rivet/joint, the ears of the storm, was able to provide whether the airborne or ground assets with the same sort of information. So I would think of it is uh, without using an analogy that may be ill suited, really a trinity between air with A-WAX, ground with JSTARS and the electronic auditory, the link of both with the rivet/joint.

Q Great. Now you mentioned that these Grum people were actually given uh, field commissions or something? I thought they were just like given per diem (unintelligible).

M Uh, the crews that flew the missions, some of the back ender crews were Grumand(?) employees. I would ask you to confirm this but my understanding was is that prior to leaving Florida and bringing the planes over to Rihad, they were all commissioned in the military. Because if they were shot down or taken prisoner, they were civilians and could be shot as spies. So we were told that they were commissioned as captains or majors and flew their missions. But pilots, we were told, were all um, crews from Wright Paterson. And the test unit there, the 4950 who had experience in flying 707-type aircraft like the EC-18, so there was no question about their capabilities. But the um, the story is that the back enders for the six or twelve weeks that they were over there were in the military and I think they acquitted themselves with honor.

Q That's great. Okay um, was this the uh-- One of the things that I, I found out about the E-2 as a result of, you know, this formerly, cosmically, you know, secret (unintelligible) system, national system, has now become a tactical asset. (unintelligible) was this a function of the-- I mean did they say anything happened to rivet/ joint where it became more of a this (unintelligible) international system? Would it be fair to say that?

M It is certainly not the first tactical use. As I mentioned, the RC-135's performed similar tactical missions in Vietnam whether it was rivet card, rivet apple, combat apple, whatever the name may have been, the mission was the same. Rivet/joint is perhaps the latest iteration of that capability. Uh, rivet/joints were involved in Grenada. Rivet/joints were involved in Panama, rivet/joints were involved in El Dorado canyon, the attack on Libyan terrorist targets and those were certainly tactical exploitations of this national capacity. It was not until the Gulf War, however, that theater commanders saw the capability of the rivet/joint because in the past it might go to Mildenhall(?) or Cadina(?) and the commanders there were told guard it, protect it, ignore it. You don't even know it's here because we are so secret even we don't know ourselves. And suddenly Desert Shield and Desert Storm revealed those capabilities to these theater commanders which appealed to them, hey, you got a powerful capability here and we can link that with the ground forces, with our air forces, with our naval forces, with our special forces. And it's been so successful that in the aftermath of the Gulf, not only has it been involved in issues like Boznia, in issues like Somalia, but there is now an effort to convert three additional aircraft into rivet/joint configurations. And those are being modified right now in Texas simply because the number of airplanes, there's fourteen of the out there, is just not enough to keep up with the tactical demand for them as well as support the traditional national issues or strategic level reconnaissance for which they're tasked. So in many ways they've earned themselves a job and they're working hard to fulfill that.

Q This is great. This is beautiful. I uh, I don't think we need anything else uh-- We've talked about, you know, (unintelligible). What about the inter-operability uh, in terms of uh, what, what the future holds for this airplane? You said that they're getting three of them. Um-- We said before that they're going to be replaced by UAD's (?) although I think some of the capabilities is going to UAD's. I mean so far as I understand it. Okay. Let's maybe sum this up. What, what does the future hold for this uh, this system? Maybe you can allude to how old it is.

M Now that's a (unintelligible).

G Okay.

M Um, the future of rivet/joint is uh, really going to be in the hands of whatever officials are willing to go to bat for it. There's no question that it's a valuable asset, but to say that it can be replaced by unmanned vehicles, that it can be replaced by ground based equipment or overhead imagery as it's called, satellites, ignores the human potential and the capabilities of the crewmen on board to adapt, exploit and use wisdom that's just not available in those other scenarios. The airplanes are old. One of the oldest 624139, very famous W model now, has perhaps the most number of flying hours. A few years ago it had over forty thousand hours on the air frame. And the original life expectancy for those airplanes was between seven and nine thousand hours. So today we can assume that it has even more. Perhaps as many as forty-six, forty-eight thousand hours total time. And there's no physical replacement in sight. In a budget world, in a Air Force world that emphasizes F-22's, joint this, Stealth that, there's really little interest in replacing the rivet/joint airframe. The ability to crank out a few 757's or 767's with that equipment on board, my gosh, a 777 would be an absolutely magic airplane. I don't know if there's technical issues associated with the electronic shielding and things like that, but there's a definite need to replace the air frames. They've achieved a great deal but they're getting old. They were first designed and built for first flight in 1956. If we think about this in terms of age and airplanes, if these airplanes continue to fly through the year 2010 it would be tantamount to going back to Desert Shield and Desert Storm with airplanes that fought in the first world war. It's just that old. And I think we owe it to our crews and to our nation to replace the airframes.

Q Alright.

M Thank you, Boeing.

(non-interview dialogue)

Q Describe the, the atmosphere (unintelligible) dynamically how a crew works together.

M The crew of an RC-135 is unequivocally its greatest asset. Not just in terms of technical acumen but in its willingness to get the job done. There are all kinds of patches that the crew members wear. Recon is my life, danger is my business. Or I love the smell of recon in the morning. There's a real sense of commradery, a real sense of devil-may-care and a strong sense of tradition. Because for many years the recon crews have been at the pointy edge of the stick. We fly so that bombs won't have to. And there's a sense of urgency and importance to the work that the crew members do. And that gives them an extraordinary ability to focus their work, their enthusiasm. There's not a lot of slouching. There's not a lot of people just biding their time. There are very few people who volunteer for this assignment and by and large it is a volunteer. It's very much in demand because of the responsibilities, because of the rewards, the satisfaction. and to fly on a mission, you're dead tired at the end of fifteen or eighteen or twenty-two hours, whatever it happens to be. But when you bring home the bacon, whether it's a new radar or you know that the pilot's been rescued, there's just nothing better than that. And it's beyond words to explain how well crews work together. There's always ups and downs. That's true in any human endeavor. But to see this work, to see all the crew members work together is really the heart of the rivet/joint. And no technology, no airplane will ever take away that spirit or that capability. And I've got to say that in my years in the Air Force, flying in the RC-135 community was simply the best.

Q Uh--

M Again, I'm trying to avoid that long prison sentence. Show this as well as all that stuff.

Q I will. Uh, now one of the (unintelligible) is the failure of (unintelligible).

M Can I try and link those together?

Q Sure, absolutely.

M After the war, General Schwartzcoff testified before congress, and he said that the intelligence assessment and dissemination function of the coalition was very disappointing. But he did say and he did stress that the collection of that material by whatever assets, including the rivet/joint, was unequaled, unparalleled and certainly should be recognized. And I think what this ultimately shows is that for the first time Desert Shield and Desert Storm attempted to integrate strategic intelligence gathering capabilities long-term, long-range, big picture capabilities with people who were devoted within a variety of government intelligence agencies, to assessing long-term strategic capabilities or potentials in a scenario that was strictly tactical. And in any situation, that integration of strategic collection capabilities and strategic analysis with tactical requirements was a problem that could not be easily resolved. Desert Shield and Desert Storm gave us the luxury of not having to do that under circumstances far more severe or adverse. And if you examine the intelligence community today, the reconnaissance community today, there's a strong emphasis on inter-operability, on interconnectedness as they call it, the ability to use strategic assets. I believe it's call TENCA, the tactical exploitation of national assets, to try and provide a U2, a rivet/joint, overhead imagery with the tactical battlefield commander. We saw, for example, in the Gulf that um, crews that would gather information or annalists that would see photographs or assess (unintelligible) would say, I can't give this to the theater commander. He doesn't have the appropriate security clearance. Well, my gosh, if he doesn't have the clearance he can't get the information. Who needs the information? The guy on the battlefield, the shooter, the war fighters they call them these days. And we're now beginning to realize that you don't have to tip your hand as to where you got the information by revealing the information itself. And I think we're now beginning to realize that you can integrate strategic gathering, strategic analysis with tactical exploitation. And in the long term I think that's the greatest legacy of rivet joint and the other assets in the Gulf War.

Q Okay.

M Did that do what you needed?

Q Yeah. I think so. Um, as far as rivet/joint was just another aspect of reconnaissance, you know, we've got this electronic reconnaissance, now we have the photographic. And I don't even know about human intelligence aspects. I have somebody talking on camera about what Desert Storm showed that we really have to increase our human capabilities.

M Oh, absolutely. We're sunk when it comes to humate in Hamas(?), humate in Iraq, humate in the Gaza strip.

(non-interview dialogue)

Q Let's start that over. Maybe we should start it out by, by another lesson of Desert Storm was the, the lack of human encounters and we will talk about the, the photographic intelligence.

M Of all the capabilities on board the airplane and of all the capabilities of satellites and ground based facilities, none of that will ever replace the people involved. And on the airplanes that certainly gives strong reason to keep manned systems in the intelligence gathering mood. But one of the weakest areas of Desert Shield and Desert Storm in particular, and we see this still today, not just in Iraq but in other regions, is the human factor. Humate, as it's called. We don't have any way to find an inside source within Iraq to tell us what Sadam Husain is thinking. We don't have any way to find out what Hamas(?) is thinking or trying to assess what the shinning path terrorists in Peru are thinking. It's just not possible. And this is a long term issue that's faced the US intelligence community, for example. When these new gizmos, these new technical devices were coming into being, senior annalists said, hey, we need to stay in the business of having the good old fashion spy. But there were a lot of claims that that was vulnerable to disinformation and double agents. Intelligence will always be a gamble. There is no easy guaranteed answer and so there needs to be a balance. And I think that by having focused so much on technical capabilities, tech (unintelligible) satellites, big buck, big ticket items, then we have overlooked an important ability to integrate. And as the annalists who see these photographs will tell you um, my gosh, there's no Soviet ICBM sights in 1954 or 1955. And the analysts will say, that's because they're hidden. Well the photographs will never tell you one way or the other. You need to have an Oleg Pencofski(?), a deep throat, a spy inside to be able to say, the missiles aren't working, we only have four total. Wow, we can corroborate this. And right now that's one of the weakest areas of our entire national capability to exploit information is the weakness of humate.

Q Okay. Um, in uh, the, the kind of swan song and the rebirth of battlefield or tactical battlefield uh, you know, photography.

M One of the final songs of Desert Shield and Desert Storm was the end of the RF4, which had served with distinction in Vietnam and served with distinction as well in the Gulf. But there's a lot of criticism about the RF4. The airplane flew its mission and had to come back. It had to download the camera film, it had to be developed, and then it had to be processed and shipped to the theater commanders who then looked at it and then shipped it to the battlefield commanders. And it really was old news. We had this sense of instant gratification. I want real-time, now pictures. Well unfortunately that's not a limit of the airplane. It's a limit of the sensor on board the airplane and the same fate befell the SR71. It had the capacity to collect information anytime, anywhere but there was not the support to upgrade the sensor suites on board the SR as there was to upgrade the sensor suites on board the U2. And so it was an easy matter to cancel the SR saying it was outdated, it was out moded. The RF4 is outdated, outmoded. Well we're now finding that the ability to gather that information, irrespective of the platform that collects it, can easily be upgraded and easily be changed. So to put digital um, synthetic aperture radar, for example, on board these airplanes with real-time telemetry capability, so as the RF4 over flies the target the battlefield commander in the black hole or wherever is seeing the same thing that the crew is seeing. It's now a strong indication that we may have been premature in discarding these assets. And it may be fruitful to think that, gosh, you could take all the two-seat F15's or two-seat F16's that are sitting in the bone yard, put a recon pod or capability in them and you got a powerful replacement for the RF4. But again, it's driven by money and intelligence isn't sexy. Fighters, B-2 bombers, new weapons, those are. And it's tough to sell what most people don't know about. And intelligence has always worked in a black world.

Q Alright. Excellent. I think that's it.

(break in tape)

M One of the future missions-- One of the future missions for the rivet/joint is the replacement in part of the (unintelligible) F4G Wild Weasel, which has a long history and tradition dating back to Vietnam and which acquitted itself very well in the Gulf. As you know, the Wild Weasel was both a hunter, it could detect and track enemy radar sights and a killer. It could fire harm missiles or ant radiation missiles to destroy the sight. But with the retirement of the F4G, it's replacement, the F16, hasn't been very well suited as an autonomous hunter/killer. Meaning, it's going to take two airplanes to do the job of one. And part of that is the rivet/joint's responsibility. Using it's ability to detect and track and classify enemy electronic threats, there's programs underway to try and make that almost instantaneous. The rivet/joint detects the threat, locates the threat, categorizes the nature of the threat and then transmits that information instantaneously, at the speed of light, real-time, from the rivet/joint to the nearest airplane capable of striking that target. And that information including latitude and longitude, based on GPS, global positioning satellite information, gives the F16, the killer, the ability to launch the best weapon in the least amount of time to strike that target specifically. On paper it's a great idea. In reality there's always technical issues to resolve. Some of the biggest issues though focus on strategy. How and why do you risk a billion dollar asset like an RC-135, of which there are fourteen, there will be seventeen, on a mission where you once had hundreds of Wild Weasels. They shoot down a rivet/joint and you lose not only the F4G capability which it replaces, but you lose all those other capabilities as well. So although the capability is there, the technical ability to fulfill that mission, there's some serious questions about how the strategic asset, rivet/joint, should or will be used in a tactical scenario. And these are problems that confront the Air Force at large. When do you risk a B-2 bomber and that sort of thing.

Q Okay, excellent. Alright, let's knock it off. Good, good stuff.

END OF TAPE