Norfolk Virginian-Pilot
April 26, 1999

Over Balkans, It's Beauty Vs. The Beast

By Dale Eisman, The Virginian-Pilot

WASHINGTON -- The two aircraft could not be more different. One is the pride of the U.S. Air Force, a $2 billion triumph of advanced technology with a distinctive bat-shaped wing and still-secret skin coatings that make it almost invisible to even the most powerful radars.

The other is the Navy's ugly duckling, a bargain-basement plane distinguished only by the refueling probe that protrudes from its fat nose.

But as NATO aircraft pound targets in Yugoslavia this spring, the Air Force's sleek and stealthy B-2 ``Spirit'' and the Navy's ungainly EA-6B ``Prowler'' have formed an unlikely partnership.

And to B-2 pilots, the Prowlers are proving as beautiful as any swan and as protective as the fiercest mother eagle.

A senior Air Force general acknowledged last week that as the B-2s with their laser-guided bombs approach targets in the flak-filled skies over Serbia and Kosovo, they are often being protected by the radar-jamming capabilities of the humble Prowlers.

Alone in the allied inventory of more than 700 fighters, bombers and support aircraft, the 26 EA-6Bs patrolling in the Yugoslav theater carry electronic equipment that can attack every enemy radar. Two other U.S. planes, the Air Force F-16CJ and the Navy F/A-18, can be outfitted to detect and attack some radars, but only the Prowler is effective -- with jammers and HARM missiles -- against all of them.

``We're kind of the guy that ties it all together,'' one Navy official said of the Prowler force and its role in the battle against the Serbs.

The B-2s and the Air Force F-117, a stealth fighter/bomber, are engineered to evade radars but are not invisible, said Air Force Maj. Gen. Bruce Carlson. So at least until allied planners are satisfied that Serb defenses have been disabled, every NATO ``strike package'' includes some combination of EA-6Bs or F-16s and F/A-18s equipped for anti-radar operations.

Though the alliance is conducting most of its bombing from high altitudes, beyond or on the edge of the range of Serb missiles and anti-aircraft artillery, defense analysts say NATO's ability to fly more than 9,500 sorties with the loss of only one plane testifies to the Prowlers' effectiveness.

The mere presence of the Prowlers, they suggest, has kept the Serbs from switching on their radars -- and thereby making themselves targets -- for more than a few seconds at a time. And without radar guidance, the Serbs' Russian-built surface-to-air missiles are little more than a nuisance.

Still, despite the plane's unique and critical role in the U.S. military's air defense scheme, the Pentagon owns fewer than 100 deployable Prowlers. Twenty-six of the 91 available aircraft are available in Italy or the carrier Theodore Roosevelt for operations in Kosovo; 21 others are in use around the Arabian Gulf, and most of the rest are being prepared for deployments later this year.

The short supply of planes means extra long hours for pilots and crews in the 19 Navy and Marine Corps Prowler squadrons. The EA-6B community ``is on a wartime footing right now,'' one Navy official said last week, and the Naval Air Station at Whidbey Island, Wash., where Prowlers are home-based, is all but deserted.

So many four-member Prowler crews are now assigned to Aviano, Italy, the principal NATO base for Kosovo operations, that one pilot from squadron VAQ-142 joked last week that the annual ``Prowler Ball'' will be held there.

``And I have a chance of making it,'' said the pilot, identified only as ``Dave.''

``We have got them very, very heavily engaged. . . and they're doing a great job,'' Adm. Harold W. Gehman Jr., NATO's Supreme Atlantic Commander, said last week. The heavy demand for the planes, he suggested, is prompting planners to reassess the mix of Prowlers and other ``electronic warfare'' aircraft, in their overall inventories.

``We are learning a great lesson here,'' he said. ``That these things are terribly, terribly valuable assets. We have enough to cover our present day contingencies, but this is going to cause us to look at our future in this area.''

Another Navy official acknowledged that in order to keep the Prowlers where they're needed, the service is stretching its personnel regulations.

Those rules require that after returning from an overseas deployment, sailors and airmen get two days at their home bases for every day spent abroad.

But the two-for-one guideline doesn't start until a deployment exceeds 60 days; to avoid that, Prowler pilots and crews are brought home after 56 days and replacements are dispatched to fly and maintain their planes. After a ``break'' of 30 days, the original crews can be deployed again.

``You can say the Navy is gaming its own (rules) to deploy these people to the maximum extent,'' the official said. ``Or you can say that the Navy, always keeping its people at the forefront of its mind, is trying to meet wartime operational requirements and still give people enough time at home.''

The brisk operating pace ``is not really stressful if you're used to it,'' the official added.

``Some people can spend a whole 20- or 30-year career in the Navy and never see combat,'' he suggested. ``And that's not a bad thing; that's a good thing for the country. But I think in everybody's heart, they'd like to see combat once. And these folks are. So they're pumped.''

Still, ``it's hard,'' he acknowledged. ``We are taxed to the limit on manpower right now, but what I want to communicate is that the Navy is not trying to intentionally screw over our personnel.'' Typically, the Prowlers flying over Yugoslavia are outfitted with a single HARM. The missile, which also can be launched from the F-16 and F/A-18, locks onto radar signals and follows them to the source. It is accurate to within a few yards of the target but ``goes stupid'' if the offending radar is switched off, the official said.

In that case, the missile flies to the last recorded position of the radar signal; because many of the Serbian radars are mobile that can mean a missed shot.

The Prowlers look for the most sophisticated, mobile and cleverly concealed radars, using their electronic jamming pods to block signals. If a Serb radar stays locked onto a target, the EA-6B may launch its HARM, but the official suggested that the plane's jammers are its most effective weapon.

Until 1995, the Navy had only about 80 Prowlers available, most of them built in the 1980s; the newest Prowlers date to 1994 and cost $54 million, just over 2 percent of the price of a new B-2.

But when the Air Force decided in 1994 to retire its fleet of EF-111 ``Ravens,'' which had a similar jamming capability, the Pentagon ordered Navy officials to put dozens of mothballed Prowlers back into service. Some were ``in bags on the seawall'' at the naval air station in Jacksonville, Fla., the official recalled, and others were parked at the now-defunct Norfolk Naval Aviation Depot.

The planes are being brought back to life at a cost of about $2 million each, getting new wings and in some cases other structural reinforcements. They're also getting a series of electronic upgrades, which eventually will be given to planes now in service as well.

The Navy and contractor Northrup Grumman overhauled 25 Prowlers last year, and the service has activated 5 Prowler squadrons -- a total of 20 planes -- in the past 30 months.

By the end of this year, the Navy expects to have 104 Prowlers available, with another 19 or 20 in rehabilitation.

``We're playing a shell game with airplanes,'' the official said.

But even with new wings, the Prowlers are wearing out. The Navy projects that it must begin replacing the planes by 2015, when the oldest of today's Prowlers are projected to have logged 12,500 hours of service. Because developing a new military plane can take up to a decade, that means the service already must begin to look for alternatives.

Options for a replacement include everything from the development of a completely new jammer to adaptation of the new F/A-18 ``Super Hornet,'' for more advanced jamming equipment than today's Hornets can accommodate.

The service probably will even look at the use of unmanned drone aircraft that would be outfitted with jamming pods, the official said.

Loren Thompson, chief analyst at the Lexington Institute, a defense think tank in Arlington, said the current shortage of EA-6Bs and the uncertainty about future jammers ``doesn't say good things about our priorities'' in buying new military equipment.

In recent years, Congress and the Pentagon have put so much money into keeping current forces ready to fight that they've not invested enough in new and replacement aircraft, Thompson says. The EA-6B is vital to today's military operation and such jamming capabilities will only become more important, he said, ``and we have nothing in the pipeline to replace it with.''

Staff writer Jack Dorsey contributed to this report.