Word: radars
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...they flew to within 30 miles of the Libyan coast, weapons-systems officers (called whizzos), who sit beside the pilot on each F-111, went into action. They lowered the Pave Tack pods, which began sweeping the horizon first with radar and then with infrared cameras, transmitting fairly detailed pictures of the ground below to a radar-infrared scope that is like a small television screen on the aircraft's instrument panel. The whizzos knew what to look for: before taking off from England, they had thoroughly studied aerial- reconnaissance photographs of their targets. In addition, information to find...
...were 28 tankers from Royal Air Force bases in Fairford and Mildenhall. Minutes later a squadron of 24 two-seater khaki-and-brown F-111 attack bombers began streaking off runways at Lakenheath and were joined by five EF-111 electronic jamming planes whose mission was to disable Libyan radar capabilities. Flying at 30,000 ft., the force rendezvoused over southern England and refueled four times during its seven-hour flight through darkened skies. After the first refueling, seven planes, brought along as a reserve in case of airborne malfunctions in the others, broke out of formation and returned...
With one squadron heading for Tripoli and the other for Benghazi, pilots dropped to altitudes under 500 ft. to avoid radar detection. This strict insistence on low-level approaches is a fairly recent development for the U.S. military. "Every pilot loves to do yanks and banks and dive and drive, but this is dangerous until you have attrited the threat," Navy Secretary John Lehman said last week in an interview with TIME. "You have to hit with antiradar devices. This results in an emphasis on night, low-level attack, which can beat any defense if you do it right...
Aircraft carrying such radar-jamming devices, as well as HARM missiles to take out radar sites, were the first to reach the target cities, approaching at 6:54 p.m. Precisely at 7 p.m., the squadron of A-6 fighters roared over Benghazi from the Gulf of Sidra and began bombing the airfield. In Tripoli, part of the F-111 squadron had circled around inland and approached from the south. The city was ablaze with light, and not a single air-raid alarm sounded. "We were able to see the hits," recalled one Navy airman, who had spent many hours studying...
Some plans have been drawn in impressive detail. One involves three waves of carrier-based planes that would strike in quick succession under cover of predawn darkness. First, fighter planes would launch missiles that home in on radar to knock out once again the radars at the SA-5 missile sites at Surt and Benghazi. Then, attack planes would wing in low and fast to knock out the missiles and their launchers. Once they had been destroyed, the third wave would hit adjacent airfields, destroying the runways so that Gaddafi's 550 combat aircraft could not scramble to counterattack...