No Precedent for Airbus’s Approach : Vincennes Crew Played Out Various Scenarios

WASHINGTON — During their monthlong voyage from San Diego to the Persian Gulf last spring, the 348-man crew of the U.S. cruiser Vincennes fought off boredom and sharpened their skills by playing a game with a long Navy tradition: “What If?”

What if a speeding Iranian patrol boat trains its guns on you? What if one of the Vincennes’ defensive systems detects radar “lock-on” by a shore-based missile battery? What if the ship sails into a mine field while escorting an oil tanker?

For these possible scenarios and others, the crew members play-acted responses, quizzed each other on weapons systems and tactics and applied the “rules of engagement” that would guide their actions when they joined the naval protective force in the gulf.

The exercises raise the question of why, less than three months later, the officers and sailors of the Vincennes did not anticipate what many Navy officers have since called “an accident waiting to happen”--an innocent but unidentified aircraft coming too close for comfort as it crossed the crowded gulf.

The Accident Happens

On the morning of July 3, the accident happened, and the Vincennes’ response was tragic. The ship judged it a hostile aircraft and fired on the Iran Air A-300 Airbus, killing all 290 aboard.

An exhaustive Navy investigation led by Rear Adm. William N. Fogarty since then has focused heavily on the ship’s sophisticated $525-million Aegis combat system, which because of technical limitations failed to distinguish between a slow-moving passenger aircraft and a missile-bearing Iranian fighter jet.

Nevertheless, some naval warfare experts are also concluding that the Navy’s crew-prepping exercises must share some of the blame.

The trouble with the “What If” games, they say, is that they follow a tradition as old as the military itself--that of fighting the last war. Most of the ships’ rehearsals for possible critical situations are based on after-action reports filed by Navy ships when they return from a deployment.

Looking Backward

As a result, ships bound for the Persian Gulf are only as prepared as the ships that have gone before them, schooled mostly in scenarios that those crews have faced.

When the Navy sent its first beefed-up force to the gulf last year to escort Kuwaiti tankers, the on-board “gaming” did not dwell on the threat of mines, because none had been encountered there, officials acknowledge. On the first escort mission, the U.S.-flagged vessel Bridgeton hit a World War I-vintage Iranian mine and suffered extensive damage.

When the Vincennes set out on April 25 for its gulf duty, its crew trained extensively on the mine threat, as well as on firefighting drills that proved crucial when the frigate Samuel B. Roberts hit a mine and caught fire in the gulf that month. There were also the lessons learned from the frigate Stark, which failed to defend itself against an Iraqi warplane and suffered 37 dead the year before.

But little attention was paid to the unproven threat of an approaching unidentified aircraft, flying inside, but not at the center of, commercial air lanes.

“Every step along the way, you try to simulate and replicate every situation you might encounter,” said Capt. David Yonkers, who commanded a squadron of Persian Gulf-bound warships before retiring from the Navy on July 1. “When you have 30 days to practice and you focus yourself . . . , you can get a lot of things done.”

The need for more creative “gaming” is particularly great in “low-intensity” conflicts such as the Persian Gulf, in which the United States is not at war with an enemy, civilians and commercial traffic are often present and rules of engagement must be particularly delicate, some officials say.

At the Naval War College’s 101-year-old war games center in Newport, R.I., simulations of low-intensity conflict situations already have come into higher demand.

But while the center’s director, Capt. John H. Heidt, said his laboratory is uniquely equipped to help the Persian Gulf force identify and anticipate future problems, the leaders of the force have not turned to his staff for help.

Navy officials assert, however, that their preparations for the gulf will get better as the experience there grows.

Since the downing of the Iranian airliner, ships headed for the gulf are expected to write such dilemmas into their training scripts, Navy officials say. Crew members get the chance to practice reading commercial flight schedules and tuning in to civilian air traffic control channels at a moment’s notice for clues to an aircraft’s identity.

Also, the force will continue to use a cast of both witting and unwitting actors in its “What If” games, recruiting other U.S. warships and aircraft as well as commercial “targets of opportunity” to play a variety of roles.

“They’re merely targets that provide a radar blip, a sonar track or a visual sighting,” said Yonkers. “It gets pretty lonely out there.”

But military war-gaming experts warn that drills will never eliminate mistakes.

“Gaming provides a laboratory for human interaction,” said Heidt. “But the one thing about gaming is that it doesn’t answer questions--it raises issues.”