THE HARM & THE USEFUL IDIOT

THE HARM & THE USEFUL IDIOT.

By Steve Douglass 

Photo By Steve Douglass 

That week in Alamogordo started out feeling like a fishing trip where you weren’t told what kind of fish you were after.

"Mark" made an odd suggestion to me. "How does spending a week in Alamo sound, monitoring the White Sands Missile Range with interception gear?

I asked him what I was supposed to be listening for. He just smiled and said, “You’ll know it when you hear it.”

So I cleared my schedule, made the trip, set up in a motel room, and started scanning. Day after day, it was the usual mix of routine traffic, fragments, and training chatter. But after about a week of recording and replaying everything, a pattern began to emerge. Certain call signs paired up consistently. The timing between launches lined up. The geometry of the flights wasn’t random.

It sounded like Wild Weasel training.

During that time period, Iraqi SAM sites were constantly harassing American aircraft patrolling the northern no-fly zone.

After the 1991 Gulf War, the U.S., along with coalition partners, enforced a protected airspace over northern Iraq. On paper it sounded routine — patrol the skies, deter aggression, respond if necessary. In reality, it became a daily electronic duel.

Iraqi air defense crews rarely had to actually fire missiles to make their presence felt. Instead, they relied on their radars.

When a surface-to-air missile battery switches from search mode to track mode, the radar energy focused on an aircraft becomes stronger and more precise. U.S. jets carried radar warning receivers that could tell the difference. Pilots would hear distinct tones in their headsets or see specific symbols on their threat displays indicating they were being “painted.”

Being painted means someone has you in their sights.

Even if there are no missile launches, that tracking signal forces a reaction. Pilots might maneuver defensively, deploy countermeasures, or abort part of their mission. It increases workload, stress, and risk. And if the radar transitions from tracking to missile guidance, the situation escalates fast.

Iraqi crews became adept at briefly locking onto American aircraft — especially fighters like F-15s and F-16s — then shutting down before anti-radiation missiles could be fired back effectively. It was harassment by design: flip the radar on, provoke a response, flip it off, repeat.

This back-and-forth turned the no-fly zone into something more than a patrol mission. It was a continuous suppression-of-enemy-air-defenses environment, whether officially declared or not. Every time an Iraqi radar emitted, it revealed its location. Every time it shut down, it survived another day.

That invisible battle — radar energy versus anti-radiation missiles — defined much of the air war over Iraq in the 1990s. It wasn’t about dogfights. It was about who controlled the electromagnetic spectrum and who was willing to blink first.

It became clear to me that they were practicing a Wild Weasel-type mission. There was a German F-4 along with a T-38 chase plane. Additionally, some of the radio traffic also pointed to an F-117  in the mix. At the time,  all three were based at Holloman Air Force Base just west of Alamogordo. 

That’s where it stopped making sense to me.

Using an F-117 as a target for Iraqi SAM sites wouldn’t accomplish much. Iraqi radar crews needed something to see to harass it. Their whole tactic in the no-fly zone was to briefly lock up American aircraft with tracking radar — not necessarily to fire, but to remind them they could. The F-117’s radar cross-section was so small that under the right conditions, older Iraqi systems would struggle to detect it at all. You can’t “shine” on something you can’t see.

So why was it in what sounded like a suppression profile?

I went back through the tapes again and again. The sequencing became clearer. One aircraft group was maneuvering in a way that would draw attention. Another element positioned differently, quieter, offset. It didn’t sound like they were practicing defending against radar.

It sounded like they were setting a trap.

And then it clicked.

What if the F-117 wasn’t the target?

What if it was carrying the HARM?

On the surface, it sounded far-fetched. Integrating an AGM-88 HARM into the F-117 would have required serious work. The Nighthawk’s bifurcated weapons bay was designed for precision-guided bombs. A HARM would mean different wiring, software integration, and major physical modifications to the bay. It wouldn’t be a small tweak.

But tactically, the idea was elegant.

Send an F-15 and an F-117 up at the same time. The F-15 shows up clearly on Iraqi radar scopes. Maybe it even appears to be turning away. The Iraqi operators, thinking the stealth jet isn’t a factor — or not seeing it at all — flip their radars on to harass the visible fighter.

And the moment they transmit, they become a beacon.

Somewhere out there, in the dark, unseen, the F-117 launches a HARM that homes in on that radar energy. The F-15 is bait. The F-117 is the hammer.

Once I felt confident that was what I’d been hearing, I reached out to William Scott at Aviation Week. I laid out what I had monitored and then asked the question that had been bothering me: was it right to publish this? After all, it would be revealing a tactic the Iraqis might not have considered.

He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he asked me if I trusted my source. I told him I didn’t even know exactly what government agency Mark worked for — but he clearly wanted me in Alamogordo for a reason. What I’d heard was probably that reason.

Scott thought about that and said something that stuck with me. If someone that highly placed wanted you there and wanted you listening, then maybe the publication was part of the plan. “He wants you to publish,” he said. “There must be a good reason for it.”

So I did. I put it in my Intercepts newsletter.

I won’t lie — I felt uneasy about it. You don’t casually broadcast potential operational tactics in the middle of an ongoing confrontation. But months went by. Nothing happened.

Then one day a letter showed up in the mail. Postmarked Alamogordo.

It read:

“Mr. Douglass — thanks for blabbing about our Wild Weasel tactic. Because of your big ears and mouth, we didn’t have to spend millions of dollars trying to fit a HARM missile into the weapons bay of an F-117.

P.S. Your story solved the problem. Now the Iraqis won’t shine as much as a flashlight at us.

Thanks for your help.

— Goatsucker”

I remember just staring at it.

If the letter was genuine, then the publication wasn’t a leak — it was psychological warfare. Instead of actually modifying the F-117 to carry HARMs, they let the possibility hang in the air. Once the Iraqis believed a stealth jet might be out there waiting for their radar to light up, the harassment game changed overnight.

No need to spend millions on engineering if you can just create some radio traffic that makes it sound like you are practicing using an HARM in an F-117. Still, you need a useful idiot with wicked Interceptor skills to figure it out. How do you do that? How about making him a suggestion he can't refuse?  

In the end, the battlefield wasn’t just physical or electronic. It was psychological. And sometimes the most effective weapon isn’t a missile at all — it’s the idea that one might be coming.

And that's when OSINT can be used as an advantage. 

Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is the process of collecting, evaluating, and analyzing publicly available, unclassified information—such as social media.

I had been used. I was a useful idiot - and I didn't mind.

-Steve Douglass