Pilot Says Awacs Failed To Alert Him

A fighter pilot who shot down one of two U.S. helicopters over northern Iraq last year testified Monday that an Air Force radar plane monitoring the no-fly zone gave no indication friendly aircraft were in the area.

Capt. Eric Wickson testified in the court-martial of Capt. Jim Wang, who faces three counts of dereliction of duty in the attack that left 26 people dead.

Wang, who was senior director on the Airborne Warning and Control System plane monitoring the zone, faces discharge and up to three months in prison. He is accused of failing to warn Wickson and another F-15 pilot that friendly helicopters were in the area and not ensuring that the helicopters were broadcasting the proper identification codes.

Wickson testified that two checks with the AWACS plane provided no confirmation that the aircraft on his radar screen was friendly, though he said under cross-examination that was not unreasonable.

He said F-15s conducted sweeps of the no-fly zone each morning, making them the first friendly aircraft in the area each day. U.S. helicopters were not included on an Air Force list of aircraft scheduled to be in the zone each day, he said.

Army Maj. Laverm Young, commander of the helicopter squadron, testified later Monday that his helicopters made flights into the no-fly zone almost every day and were never told to change radio frequencies, as were other aircraft.

Wickson said he picked up an aircraft on radar almost immediately after entering the zone that morning. He checked with AWACS and received no affirmative reply.

“My assumption was he did not have those on his radar,” Wickson said, referring to the in-flight controller aboard AWACS. “That’s not surprising because they (the helicopters) were in a low area.”

Three minutes later, he said, he contacted AWACS again and was told the aircraft had been spotted, but AWACS didn’t indicate they were friendly. During the intercept, Wickson said, he also tried three times to make radio contact with the helicopter but never received a positive, or friendly, reply.

He and the pilot of the F-15 shot down the trailing helicopter after each misidentified it as an Iraqi craft.

But during cross-examination, Wickson said the ability of the F-15’s radar to spot the helicopters was “far superior” to AWACS because of where the helicopters were flying - low in a valley, surrounded by mountains.

He said his visual identification of the first helicopter left him positive it was an Iraqi craft.