One of the military ruler’s sublieutenants was Manuel Noriega. After the ruler’s death in 1981, a struggle for leadership ensued; and, in 1983, Noriega prevailed. He promoted himself to general and consolidated the military branches into the Panamanian Defense Force. Noriega maintained ties with the US intelligence community, furnishing information on Latin American drug trafficking and money laundering, while at the same time engaged in such activities himself. By 1984, those opposing Noriega’s regime openly criticized him and accused him of being a drug trafficker. By 1987, brutal repression of his people was enough for the US Senate to issue a resolution calling for the Panamanians to oust him. Noriega in turn ordered an attack on the US Embassy, causing an end to US military and economic aid.
In 1988, a Miami federal grand jury indicted Noriega on drug-trafficking and money-laundering charges. Noriega intensified his harassment against his own people and all Americans. By 1989, President George H. W. Bush decided to invade Panama.
All four branches of the US Armed Forces played a role in Operation Just Cause. For the Air Force, elements of 18 wings and 9 groups used 17 types of aircraft. The responsibility for airlifting the attacking Marine and Army task forces fell to the Air Force’s MAC. On the first night of the operation, 84 aircraft flying 500 feet above the ground dropped nearly 5,000 troops, the largest nighttime airborne operation since WWII. The airdrop also featured the first use of night vision goggles by Air Force personnel during a contingency. SAC KC-10s and KC-135s provided air-to-air refueling for airlift aircraft, as well as for TAC F-15s assigned to protect the transports. From 20 December 1989 to 3 January 1990, tankers offloaded more than 12 million pounds of fuel to aircraft supporting Operation Just Cause.
The Air Force special operations forces, meanwhile, provided support to ground forces and were the first Air Force forces on the ground in Panama. Special operators installed navigation beacons to guide troop transports to designated drop zones and combat controllers cleared runways of obstacles for subsequent airland operations. Also, AC-130s provided air cover for helicopters inserting US Army Rangers and also flew ground suppression missions. On one of the ground suppression missions, an AC-130 pilot earned the Distinguished Flying Cross, not for what he did, but rather for what he did not do. Air Force Reserve Major Clay McCutchan and his crew, unsure of the nationality of a potential target, refused to attack what a forward air controller believed was a concentration of enemy troops near the Fort Amador Causeway. The following day, analysts determined that the one-time targets were American troops. Major (now a Brigadier General) McCutchan’s “inaction” potentially saved the lives of scores of American soldiers.
Operation Just Cause was the largest and most complex air operation since Vietnam. It involved over 250 aircraft. American forces eliminated organized resistance by Christmas day, just 6 days after the beginning of the invasion. Manuel Noriega surrendered on 3 January 1990 and was flown to Miami, Florida, to face trial. Less than a year later, many of the same airmen that made Operation Just Cause a resounding success would build and travel through another, larger air bridge during Operation Desert Shield.
Persian Gulf War and Subsequent Operations
The services were still digesting the lessons of Operation Just Cause when another tremor of political upheaval shook the world. Unlike the low-magnitude oscillation that the crisis in Panama registered on political Richter scales, this was a violent fluctuation that threatened to disrupt global petroleum supplies and to endanger the independence of many countries in the Middle East.
From its inception as a state in 1922, Iraq claimed the tiny bordering nation of Kuwait as one of its provinces, a claim not recognized by the international community. Created following the dissolution of the Ottomon Empire following WWI, Iraq coveted Kuwait for its seaport and oil reserves. Attempts by Iraq to seize its neighbor failed in 1961 and again in 1973, but in the summer of 1990 Iraq once again moved its military forces to the Kuwaiti border.
