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DAVIS COUNTY -- President Barack Obama says the United States will take the lead on any military action in Libya. The tough talk comes after the United Nations approved a no-fly zone over the country Friday in order to keep embattled leader Muammar Khaddafy from annihilating rebels who are fighting to topple his government.
Establishing a no-fly zone over Libya will require a large scale organizational and cooperative effort, and perhaps no one knows more about how to do that than a Davis County man. Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. General David Tanzi went over to Iraq twice with the 419th Reserve Fighter Wing out of Hill Air Force Base.
In November 1994, the Airmen of the 419th prepared to deploy to northern Iraq. Their mission was to protect the Kurdish people by enforcing the no-fly zone. Tanzi was their leader.
"We would be looking for any type of airborne activity or any type of ground activity that would be detrimental to us," Tanzi told KSL News in 1994.
"We had live missiles, air-to-air missiles, and we had live air-to-ground bombs we could drop," he recalled Friday night.
Another mission, and 17 years later, Tanzi is retired. But the memories of flying in a F16 while patrolling the air are fresh.
"We would have packages of 24 fighters that would go up," he said. "And we as a group would have certain sectors, and there would be a flow to how you went from one sector to another. I mean, it's orchestrated."
On a very basic level, it's similar to how a highway patrol trooper patrols the freeway. If someone enters that airspace, pilots follow the rules of engagement to clear it.
They also have to keep an eye on the ground, where enemies may have ground to air missiles.
"They could have chosen to light us up, as we call it, where they actually shine their radar on our airplane. And we have systems that tell us something is looking at us," Tanzi said.
In the case of Libya, Tanzi is confident the United States will make the right decisions and the military will perform heroically.
"As a world leader, you have an obligation, in my opinion, to make sure crimes against humanity are dealt with," he said.
In their two tours of duty, the 419th never fired on any aircraft or ground crews.
Email: sdallof@ksl.com
