Insurance Policy
We were a big insurance policy against Scuds, maybe a deterrent at best. We ended up being an on-call air force for the special operations forces.
     — Lt. Col. Sammy Black

OSW To OIF
I arrived as part of the first group of 23rd Fighter Squadron personnel in the beginning of February and started to fly our F-16 Block 50s straightaway. We began OSW missions after the first week and right up to the start of OIF. Initially, Iraq was divided into lanes. We roamed around a large area to provide SEAD support. The jet was excellent. We were overly qualified. The Iraqi air-defense system was almost nonexistent. A lot of the air strikes had taken out the crucial air-defense nodes making the Iraqi SAM sites autonomous, which meant they weren't doing very well. I shot two HARMs and dropped some JDAM and CBU-103 WCMD.
     — Capt. Brandon Roth

P-3 Passengers
We often flew Marine or Army observers who were familiar with ground targeting and recognition. They brought their own comm gear and sat on a camp stool or their helmet between the nav and the TACCO or back by Sensor Station 4, so they could have a clear view of the AIMS display. They evaluated potential targets we found with our AIMS pod. They then relayed target information to ground units in the area and they would investigate or eliminate threats as necessary.
     — Lt. Cmdr. Chris Saindon

14th First
We went out as a four-ship DEAD mission on the fourth night of the air war. The weather was so cloudy that we had to drop down to a lower altitude over eastern Baghdad to support Hornet strikers. The shooting was the worst I saw during the first week. Being so low made the ground fire seem even more intense. Triple-A and ballistic SAMs were flying all around and above us. The Hornets did not mention that they were safe. Assuming they still needed support, we stayed down there getting shot at for an extra ten minutes. We then got tasked to take out an SA-3 radar in southern Baghdad near an SA-6 site.

The two wingmen in our flight took PET shots to support us as the other lead and I descended into the weather to drop. Triple-A was thick and blowing up all around us. I followed him down the chute by about two miles and saw him light his afterburner and punch his tanks off as he came off target. I pickled my bombs and followed him up in full grunt. I looked over my shoulder for explosions. When I finally looked forward once I got above the clouds, I was thirty degrees nose high at about 38,000 feet and about 200 knots. Not smart. I guess I should have considered punching my tanks, too. The four of us thought that was probably the coolest thing we'd done at the time. We were the first members of the 14th Fighter Squadron to ever drop ordnance in combat.
     — Capt. Shamsher Mann