A large number of U.S. strike missions to suppress military activity in western Iraq were quietly launched from an airbase in eastern Jordan, despite that government's denial that U.S. forces there carried out offensive military operations against Iraq.

Publicly, Jordan's leaders said they were not a party to the conflict and there was no activity from inside their country against Iraq. The U.S. presence was limited, they said, to several hundred troops, most of whom manned Patriot air defense missile batteries.

Of particular concern to U.S. planners were moving targets around or in the Scud boxes along the border with Syria. Scud boxes are pre-measured launch areas in Iraq from which a Scud could be fired with some hope of hitting Tel Aviv or other large targets in Israel.

A total of 24 F-16s, equipped with advanced Litening II targeting pods and GBU-27 laser-guided bombs, along with their pilots and ground crews, were pulled from the Colorado, District of Columbia and Alabama Air National Guards for the assignment, according to one of the pilots involved and a senior Air Force official. Such amalgamations are called "Rainbow" units, and this one served as the 120th Expeditionary Fighter Sqdn., under the 410 Air Expeditionary Wing. Officials of the D.C. Air National Guard would only say that pilots and ground crews from their 113th Wing were at a "classified location" in the Middle East.

Pilots and ground crews have begun returning home after flying 700 sorties. In addition to preventing Scuds from being fired into Israel, they supported ground operations in the occupation of the H-1, H-2 and H-3 airfields in Iraq as well as participating in the battles for Baghdad and Al Qaim. The latter, near the border with Syria, was one of the last strongholds for organized Iraqi defense. During the fighting, an associated HH-60-equipped combat search and rescue unit shifted its operational site forward from Jordan to Iraq's H-1 base much nearer Baghdad.