Tactical Airborne Reconnaissance Pod System - Operational History

Operational History

TARPS was immediately impressed into the Cold War and used for surveillance of Soviet ships at sea and in their anchorages sometimes from over 1,000 miles (1,600 km) distant from patrolling aircraft carriers in the classic cat and mouse tactics of that era.

TARPS resulted in Tomcats being put in harm's way shortly after it was introduced to the fleet in 1981. VF-102 Tomcats had been inadvertently been fired on by AAA and a single SA-2 SAM over Somalia in April 1983 while conducting peacetime mapping prior to a major exercise. A few months later VF-32 conducted TARPS missions in support of the invasion of Grenada and went on to join VF-43 and VF-31 in flying missions in the Eastern Med where three carriers had gathered to respond to the crisis in Lebanon. Thus, TARPS was responsible for the Tomcat's first sustained combat baptism of fire when the crisis in Lebanon heated up in 1983 requiring daily overflights over hostile AAA and SAMs. During operation El Dorado Canyon in 1986, Libya launched SCUD missiles at a US outpost on an island in the Med and VF-102 flew TARPS to ascertain if there had been any damage.

Initially, TARPS was not a priority on the Air Tasking Order during Desert Shield/Storm due to availability of strategic assets like the U-2/TR-1 and plentiful USAF RF-4 units. However, once Desert Storm started, the demand for realtime intel overwhelmed the other assets and TARPS missions were called upon to meet the demand. Immediately, it became obvious that Tomcats were favored for in country missions over the RF-4 as they required no escort and needed less fuel pre and post mission, which was a real concern at the time. TARPS continued to be utilized post Desert Storm and training was modified to take into account medium altitude tactics such as were flown in Desert Storm. Prior to that, the majority of TARPS missions training missions were low altitude overland and over water navigation and imagery. Only mapping was flown at medium altitudes. TARPS was used routinely in Operation Southern Watch over Iraq and called upon in Bosnia in 1995 and then again over Kosovo in 1999. The advent of LANTIRN into Tomcat operations provided a useful complement to TARPS. Since both systems need the same real estate in the rear cockpit for sensor operation control panels, they cannot be mounted on the aircraft at the same time, but they can be flown in formation yielding the best of both systems.

TARPS was used in the United States in 1993 when areas of the Mississippi River flooded. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) requested TARPS flights be taken over the area to determine which locations were hardest hit. TARPS has also been used for hurricane damage assessment.