Moves by Libya Led to Heightened U.S. Alert : Stepped-Up Flights May Have Reflected Fear of American Attack Amid Tense Atmosphere

Libya, in the days before Wednesday’s fatal clash with U.S. Navy jets, had taken a series of military steps that suggest it was expecting an American military strike, Administration sources said Thursday.

The Libyan air force had stepped up flights by its fighter planes, the sources said, and Libyan jets made several close passes at U.S. reconnaissance aircraft patrolling with the Mediterranean 6th Fleet. The Libyans also dispersed their aircraft on the ground, a move generally taken when an attack is expected, the sources said.

The military activity, coupled with a diplomatic confrontation over a suspected chemical weapons plant under construction 40 miles southwest of the Libyan capital of Tripoli, had created an atmosphere of heightened tensions. As a result, while U.S. officials have insisted that the Navy jets were on routine patrol, F-14 pilots flying off the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy were probably in no mood to take chances when two Libyan MIGs took off from the coastal airfield at Al Bumbah on Wednesday.

And when the MIGs pursued the Navy jets in a manner that was interpreted as particularly hostile, the U.S. pilots did not hesitate to send them into the sea after an eight-minute aerial drama.

President Reagan, questioned briefly in Los Angeles before boarding Air Force One to return to Washington after a California vacation, was asked whether the pilots had acted properly. “Yes,” he said. They were responding to “very obviously a hostile threat.”

Hostile Intent Assumed

When told that Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi viewed the U.S. action as “terrorism,” the President replied: “I haven’t believed what he’s said for a long time. Our pilots acted completely in self-defense.”

Defense Department spokesman Dan Howard, defending the Navy pilots’ decision to fire before making visual contact with the Libyan jets to see whether they were carrying missiles, said: “You have to assume that the intent is hostile. If you don’t and if you wait long enough that you can actually see what he has hanging under his wings, you’re dead. Because, by that time, he may well have fired the missile.”

Howard repeated the U.S. insistence that the F-14s were conducting routine operations when they were confronted by the MIGs.

“We’ve been doing these military exercises in the Mediterranean for a long time,” he said. “We have exercised in precisely the same area . . . the previous day. They were not directed at Libya.”

Videotapes made by the U.S. pilots show that the Libyan fighters were armed with missiles and repeatedly maneuvered to get into firing position, despite Libyan claims that they were unarmed reconnaissance craft, the Pentagon said Thursday. It released the tapes to support the U.S. position that the Navy pilots acted to defend themselves.

No Trouble Sought

“These F-14s were not out looking for trouble,” said Howard. “If we were going to commit some sort of hostile act, that is certainly not the position from which we would have committed it, and those are not the aircraft that we would have used.”

The Libyan government newspaper Al Fajr El Jadid said that the downing of the MIGs was linked to the imminent arrival in the Mediterranean of a 13-ship Navy carrier strike force to relieve the Kennedy battle group already there.

“This shows clearly that the United States intends to attack Libya. They are there to attack Libya and the attack against our planes is proof of this,” the newspaper said.

A second-by-second reconstruction of the confrontation made public by the Pentagon revealed that the Libyan pilots flew directly at two U.S. F-14s at more than 600 m.p.h. even though the American jets “painted” them with weapons radars shortly after they took off.

Electronic equipment aboard the MIGs would normally indicate to the pilots that they had been targeted by the American jets. In previous encounters, Libyan pilots had been ordered back to base after U.S. planes turned on their targeting radars, the Pentagon spokesman said.

‘Incompatible’ Radios

Until Wednesday, the closest Libyan fighters have come to U.S. fighters in recent years has been 30 miles, he said.

No other warnings were issued by the U.S. planes, because their radios are “incompatible” with Libyan receivers, officials said.

One Pentagon official said, however, that Libyan jets had flown much closer than 30 miles to U.S. reconnaissance planes in recent days, adding to the tension in the central Mediterranean.

Despite some early confusion on the point, the MIGs never “locked on” to the U.S. jets with their weapons radar, American officials said. But they emphasized that the Soviet-built weapons carried on a MIG-23 do not need a prolonged radar lock-on to be effective.

The account also revealed that one of the F-14s passed within 1 1/2 miles of one of the MIGs before blowing it up with a heat-seeking Sidewinder missile. Pentagon officials said that a videotape taken from that distance clearly shows the MIG carrying two Apex radar-guided missiles, with two Aphid heat-seeking missiles slung beneath the Libyan fighter.

The videotape directly contradicts Libyan claims that the MIGs were harmless reconnaissance planes, Howard said.

‘We Have the Pictures’

“It tells me that the Libyan ambassador to the U.N. is a liar,” Howard said at a press briefing Thursday. “They’ve gone out yesterday and said, repeatedly, that those were unarmed reconnaissance aircraft. Well, we have the pictures now to prove that they were not unarmed aircraft. They were obviously armed aircraft with obvious hostile intent.”

The Libyan envoy Howard was referring to, Ambassador Ali Muntasser, Libya’s U.N. charge d’affaires, replied from New York City, where he attended a U.N. Security Council debate on the affair, that anyone who accused him of lying about that was himself a liar.

“The man who said that I am a liar, he is a liar,” Muntasser said. “We sent our planes to do their reconnaissance. . . . We know our planes were not armed. No weapons at all.”

Howard told reporters that the tape was of “lousy” quality but definitely showed one of the MIG-23s was armed. “Every indication is that both of these aircraft were armed and both had hostile intent,” he said.

“The pilots during the course of the exercise did not see weapons, they were not in a position to see weapons. However, as one of the pilots said, it’s ‘a pretty dang-fool question’ whether they were carrying weapons or not,” Howard said. “We certainly assume that any nation’s fighter aircraft are carrying weapons--that’s why they’re built.”

Washington Debriefing

The new details of the aerial clash made available Thursday were pieced together from cockpit conversations and detailed interviews with the pilots and weapons officers of the two F-14s. The pilot and airborne warfare commander of the lead F-14 were flown to Washington on Wednesday night for further debriefing, including a session Thursday morning with Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The Pentagon would not release the names, ranks or unit assignments of any of the four aviators, citing concerns that they might be made targets for retaliation. But Howard described them as “relatively senior, extraordinarily experienced officers.”

They provided a “very sober, detailed analysis” of the incident, Howard said, which supported the Administration’s view that the pilots acted properly in defense of their aircraft and the ships that they were responsible for protecting.

Howard said that the lead F-14 pilot fired two radar-guided Sparrow missiles before making visual contact with the MIGs, at ranges of 14 and 12 miles. Both shots missed.

“There was no visual sighting by our aircraft commanders, nor would they have been in a position to do so,” Howard said, “If you’re dealing with modern weaponry--and, as I said, the Apex missile . . . (has a) range of 15 to 20 miles--you don’t wait until you’re in 3 or 4 miles range before you . . . take countermeasures.”

‘Still Scratching Our Heads’

The MIGs flew directly at the U.S. planes, which turned to avoid them. “They went through this maneuver five, six times to avoid that collision, and the MIGs turned back toward them every single time. And in the final maneuver, of course, they turned sharply into the wingman (second F-14),” Howard said.

“They were in no way a provocation or planned as a provocation,” the spokesman declared. “Frankly, we are still scratching our heads wondering why the Libyans did this. It doesn’t make any sense.”

At the Security Council debate in New York, Libya’s Muntasser repeated charges that the downing of the two MIGs was premeditated and the prelude to a large-scale American aggression. He urged the 15-nation body to condemn the American action and take measures to prevent a repetition.

U.S. Ambassador Herbert Okun offered the lone voice in justification of the American action, invoking the right of self-defense in response to “hostile behavior” by the Libyans, as other Arab and nonaligned states joined in denouncing the U.S. action.