by Tom Clancy
With the initial phase completed, the deployment will transition to a more sustained pace. Additional fighter units will deploy, the bombers will continue their strike operations, and a sustained tanker air bridge will be established. During this transition phase, the 366th would be generating ATOs for all of the deployed forces, as well as for the bomber/tanker missions coming in from the United States. Should host or coalition aircraft wish to join in, they can supply their own command and control hookups into the 366th Air Operations Center (AOC). And if the crisis were to escalate, or the tempo of operations grow, you would probably see a full-sized theater-level JFACC Tactical Air Control Center (TACC) from one of the numbered air forces dispatched to relieve the 366th AOC. At this point, air operations would intensify, and you would see a sustained Op Tempo similar to that of Operation Desert Storm.
This is the current scheme for deploying airpower with ACC. Whether it survives the first hours of a crisis remains to be seen. But given the experience of some of the people who have worked on these plans, it represents the best use of the available ACC assets today. Of course, as new aircraft, weapons, and sensors come on-line, the plans will be altered to suit the new situation.
No military operations plan ever runs completely as designed. When General Horner laid out the deployment plan for Operation Desert Shield in August 1990, he did it in an office in CENTCOM headquarters at MacDill AFB near Tampa, by himself, on a pad of paper with a pencil. No other JTF commander will ever have to do that again. That is the promise that Mike Loh, Joe Ralston, and the ACC staff have made to unit commanders throughout this new air force that they have built.
ACC TOMORROW: COUNTDOWN TO 2001
And what of the future? The next few years will be, if anything, more dangerous and uncertain than the last few. Given the wild rush of events since Mikhail Gorbachev took power in 1985, we can only imagine what the final years of the 20th century will bring.
So what will ACC look like as it moves towards the 21st century? Almost certainly it will be smaller. Older types of aircraft such as the B-52 and F-111 will disappear, and the small fleet of B-2A Spirit bombers will make itself felt. Also arriving will be the first of the new F-22A stealth air superiority fighters which will revolutionize air-to-air warfare. It would be nice to think that these new airframes will be bought in the kind of numbers that will make them decisive in future combat situations. But with B-2A production limited by Congress to a mere twenty airframes, and the F-22 production run planned at just 442 units, such hopes may be just that. Hopes. Nevertheless, it has been an Air Force tradition to equip their aircrews with the best that the American treasury can buy, despite the numbers involved. Also, there is a firm commitment by USAF leadership to keep critical design and manufacturing capabilities from wasting away. The USAF needs to maintain its share of the defense industrial base. Three areas that General Loh has identified as critical are:
• Design, development, testing, and production of bomber and fighter stealth airframes such as the F-22, F-117, and B-2.
• Design, development, testing, and production of heavy airlift aircraft such as the C-17, capable of carrying outsized cargo loads.
• High-speed computer and electronics design to support improved avionics capabilities, as well as improving reliability and maintainability of new and existing aircraft.
In particular, he would like to see continued low-rate production (two to three a year) of the B-2, so that the bomber force might stabilize at around 120 airframes (say, 80 B-1Bs and 40 B-2s) at the turn of the century. In this way the force would remain both credible and survivable following the retirement of the last of the B-52s. As for the F-22, that is another problem. Recently, senior Administration officials proposed that the F-22 program should be "stretched out" so that the new fighter's service introduction would be delayed until around the year 2005. This would undoubtedly result in a rapid escalation of the program's cost and force ACC to push their already limited and aging fleet of F-15Cs to last another five years more than planned. It may well be that the program stretch will be required. But it will come at a high price in time and treasure. The old adage "Pay me now, or pay me later" was never truer than in the game of defense procurement.
As for the rest of the ACC combat force, there will be a modest series of upgrades. Addition of Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers and new Have Quick II radios will certainly be applied across the board. These are relatively low-cost upgrades which will be felt across the whole of the USAF. A more subtle upgrade is being applied across the entire ACC fleet in the form of improved sensors to target improved weapons. Some of these are as simple as software upgrades to enable a greater percentage of the ACC fighter force to fire the AIM-120 AMRAAM missile. Others — such as adding the AN/ASQ- 213 HTS pods to the Block 50/52 F-16C — cost a bit more, yet provide a cost-effective, interim replacement for an existing but dying capability. Still others, like the AIM-9X version of the classic Sidewinder air-to-air missile and the new series of air-to-ground munitions, are costly, but necessary to maintain the credibility of a shrinking force. It is important that Congress and the American people understand that the money spent on these programs is not just being spent to protect the stock values of defense contractor shareholders, but to maintain the very credibility of our military forces. A bit of money spent today may prevent an aggressor from deciding that tomorrow is a good day to test the will of America and her allies. A war never fought is always the cheapest war. We should always look for the real bargain.
Another financial problem for ACC, and the entire U.S. military, is that they must bear the burden of an unnecessary support infrastructure that is essentially a large public works program for members of Congress. Let me explain. Unless you have been on Venus the last few years, you probably have heard something about the Base Reduction and Closing (BRAC) Commission which has been recommending the closing or realignment (i.e., reorganization) of various surplus military facilities around the United States. The fights over which bases will remain and which will be closed have been among the most vicious and partisan in memory. Because of the loss of civilian jobs inherent in any base closing, individual members of the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate have taken the fight to keep pet facilities open to sometimes absurd lengths.
For the USAF and ACC, this has meant they have been forced to keep facilities open and paid for that they simply do not require or desire. For example, the USAF currently maintains five Air Logistics Centers (ALCs) around the United States. These are massive facilities, where the Air Force modifies or rebuilds aircraft of virtually every kind. However, the requirement for five ALCs was set for the USAF during the Cold War, not with the reduced force of today. Senior USAF officials have publicly stated to me that they only require two ALCs to service the current USAF fleet. The ALCs at Tinker AFB, Oklahoma (near Oklahoma City), and Hill AFB, Utah (near Ogden, Utah), have won awards for their facilities and personnel, and they can handle, with capacity and capability to spare, every aircraft in the USAF. Yet mainly due to the efforts of the congressional delegations of California, Texas, and Georgia where the endangered facilities are located, the Air Force has been unable to close any of the excess facilities. Between payroll and O&M costs, each ALC probably costs the USAF close to a billion dollars a year to keep open. Just the savings from closing these three facilities could support between ten and fifteen wings of combat aircraft every year!
Bases are, of course, not the only pork in the military budget. The USAF and other services are also forced to bear the financial strain of buying weapons and systems they do not need or desire, so that a contractor can be sustained in a home state or district. I wonder at times how the shame does not show on the faces of those elected and appointed to serve the people. So, will the Air Force and other services ever be allowed to cut the unnecessary overhead costs from their budgets? Doubtful to impossible. Closings cost votes, and the members of Congress much prefer to let our combat forces shrink than suffer a los
s at the polls.
It should also be said that USAF leadership would love to restructure their support facilities to get more out of them. One of the more interesting ideas I have heard is the concept of merging all U.S. military flight test facilities and test pilot schools into a small group of consolidated facilities in the open areas of the western United States. This would allow the Department of Defense to close a number of facilities such as Naval Air Station (NAS) Patuxent River, Maryland, and Eglin AFB, Florida, while retaining a robust test capability at bases such as Edwards AFB and NAS Point Mugu, California. Again, hundreds of millions of dollars could be saved yearly, if only Congress and the Administration would allow it. So the next time you hear a member of Congress whining about the inefficiency and bloat in the U.S. military, send them a letter, fax, or e-mail, and ask them when they last closed a base in their home state or district! The burden of their pork is being borne by folks like General Ralston and his combat aircrews.
Despite these problems, ACC remains the single most powerful air force in the world today. In spite of the challenges and financial burdens that they bear, they will always do their best with what we the taxpayers care to give them. Let us hope that it is enough, and that they will not come back saying, "You could have done better."
The 366th Wing: A Guided Tour
Audentes Fortuna Juvat — Fortune Favors the Bold.
— 366TH WING MOTTO
You really have to want to get there, and it is not easy — some fifty miles outside Boise, Idaho, down Interstate 84 to a turnoff onto a road that seems to dead-end into nowhere. After about ten of the most desolate miles you will ever drive, you arrive at the gate. Your next impression is surprise, for what you have found is a state-of-the-art military facility in the middle of the Idaho desert, a place with the unlikely name of Mountain Home Air Force Base (AFB). The buildings are modern and trim, the flight line is vast and spacious. Then you notice the sign, "Home of the Gunfighters."
And so you get your first introduction to the most exciting combat unit in the U.S. Air Force today, the 366th Wing. Note that I say "Wing." Not "Fighter Wing" or "Bombardment Wing," but just "Wing." The 366th is made up of five flying squadrons, including a mix of fighters, bombers, and tankers, thus, its unofficial title of "Composite Wing." As such, it is controversial, since single-type aircraft wings have been the norm in the United States Air Force since World War II. Mixing up different kinds of aircraft in the same wing makes hardcore traditionalists very nervous. The traditionalists are wrong… in this case. If the Air Force is to meet all of its worldwide commitments, especially with the huge drawdown in Air Force strength since the end of the Cold War, they're going to need an edge. The 366th and the composite wing concept is just such an edge.
THE COMPOSITE WING CONCEPT
The 366th is the product of Air Force experience in Operation Desert Storm… as well as what might have happened during Operation Desert Shield in August 1990 if Iraq had continued south into Saudi Arabia after the invasion of Kuwait. In that anxious time, because of its long reach and ability to react quickly, airpower was critical to the defense of the Saudi oil fields. And yet, except for a pair of United States Navy (USN) Carrier Air Wings (CVWs), American airpower was slow to reach the area; and the two CVWs would have had a hard time stopping any Iraqi advance south. It took weeks to deploy enough air units to block an Iraqi strike into Saudi Arabia or the Emirates. Worse yet was the condition of their units when they arrived. Munitions and supporting equipment they would need to sustain an air campaign were scarce.The official badge of the 366th Wing, the "Gunfighters." U.S. Air Force
When the forces were at last deployed, there were doubts about how effective they would be in this "come as you are" war — without time for the kind of detailed planning and meticulous preparation military organizations love. As it happened — fortunately — General Chuck Horner had six months (August '90 to January '91) to get his forces and supplies in place, plan his strikes, and train his forces before he initiated offensive air operations. But the next dictator with expansionist ambitions may not be so foolish as to give us six months to get ready.
Time. Time is the enemy if you are responding to a fast-breaking situation. Time always seems to be on the other guy's side. Given time, that dictator might gain recognition for his actions and (alleged) grievances in the halls of international organizations like the United Nations. He might also have time to dig in his forces and make their position too costly to recapture. Time can kill you. The British effort to retake the Falkland Islands from Argentina in 1982 ultimately hinged on their ability to rapidly move a handful of Harrier and Sea Harrier jump jets into the area to provide air cover for their forces. The planes had to travel eight thousand miles by ship. And the hard-fought air campaign barely resulted in victory.
Time… Quick response of integrated, combat-ready airpower in a come-as-you-are war…
These thoughts buzzed around the collective brains of ACC. In Desert Shield we were lucky, they knew. But they also knew we needed something better than luck. One idea they tried came from the USAF's past — composite wings. These units have gone by many names. In World War II they were Air Commando Wings. During the Cold War they were Tactical Reconnaissance Wings. Whatever the name, they were created and used to solve an immediate problem.
In Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War at Al Kharj Air Base, the 4th Composite Wing (Provisional) was made up of an F-15C squadron from the 36th Tactical Fighter Wing (TFW) at Bitburg Airbase (AB), Germany, two squadrons of F-15Es from the 4th TFW at Seymour Johnson AFB, South Carolina, and a pair of Air National Guard (ANG) F-16 squadrons from New York and South Carolina. Another, even more unusual, composite unit was based at Incirlik AB in Turkey. Dubbed the 7440th Composite Wing, it was made up of no less than a dozen squadrons and detachments flying several different kinds of aircraft, a miniature air force unto itself. The 7440th was charged with running the air effort out of Turkey during Desert Storm (under the operational code name of Proven Force). And it represented the American effort in northern Iraq during and after the war, when it became the covering element for Operation Provide Comfort, the Kurdish relief effort in northern Iraq.
After the war, the lessons from Desert Storm were carefully analyzed to see what might have been done better, faster, and more efficiently. For the USAF leadership back in the Pentagon, one obvious lesson was the need to rapidly move integrated, combat-ready airpower into a crisis area, where it would either help defuse the developing crisis or actually begin combat operations, while follow-on forces arrived to take over the main effort.
As a result of these studies, the concept of special-purpose composite wings for specific missions was resurrected. Many different people within the Air Force had a hand in making this happen. General Mike Dugan, who was USAF Chief of Staff prior to Desert Shield and Desert Storm, proposed the idea to the USAF Air Staff. Following the war, the idea gained support from officers like Chuck Horner and Colonel John Warden who conducted a study of the concept. The final decision came from then-USAF Chief of Staff General Merrill "Tony" McPeak in the fall of 1991. As part of his general reorganization of the Air Force in 1992, McPeak authorized the creation of the 23rd Wing at Pope AFB, North Carolina, and the 366th Wing at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho. The 23rd was charged with supporting the rapid deployment units of the XVIII Airborne Corps (the primary ground component of CENTCOM), particularly the 82nd Airborne Division at nearby Fort Bragg, North Carolina, while the 366th Wing was formed to provide a rapidly deployable air interdiction force to deter or defeat enemy forces, and to provide a nucleus for other arriving air forces in an area. Both units were "stood up" in January 1992, being formed on the shells of two wings that were in the process of being shut down.
Getting the two wings up and running has created great challenges, the largest of which has been the cost of operating a unit with five different kinds of aircraft, ranging from fighters and bombers to tankers. Adverse publicity from a midair collision at Pop
e AFB didn't help either. In March 1994, a pair of 23rd Wing aircraft, an F-16 and a C-130, crashed into each other. The wreckage of the F-16 then struck a C-141 loaded with paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne, killing twenty-three and injuring dozens more.
After the crash, composite wings took a lot of flak from critics, who charged that the wide variety of aircraft flying in the pattern had something to do with the accident. The charge was absurd, and the critics knew it: Nellis AFB, Nevada, is the largest and busiest air force base in the world. During exercises, Nellis often has over a dozen different aircraft types in the pattern at one time, and has not had a midair in anyone's memory. The reason the critics were upset had little to do with the tragic accident. They just hated the idea of composite wings.
Despite the difficulties, composite wings appear to be working — working so well that a third such unit, the 347th Wing at Moody AFB, Georgia, has been formed to work with the XVIII Airborne Corps. Meanwhile, the 23rd Wing completed a highly successful deployment to Kuwait during the crisis that erupted in the fall of 1994, when a pair of Iraqi Republican Guard Divisions moved into the Basra area. Two of the 23rd's squadrons, one each of F-16Cs and C-130s, rapidly deployed to the region as part of a much larger airpower deployment, with virtually every kind of USAF aircraft contributing (several hundred aircraft were involved). Though the 23rd did not fly combat sorties, this first real-world use of a composite wing has to be judged a success. The Iraqis backed off. This, in fact, is the ultimate goal of airpower: to be so formidable that a potential foe chooses not to fight.