by Tom Clancy
Friday, April 15, 1994—Nellis AFB Officers' Club
By the end of the first week of Green Flag 94-3, the 366th and the other attached units of the Blue Force had racked up an impressive record of damage to targets and defending SAM/AAA sites, as well as killing a small air force of adversary F-16s. The first four days had been a clear victory for the Blue Force. The 366th and its attached units were breaking Red/Green Flag records like crazy, and the staff at the Adversary Tactics Division was starting to get a bit punchy.
So the Red Flag staff controlling the exercise decided something had to be done to keep things interesting: Starting the following Monday, the adversary F-16Cs would be allowed to use tactics simulating the very agile and capable Russian Su-27/35 Flanker (it resembles our F-15 Eagle). The rules of engagement would also be loosened for the Red Forces on the ground, making it easier for them to fire their simulated missiles at Blue aircraft.
We spent the afternoon touring the Threat Training Facility across the street from the Red Flag building, which maintains just about the finest collection of foreign military equipment anywhere in America (it's sometimes called the petting zoo). Everything from a French Roland SAM launcher to Russian MiGs can be viewed here. Just ten years ago, the whole facility was highly classified; but now, the Air Force lets Boy Scouts and civic leaders tour the facility. What a change the end of the Cold War has made!
A Soviet-built ZSU-23-4 mobile anti-aircraft gun system in the yard of the Nellis AFB threat training facility. This radar-controlled system is one of the significant threats to tactical aircraft, and can be studied by aircrews visiting the base during Red/Green Flag exercises and Weapons school.
Craig E. Kaston
As the week wore down, and the last mission of the day came in, the thoughts of the aviators and staff officers turned to the observance of a Red/ Green Flag tradition: Friday night at the Nellis O-Club. Now it should be said that given the pressures for moral, physical, and mental perfection, such celebrations are kept to a bare minimum. But to remove the camaraderie of Friday night at the club would be to remove one of the most important social institutions in the pilots' lives. Thus, after appropriate assigning of designated drivers and agreement about the time we would all return to the hotel, we headed down to the Nellis AFB Officers' Club for a long evening of "Happy Hour."
The original O-Club that stood during the glory days of the 1970s and 1980s had been torn down a few years back and replaced by a building now used as the open officers' mess and club. The present building, though splendid in its own way, lacks some of the historic character of the old club. To make up for this, the builders of the new facility kept the old club's tabletops (where generations of fighter pilots had burned in their names and messages with woodburning irons) and recycled them as wall panels. As you walk by, you see the names of aces and wild weasels, POWs and MIAs, Medal of Honor winners, and MiG killers; and it is hard not to stare at names of people you know, people you will never know, and those you wish you had known.
Colonel Robin Scott, the 366th Wing Operations Group commander (handling billiard balls at left), referees a game of Crud for members of wing at the Nellis AFB Officers' Club on a Friday night.
John D. Gresham
As the bar area fills up, the evening begins to get more lively. The music is a mix of rock and country, and it is loud! Every generation of USAF fliers has gone to war with their own brand of music. Where World War II vets took Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey records with them, and the Vietnam-era fliers had Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, today's aircrews seem to enjoy country/rock music as the tunes for their times. Back in the '80s, the old days of Red Flag, Friday night was the time for macho contests or even fights in the parking lot, but such behavior does not fly in today's Air Force. Luckily, there is a game called Crud to absorb the competitive energy of the aircrews. Crud is an odd little contest, with elements of soccer, racquet-ball, and billiards all mixed together. Played on a pool table with a pair of billiard balls, it is a full-contact sport for teams of two or more. The idea is to use a cue ball to hit the other ball (you use your bare hands to throw the cue ball), while it bounces around the table. You play in ordered relays, and either a break in the order or a missed ball results in a score. The game requires a referee, and this is inevitably the senior officer present. Normally this would have been General McCloud, but he was attending General Loh's annual wing commanders' conference, so Colonel Robin Scott took over. The Nellis O-Club bar has the finest playing area, called a Crud Pit, in the country. The walls are lined with sandbags, and there is plenty of space to set down long-necked bottles of beer (the favorite of the pilots) while you are playing.
As the evening wore on, and the music got slower so the couples could dance, some of us, including Lieutenant Colonels Clawson and "Boom-Boom" Turcott, moved to a corner to talk. Toasts were drunk to departed friends, and everyone went their way for the weekend. By midnight, only the AOC staff was still working, the lights in their tent city still glowing as they planned the Phase III strikes for the second week of Green Flag 94-3.
Monday, April 18, 1994
Every April 18th the USAF commemorates Jimmy Doolittle's bombing raid on Japan (Doolittle had recently passed away). This day, however, safety was uppermost in the minds of the Green Flag controllers: Most fatal Red/Green Flag accidents take place on Monday after the weekend break. Throughout the day, especially at the briefings, the safety rules were hammered into the aircrews as they were admonished to "take it easy" while they got back into the "groove" of flying. A special safety video was played for the crews just before they headed to their aircraft. With a deafening musical backup from ZZ Top playing "Viva Las Vegas" (appropriate, don't you think?), it was five minutes of near misses and accidents that will never be shown to the public. The idea was to shock the fliers a bit and make them think.
We sat in on the afternoon briefing in anticipation of watching the live action on the big screen RFMDS (Red Flag Measurement and Debrief System), while the afternoon strikes hit their targets. There were new wrinkles in the balance of forces this day, as the Red Force got their new simulated Flanker fighters, and the Red ground units got their new rules of engagement. There was a shift away from using live ordnance and decoys, since they were in short supply. That morning, we had watched LANTIRN videotapes showing LGB and IIR Maverick missile deliveries, and it was easy to see why the uprange target arrays had taken such a beating the previous week. There is a general shortage of targets at Nellis AFB, and the range crews have to be creative to keep the ranges stocked with fresh ones.
Mother Nature had also decided to spice up the exercise with some variety. The weather had changed, and layers of heavy cloud hung over the northern range areas. Extra precautions would be needed to guarantee deconfliction between aircraft, along with special weather reconnaissance flights to determine if conditions were good enough to run the missions safely. The morning flight had gone all right, but eight hours of the desert sun had stirred up the air considerably, making the weather a bit dicey.
By 1400, we were comfortably seated in the viewing theater in the Red Flag building, staring at a projected screen display of the situation up on the northern ranges. We had a "God's-eye view" of the action on both sides, and we could identify various aircraft by color codes. The radio chatter on the squadron nets was piped in, giving us the feeling that we were watching some sort of bizarre video game with an audio track. Today's Blue Force targets were restrikes on SCUD and supply convoy targets that needed to be hit again. From the Red Force, with their "new" airplanes and enhanced ROE, came new tactics. They would attempt to disrupt the strike by attacking Blue's High Value Heavy Airframe Aircraft (HVHAA) such as the E-3, the Rivet Joint, or the tankers. Using a decoy force of aggressor F-16s down low, they would bait the 390th's "wall of Eagles"; then they would send two other F-16s into a ballistic "zoom" climb over the top of the F-15s to get at the HVHAAs. This would draw off the escorting Eagles from the strike forces, allowing re
generated aggressor aircraft more freedom of action against the strike aircraft. Red had tried this tactic unsuccessfully several times before, but the combination of the weather and the new rules made them think it might work this time.
Three Block 52 F-16Cs of the 366th Wing's 389th Fighter Squadron peel away from a 22nd Aerial Refueling Squadron KC-135R tanker, on their way to targets on the Nellis AFB ranges during Green Flag 94-3.
John D. Gresham
The weather recon birds almost canceled the mission, but at the last minute, they allowed the exercise to continue with flight restrictions between 15,000 and 25,000 feet/4,572 and 6,720 meters. The wall of Eagles moved forward, and the "push" call launched the Blue strike force toward the targets. It was a mess. The cloud deck divided the sky into high and low zones, creating two separate fights for the Eagles. The two aggressor F-16s made their move over the top, but they did not go unnoticed. The AWACS aircraft saw what was happening and called for support from the F-15s. The two Red Falcons got close, but not close enough for a shot at the HVHAAs before the Eagles drove them off. Still, the Eagle drivers were agitated that night over dinner. They would have to find ways to adjust their "wall" tactics for bad weather.
And then it happened. Everyone was already on the way out when an emergency call came in that one of the U.S. Army OH-58C helicopters was down… and it was bad. Everyone went silent. The 66th RQS rushed an HH- 60G Pave Hawk up to the crash site to look for survivors. But there were no survivors. Both crewmen, officers from the 2-229 Attack Helicopter Regiment at Fort Rucker, Alabama, had perished in the crash. It was the first fatal accident to take place during a Flag exercise in over three years, and it cast a pall over the rest of the day.
In early 1995, the causes of the crash are still being assessed, though it appears that the chopper hit a rock wall of a mountain while returning to Indian Springs. The old Monday-after-the-weekend jinx had struck again, and the Green Flag staff was not happy. They immediately went on a tear with the aircrews to review safety and ROE instructions. Dinner that night did not taste very good.
Tuesday, April 19, 1994—Adversary Tactics Operations Center
Today we would view the morning mission from the Adversary Tactics Control Center, then fly an afternoon tanker mission with the 22nd ARS. Our host, Major Steve Cutshell, gave us the Red side of the Green Flag story. He confessed that the 366th had given the Red Force challenges they had never experienced before, and that subsequent exercises might require more Air National Guard F-16s to reinforce the Red air forces. On the other hand, the ground-based Red forces had done well, considering the age of the equipment. The wily contractor personnel who live uprange and operate the emitters have years of experience. Indeed, they could probably teach the Russians a thing or two about how to use their systems! Red communications jamming against the Have Quick II radios had been fairly effective, though it tended to wipe out their own communications. And Red's radar jamming usually worked, though the newest U.S. airborne radars with advanced signal processing can out-fox most ground-based jammers, or just burn through them with raw power.
That afternoon, we headed back out to the HVHAA ramp, and were pleasantly surprised to find we were assigned to the same aircraft (62-3572) and crew we rode with the previous week. This time we were the second tanker in the flight, called "Refit," and our call sign was Ruben-50. We would refuel six F-16s from the 389th FS that were going to strike targets on the southern side of the range, as well as a pair of F-4G Wild Weasel aircraft from the 561st FS at Nellis AFB. The Vipers would each get 5,000 lb./2,272 kg. of fuel, with 8,000 lb./3,636 kg. going to each of the Weasels. Since the F-4s had the shortest "legs" of any aircraft in the strike force, they would tank last, to be as full as possible when the push to the targets came. Takeoff went smoothly, though there was a lot more cloud cover this afternoon, a residue of the previous day's thunderstorms. This made for a rough ride, and Sergeant Hughes's skills were taxed to keep the tanking on schedule. He had particular difficulty with the old refueling receptacles of the Phantoms; their tricky (and now worn-out) refueling probe latching mechanism had trouble establishing and maintaining a solid connection. Nevertheless, he managed to fill everyone up, and they all made the mission push on time.
An F-4G Wild Weasel aircraft from the 57th Wing's 561st Fighter Squadron pulls away from a 22nd Aerial Refueling Squadron KC-135R tanker during Green Flag 94-3. These defense-suppression aircraft are rapidly being replaced by F-16Cs equipped with the AQS- 213 HARM Targeting System pod.
John D. Gresham
Then, just as we were scheduled to head home, there was an urgent radio call from the Blue Force air-to-air mission commander. Several aggressor F-16s had finally made it over the top, and were chasing several of the HVHAAs, including us! Luckily, a couple of Eagles hunted them down, but it was now clearly too risky to leave the big birds unescorted during missions. For the rest of the week, until it was certain that all the airborne Red aircraft had been killed, there would be fighter cover for the HVHAAs.
Friday, April 22, 1994
As the last missions finished up, the 366th and the other units prepared to pack up and head back to their home bases. While the Gunfighters had "won," that really was not the intention of the exercise or the true measure of what was achieved. Much more important: The composite wing concept was validated, at least as far as the resources of Nellis were capable of testing it.
For the 366th Wing itself, there was a mass of data to be analyzed, assessed, and acted upon when they got back to Mountain Home AFB. As the last missions were flown and the ground crews started packing up their gear onto the FAST tankers, everyone could take pride in his or her own contribution. The raw steel that General Hinton had passed on to General McCloud the previous year was now a sharp sword, though it might still require some polishing. That could wait for tomorrow. Today the Gunfighters were going home to their families. As we joined them, it gave us much to reflect on, for we had seen more than any civilian had seen before about how the USAF gets ready for war.
AFTERWARDS
Later in 1994, we returned to Mountain Home AFB to see how the wing was implementing the changes that emerged from Green Flag 94-3. In the few months since the deployment, many jobs in the wing had changed hands. When we arrived, Dave McCloud had less than a week left in command of the 366th; his next assignment was a staff job for General Joe Ralston (now the ACC commander) in the Operations Directorate of the Air Staff. This was a good omen for his future promotability to lieutenant general (he made the list "under the zone" in early 1995). McCloud's replacement, Brigadier General "Lanny" Trapp, came from the A-10 wing at Davis-Monthan AFB in Arizona, and chose an F-15E Strike Eagle as the new "Wing King" aircraft. Colonel Robin Scott had left to attend the U.S. Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. Lieutenant Colonel Clawson, now promoted to full colonel, moved over to the wing staff. Roger "Boom-Boom" Turcott, who had given John Gresham his ride, moved up to command the "Bold Tigers." And the 34th BS became fully operational with its B-1Bs. It conducted its first Global Power/Global Reach mission just six months after "standing up." The steady flow of new personnel is a positive sign that the wing is alive and healthy.
Finally, there was one more big exercise for the 366th Wing in the fall of 1994—Joint Task Force (JTF)-95. JTF-95 was planned to team elements of the new Atlantic Command (a carrier battle group and a Marine expeditionary unit) in a combined exercise. But just as the exercise was kicking off, the U.S. intervention in Haiti and an emergency deployment to Kuwait took away the Atlantic Command assets, wiping out the entire JTF-95 exercise package. In our "new world order," global events seem to be keeping military units too busy to train for the future. In a time when we are contemplating further force structure cutbacks, that is something to think about.
Roles and Missions: The 366th Wing in the Real World
As we have seen, the power a composite wing like the 366th can bring to bear in a time of war is impressive, possibly even decisive. But how mig
ht this power actually be used in a crisis? The question is often on the minds of a number of folks, from the JCS Tank in the Pentagon to the flight line at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho. (Currently, only one of the three USAF composite wings assigned to ACC, the 23rd at Pope AFB, South Carolina, has ever been deployed during a crisis.) The decision when and where to use the 366th, with its unique capabilities, will be a tough judgment call for the national command authorities who will order it deployed and the regional CinCs who will command it during a crisis.
The following scenario is designed to show you some of the possibilities. I hope it will help you understand the capabilities of the 366th Wing and of modern airpower in general. The composite wings of ACC, along with the carrier air wings (CVWs) on our aircraft carriers, are going to be our aerial fire brigades for the next generation or so. If the last few years have been any indication, the coming decades will be violent enough to make the Cold War look no more frightening than an election in Chicago.
OPERATION GOLDEN GATE — VIETNAM, MAY 2000