Chains of Command

by Dale Brown

  Now, sitting in his staff car surveying his flight line, he knew he had a daunting task ahead of him—made worse by the warning message from Strategic Command about some possible action very soon. He was going to have to give this unit a real kick in the ass, shake things up. When—not if but when—the shit hit the fan and they were tasked to go fight overseas, he wanted these warplanes to be ready.

  The flight line was virtually deserted. In the growing dawn, Mace could see snow heaped on airframes, fire bottles buried in snow, and taxiways surrounded by ridges of plowed snow and ice so high that visibility was impeded—one mountain of snow near the flight line, piled high by snowplows and truck-powered snowblowers, was over thirty feet high! Mace remembered back to his days at Pease Air Force Base in New Hampshire when they would put a bomb wing flag atop a snowpile like that and take bets on when the flag would reach the ground—mid-May was the best bet—but now, as the MG and not a give-a-shit crewdog, that pile of snow wasn’t funny anymore.

  A few crew chiefs were out working on planes with no shelters, no warm-up facilities, no support vehicles, not even a power cart to stand beside for warmth. Security police trucks were cruising up and down the taxiways between planes, the drivers slouched down in their seats, coming dangerously close to aircraft wingtips and pitot booms. Only a few of the tall “ballpark” light towers were on, and each tower was missing a good number of lamps. The aircraft were parked next to one another haphazardly, mainly because the crew chiefs or marshalers couldn’t see the taxi lines through the snow. The place was a mess. It was time to kick some butt.

  Mace’s first stop was the nearly empty base operations building, located just below the control tower, where he changed into green camouflage fatigues over thermal underwear, thick wool socks under cold weather mukluks, a grey parka with a fake fur hood, and a gray fur “mailman’s” hat (real fur this time) with black subdued lieutenant colonel’s rank pinned on the front crown. He grabbed a cup of coffee and a microwaved egg sandwich while receiving a report from the weather shop.

  Mace then drove over to Maintenance Group headquarters, located in a large aircraft hangar adjacent to the flight line. He was met inside the front door by Senior Master Sergeant Michael Zaparski, the Group NCOIC (Non-Commissioned Officer In Charge), a short, thick-waisted, barrel-chested, gray-haired man wearing a long-sleeved shirt and tie. “Colonel Mace?” he greeted his new superior officer, opening the door and shaking hands with him. “Glad to see you, sir. Afraid you might have gotten lost.”

  “Nice to meet you, Sergeant Zaparski,” Mace said. “No, not lost, but I wanted to get a weather report first before briefing the staff.” He removed his hat, jacket, and gloves, stamped snow off his boots, straightened his fatigues, then turned on his heels and marched into his office, where the three squadron commanders and three division commanders snapped to attention.

  The Maintenance Group consisted of three squadrons, whose commanders reported directly to Mace, and three division staffs of deputy commander status. The largest squadron in the group, and the largest single unit in the entire wing, was the 394th Aircraft Generation Squadron (AGS), with over a thousand men and women, who were responsible for day-to-day maintenance, launch, and recovery of the forty-four planes at Plattsburgh. The AGS was divided into two aircraft-maintenance units, or AMUs, one for the RF-111G Vampire reconnaissance/bombers and one for the KC-135E Stratotanker aerial-refueling tankers. Each AMU was composed of the aircraft crew chiefs and assistant crew chiefs who were colocated with their respective flying squadrons and worked side by side with the aircrew members, plus maintenance specialists that assisted and supported the crew chiefs. The 394th Component Repair Squadron repaired avionics, engines, aircraft systems, fabricated aircraft parts, and maintained the sophisticated electronic sensors used in the aircraft; and the 394th Equipment Maintenance Squadron repaired aircraft ground-support vehicles, performed phase and periodic aircraft inspections, maintained and stored the weapons, and maintained the aircraft weapons release and carriage systems. The group’s three division staffs—Operations, Quality Assurance, and Personnel—assisted the group commander in carrying out day-to-day operations.

  “It’s very nice to meet you all, and thank you for coming in so early,” Daren Mace said tightly to his assembled staff. “I wish I could sit down, tell you about myself, and give you my philosophy of life, but this is the first day of Hell Week and the flight line looks like shit, so the honeymoon will never even start.” The polite smiles on the faces of the squadron and division commanders abruptly disappeared.

  Mace’s assistant group commander, Major Anthony Razzano, was impatiently standing beside Mace’s desk, obviously perturbed at being awakened two hours early. He was wearing a long-sleeve Air Force blue shirt, a clip-on tie, and dark-blue trousers with Corfam shoes—how the hell he made it into the building without getting a shoeful of snow, Mace couldn’t figure. Beside the door Mace noticed a young black female lieutenant, Alena Porter, who was the maintenance group’s chief of administration—she was in utility uniform, camo fatigues and boots. Every one of the division staff officers except Porter was in blues.

  “First off, nobody shows up in this office during Hell Week in anything but utility uniform,” Mace said, affixing his gaze briefly on Razzano to hammer down the point. “This is a combat unit getting ready to deploy, and you will wear utility uniforms. Next, I want—”

  “Excuse me, sir,” Razzano interrupted, obviously interested in testing the boundaries of the new “old man’s” style right away, “but it’s too uncomfortable to work in this office with fatigues.”

  “Major Razzano, I was not considering your comfort when I issued my instructions—I was thinking of the combat effectiveness of this unit,” Mace said. “However, speaking of comfort …” He turned to Major William LeFebre, commander of the Component Repair Squadron. “Major, perhaps you could explain to me why three CRS troops are on the ramp working on aircraft without a shelter.”

  LeFebre shrugged his shoulders, looking for help from anyone else in the room, not finding any, then stammering, “I … I didn’t know about that, sir …”

  “And why, Major Razzano, was Civil Engineering not advised to clear my ramp and taxiways so my maintenance troops can get out to their planes?” To the Aircraft Generation Squadron commander, Major Charles Philo, he said, “And why do my planes have six inches of snow on them? And why don’t I have six airplanes in the shelters ready to generate this morning? You know there’s going to be a Bravo exercise, Major.”

  “Sir, we don’t usually start generating aircraft until we’re given the word from headquarters,” Philo said. “We’re supposed to act as if we’ve been given a mobility order … you know, go from a standing start … ?”

  “Don’t give me that crap, Major,” Mace retorted. “That sounds like a line of bullshit from some of the old, lazy MGs that used to be around, the MGs and their staffs who allow snow to pile up on combat aircraft and who allow their troops to stand in knee-deep snow in freezing weather. This is a combat unit, people. We don’t do exercises—exercises are for units that have a mission only if combat starts. We train for war. Does everybody understand this concept? We don’t need exercises, we need to be ready to go to war at any time. Is that clear to everyone?”

  “But sir, we’re not at war,” the Equipment Maintenance Squadron commander, Major Emily Harden, interjected.

  “You listen to the news this morning, Major?” Mace interrupted. “You know about Russia invading the Ukraine?” Judging by the expressions on some of the faces around him, it was obvious that many in the room, including Razzano, did not know about the events happening half a world away.

  “Of course, sir,” Harden replied uneasily. “But I’m referring to this Reserve training week. Bravo exercises are not preparations for war—they’re just, well, exercises. “

  “Sergeant Zaparski, give me a copy of the tasking order for this week’s ’exercise’ and give it to the Major,” Mace said. Zapars
ki did as he was told. “Read it, Major, and tell me if you find the words ’exercise,’ ‘simulated,’ or any such term in there.”

  Harden read the message quickly, her eyes widening in surprise. After a few seconds, she said, “Well … no, but we’re deploying to Plattsburgh, for one thing. We’re loading training weapons …”

  “Major, I can assure you, a real deployment order looks exactly the same as that order does,” Mace said. “The location may be different, and the weapons loadout would be different, but the order looks just like that one. Now, if you knew that a war was coming, would you wait for that piece of paper to arrive before you began to prepare?”

  “But this is an exercise, sir,” Harden said resolutely. “It’s training, pure and simple. We have certain rules, certain ‘academic situation’ changes that differentiate this from an actual deployment. To give you an example, it says prepackaged mobility stockpiles in certain categories will not be available. Now I know they’re available, because I check them myself, so it means they’re simulated for this exercise.”

  “Those items are gone, Major,” Mace said. “I got the word this morning. They were loaded on a LogAir flight and departed about four hours ago—coincidentally, this was a few hours after the Russian air attack in the Ukraine. Everyone get the picture?” Mace could see his new staff member’s eyes widening in surprise—they were indeed getting the picture. “Nine pallets, eleven-point-seven-two tons, intermediate destination Langley Air Force Base, final destination is classified.”

  “That’s crazy,” Harden said incredulously. “They can’t take prepack mobility items without coordinating with me!”

  “They can and they did—I confirmed it with Resource Plans Division,” Mace said. “They were going to let us know just before the battle staff meeting. You people just lost half your prepackaged spares and tools, and you didn’t even know it. We’re behind the eight ball, people. You think you know it all, you think you got it wired, you think it’ll all go smoothly—and you’re all wrong.

  “Now I know, and you know, that the commander is going to order us to generate eighteen bombers and twenty-two tankers in a few hours. Why are we sitting on our asses? Why aren’t my ramps plowed? Why aren’t we prepared to go to war around here? And how in the hell can you people think that everything is normal when the fucking Russians sent a full squadron of Bear bombers on an obvious cruise-missile launch run over the Ukraine just a few hours ago?

  “For us, war begins right now, and I don’t just mean the Bravo exercise. I want six … no, I want eight planes in the shelters immediately, fueled and ready to upload, and from now on I want eight aircraft in those shelters at all times in four-hour generation status. Is that clear?”

  “Eight planes on round-the-clock four-hour status?” Razzano asked wide-eyed, already calculating his work load with dread. Four-hour status meant that all of the weapons preload functions had been accomplished, the aircraft had been fueled and preflighted by AGS, and it was ready to upload weapons—no more than four hours from start to fully combat-ready. “Sir, it takes more manpower to get a plane up to weapon preload status than normal training status—keeping eight planes in weapons preload status will be a nightmare. We need to coordinate with security, get permission from Logistics and Mobility to service the shelters—”

  “Gentlemen and ladies, whatever it takes, I want it done. Weapon preload status will be our normal aircraft status from now on,” Mace said, impatiently holding up a hand to silence Razzano. “I will not tolerate this arbitrary ‘training’ status on my airframes. The normal day-to-day status of all airframes in a combat unit such as ours is supposed to be category two, which is at least 50 percent of all aircraft in combat preload status. I see nothing in the regs or the wing ops plan that directs the MG of this wing to keep his planes in anything other than combat preload status, so that is what we will do.

  “We have eight alert shelters on our flight line, and from now on I want all eight of them filled with bombers ready to upload weapons or photo pods. The same goes with our tankers—I want twelve planes, not just four, on strip alert status, fueled, preflighted—deiced and ready to fly in thirty minutes. Is that clear?”

  Heads with surprised faces nodded all around the room.

  “Next item,” Mace continued. “Squadron commanders, your place is on the flight line with your troops, not in the office with your feet up. I know you all have paperwork and administrative chores to do, but when you’re not working on squadron business I want you on the flight line or in the shops with your troops. They need to see the officer cadre, and you need to know what they need and where the bottlenecks are. You all have cellular phones, so start learning to work on the move with them. Is that clear?” He received murmured “Yes, sirs” from the squadron commanders.

  “In order to make the previous directive work, I want division staffs to start taking over the routine daily functions of the squadrons,” Mace continued. “Security, compliance, safety, manuals, training, inprocessing—I want all that stuff handled by the division staff instead of each squadron having its own safety officer, newcomers officer, training officer, and so on. These units are spending too much valuable time on shuffling papers and not enough time fixing airplanes, and that will stop right now.” Now it was the squadron commanders’ turn to smile, and the division staff officers’ turn to look grumpy and displeased. Routine staff functions and additional duties not involving aircraft maintenance did eat up a lot of every airman’s time, and finally the squadrons were going to get some relief.

  “That’s all I have right now, ladies and gents—we have airframes to generate. I’ll see you all in the field. Major Razzano, a word before you leave.”

  When the door to Mace’s office was closed behind the departing squadron and division staff officers, Razzano crossed his arms on his chest and said, “Well, I think you got everybody’s attention now. What do you do for an encore?”

  “We make it work, Tony,” Mace said, running a hand through his blond hair. “It’ll be a ball-buster, but it’s gotta be done. We’re going to do it until someone orders me to stop.” Mace paused for a moment, waiting for another challenge from Razzano; then, when all he got was a disapproving, skeptical glare, Mace asked, “Why didn’t they make you group commander, Tony?”

  “Why ask me, sir?”

  “I checked your records: you have more specialty experience than I do, and although you’re not a flyer, that’s never been a requirement for MG. Why aren’t you in command? I don’t see anything in your records that would have disqualified you.”

  Razzano was obviously stung by the pointed question, and Mace could see the ire rising in his face: “Why aren’t you a wizzo anymore, sir?” Razzano asked, clearly agitated. “I heard you screwed the pooch back in the Sandbox. Is that why they stuck you in maintenance, sir?”

  The question stung Mace a little, but it didn’t slow his response down. “You’re not privileged to hear that information, Major, but I can tell you this: yes, I had my eyes open and my brain in gear and I didn’t let anybody else tell me what was bullshit or the truth. Yeah, I got hammered for it, and yeah, I got stuck in maintenance over in Turkey. But when I got in maintenance, I kicked ass. Now I’m the MG for the only Vampire wing in the goddamned world, I still got my promotion, and I still got my wings.

  “I know you, Tony. I got the same give-a-shit attitude as you,” Mace lectured. “The difference between you and me is that you go around saying, ‘I don’t give a shit,’ and it doesn’t get done, while I say, ‘I don’t give a shit,’ and I press on and do it anyway. Most people don’t care what you do, Major—they just want you to take charge, take responsibility, do something. That’s what I want to do.

  “I know guys like you, too. You play golf with the brass, go boating together, go to each other’s picnics. You can stop me from doing the things I want to do. The question is, are you going to play ball with me or are we going to tangle?”

  “You’re the MG, sir,” Ra
zzano said, “but I’ve been running this shop now for four years. You want my help, we gotta work together.”

  “You know how to put together an ACC readiness report?”

  The question took Razzano by surprise. He hesitated, searched his memory, then replied, “No, sir, but I—”

  “Lieutenant Porter!” Mace shouted through the door. A few seconds later, Porter opened the door and stood in the doorway. “Lieutenant, you know how to put together an ACC readiness report?”

  “All I need is the message time, sir,” Porter replied.

  “Good. Lieutenant Porter, you are the new chief of staff.” Her mouth dropped open in surprise. “And since the MG is not authorized by regulation to have a vice commander, Major Razzano, and since you’re not qualified to be either chief of staff or MG, you are out of a job. Report to General Cole’s office for reassignment.”

  “What?” Razzano retorted. “Hey, you can’t do that!”

  “I can and I did,” Mace said. “I just got here, Major, but I know the regs better than you do. You were made vice MG because the last two MGs were weak-dicks, but they didn’t make you the MG, so that makes you a weak-dick too. This group was in your hands for four years, and you let it go to hell, and you’ve obviously demonstrated your unwillingness to work with me, so you’re out of here.