It was quite a sight. Every kind of aircraft seemed to be there. Rows and rows and rows of helicopters, combat choppers like the Apache and lots of Chinook transport and troop carriers, dozens of C-130s and the enormous C-17 transport aircraft, and aeroplanes like the floppy-winged Russian Ilyushin Il-76s and Antonov An-24s that usually seemed to be flown by mercenaries. Simply scores of them.
None of the Russian aircraft looked as though they were very airworthy, but this was partly a design feature. British- and American-built planes tend to be quite rigid, but Russian ones just sag because that’s the way they’re built, with wings that seem to droop down as if they’re tired. Antonovs, in particular, sag so much that they look as if they’re broken even before you get in them.
There were little pockets of activity all over the helicopter area, in among this huge diversity of aircraft types, most of it centred around Rubb hangars. Technically known as ‘tension membrane relocatable structures’, these are semi-permanent rubberized fabric hangars of various sizes that are quick and easy to erect and dismantle. Each of them had a little ecosystem inside, with lighting, plug-in heating and other services, and at night it was easy to tell which ones were working because of the glow coming from inside. Inside them everyone was busy with the enormous amount of maintenance that needed to be done to the helicopters, which flew almost non-stop.
All the aircraft, in fact, flew much more than they were ever expected or intended to, so there was a constant stream of take-offs and landings. The place was noisy and dusty, with the ever-present background rumble of the heavy machinery employed in building roads, hard standings and other structures. Water trucks trundled around the airfield spraying water in a steady but fairly futile effort to keep the dust down.
One of the hangars caught my eye because it was so derelict.
‘Can’t anyone do something to repair that one?’ I asked Squid. ‘Or maybe bulldoze it? It’s obviously not used any more.’
I pointed at the horrible, rusted structure with rotting pieces of corrugated iron hanging from the roof. Daylight streamed through the dozens of holes in the roof where panels were missing. I guessed that the OC would just confirm that it was scheduled for demolition. But his reply was most unexpected.
‘You won’t believe it, but that’s one of the busiest hangars on the airfield,’ he said.
‘Really? Who uses it?’
‘If I tell you that, I might have to shoot you afterwards.’
At the accommodation area I wanted to check that everyone was settling in, but as I climbed out of Squid’s jeep I immediately became aware of a pervasive and very unpleasant smell. And I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed it.
‘What the fuck’s that smell?’ somebody called out.
‘I think it’s stale shit.’
‘What does stale shit smell like, then?’ another voice asked.
‘Just like this, you wanker.’
‘It’s Poo Pond,’ Squid explained, as we stood beside the accommodation block, trying not to breathe too deeply. ‘The problem is that Kandahar Airfield was never intended to be used as living accommodation for the sort of numbers that are here, and one result of that is Poo Pond. In fact the name’s wrong. It’s actually a sodding great lake full of piss and shit. It’s just over there’ – he pointed to the south-west – ‘and it’s basically the end of the sewage disposal system for the entire airfield, which is entirely inadequate for the task.’
‘Wonderful,’ I said. ‘I suppose you get used to the smell?’
‘I haven’t,’ he replied with a grin. ‘It still closes up my sinuses every time I smell it. But there is some good news.’
‘Which is?’
‘You’re not the closest to it: the Romanians are. Incidentally, rumour has it there was a $100 bet that nobody would be prepared to swim across it. Apparently three guys tried it – two Romanians and, predictably enough, one member of the Parachute Regiment. The para won, of course. Nobody would go near him for weeks.’
The accommodation was typical of military establishments everywhere – rows of long pre-fab huts divided into rooms, each capable of holding between two and four beds – and by now the squadron personnel were sorting out where they were going to sleep and stow their gear. Some of the comments I overheard suggested not everyone was entirely happy with what was available.
‘Bit of a shithole, this.’
‘Could be worse, mate. It could be a leaky bloody tent like we had back at Cottesmore. At least this is a solid roof over your head.’
‘Yeah, well I’ll take a leaky tent and people firing blank ammunition over this place, the smell of shit and the murderous bloody Taliban any time, thank you very much.’
‘Right,’ Squid said to me, ‘once you’ve got your kit stowed and you’ve sorted yourself out, let’s kick the tyres and light the fires. We’ll get into the air and do a familiarization flight. See if we can find any trade for you to sink your teeth into.’
5
The Ops building at Kandahar was about two miles from the flight line, and as the two of us drove round the airfield it soon became clear that in some ways the drive there was almost more dangerous than the subsequent flight. We weren’t allowed to travel on the runway, of course, or the taxiways, unless we were responding to a Ground Close Air Support (GCAS) scramble call, because Kandahar is a very active airfield, with stuff going on all the time. So we had to drive all the way through the camp on an unmade track that snaked over rough ground, very bumpy and dusty when the weather was dry, and which Squid told me turned into a quagmire on those rare occasions when it rained.
The track was bad enough but, to make matters worse, there were significant traffic hazards. Huge transporters would appear round corners without warning, easily big enough to swat our South Korean-built Ssangyong 4x4s right off the road, and there were dozens of other vehicles, ditches, bumps, potholes, obstructions, pedestrians and all sorts of other crap on it.
‘Jesus, is it always like this?’ I said, as yet another lorry appeared round a corner on our side and Squid took early avoiding action.
He shook his head. ‘No, it’s fairly quiet at the moment. Some days it’s a lot worse.’
About the only good thing was that the track had been cleared of mines, but it was clearly going to be a nerve-racking ten or fifteen minutes in a 4x4 every morning before we even got to the dispersal area.
‘The routine here’s simple enough,’ Squid said, leading the way into Ops. ‘As soon as we arrive, we all get a full briefing to update us on what’s happening, even the pilots who aren’t scheduled to fly immediately. The situation here is really fluid and can change very quickly. If it all goes to the wire, we need to be in a position where everybody can get airborne, knowing the situation on the ground, and do whatever’s required of them, without any delays.’
‘Makes sense.’
‘So everyone gets an Intel brief, an Ops brief and a Ground Liaison brief. And if you’re the incoming Duty Officer, you’ll then take over the desk and be given a handover, which explains where the aircraft are, what the serviceability is, what tasking had been given and what was going on in theatre.’
As well as these general briefings, the pilots collected their individual briefing packs prepared by the Squadron Intelligence Officer – or Squinto – and looked through what they were doing that day.
Assisted by the Operations Officers, the Squinto pulled together the tasking that came in from the command system, which was on a seventy-two-hour forward-planning cycle, so he always knew roughly what was coming up three days ahead. Twenty-four hours in advance, the Squinto and his team extracted the detailed tasking instructions from the computer, and put these into the briefing packs. They also loaded the basic reference points for each specific sortie into the mission planning system computers that the pilots would use to prepare their own detailed mission plans. These plans eventually ended up in the ‘data bricks’ we plugged into the Harriers before we started the engines.
&
nbsp; As part of the main brief, the Squinto provided the intelligence update, an ops update and a briefing on the situation on the ground. In effect this was the most important part of the entire process, because we were there to provide a service to the troops on the ground, and, if we didn’t understand what was happening down below us, we were a potential liability.
‘Right,’ Squid said. ‘Once you’ve done all that, you sit down at the mission planning computer, locate the file the Squinto has prepared, and open it up. You’ll find a big digital map of Afghanistan and all the relevant locations, with the basic mission and the reference points already entered. Then you can add anything else you feel is necessary for the mission.’
As we completed the full briefing and self-briefing process, he asked: ‘Ready to go?’
‘I’m ready,’ I told him.
We walked through the main accommodation building, into the crew room, where some of the off-duty personnel were sitting watching TV and reading, past the main engineering admin area and into the survival equipment section. There we both collected the combat survival waistcoat that held our personal weapon. For this, the Navy’s now standardized on the Walther PPK 7.65mm semi-automatic pistol rather than the old Browning 9mm. Because of the possibility of Taliban attacks against Kandahar, we all either carried, or had rapid access to, our personal weapons at all times while on the base.
‘Right,’ Squid said. ‘The last thing we do before leaving Ops is the out-brief.’
This took about five minutes, and was essentially a last-minute check by the authorizing officer that the pilots were ready in all respects for their sortie before they climbed into their aircraft. He checked that we’d done everything, and had collected everything we needed for the sortie. These checks also confirmed that we had our pistols, along with a wad of money so that we could try to barter our way out of a situation on the ground. Few of us had any illusions about how successful that might be.
We also carried a small, tear-proof sheet, colloquially known as a ‘blood chit’ or a ‘goolie chit’. This second name was a hangover from Royal Flying Corps operations in the First World War in India and Mesopotamia, where local tribesmen routinely handed over captured aircrew to their women, who almost invariably sliced off their testicles as a first step in the negotiations.
The Afghan women had exactly the same reputation, but the chit was intended to avert this painful and brutal surgery. It stated, in English and all the major languages of the region, that we meant the people of Afghanistan no harm and that they would be handsomely rewarded if they could help the bearer reach the nearest coalition troops. It might have had some influence with the Afghans – money talks, after all – but it’s not likely that any of these aids would have been much help to any of us if we’d fallen into the hands of the Taliban.
We walked out to the dispersal to get kitted up. Like a lot of the other aircraft at Kandahar, the Harriers lived in little fabric ‘pods’ which offered some protection from the wind, provided shade during the day and could be heated, though not very effectively, at night. In the dark I discovered these could look slightly eerie, a bit otherworldly, as I looked down the line and saw the noses of the aircraft poking out of these dimly illuminated saucer-shaped pods.
Even though the Safety Equipment (SE) ratings had already prepared our equipment and laid it out, getting kitted up was a laborious process because of everything we had to wear and carry. Squid and I pulled on the g-suit – a pair of tight-fitting over-trousers made of a kind of webbing mesh and incorporating air bladders – over our flying overalls. The g-suit, sometimes known as ‘speed jeans’, was plugged into the aircraft system. It automatically squeezed our thighs as the aircraft pulled high levels of g-force, to help stop the blood draining to the extremities and potentially causing a blackout or g-loc – a g-induced loss of consciousness.
Over the top of the g-suit we pulled on the cold-weather flying jacket, followed by the combat survival waistcoat, which carried everything we might need on the ground – food, water, flares, spare ammunition, survival kit, medicine and so on. This was a very bulky bit of kit, so the SE rating had to help us get it on and fitted properly.
The final layer was the life jacket, which went on top of everything else. This over-jacket carries the personal equipment connector and also incorporates a life vest. We’d be unlikely to end up in the water if we ejected over Afghanistan, unless we were directly over the Kajaki Dam in Helmand Province when we bailed out. Even so, we would still inflate the vest if we did have to eject, as it would provide a good solid support round the neck, which could be important to avoid injury when we hit the rugged terrain below.
The last items we grabbed were a set of gyro-stabilized binoculars and our flying helmets and gloves.
One thing we’d noticed, back at the warehouse at Cottesmore, was that criticism by forces personnel, and inevitably the media, of the quality of some of the military equipment issued for use in Afghanistan and Iraq had prompted a massive over-swing to correct some of the deficiencies. As a result, a lot of the gear we were supplied with for this detachment was the best that the commercial manufacturers can produce. In the harsh light in theatre, for instance, brilliant high-impact sunglasses, complete with three sets of filters for snow, sand or sun, were particularly welcome. We were even issued with elasticated over-covers to turn our standard green camouflage-pattern rucksacks – very high-grade pieces of kit made by Gore-Tex – into desert-coloured ones. Throughout history, the British armed forces have consistently demonstrated an ability to make do with some less than perfect equipment. This time, it was a great relief to have access to such high-grade gear.
Fully booted and spurred, we stopped at the engineers’ desk to look at the logbook for our respective aircraft and check for any notified faults or outstanding issues. We checked with particular care which weapons the book said were fitted to the aeroplane and how they were set up, and then signed out the aircraft.
That done, Squid and I strode out to our Harriers carrying our helmets. Already crowding the jets was a rating responsible for the weapons, plus the plane captain, the man in charge of the aircraft itself and an avionics technician. While we’d been inside getting kitted up, they had all been in and around the Harriers, preparing them for the mission. Powered by external generators, the jets’ navigation systems were already aligning. I greeted the ground crew and climbed up the ladder to do my initial checks.
The first thing was to make sure the aircraft was safe to walk around, and that meant making sure that the master armaments safety switch was off, as this renders all of the weapon stations unpowered and inert. This switch is crucial, controlling not just weapon release but other systems, including the fuel tanks. The flares and self-defence systems are independently controlled.
Next I checked that the ejection seat was safe. This used to be done with steel pins that had to be manually inserted and removed. But in the GR7 there’s now an oblong handle on the panel on the right-hand front of the seat that can be pulled backwards from the seat-locked position, where it says ‘safe’ and is painted green, to the ‘live’ position, where a distinctive red and white diagonal pattern is displayed.
Happy that the seat was secure, I put the helmet and the other gear on the cushion, did a quick sweep round the cockpit to make sure that all other switches were correctly set, then checked that both sets of igniters were working. Leaning in, I pressed the ignition button on the throttle, then glanced round to see the plane captain nodding. All of us could hear the igniters clicking away inside the engine.
I jumped down spent about ten minutes carrying out the external checks before finally climbing the ladder again to settle into the cockpit.
Strapping in was always a challenge, because we had so much gear on that we pretty much filled the cockpit. Each time we needed one of the maintainers to help secure the seat belts as we couldn’t reach all of them without assistance. Especially at night, with very restricted visibility, we got used to doing
everything by feel. Harrier pilots generally find most of their controls by feel, simply because most of the side panels are invisible without severe contortions.
Harnessed and ready to go, the safety cover was removed from the cockpit’s delicate glass head-up display (HUD). I carried out a sweep from left to right around the various panels and controls.
On the right-hand front panel were the fuel system controls, behind those the radios and, right at the back, the slot for the data brick that carried all our mission details, and which I had prepared back at Ops as part of my pre-flight planning. The brick was a block of electronics, something like a removable hard disk, that I slotted in. Once this was in place, the mission was downloaded into the Harrier’s computer. I programmed each of my weapons to do whatever I needed it to do, such as setting the impact angle for the bombs. On that first sortie my aircraft was carrying two 1,000lb laser-guided bombs, while Squid had two 540lb bombs and a couple of pods of CRV-7s.
The Harrier GR7 can be fitted with a variety of ordnance. The smallest is the CRV-7 rocket. Each pod contains a total of nineteen of these, and two pods will normally be carried. These are very flexible weapons, permitting anything from a single rocket to be fired to all thirty-eight of them in one go.
In terms of yield, next up is the ‘five-forty’ bomb, which comes in two guises. It can be configured to explode either on contact with the target or in an airburst above the target. The airburst configuration includes a basic radar altimeter, or radalt, that triggers the weapon when it reaches a specific pre-set height above the ground. In this mode the five-forty is normally used against soft-skinned targets like people and vehicles, when it’s set to detonate at about twenty to thirty feet above the ground. Used in this way, the weapon has a lethal radius of some 200 yards. Outside that range, the blast would certainly smart a bit, and a piece of shrapnel could kill or maim, but most people would survive, so its effects are relatively limited.
Joint Force Harrier Page 5