Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an Air Force Combat Wing

by Tom Clancy

  Within the halls of the Pentagon, the leadership of the Air Force was quick to realize that with their primary threat nullified, and with severe budget cuts already planned by the Administration of President George Bush, they would have to remake themselves if they were to survive the coming lean years of the 1990s. Thus, in early 1992, USAF Chief of Staff General Merrill McPeak ordered a complete, USAF-wide reorganization. But don’t call it a reorganization. Call it a revolution. It so stunned members of the service, they are still trying to fully understand it.

  The three traditional flying commands, SAC, TAC, and MAC, were abolished, with combat aircraft (fighters, bombers, electronic warfare and theater transport aircraft) going to the newly formed Air Combat Command (ACC) headquartered at Langley Air Force Base. Virtually all heavy airlift (C-141, C-5, and C-17) and airborne tanker (KC-135 and KC-10) aircraft went to the newly formed Air Mobility Command (AMC), based at Scott AFB, Illinois. The strategic nuclear mission was handed off to a new unified (i.e., joint USAF/Navy) command called Strategic Command (STRATCOM). Incidently, STRATCOM does not own any of the bombers, submarines, or missiles that it operates.

  On June 1st, 1992, when the reorganization took place, it was as if every major airline in America (and a few large service companies as well) had merged overnight and thrown their individual corporate cultures to the winds. As might be imagined, this has caused a great deal of stress and personal disorientation. It has also created one of the most powerful and diverse fighting forces in the world. Definitely a revolution! Let’s take a look at it.

  TAC TO ACC: THE GREAT MERGER

  When ACC was formed in June 1992, the man who was tasked as its first commander had the advantage of also being the last commander of TAC. Thus, General Michael Loh, USAF, had the unique distinction of commanding major USAF military commands on both sides of the great merger. A career fighter pilot, he suddenly found himself leading a force that would have been inconceivable just five years ago.

  General Loh makes no secret of his tactical bias in the eternal struggle between the fighter pilots of TAC and the bomber pilots of SAC. It is even conceivable that on the night of May 31st, 1992, he may have hoisted a beer or two to celebrate the end of TAC’s “true” enemy, the Armageddon-oriented bomber culture of SAC, which was to vanish at midnight that evening. But to listen to him now is to understand the transformation of the old Air Force he grew up in into the new one that he helped create. Gone is the cocky, triumphant fighter pilot. As he hands off command of ACC to General Joe Ralston there is an intense (you could define intensity by spending an hour with General Loh!), almost desperate drive to weld the formerly distinct elements of his new command into a single fighting force. Not in ten years, or even five. But now! Before they are needed again in some far-off, dangerous place. This is the reality that he faced as he finished his final year of command at ACC (he retired in the summer of 1995). His challenges have been simple but formidable. They included:

  General M. “Mike” Loh, USAF. General Loh was the first commander of the USAF Air Combat Command (ACC). Official U.S. Air Force Photo

  • Merging personnel, bases, and aircraft from all three of the former major flying commands (bombers from SAC, medium transports from MAC, and tactical aircraft from TAC) into a unified combat flying command.

  • Continuing modernization of ACC aircraft, weapons, and equipment, despite the fiscal limitations of the 1990s.

  • Maintaining operational and tactical proficiency when out-of-area (i.e., overseas) operations rates (Op Tempos, as they are known) for our forces have never been higher, and operations and maintenance budgets (per pilot and aircraft) have never been lower.

  • Supporting Administration plans to be able to fight in two near-simultaneous major regional conflicts (MRCs) of the size that might be anticipated in Korea, or perhaps Iran.

  • Doing all this in a time of planned drawdowns and budget shortfalls that are challenging even to those who survived the dark fiscal days of the 1970s.

  ACC currently has units spread over the globe, conducting missions on a global scale. In Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Italy, ACC aircraft are helping to enforce no-fly zones over Iraq and Bosnia. In Korea, ACC aircraft and personnel are providing muscle to diplomatic efforts to maintain peace and stability in that troubled region. And U.S.-based ACC aircraft were key to the recent efforts to build and enforce democracy in Haiti. All this while trying to maintain normal commitments in NATO, Latin America, and the Far East, as well as providing continental air defense for North America.

  THE ACC MISSION

  All this brings us to the question of just what are normal operations for ACC. To understand this requires a short history lesson. Back in the mid-1980s, during the Reagan buildup, questions were asked about the effectiveness of the military the buildup was buying. Less-than-perfect joint operations in Grenada (1983) and Libya (1986), along with the disaster of our intervention in Lebanon (1982 to 1984), were disturbing signs that more than just money was needed to get the most out of the American forces. The Congressional response was the Military Reform Act of 1986, known more popularly as Goldwater-Nichols, after its sponsors. Goldwater-Nichols reformed the various military chains of command, and concentrated actual power to command forces in the field in the hands of regional commanders in chief, or CinCs as they are called. These CinCs, of which there are currently eight, control all forces, regardless of service, that are assigned to their geographic area of responsibility (AOR) in the world. These joint commands range from the Middle East (U.S. Central Command, CENTCOM) to forces based in Europe (U.S. European Command, EUCOM). For example, anyone assigned to operate in Latin America would come under the command of General Barry McCaffrey, USA, who (at the time of this writing) is CinC of the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) based in Panama. In addition, the Goldwater-Nichols bill strengthened the position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), so that the billet is now considered a cabinet-level position and the President’s senior military advisor. The underlying idea was to clarify the chain of command between the civilian leadership of the national command authority in Washington, D.C., and the forward leadership of our armed forces in the field.

  So far, Goldwater-Nichols seems to have worked, with joint operations from Panama to the Middle East running more smoothly than those of the post-Vietnam era. This is not to say that poor political objectives can’t cause such operations to fail, as was proven in Somalia in 1992. On the contrary, Goldwater-Nichols places a much greater burden of responsibility for military operations on the civilian leadership of the United States, something future Presidential candidates might be wise to consider before seeking the office.

  At this point, you might ask just what all this has to do with getting a wing of combat aircraft into action somewhere in the world? More than you might think, actually. Since the end of the Cold War, the military of the United States has increasingly become a home- or continental-based force. Just in the last five years, we have closed the bulk of our overseas bases in the Philippines, Germany, Spain, and many other countries. This means that interventions by U.S. armed forces are increasingly made at the request of a host nation or as part of a coalition of forces. Thus, the current U.S. military basing strategy has relatively few units forward based, with the CinCs frequently owning few or no forces of their own.

  For example: When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, General H. Norman Schwarzkopf owned exactly nothing in the way of combat forces. All he had was a staff and a headquarters. So where did he get the nearly 500,000 soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen who fought in Operation Desert Storm? Well, those forces were “packaged” and “chopped” to his command (CENTCOM) for the duration of the crisis in the Persian Gulf, and included units from virtually every other command in the U.S. armed forces. At the time, this action was regarded as something of an anomaly, but today it is a fundamental principle of our national defense strategy. By the year 2001, something like 90% of all U.S. forces will be based in the co
ntinental United States, meaning that if we want to intervene somewhere, we’re going to have to take our show on the road.

  To support this shift in the U.S. defense paradigm, a new joint command has been created, called United States Atlantic Command (USACOM). In essence, this massive command “owns” virtually every military unit based in the continental United States. The role of USACOM is to be the “packager” of joint task forces for shipment to the various unified commands around the world. Delivery of the package is handled by the folks at U.S. Transportation Command (TRANSCOM) at Scott AFB, Illinois. TRANSCOM controls all the ships, heavy airlift, trucking, and rail assets needed to move the packaged forces to wherever they are needed.

  This is where ACC comes in—as the one-stop supplier for USAF combat aircraft. If you need a wing of F-15s with AWACS support to keep a no-fly zone patrolled, ACC supplies the units that will make it happen. In addition, they can supply airbase construction teams (Red Horse battalions), Tactical Air Control Centers (TACCs), medical teams, and even field kitchens, for use at undeveloped airfield sites. They are also, as was demonstrated recently in Haiti, capable of deploying forces from their home bases in America directly into a crisis area.

  ACC: THE FORCE

  So just what is ACC made up of? The slides of the “ACC Today” command briefing (September 1994) are full of numbers, some of them almost numbing in magnitude. Over 250,000 personnel, including 117,700 in the Air National Guard (ANG) and Air Force Reserves (AFRES). Twenty-five dedicated ACC bases, with ACC units “bedded down” at eleven other USAF installations. ACC boasts a force of some 3,230 aircraft (1,640 active, 1,590 ANG/AFRES) in some 160 different “battle management units,” as they are called. These are distributed in four numbered air forces across the continental United States:

  • 1st Air Force—Provides fighters, radars, and other units as the primary air component of the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD).

  • 8th Air Force—Provides the bomber force for ACC, as well as being the primary air component for STRATCOM and USACOM.

  • 9th Air Force—Equipped mainly with fighter and transport aircraft, it is the primary air component for CENTCOM.

  • 12th Air Force—This is the primary air component for SOUTHCOM, as well as the airborne battle management component for STRATCOM.

  In short, if it is a combat USAF aircraft, it belongs to ACC.

  An F-15E Strike Eagle of the 366th Wing’s 391st Fighter Squadron taxis down the ramp at Mountain Home AFB to take off on a training mission. LANTIRN-pod equipped F-15Es and F-16Cs will provide the bulk of the USAF precision guided munitions capability until the introduction of JDAM and JSOW early in the 21st Century. John D. Gresham

  Headquartered at Langley AFB, Virginia, near Hampton Roads, ACC is commanded from the old TAC headquarters building. From here, General Joe Ralston (the current ACC commander) oversees one of the largest aerial combat units in the world today. But it’s a shrinking unit, down from its 1980s high point of almost forty combat wings. In the fall of 1994, ACC was based around a force of some 22 1/2 combat wings. The calculus of counting military strength is an arcane science at best, but for our purposes, we will assume that a fighter wing equivalent (FWE) is composed of roughly seventy-two aircraft in three squadrons of twenty-four planes each. The bad news is that preplanned cuts will drop this number to 20 1/2 wings by 1996. Despite this, Generals Loh and Ralston have worked hard to make this force stretch to meet the requirements of the current Administration’s two near-simultaneous MRCs strategy.

  One way is to retrofit older airframes with the new series of precision munitions. Another is to make the limited number of new airframes (B-2As and F-22As) as capable as possible, so they might do individually more than the aircraft they will replace. In General Loh’s view, any air force that buys new aircraft that are neither stealthy nor equipped with new generation precision and fire-and-forget weapons is committing a criminal act. This is not an extreme point of view; it is borne out by the results of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The effectiveness of aircraft like the F-117A and the F-15E shows what can be done with modern systems and advanced aircraft engineering.

  When you think of ACC today, the cutting edge of its capability is the fighter force. The word fighter is broadly defined. The USAF classifies any tactical combat aircraft as a fighter, regardless of whether it has an air-to-air capability or not. As shown in Table 1 below, the ACC fighter force is currently based around six different types of aircraft (F-15, F-16, F-15E, F-111, F-117, and A-10), which provide it with the bulk of its strike and interdiction capability. A further look shows that something like 25% of the ACC force is based overseas with United States Air Forces Europe (USAFE) and the Pacific Air Force (PACAF). These will almost certainly be pulled back to U.S. territory. In the Pacific, this has already begun, with units previously assigned to the Philippines being transferred to bases in Alaska, Okinawa, and Hawaii. Similar cuts and transfers are being made in Europe, with the bulk of the remaining USAFE units now based in the United Kingdom and Italy, with a continuing presence in Turkey.

  Table 1—ACC Fighter Aircraft Force

  Another point to notice is the small but significant force of air defense fighters which “chop” to the control of the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) for purposes of continental air defense and airspace control. It is a sign of the times that these aircraft are no longer flown by active duty USAF personnel, but by units of the ANG. In fact, if you look closely, over 40% of the ACC fighter force is made up of AFRES/ANG units flown by dedicated weekend warriors who might fly you commercially from Washington to Boston on a normal weekday. This is the total force concept put forward after the Vietnam War, where reserve and national guard units are equipped with the same up-to-date equipment as the active components, and trained with them to be able to work together in time of crisis. For example, during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, AFRES and ANG provided the bulk of the deterrent reserve for Korea, as well as virtually all of the air defense for the United States, while the bulk of the active force was fighting the war with Iraq. The process, called backfilling, is vital to the multiple MRC strategy, if it is to work.

  A Rockwell B-1B Lancer bomber files over the Egyptian pyramids during Operation Bright Star 93. Building upon their known and existing capabilities, ACC hopes to arm B-1s, B-2s, and B-52s with a variety of precision guided munitions to support their worldwide missions. Official U.S. Air Force Photo

  As for the future, the good news is that there is a new airframe on the way to replace the F-15 Eagle, the backbone of the fighter and interceptor force for over two decades. When the F-22 arrives for service in the early part of the next decade, it will probably become the basic “heavy” fighter airframe for the USAF. The bad news is that the program will only see production of 442 fighter versions, about enough for four and a half wings of fighters in the current ACC structural scheme. In addition, there will be further cuts in the aircraft shown in Table 1 in some especially critical areas. The most likely place for cuts will be in the force of F-111Fs operated by the 27th Wing at Cannon AFB, New Mexico. While the Aardvarks of the 27th are some of the oldest and most expensive aircraft in the ACC force to operate and maintain (O&M), they also have the longest range and some of the best weapons systems in the whole of the USAF. Most important, to lose the entire force of F-111s, with their invaluable Pave Tack delivery systems, is to give up almost 25% of the Air Force’s PGM delivery capability. According to current ACC plans, the B-1B force will take over this role when the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) and Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) programs come online in the late 1990s. The problem is that none of the munitions these critical programs are designed to deliver is yet in service, meaning that if we prematurely retire aircraft capable of precision strikes, we will have a window of vulnerability that might prove critical in a time of crisis.

  And then there is the shortage of F-15E Strike Eagle airframes. To sustain the current force of roughly two hundre
d F-15Es, ACC will need about forty additional airframes to make up for aircraft lost in accidents and projected combat attrition. Despite a hard fixed price offer by McDonnell Douglas ($50 million per copy), there is no money for such a sensible purchase. Lockheed has submitted a similar bid for its F-16 Block 50/52 Fighting Falcon, at $20 million per aircraft, and Northrop has submitted a bid of $595 million per aircraft for the B-2A Spirit. Money is just that tight right now.

  “What the hell are we going to do with bombers?” When ACC was created in 1992, some of the former TAC-types were asking that question. And the answer they wanted to hear was: “We don’t need them. Throw them the hell away.” The TAC types were wrong. We need bombers; we need them bad.

  Without bombers, General Loh would tell you today, there is absolutely no way ACC can hope to accomplish its assigned missions. Though they seem large and ponderous to fighter pilots, the big birds represent a known and ready capability to deliver massive amounts of firepower over great distances, with rapid responsiveness. Current ACC plans have the bombers armed with a variety of precision munitions (JDAMS and JSOW), conventional bombs (Mk 82/83/42 and CBU-87/89/97), and standoff missiles (ALCM-C/CALCM and AGM-142 Have Nap), so they might provide the necessary firepower to prevail in a future conflict. And in time of international crisis, elements of the force of B-52Hs and the B-2 force may be chopped over to control of STRATCOM, to provide additional nuclear deterrence muscle. The Cold War may be over, but the need to present a credible nuclear deterrence force is still with us. Remember, settling our problems with Russia only leaves a couple of hundred potential enemies (countries, terrorist groups, etc.) to deal with out there in the world. Many of them are trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and the possibility of suffering nuclear annihilation from an overwhelming and undeniable U.S. deterrence force is one way to keep proliferation of such weapons under control.