Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an Air Force Combat Wing by Tom Clancy
Another way of building skills and unit esprit is to hold weapons competitions. As might be imagined, these contests of skill appeal at a basic level to the ACC flyers, who by their very nature are competitive creatures. These include:• Gunsmoke—This is ACC’s biannual worldwide gunnery and bombing meet run every September of odd-numbered years at Nellis AFB, Nevada.
• William Tell—One of the longest-running exercises in USAF history, William Tell is ACC’s worldwide air-to-air missile and gunnery meet held at Tyndall AFB, Florida. This is also a biannual event, run in even-numbered years.
• Long Shot—A new competition to ACC, Long Shot is a global power projection exercise which tests units’ ability to both deploy and put combat power on target. Also a biannual, it is held during even-numbered years at Nellis AFB, Nevada.
• Proud Shield—A new event, this is the ACC long-range bombing competition that is held at Barksdale AFB, Louisiana, in odd-numbered years.
How does all of this training, exercising, competing, and expense pay off? Well, it gives us the best air force in the world for starters. No other air force trains as hard to go somewhere and fight as hard. Even such vaunted units as the air forces of Great Britain and Israel can’t begin to match the mobility, capability, firepower, and professionalism of today’s USAF.
So just how would ACC respond to an MRC? While the following comments reflect current ACC policy, as set down in their September 1994 command briefing, it should not be considered a one-size-fits-all kind of doctrine. The keystone of the responses is flexibility to the particular situation at hand.
The first part of any intervention is called the Contingency Response—how quickly different types of ACC units can be ready to move out to a crisis area. Consider the following types of ACC unit responses:• U.S.-Based Bombers—Within three hours of any alert, every bomber unit in ACC is prepared to upload any ordnance in its required table of organization and equipment (TO&E), and launch the first cell of two or three aircraft on a mission. Following this, the units are required to maintain a continuous sortie rate (it varies with different types of bomber units) during the duration of the crisis. They also must be ready to deploy all of their equipment, aircraft, and personnel within seventy-two hours of an alert order for deployment to the crisis zone.
• Active Fighters—Active-duty ACC fighter units must be ready to deploy their first full squadron of aircraft within twenty-four hours, with all squadrons ready to move within seventy-two hours.
• Reserve/Air National Guard Fighters—These ACC units are given twenty-four hours to recall all personnel; they then must meet the same standard as active fighter units. First squadron wheels up in twenty-four hours, last bird in the air at seventy-two hours from the end of the mobilization period.
This is an impressive standard to meet, and one that the former bomber crews from SAC are proud to have brought with them to ACC. Now it should be said that not all ACC units would deploy to a crisis area all at once. Just the limitations of heavy airlift and available ramp space would restrict movement to those units absolutely required in the early stages of a crisis. Right now, the USAF is in the midst of the most serious airlift crisis in its history. With the C-141 fleet quickly coming to the end of its life, and the C-17 program only coming on-line slowly, the U.S. military’s ability to rapidly deploy is greatly in question. This is one of the reasons for a new kind of ACC unit—the composite wing. It is designed to rapidly deploy airpower into a region with all the pieces necessary to start a successful air campaign. Three of these units have been formed to help get the ball rolling on any crisis response that might require USAF support. They include:• 23rd Wing—Based at Pope AFB, North Carolina, this unit is paired with the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Equipped with A/OA-10 Thunderbolt II attack fighters, F-16 Fighting Falcon fighters, and C-130 Hercules transports, it is designed to provide the first airborne units of the 82nd the kind of support that they would need early in a crisis.
• 347th Wing—Located at Moody AFB, Georgia, the 347th is teamed with the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Georgia. Equipped with a similar TO&E to the 23rd, it will help support the only heavy armored unit in XVIII Airborne Corps.
• 366th Wing—The crown jewel of ACC’s quick-response strategy, the 366th, which is based at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho, is designed to provide a core air intervention capability on day one of a crisis. Composed of five different squadrons of F-15C Eagle fighters, F-15E Strike Eagle fighter bombers, F-16C Fighting Falcon strike fighters, B-1B Lancer heavy bombers, and KC-135R Stratotankers, the 366th is a miniature air force in a wing-sized package. It also contains a command and control element that can generate Air Tasking Orders (ATOs) for up to five hundred sorties a day.
Designed to deploy with less than half the normal number of heavy airlift sorties of normal combat wings, these composite wings are light on their feet and ready to move at a moment’s notice. The price they pay is that they will only be able to operate for about a week on their own, before reinforcements will be required. Nevertheless, with the rapid response capability inherent in these composite wings, the commander of a JTF on the way to a trouble zone will have something waiting for him when he gets there. And that is more than General Horner had when he assumed the job of CENTCOM Forward in August 1990. It should also avoid the nightmare that met Lieutenant Colonel Howard Pope and his wingman when they arrived as the first elements of the 1st Fighter Wing in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Alighting on an almost empty airfield, expecting some kind of welcome from the Saudi authorities, what Pope got instead were directions to the arming and fueling pit, with instructions that he and his wingman would be on alert; and for the next twenty minutes (until the next pair of F-15s was due), they were the only American airpower in the region!
With all that behind us, let’s consider the initial phase of a crisis. The President has decided to use force in response to the actions of a threat nation. The first units capable of responding to an emerging crisis would be bomber units and their associated tanker assets. The missions could cover a spectrum of possibilities. You might have B-52Hs hitting hardened enemy command and control facilities with penetrating AGM-142 Have Nap standoff guided bombs. Another possibility could have B-1Bs firing ALCM-C/CALCM cruise missiles into critical nodes of a threat nation’s electrical power grid. Or B-2As might be penetrating enemy airspace to do precision drops of naval mines inside an enemy harbor or river estuary. Whatever the mission, the rapid application of airpower, and the demonstration of American will, probably have a significant effect on the actions of enemy leadership, as well as on the world scene. Thus, within twenty-four hours of the national command authority giving the order, the first bombers will have put ordnance on target. This done, they can return to the continental United States for another load, or continue on to a host nation base to raise their OpTempos even further by cutting the range to their targets.
Meanwhile, AMC will be positioning key command and control units, as well as airborne tanker assets, to support the massive flow of units and aircraft that will be headed towards the crisis. While this is happening, the first of the composite wings, the 366th, will deploy from its base at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho, to provide an initial JFACC capability in the forward area. In addition, if contingency ground forces are due to deploy, the 23rd (if the deploying unit is the 82nd Airborne Division) and/or the 347th (if the 24th Mechanized Infantry is used) will be getting ready to move and be in place when their associated ground units arrive in-theater. Unlike Operation Desert Shield, where this level of deployment took weeks, the whole sequence will take days. The idea is to respond so rapidly that a crisis can be contained, rather than become a drawn-out campaign.
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 g
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 loss 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 co
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.”