Viper Pilot: A Memoir of Air Combat (14 page)

I’d fought some Arabs, trained a few, made personal friends and at least one personal enemy among them. There is much to admire about the Arabs and their culture. For instance, my Egyptian friends were always watching American television to improve their English (fat chance) and learn about us. One day, one of them asked me about a show he’d seen, regarding nursing homes. He remarked, “How sad that these old people have no family to care for them.” I told him that many did have families but that they lived in homes to receive proper care. This shocked him and he just couldn’t grasp the notion that families wouldn’t care for their own.

On the other hand, I watched a platoon of Egyptian tanks (American-made M-1 Abrams) level a village that had supposedly sheltered insurgents. They pulled up, gave the villagers thirty minutes to leave, and smoked a few cigarettes. At the end of the half-hour, they simply rolled over the mud-brick houses and flattened them.

Understanding them a little, living within their world, and flying with them was a tremendous advantage. However, this would cause me some problems later in my career. There were lots of guys, especially among the general officers and the up-and-coming batch of lieutenant colonels, who’d all missed the Gulf War. They’d been off on staffs or in one of the Professional Military Education (a true oxymoron) courses, and hadn’t fought anybody. These officers were still fighting the Soviet Union in their minds, and were slow to change with the times. But an officer who could quote Sun Tzu and knew about OODA loops was, well, vital. Right?

Right.

That’s how a guy who wrote speeches for a general ended up commanding a fighter squadron. It’s also how a C-130 transport pilot wound up in charge of the entire U.S. Air Force.

Another obstacle was simply entrenched military doctrine. Decades had been spent creating, packaging, and making careers out of fighting the Soviet Union and its puppets. No one had been thinking of Iraqis or Afghans as a threat, because no one cared. Fundamentalist extremists like al-Qaeda and the Taliban weren’t on anyone’s radar yet. They weren’t a threat to the big military and so they weren’t considered—though they should’ve been. As the Arab proverb says, “A fly in a man’s mouth won’t kill him but it will make him vomit.” I’d seen the entrenched hatred of America even in our Egyptian allies, and if some of them felt that way then trouble from Iraq, Iran, and others couldn’t be far behind.

Several months after the Great Hijacking, I was thrilled to get orders back to the United States. I’d been away for more than four years and was ready to come home. The exotic life of an expatriate is great, but I wanted a Sonic double hamburger. I wanted to listen to people talk and not translate it in my head. I wanted to see brainless American television and go to the Home Depot on Saturday morning to buy flowers I’d never plant. I wanted to walk into a Safeway at three
A.M
. because it was open and I could.

I wanted to come home.

5

Patchwearer

F
IGHTER SQUADRONS, LIKE ALL ELITE GROUPS, EACH HAVE
their own personality. Same profession, same jets, same types of people; and yet every one is unique. Some of our active units, like the 27th and 94th Fighter Squadrons, have lengthy pedigrees going back to the dawn of air combat during World War I. Many others were created amidst the huge expansion of military aviation during World War II. In 1941, there were barely a hundred up-to-date fighters in the U.S. inventory. By mid-1944, the Army Air Corps (the predecessor of the modern Air Force) owned eighty thousand combat aircraft.

The structure, from the top down, works like this. The modern Air Force contains nine Major Commands (MAJCOMs), grouped by location and mission. Three of these are fighter commands and the others are for bombers, transports, training, and logistics. I don’t count the Space Command—sorry. Incidentally, this ongoing money pit has a bigger slice of the 2012 Air Force budget than Air Superiority and Special Operations combined. Air Combat Command (ACC) is for fighter wings based in the continental United States; Pacific Air Forces (PACAF) for units in Asia or the Pacific; and U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) is for Africa and Europe. Pilots can and do rotate between all of these. It’s a great way to see the world, learn languages, and live life.

MAJCOMs are composed of Numbered Air Forces (NAF) responsible for a geographic region. Ninth Air Force, for example, is made up of five fighter wings based in Virginia, both Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. A wing is commanded by a very senior full colonel or a brigadier general and functions like a small town. There are married and bachelor housing areas of different quality, depending upon one’s rank. Fire and police stations, a commissary for food, and a military-style Walmart called a base exchange. Fitness centers, pools, a church, and, of course, officer and enlisted clubs.

Each fighter wing is made up of several “groups” that share the wing’s number. For instance, the 20th Fighter Wing (FW) at Shaw AFB consists of a Maintenance Group, Medical Group and a few other support organizations like Security Police and Personnel. The 20th Operations Group contains the 55th, 77th, 78th, and 79th Fighter Squadrons. Every active flying pilot on the base is assigned to a squadron. A recently assigned pilot, whether a transfer or a true rookie out of the training pipeline, is called a Fucking New Guy (FNG)—unless he’s a lieutenant colonel or above. FNGs are assigned to a “flight,” an administrative unit within a squadron made up of about five pilots plus an Assistant Flight Commander and a Flight Commander. These last two guys are senior captains; the Flight Commander should be an Instructor Pilot (IP) but often is only a flight leader.

He takes care of his guys. The Flight Commander knows what upgrades and training each pilot needs, and builds the weekly flying schedule accordingly. He reviews the grade sheets written on each man and helps maintain the all-important grade book. This is a permanent record of the formal training courses and upgrades the pilot has completed.

Besides a flight assignment, a pilot will also have at least one additional duty. He’ll be put into one of the squadron functional areas, called a Shop, under the Shop Chief who is a senior captain. These shops allow the squadron to run smoothly: Scheduling, Training, Mobility, Life Support, Standardization and Evaluation, Intelligence, and the Weapons and Tactics.

The Training Shop is exactly that. The Chief and his minions keep track of each pilot’s various requirements and currencies. Currencies cover not only tactical issues, like weapons qualifications, but a myriad of other headaches. How many takeoffs and landings per month, how many night landings, instrument approaches, required briefings, etc. . . . The list is nearly endless. Scheduling is the backbone of a flying operation. Every six months, the Scheduling Shop builds a Long Range Schedule outlining known deployments, exercises, and then creates the Flying Window, which are blocks of time available to the entire wing for its flying. Every pilot needs to maintain weapons currency by dropping so many bombs, strafing, and firing a certain number of missiles within preset accuracy parameters. There’s much, much more to this, but it’s sufficient to say that scheduling is a basic nightmare and an excellent place to stick a new guy.

Mobility is responsible for all the equipment, paperwork, and special requirements necessary for a squadron of three hundred people and two dozen aircraft to deploy at a moment’s notice. The life-support shop, with the assistance of specially trained enlisted folks, maintains the helmets, G-suits, harnesses, and survival gear, as well as overseeing periodic refresher training for first aid, water survival, land survival, and personal weapons qualifications.

Standardization and Evaluation (Stan Eval) Shop is like the flying police. Everything related to military and applicable civilian flying regulations is maintained and enforced by Stan Eval. Each pilot, in addition to required training, currencies, and upgrades, must also take at least two check-rides per year. As explained earlier, check-flights are comprehensive oral, written, and flying exams. Normal pilots must take an instrument check that verifies his instrument rating and professional qualifications to fly a military fighter. This involves a session in a flight simulator, where all critical emergencies must be analyzed, solved, and taken to a logical, satisfactory conclusion. Another day is taken up with written tests covering aircraft systems, flying regulations, and the annual Instrument Refresher academic course. The actual flight takes another day.

The check pilot, called a Standardization and Evaluation Flight Examiner (SEFE), evaluates every aspect of the mission. Instrument Qual checks focus on maintaining your instrument rating and advanced aircraft handling through aerobatics and a few dogfighting setups. Several instrument approaches are flown, followed by Simulated Flameout Approaches, since being able to land without an engine is obviously crucial to a single-seat fighter pilot. Once back on the ground, after an extensive debrief, the SEFE gives an oral examination of anything else he feels is required.

Mission Qual checks follow the same format but the focus is on a pilot’s fighting skills. The actual flight will be from a scenario provided by the SEFE, which encompasses the specific missions a squadron would be responsible for in combat. Strike squadrons may focus on laser-guided bombing, whereas a Wild Weasel squadron would concentrate on Maverick missiles or cluster bomb attacks against SAM sites. The oral debrief is just as thorough and equally unpleasant
but
absolutely necessary. It’s all taken very, very seriously. The examinee is tested up to whatever qualification level he holds and must demonstrate his proficiency at all the inclusive skills. Every pilot, regardless of rank or qualification, is also subject to no-notice check-rides. This occurs when a SEFE shows up at the squadron one morning, points at a scheduled flight, and makes it a check-ride. The idea is to see how ready and lethal a pilot can be with no time to prepare. Kind of like combat.

Evaluators are usually field-grade officers and always instructor pilots. Some of the best SEFEs are Weapons Officers who’ve been off to staffs and schools, are now majors, and are back in flying units. Evaluating others from your own jet and knowing what’s happening in the other cockpit takes a great deal of experience—judgment of critical, dynamic situations with lives and tens of millions of dollars at stake doesn’t come naturally to everyone. In a fighter squadron, the commander and the director of operations (DO) should always be SEFEs. This is a credibility issue as well, since guys who lead
should
be the best, and credibility is essential in fighter units. The Weapons Officer is also usually a SEFE, and at least one of the Assistant Director of Operations (ADO).

ADOs are majors or sometimes very junior lieutenant colonels. They usually return to flying after completing the obligatory staff tour or one of the singularly useless professional military education courses. Fully re-qualified to fly, they’re put in charge of the functional shops run by captains. As field-grade officers, they’re another level of supervision and they work directly for the Director of Operations (DO).

The Director of Operations is the second-in-command of the squadron. He takes care of all the operational and training aspects just discussed. The squadron commander sets the tone and focus, and the DO deals with implementation. Always an IP and a SEFE, this officer rules the flying operations. He’s a lieutenant colonel who has served as an ADO or on the wing staff and should know all there is to know about running a squadron. If he doesn’t retire or screw up, he’ll likely command a squadron of his own.

The squadron commander makes or breaks the outfit. Life is superb with the right commander and miserable with the wrong one—I’ve had both kinds. When I showed up in Germany, my squadron was just shutting down for two weeks of skiing. The commander had made it an annual tradition to take everyone to the Alps for a big winter party. So, a month after finishing F-16 training in Phoenix, Arizona, I’m sitting on a snowbank on top of an Austrian mountain and drinking Apfelkorn. Surreal.

We also routinely rented boats during the grape harvest season and would take wine-tasting cruises up and down the Mosel River. There were also weekend “cross-country” flights. These contributed to instrument training and familiarity with foreign air bases, but it was also great fun to take a few fighters and tear up a French Officer’s Club. Or fly up to Copenhagen to see the Little Mermaid statue or over to England for a weekend in London. You get the idea.

Another great squadron had a weekly ceremony and award called the “HUA.” This stands for “Head Up [his] Ass” award and was given—after much serious and sober consideration, of course—to the poor bastard who’d done the dumbest thing that week. This didn’t necessarily have to do with flying if you’d been stupid enough to have witnesses for something else.

Like the punk lieutenant who rolled in on a slightly older but stunning woman at the Officer’s Club bar only to later discover that she was his new commander’s wife. A commander who observed the whole sorry attempt from a few bar stools down. She thought it was funny but the colonel didn’t laugh much. Neither did the lieutenant.

Where the commander is the personality of a squadron, the Vault is the heart.

The Vault is a secure, special-access area of the squadron that’s only entered through a coded, double steel door. Inside are the briefing rooms, library, mission-planning areas, map rooms, and computers. The Vault is the focal point for tactical operations and is the province of the squadron Weapons Officer.

Also known as a Patchwearer or Target Arm, the Weapons Officer is the squadron expert on combat operations and the training required to survive and win wars. A graduate of the elite Fighter Weapons Instructor Course (FWIC) taught at Nellis AFB in the Nevada desert, he’s been through the nastiest, toughest tactical-air-combat course in the world. Think of it as a fighter pilot’s version of a Special Forces or SEAL Team—absolutely the best of the best in tactical aviation. Easy to spot by the black-and-gray patch (earned on completion of Fighter Weapons School) worn on his left shoulder, the Weapons Officer is the yardstick by which the other squadron pilots are measured. He instructs the instructors. He takes the squadron to war.

T
HE PATHWAY TO THE
F
IGHTER
W
EAPONS
S
CHOOL WORKS LIKE THIS
.

Weapons Officers are constantly evaluating the instructor pilots in their squadrons. Target Arms select and train senior flight leads as instructors, so they’re aware of likely candidates for several years. Each of these guys will already have phenomenal credentials as a pilot and instructor, so what makes or breaks the application are the recommendations from the few active Patchwearers in the wing. Just being an extremely gifted pilot isn’t enough. The guy has to be able to
teach
as well as lead, and this isn’t always the same thing.

The Air Force’s idea is to train very few individuals to a level surpassing all others and then have them teach the rest. Aside from eye-watering flying abilities, this is why being able to instruct is so vital. To paraphrase one Fighter Weapons Instructor, being the best pilot in the Air Force doesn’t matter if no one can learn from you.

Twice per year, each wing will submit a primary candidate and an alternate from its top pilots for the Weapons School selection board to consider. So, out of the hundreds of fighter instructor pilots in the USAF, about thirty get selected to attend each course. For the F-16 world, that amounts to three or four from bases within the United States, one from Germany, and two from the Far Eastern bases.

Once you’re selected, but before leaving for Nellis, you get what’s called a “spin-up.” In essence, the Patchwearers at your base take turns beating the shit out of you. You go out and dogfight every day against your wing’s Target Arms for two weeks to hone your skills. Your briefing and debriefing skills are exhaustingly picked apart. Remember, you’re already an IP
and
the top pick from your base, so this is humbling.

Fighter Weapons School lasts six months—and the details are almost all classified. Incidentally, all Air Force fighter pilots today have Top Secret/Special Compartmentalized Information (TS/SCI) clearance. The course generally follows the same structure that a pilot will have experienced in every training program he’s completed—but the course is on steroids. Remember, besides extremely lethal fighting skills, the goal is to really,
really
teach a pilot how to instruct others.

A
S YOU TRAVEL TO
N
ELLIS
AFB (
LOCATED OUTSIDE
L
AS
V
EGAS
, N
EVADA
) and spend your first week there in a classroom, the Weapons School instructors are fighting each other twice a day, every day. By the time you face off with them, you haven’t flown in two weeks, while they’ve been sharpening their claws and licking their fangs. Not that it would make a difference. They’re superb, and no spin-up in the world would save a student from the shredding he’s about to receive. It’s a necessary attention-getter: until you get thoroughly trounced, somewhere in the back of your mind is the belief that you’re still God’s gift to the fighter world. You get over it quick.