Two Rides Left...

Two rides left in the course...with things going as fast as they have, I'll be back here in the states pretty soon as an instructor in the jet! I have an out and back flight to Hill AFB, UT tomorrow and one more close air support (CAS) ride on Tuesday. The week after I dropped the live Mk82s, we had a simulated desert deployment down to Gila Bend AAF (auxiliary air field) to give us a flavor for what it'll be like real world in the "sandbox" as it's called. Gila Bend AAF has an 8,500 ft runway and is 45 min south of the base. We use it for visual approaches to take a load off of the traffic pattern at Luke. I realize that Iraq will be a lot different, but it was a change flying out of and into a different airfield that's out in the desert. While there, I had my first CAS flight. During a CAS scenario, there are ground troops (Army, Marines, Special Forces, etc.) in close contact with the enemy and that are in need of some direct fire power on a specific location. We had some Army ground controllers supporting us on this flight as well as a Joint Forward Air Controller (JFAC). The JFAC (also flying an F-16) works with the ground controller and has his eyes talked onto a target that needs destroyed or the position of enemy troops. Once he's in contact with the position of interest, he's cleared in hot and marks it with smoke rockets. That's where we come into play...we are then cleared in on the marked target and either strafe it with our gun, or drop some bombs. We were dropping training bombs (BDU-33s) on this flight. It was really cool to see how the whole process works and realize that I may be called on someday in the future to save some of my military bros on the ground.

At the end of the program, we fly in what they call a Large Force Employment (LFE). I flew in one this past Monday up to the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR), and then in another local one on Friday. It's where everything we've been learning over the past 5 months comes together into a big simulated mission into "bad guy" territory. For the LFE to the UTTR, we took 14 F-16s from Luke to destroy four different targets. Providing red air support were four F-18 Super Hornets from CA simulating Russian Mig-29's. We also had two tankers giving us gas before the fight. You can already see there's a lot of coordination and planning that goes on for an exercise like this. The day before each LFE is spent in the planning room with about eight guys working to bring everything together under the direction of the Mission Commander. The UTTR LFE I flew in was 3.5 hours from gear in the well until touch down, so that was about 2.5 times longer than the usual sortie. The flight up and back was awesome with great scenery. The Grand Canyon is incredibly huge from both the air and the ground...I could hardly believe how far it stretched! Once in Utah, the mountains were covered with snow and shot up pretty high. During our fight there were times we flew below the snow covered peaks. We could also see the Great Salt Lake just to the north of our airspace. I'll be seeing some more of the awesome mountains around Salt Lake City tomorrow.

Our LFE this past Friday was a little smaller, but not my much. It included 10 F-16s with six F-15C Eagles providing our red air support again simulating Mig-29s. Since it was a local flight, there were no tankers needed. I actually got to see a couple Eagles up close during the fight...my flight lead and I shot them both! Later on as he and I were leaving the fight due to our gas being low, an Eagle rolled in behind me and shot me up pretty good. But, it didn't count at that point because of our gas...in real life it would have though. The LFEs were a great experience as a young fighter pilot! It was only a glimpse of what a Red Flag Exercise at Nellis AFB, NV will be like someday. Those exercises include close to 75 airplanes in a mass "war." Looking forward to it!

The end of next month I have a ton of family and friends heading out here for my graduation, so I'll be sure to take some pics and fill everyone in. Until then, have fun, fly safe and check six!!