Tactical Leadership Program (TLP)

The NATO Tactical Leadership Program (TLP) is a multi-national flying course for fighter jets. It takes place at Florennes Air Base, Belgium and is designed to train and teach the pilots who attend about the tactics and capabilities of other allies within NATO. If needed in the future, it will be very important to understand each other's capabilities in order to operate effectively together in war. At the completion of the course, we are qualified mission commanders with the training needed to lead a large force of fighters effectively into war. There is much to learn still, but we have the baseline tools to do so.

Each day of flying at TLP, the mass weather and training rules brief started sharply at 0800. Once complete, the air tasking order (ATO) for the day would be passed out with the specifics of what the "General's" objectives were for a successful mission. On the ATO one of the pilots would be tasked as the mission commander for the day and it would specify the location of the targets. A mission commander has the overall responsibility to coordinate "blue" air-to-air fighters, air-to-ground fighters, tankers, AWACS and other assets to come up with a plan to strike a target in "bad guy land" without getting shot down by "red air" fighters or surface-to-air missile sites. "Blue" and "red" is used in reference to "friendly" and "enemy" forces either in the air or on the ground. During TLP, there were 15 flights scheduled for the month of which we only flew 12 due to weather, birds (yeah, it's migratory season) etc. These flights use airspace in Britain, the Netherlands, Germany and France. So, in addition to quickly planning a safe mission each morning, there were different airspace rules to followed specific to each country. In general, regardless of the target, the plans basically boiled down to the air-to-air fighters pushing first to shoot the "red air" threat followed by the air-to-ground fighters following once it was safe to do so and bomb their target. Once the planning was complete, we would go fly a mission early in the afternoon and then spend until about 2000 that night debriefing lessons we had learned. Since we were busy the whole day, a few days a week Chris and I would go to the gym at 0630 for a quick workout before breakfast and then head over to the TLP operations building.

In our TLP class we had British F-3 and G-4 Tornados, French F-1 Mirages, Spanish F-1 Mirages, F-18 Hornets and Harriers, Italian Eurofighters (from Grosseto where I had flown before on a previous cross-country), Greek F-16s and our F-16s. Thankfully our squadron commander and director of operations let us take two of our new CCIP jets to the training. Operating on the Link 16 with other nations and the AWACS provided a lot of good learning for both us as we're getting used to the new "toys." It was a great experience for the two of us and really increased my overall understanding of how we and our allies would integrate to accomplish a mission during war time. After the last fight on 2 Oct, we had a TLP graduation and officially became mission commanders.

As you already saw in my last post, the weekend were free to travel. In addition to Brugge and Paris, I did some site seeing the other two weekends in Belgium. The third weekend I went with some British and French guys to Reims, France. Reims is in the Champagne region of northwestern France. One of the French pilots has a friend in the business and we were able to tour his small winery over the weekend. It's quite an intensive process, which takes years to complete depending on the type of Champagne. Reims is also well known because it was the town the new kings went to to receive their crown. The fourth weekend Chris and I went to Bastogne, Belgium...where the famous Battle of the Buldge took place. The 101st Airborne fought the Germans for the better part of month here during WWII, with most of the fighting taking place in the Ardennes Forest nearby. If you've seen the Band of Brothers series, it gives a great depiction of what the 101st went through...real heroes of WWII. We visited a museum and also drove out into the forest where the 101st airborne fought to see what remains of the foxholes they dug for protection and to stay warm. We also drove a little further down the road to Luxembourg to see the WWII memorial there. It's sobering to see so many white crosses in one graveyard.

On 3 Oct Chris and I took off and flew back to Aviano after a month of successful training. Sadly, Lana and I now have only about three weeks left here in Italy. Our last day here is 16 Dec and the movers are already coming to pick up our things the first week of December. As much as we don't want to leave, we know God has more in store for us over the year ahead. We're already talking about plans to visit Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and Vietnam while I'm stationed in Korea. Fly safe...check six!

More Pictures:
TLP; Bastogne, Belgium