Kandahar Air Base, Afghanistan

After a 5.5 month deployment, I'm back in Germany with the family!  Hence the short hiatus from the blog over the past half year.  A few days after our trip to Italy, I was on a plane out of Germany (not an F-16) and on my way with an initial "setup" group of pilots to get things ready for the squadron to arrive the middle of April.  We were stationed at Kandahar Air Base in the southern portion of the country.  Southern Afghanistan is flat and brown, while the northeast is very mountainous with 25,000 ft peaks of the Hindu-Kush mountains lining the horizon.

 

 
Deployed life essentially consists of flying, eating, working out, and sleeping.  The Sundays I wasn't flying I also attended a chapel service near our living quarters to stay plugged in to the body of Christ while away from home.  The schedule generally had a pilot flying once every 3-4 days and I flew 78 sorties with over 500 hours of combat time.  On average, the flights lasted 4-6 hours and had about the same number of air-to-air refuelings.  The flying in Afghanistan was very similar to my deployment to Iraq, but this time the employment rates were quite a bit higher.  I had multiple sorties where I either employed bombs or strafed with the gun to protect the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops on the ground who were under attack.  Some were quite an adrenaline rush, trying to gain situational awareness of the ground situation while hearing gun fire over the radio requiring precise employment of munitions in order to not hurt friendly troops or any Afghan civilians...all from about 10,000 ft above! 

 

 

 

As the squadron weapons officer, I would review each bomb drop or strafe pass to pull learning points for the squadron in order to learn from each other's mistakes and successes.  The flight lead would send a lessons learned email about their specific employment, then I would reply to all with anything additional I had.  In total, the 480 Expeditionary Fighter Squadron dropped 147 bombs and shot about 11,000 rounds of 20mm bullets.  Thankfully, no civilian casualties were noted from our munitions during our time in Afghanistan.

 

  

A big difference from Iraq in 2007 was the available technology.  We had wireless internet in our rooms allowing my wife, the kids, and I to talk on Skype most days.  This was a HUGE difference compared to 15 min / day on a phone in Iraq.  It made the reunion with the kids that much better since they were able to "see" me on the iPad quite a bit!  Lilli went from scooting around on her backside to running while I was gone, but seeing her do this on the computer was a blessing.  Thank God for internet this time!

 

 

 

 

 

 

I flew a jet home from the desert on 15 Sep to finally see the family again!  After a 10.4 hour long flight, we landed back at Spangdahlem to our families waving flags and signs like, "Welcome home Dad" or "We love you"!  One of the greatest sites to see!  As soon as our jets were shut down, our families could run out to the jets and welcome us home.  Soon I had Lana and the kids in my arms again...where they're supposed to be!  And with this reunion, my deployment was over.  Next up, a month with the family in the small Pacific islands of Palau and Yap...