Air Force Times October 7, 2002
'We're going to be READY'
Taxing year has resulted in experienced force, Gen. Jumper says.
By Gordon Trowbridge
Times Staff Writer
 Al Udeid Airbase, Qatar Satellite imagery of the aircraft shelter shows how it can have a low visual profile. The facility is contructed of hardened concrete and vocers about 1.7 acres of space. It can hold between 20 and 40 aircaft, depending on parking arrangements. |
A tired by toughened Air Force will be "at the peak of our game" if called to combat a new foe, Chef of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper told Air Force Times in a Sept. 20 interview at the Pentagon.
Jumper didn't specifically discuss Iraq or any other potential enemy in the hour-long session. But he said whoever stands against his force will have to battle a veteran corps of airmen.
"Whatever we might be called to do in the future, we're going to be ready to do," he said.
"Almost every captain in the United States Air Force who flies airplanes has combat experience. . Almost any support troop, any engineer, any security forces, any medic in the entire United States Air Force has been deployed. . So this is a veteran, hardened combat force that we have here. They have been shot at. They know what it's like. And so when we go, we're going to be at the peak of our game."
That's the payoff, Jumper said, for one of the busiest years in Air Force history. The unexpected job of destroying the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan, on top of commitments in the Balkans and Persian Gulf, has taxed his troops, Jumper admitted.
"Are they tired? You bet. Are they committed? Yes. They are more committed than they are tired," Jumper said.
Airmen and officers such as F-16 pilot Capt. Charles E. Davis have felt the brunt of a busy year.
"I've been TDY every month for the last year," said Davis, with the 524th Fighter Squadron at Cannon Air Force Base, N.M.
"Of course it affects my family," he said. "I work 50-60 hours a weeks [if not more], and I don't get a lot of time with them."
Though the people and machines of his squadron are tired, Davis said, that doesn't mean they can't accomplish the mission.
"Determination and commitment will help push you through the fatigue as long as you believe in what you're doing," he said.
Past success has future cost
Jumper addressed a number of other issues, including:
- Changes to the deployment policies prompted by the demands of the Afghanistan campaign.
- His push to modernize an aging inventory of aerial tankers - and his concept for a "smart tanker" that combines refueling, reconnaissance and communications.
- The difficulties of getting maximum value from unmanned aerial vehicles.
But his strongest comments were saved for praise of airmen for their performance in the past year, and expressions of confidence that they'll handle whatever they're asked to do.
"I've walked flight lines in the middle of conflicts all my life," he said. "And every single time, I'm surprised all over again at the dedication and commitment of our people."
That commitment has carried a price, Jumper acknowledged.
The demands of Operation Enduring Freedom forced planners to reach forward into future Aerospace Expeditionary Force packages, moving up planned deployments and exploding those future deployment cycles. Also, as many as 15 percent of airmen in current AEF deployments will spend as long as double the standard 90-day period overseas.
"I don't like that," Jumper said. "That's breaking faith with our people. It's breaking faith with our families."
Jumper said future AEF plans will go deeper into the Air Force, reaching even to the Air Staff, giving planners a deeper pool with the hope of limiting the need to disturb future cycles or extend deployments.
The buildup has started
It's not clear what impact a campaign against Iraq would have on those plans and other initiatives to ease the strain on manpower. What is clear - even without embellishment from Jumper - is that preparations for such a campaign are under way:
- Hundreds of U.S. Central Command staffers are on their way to Al Udeid Air Base in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar, where they could run an Iraq campaign
- Commercial satellite photos show continued construction at Al Udeid, including hardened aircraft shelters and command bunkers. Publicly available satellite imagery shows a new shelter with roughly 76,000 square feet of space, room for as many as 40 aircraft, according to the GlobalSecurity.org Web site.
- The United States has sought permission to base B-2 Spirit bombers on the British-owned island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, thousands of miles closer to Iraq than the plans' base in Missouri. The move requires building mobile shelters to provide the benign environment the B-2's stealthy skin needs. But when completed, the move would put the bomber within 3,300 miles of Baghdad, less than half the distance from their home at Whiteman Air Force Base.
Jumper said the service has work to do on materiel, as well as manpower, to prepare for whatever might be coming.
"The normal logistics and maintenance preparations that we have to make are on everybody's min," he said. That includes speeding up the manufacture of precision-guided munitions; bringing some older bomber and reconnaissance aircraft home from Operation Enduring Freedom for reconstitution; and double-checking inventories of tents and other camp equipment.
The job has fallen to workers at installations such as the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center at Tinker Air Force Base.
Maj. Gen. Charles L. Johnson, commander of the center, said the number of KC-135 tankers in depot or modification status was cut below 100 in August. "That's an awesome reduction considering that's from a peak of 176," Johnson said.
"At times, our work force has had to step up operations, some working 12-hou days," Johnson said.
Ordnance is another priority, Jumper said. Nearly 60 percent of the bombs dropped on Afghanistan were precision-guided, a proportion roughly eight times that used in the Persian Gulf War. Pentagon officials have said stocks depleted over Afghanistan are nearly replenished.
There's no question that Enduring Freedom has increased the strain on aircraft, including some of the oldest in the Air Force inventory. "We have a challenge with aging aircraft," Jumper said.
The three manned aircraft with the biggest flight-hour increases in the past year are the KC-10 Extender (21 years old), the B-52 (nearly half a century in service) and the C-5 (more than 30 years in service). In total, operations Enduring Freedom and Noble Eagle have required more than 75,000 sorties.
Despite that workload, Jumper isn't alone in his belief the Air Force i8s up to the challenge. Defense analyst John Pike said some may have overestimated the size of the task in Iraq.
"I don't think it would be that large," said Pike, founder of the GlobalSecurity.org Web site.
"It depends on how big of a campaign you're talking about, how long it lasts," he said. But a ground campaign that bypasses large Iraqi concentrations, and an air campaign focusing only on key targets, could ease the strain, Pike said.
"It's entirely possible that the air campaign will turn out to be surprisingly small," he said.
The 'John Madden Option'
Jumper said the Afghanistan campaign has taught valuable lessons about the need for more work on managing the flood of information available from sensors probing the battlefield.
An example: Testing a system that combines Monday Night Football with the Predator UAV.
Jumper said real-time video from Predator cameras is a valuable tool, but one that can better help avoid friendly-fire casualties. So technicians will test equipment that lets ground personnel mark the video screen - just like the telestrator John Madden uses on Monday Night Football telecasts. Tests on the "John Madden Option," as Jumper described it, begin this month, Jumper said.
Jumper also used the Afghanistan experience as evidence in support of another pet project: modernizing the Air Force's aging tanker fleet.
The Afghan campaign, he said, simply couldn't have happened without tankers. Bombers and airlifters couldn't have reached the theater from the continental United States; fighter couldn't have arrived from Persian Gulf bases; Navy carrier planes couldn't have reached farther inland than any mission in the history of carrier aviation.
"When people ask me why I'm so frantic to modernize our tanker force, it's because it's just the heart and soul of what we do," Jumper said. "And [Chief of Naval Operations] Vern Clark would be the first to tell you that."
While Jumper didn't discuss the Air Force's hope to lease up to 100 Boeing 767s for use as tankers, negotiations continue. Boeing officials say they still believe they can negotiate a lease acceptable to Congress. In a Sept. 18 speech to the Air Force Association convention, Air Force Secretary James G. Roche said the service would buy the planes if it can't work out a lease.
Jumper repeated his longer-term goal of creating a "smart tanker," using tanker aircraft as communication links that give combat planes in the sky and commanders on the ground a common picture of the battlefield.
"And how did you do it? You didn't create a [new] platform to do it. You took advantage of the stuff that's already there," Jumper said.
UAV's still have way to go
On another innovation - UAVs - Jumper said the Air Force has much work to do, despite the use of Predator and the more advanced Global Hawk over Afghanistan.
The chief said the updated Predator B, with a turboprop engine that will triple the top speed of the current Predator model, will open up new opportunities.
"It will be designed for the hunter-killer role," Jumper said, carrying Hellfire missiles or perhaps the Small Diameter Bomb the services is developing.
But even the next generation of pilotless planes, the Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle built by Boeing and being tested at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. Is several steps from where Jumper thinks UAVs should be.
For instance, the UCAV and other UAVs need airlifters to get them near the battlefield, Jumper said. "The problem is, those are the same C-17s and C-5s that everybody is competing for."
Assembling the planes agree transport takes time, eh said. And unless they're very near the conflict, they may require in-flight refueling capability, Jumper said.
"It's not that we couldn't do that, but now you start to talk about a fairly expensive piece of machinery," he said. "And you're asking, you know, 'Where's the little bitty guy that we can put in there to make sure it gets off and comes back, you know, safely?"
Gordon Trowbridge can be reached at (703) 750-8641 or gtrowbridge@airforcetimes.com
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