Osprey: The Challenges of Maintenance In Iraq and Afghanistan

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11/28/2010

An Update on the Osprey from New River (VI)

An Interview With Corporal Warshek And Sergeant Fante

11/28/2010 – Second Line of Defense in late August 2010 talked to Osprey maintainers at New River Air Station. One theme, which was discussed, was the challenge of maintaining the aircraft in the tough operating environment of Afghanistan. It is one thing to maintain the aircraft in a facility such as New River with machinery to lift parts of the aircraft and a building to protect the aircraft from the elements. In Afghanistan, the USMC has been operating the Osprey in very tough conditions, and did maintenance out of tents. This is certainly a challenge when considering readiness for operations. So when one thinks of readiness, it is one thing to talk about base operations, but another when talking about deployment in extreme environments.

Osprey Hanger in Afghanistan (Credit: USMC)Osprey Hanger in Afghanistan
Credit: USMC




 

 

Cpl. Warshek (Credit: SLD)

 

 

SLD: Could you tell us about your job in maintaining an Osprey?

Corporal Warshek: I’m a dynamic component mechanic.

SLD: What is a dynamic component mechanic?

Corporal Warshek: We touch the rotor systems, the drive systems, flight controls. We would see the rotor heads, the swash plates, you know, pretty much the big components, the blades, everything like that that would fall under us.

SLD: Did you work on rotorcraft before?

Corporal Warshek: I’ve done all type manual series. I have worked on land and at sea.

 

 

 

 

 

Sgt. Fante (Credit: SLD)

 

 

SLD: Sergeant Fante, what is your background?

Sergeant Fante: Right now I work on the Osprey, but had six years experience in hydraulics and tire wheel shops. I’ve worked on all type model series from Iraq and on the ships. I’ve done C-130s and EA-6s, virtually in all of these on-sea, at-sea, on the land.

SLD: What has been the challenge of moving from rotorcraft to a tiltrotor craft?

Sergeant Fante: It was slow, really slow at first because mostly with lack of experience and lack of supply assets. Whereas, with the 46 and the 53, we see a part come in and if you didn’t know what it was, you can easily go to QA (Quality Assurance), go to a senior guy to get help. Until we get a part in, everybody is kind of scratching their heads. We have to call a civilian an FS, field service representative and they’d have to come in and kind of guide us along.

It was slow, really slow at first because mostly with lack of experience and lack of supply assets.

The service vendors provided the transition, because we had no experienced Gunnys. The FSs here and they’re very, very, very adequate. They’re awesome guys but before with the traditional aircraft we relied on the long experience of Gunnys. And you have enough to pull in assets where you’re going to have parts and you have 30 years experience producing parts so there’s going to be a supply chain that’s got capability built into it.

SLD: Whereas, in the case of the Osprey, the supply chain is new and you have challenges with availability of parts and metrics of performance and life cycle of those parts? So you’re either going to have to adjust the metrics to make them realistic and you’re certainly going to have to improve the product towards whatever the “normal” is. That gets you back to your lack of experience issue. There’s no gunny to go to and say, okay, we’re going to work in sync for a long time, you know, I’m looking at this part, is this normal, right? It’s hard to have a normal, when you don’t have normal.

 

Sergeant Fante: We are dealing with a lot of new recognition issues with regard to the parts and their performance.

Corporal Warshek: There is the problem of dealing with changing capabilities. Certain pieces of gear change almost constantly as upgrades are made. This meant we had to learn to adjust.

There is the problem of dealing with changing capabilities. Certain pieces of gear change almost constantly as upgrades are made. This meant we had to learn to adjust.

For example, we just recently got in first two pendulum assemblies into our shop. We’ve never seen before. We rely on the SR’s to provide guidance on how we would tackle something like that. The pendulum assembly attaches to the rotor head.

SLD: What was your experience in Afghanistan with regard to maintenance?

 

Corporal Warshek: I deployed with 261, VMM-261 when they went out. Occasionally, we’d run in something like where would be in a situation where the service representative wasn’t available or, we’d be on our own and the publications we were relying on was a little unclear or none of us had seen the problem before quite in the same way. So we would draw upon the “Osprey Nation.”

Osprey Operations in Afghanistan in Challenging Conditions (Credit: USMC)Osprey Operations in Afghanistan in Challenging Conditions
Credit: USMC

SLD: So you had to face two uncertainties: maintaining a new aircraft and operating in a tough environment? How did you handle that challenge? It must have been interesting.

Corporal Warshek: It definitely was interesting. The space issue was probably our major focus. If a rotor head were to go down, we didn’t really have the space at I-level to fix that rotor head. We were working out of the vans. And for the I-level, we were working out of cans, so we didn’t have the space to actually put a rotor head in the cans, take it apart or anything like that, so we would have to rely on the squadrons, so that they may possibly give us a spot there, a hangar, work out there and use all their tools. We’re taking our tools down the flight line and basically we had to move our shop down there. This took a couple of hours just to move our shop. For example, we would have a rotor headstand and a rotor head we fit on and would have to move that from where they were located on the compound down to the flight line. This took a joint effort of supply and using a forklift, maybe a flatbed truck, somebody who would have a license to drive a truck, some way to get it off the truck when we would have to support the flight line.

SLD: Without breaking it.

Corporal Warshek: Absolutely. And then there is the challenge of dealing with the sand, which we had in Iraq. If we get sand in the hydraulic system and sand goes rushing through there and it’s absolutely destroyed. So if we’ve got a sandstorm coming in and we’ve got all these gear in the shop we’re working on, if it’s coming in through the seams, the doors, it’s a potential serious problem.

If we’ve got a sandstorm coming in and we’ve got all these gear in the shop we’re working on, if it’s coming in through the seams, the doors, it’s a potential serious problem.

The Arctic Sea Competition: Strategic Competition (Part Two)

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By Caroline Mükusch
German Correspondent, Second Line of Defense

Credit image: www.crystalinks.com

11/28/2010 – When it comes to the North Pole and the question of who wins the race for the Arctic, two major interests are rising: energy and security.  Therefore Arctic neighbor states regularly assert their national interests in this region.  Predictably, they are increasing their civil and military engagement in the Arctic area.  Although Norway and Canada are very engaged in the Arctic area, the policy stage is still set by the Cold War superpowers Russia and the United States.  Russia has a proactive policy; the U.S. has a reluctant policy.

In 2008 after Canada, the United States, and Denmark criticized Russia’s territorial claims to the continental plateau of the Arctic, Russia set out training plans for military units that could be engaged in Arctic combat mission; extended the “operational radius” of its northern naval forces; and reinforced its army’s combat readiness along the Arctic coast – just in case of a potential conflict. [1]

In its new national security strategy (2009), Russia raised the prospect of war in the Arctic Ocean if Russia’s interests and border security were threatened by neighboring nations, likely considering the current circumstances of pending border agreements and disagreements between Russia and those nations.  To secure and guarantee its overall energy and security interests, Russia stated “in a competition for resources it cannot be ruled out that military force could be used to resolve emerging problems that would destroy the balance of forces near the borders of Russia and her allies.” [2]

Russia is willing – and able – to use the entire spectrum of instruments to settle legal status problems in disputed regions such as the Arctic, Caspian, and South China Seas.  [3]

Russia’s 2007-2015 rearmament program plans to rebuild the submarine force, recommending building several dozen surface ships and submarines, including five Project 955 Borey nuclear-powered strategic ballistic missile submarines equipped with new Bulava ballistic missiles, two Project 885 Yasen nuclear-powered multipurpose submarines, six Project 677 Lada diesel-electric submarines, three Project 22350 frigates, and five Project 20380 corvettes. [4]

The United States – although it had been an important Arctic nation since it purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867 – is now a “reluctant Arctic power.”  After the Cold War the United States became too passive in the Arctic, preferring mainly re-active policy measures than a comprehensive Arctic strategy.  [5]

With the end of the Cold War the United States steadily closed some northern military bases, including the naval base on Adak and Fort Greely.  These developments reflect the United States’ perception that a significant military presence is – since Soviet Union submarine force collapsed – no longer needed in the Arctic. Although the collapse of the Soviet Union seemed to make the challenges easier to resolve, the challenges in the Arctic facing now U.S. policy-makers are much more complicated than expected in 1991.  Threats are much more nebulous, long term, and complex.

With the end of the Cold War the United States steadily closed some northern military bases, including the naval base on Adak and Fort Greely.  These developments reflect the United States’ perception that a significant military presence is – since Soviet Union submarine force collapsed – no longer needed in the Arctic. Although the collapse of the Soviet Union seemed to make the challenges easier to resolve, the challenges in the Arctic facing now U.S. policy-makers are much more complicated than expected in 1991. 

(Credit image: http://www.uscg.mil/history/docs/ArcticOverview%5B1%5D.pdf)Credit image: www.uscg.mil

Additionally resources are bringing new actors to the north as well.

  • Although China is lacking an Arctic coast, China stated recently: “The Arctic belongs to all the people around the world as no nation has sovereignty over it”. [6]
  • Japan for instance does not possess any Arctic claims, Japan is interested in gaining greater access to discussions and negotiations on the Arctic because it could benefit from the opening of the Northwest Passage, which would establish a route circumventing the Suez Canal and shorten transit times between Asia and Europe by 40 percent. [7]
  • Furthermore, Russia invited China – the world’s fastest-growing economy that requires 10 percent of global energy demand while meeting 95 percent of those needs with domestic energy supplies – to exploit oil and gas reserves locked in the “Russian section of the Arctic.” In 2010 China, with an interest in sustainable energy supplies, was offered a “mutually advantageous and constructive cooperation” exploring and exploiting the regional natural resources base with Russia.
  • In 2009 finally the United States changed its Arctic perception by releasing both an Arctic policy declaring security as top priority of American Arctic policy and an Arctic roadmap outlining the direction of U.S. maritime Arctic security protection [8].  But what is missing is a clear shaping of capabilities to implement the policy.

Hence, the strategic environment within the Arctic region is set by very simple rules:

  1. Sufficient scientific data about topography and environmental conditions
  2. Money for resource expedition, exploration and infrastructure projects
  3. Vague rules of international law
  4. A latent conflict level.

———-

References

[1] http://en.rian.ru/russia/20080624/111915879.html

[2] The London Times

[3] See Principles of the state energy policy and its implementation phases, Energy Strategy of Russia for the period up to 2030, Moscow 2010

[4] Compare: Rianovosti (2008): Russian Navy to receive Severod Severodvinsk nuclear submarine in 2010

[5] Huebert, Rob (2009): United States Arctic Policy: The Reluctant Arctic Power, The School of Public Policy: SPP Briefing Papers Focus on the United States. Vol 2, Issue 2, May 2009, p. 1-26

[6] Chang, Gordon G. (2010): China’s Arctic Play, The Diplomat from 3/10/10, http://the-diplomat.com/2010/03/09/china’s-arctic-play/

[7] The Japan Times from 11/7/08, http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20081107a9.html

[8] National Security Presidential Directive and Homeland Security Presidential Directive No 66 / Homeland Security Presidential Directive No 25 and Department of the Navy (2009): Memorandum for Distribution – The U.S. Navy Arctic Roadmap, 3140 / Ser. N09/9U103038

The F-35 Seat’s Enhanced Maintainability

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11/18/2010

An Interview With Armando Martinez

11/18/2010 – During a visit to the Lockheed Martin F-35 facility mid-September, “Mondo” Martinez was interviewed with regard to the new seat in the F-35, which represents an important increase in maintainability.  On average, what takes the F-16 maintainers more than three hours to do with regard to seat maintenance will take F-35 maintainers 15-20 minutes.  This is an obvious improvement with regard to combat operations.  The change is due largely to the need NOT to take the seat out for a number of maintenance operations. Armando Martinez was recently the completion supervisor for the BF-4 or the 4th F35-B; he is now the completion supervisor for the first build of the F35-C, or the naval version of the F-35. In a recent interview, “Mondo” discussed working on the F-35C .  In the slide show below, “Mondo” discusses the seat with SLD’s Robbin Laird, which several aspects are featured in the photos.

SLD: The ejection seat in the 35 is common across the three aircrafts. You explained before that the seat for the F-35 is much more integrated than the one for the F-16 and that there are many more modular parts so that you don’t have to take the seat out to do repairs.  You obviously don’t have to remove the cockpit, which you do in the F-16.

“Mondo” Martinez: No, and there’s more teardown on the F-16 to get the seat out.  I’m not saying it’s harder, it’s just more time consuming.  For combat you don’t want to waste time in pulling the seat out.  You have to be able to pull the seat out if you need to.  And that’s one of the better options you have on this seat, but you can work most of the seat on the aircraft.

In addtion, you got a lot of replacement items which are easier to get to, to remove and to replace: this is good for maintenance.  Good for the customer and good for everybody. I was talking to one of the guys on the BF-5 line and he was saying that, for the F-16, it could take about three hours to do the maintenance that you could do in about twenty minutes on the 35, because you don’t have to remove the canopy.

SLD: But the point that you were emphasizing and showing me on the aircraft itself is how much repair you could do on the seat while it stays on the plane? You were explaining that this was due to modularity for several parts, and a lot of simplification too.  That there are a lot of mechanical parts that were in the older seats, that are not in the new seats.  So that if they’re not there, they won’t fail, is this correct?

“Mondo” Martinez: Yes, and another important factor is that they’ve cut the inspection requirements immensely on the seat, because you don’t need them as much now. You always have to have inspection, especially when you have to deal with safety of flight.  This is a seat, this is critical for the pilot to leave the aircraft in an emergency and that’s one area you don’t want it to fail.  And always a second pair of eyes never hurts.

SLD: So significantly reducing inspection time necessary to verify the plane safe for flight is another cost saver?

“Mondo” Martinez: Yes, sir.  And when you have less mechanical parts, less areas to work in, the less there is, the less there is to do.

When you have less mechanical parts, less areas to work in, the less there is, the less there is to do.

SLD: Another thing that you were showing me is that the cockpit has been designed with significant upgrades for the safety of the pilot himself.

“Mondo” Martinez: Indeed: for example, they have a tunnel where the actual pilot’s legs go inside of the cockpit and where he sits in it for the rudder pedals.  During an emergency situation, he has what they call the leg restraints, and these leg restraints retract his legs, and make sure that in the time of the ejection, there’s no injury to the pilot.  Not only that, his uniform cover’s got restraints in it too, so it pulls his hands in, and that makes sure there’s no fingers lost or anything when he ejects.  It’s just something the aircraft automatically does for him.

SLD: What about the parachute release?

“Mondo” Martinez: The parachute on the F-35 is designed to eject the pilot out of the backside, rather than straight up.  The parachute opens right up, balances itself and the pilot leaves the aircraft safely. This will reduce significantly threats to the pilot’s safety over traditional aircraft.

The parachute on the F-35 is designed to eject the pilot out of the backside, rather than straight up.  The parachute opens right up, balances itself and the pilot leaves the aircraft safely. This will reduce significantly threats to the pilot’s safety over traditional aircraft.

C4ISR D Central To XXIst Century Power Projection

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Forging a 21st Century USN and USMC : C4ISR D as a Key Element for XXIst Century Power Projection Force

By Dr. Robbin Laird and Dr. Scott Truver

Dr. Scott Truver is Director of National Security Programs at Gryphon Technologies, LC ; Robbin Laird has worked with Dr. Truver on maritime issues since 1996.

This special report examines the key role of C4ISR D in allowing the USN and USMC to operate as a global power projection force.

11/18/2010 – Crafting an effective U.S. Navy and Marine Corps strategy for the 21st century––one that both supports national security and homeland security objectives and gains sustenance from them––requires a strong emphasis on networking in a broad and comprehensive context. Networks make U.S. forces more effective by enabling them to share more information on a timelier basis, thus leveraging the power of a limited numbers of units and small forces.

That said, seamless interoperability and comprehensive information sharing per se in single-service, Joint, inter-agency and combined operations will no longer, in themselves, suffice. With the growing dependence of the nation’s top-level strategies on the contributions of allies and coalition partners to the maritime defense of the global commons and to multi-national, sea-air power projection, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps will have a greater requirement to network with American allies, partners and friends in a significantly broader, more inclusive fashion than ever before.

And the evolution of the global operations of the USN and USMC will operate in an increasingly global centric regionally based environment. The need to build effective regional coalitions among developed and developing states is a key requirement for U.S. policy in the years ahead. A major difficulty in shaping such a new security system will be maintaining a strong leadership role without generating anti-Americanism as a factor in stimulating new regional alliances against U.S. interests.

In this emerging and burgeoning “network-centric” context, the key to the effectiveness of the United States as a global power will be its ability to leverage relations in one region to achieve effects in another, i.e., its skill in reaching beyond itself in one region to engage the participation of corresponding states in other regions.

In contrast to the traditional strength of a global super power––the unilateral capacity to bring overwhelming military force to bear without regard to the requirement to work with regional states––it is this regional networking role that will now be critical for the U.S. capacity to defend its interests.

Specifically, the United States will seek to become the primary architect of a security zone extending from the Mediterranean, through Europe, across the Atlantic to the Americas, and across the Pacific into Asia and the Indian Ocean littoral. In this role, it will not act as a hegemonic power, but rather as a networking power.

The crafting of a connectivity “workspace” will be a central challenge, and the emergence of such a “workspace” among allied forces is a weapon system in and of itself.

The strategic challenge in this unique historical situation is to combine global reach with growing deftness in putting together coalitions––networks––of “the willing” to meet specific threats. This blending of military and diplomatic skills to create netted regional security arrangements will be a key U.S. goal in the 21st Century.

Thus, for the United States to have an effective military role in the new setting of regional networking, a key requirement will be effective and assured combined command, control, and communications, linked by advanced computing capabilities to global, regional, and local intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance assets (C4ISR).

The services will need to ensure that there is broad synergy among U.S. global forces fully exploiting new military technologies and the more modest capabilities of regional allies and partners. Indeed, C4ISR is evolving to become C4ISR D, whereby the purpose of C4ISR is to shape effective combined and Joint decision-making.

The Department or Defense and the Department of the Navy have responded to this new “cyber” environment with a major change to how DoD and DoN are organized. The Department of Defense has established U.S. Cyber Command as the command primarily responsible for dealing with new threats – and opportunities – created by the technologies that allow friend and foe to operate in this new dimension.

Additionally, for the U.S. Navy the response to this new environment has been proactive and dramatic and has been reflected by the most profound reorganization of the Navy staff in over a decade.

Figure 1 Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead and Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Walter Gaskin, commanding general of II Marine Expeditionary Forces (Forward), meet with the commander of troops of the Azerbaijan army detachment collocated with the U.S. Navy detachment at Haditha Dam. The Azerbaijani detachment provides force protection to the U.S. Navy's riverine unit on the dam. Roughead expressed his thanks to the Azerbaijan people and their army for their contributions to Iraq's future and their cooperation with U.S. forces in support of coalition efforts. Credit: USN Visual Services, 11/1/07

Concurrently, in his most recent CNO Guidance, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gary Roughead has made achieving “Decision Superiority” one of his top five goals for 2010. The U.S. Navy Vision for Information Dominance builds on this CNO Guidance and quotes Admiral Roughead regarding this sea change in the Navy’s use of information as a weapon:

The biggest breakthrough of the current fight in OEF and OIF is the successful integration of intelligence with operations, and using the network to get information to the right person, at the right time, in the right way. That is where the power is.

In part, this is the challenge of a technology gap; but it also means recognizing the difference of emphasis between a global power operating regionally and regional powers operating locally.

At a minimum, U.S. forces and those of America’s friends must share and exercise common command and control, with regular participation of coalition officers trained to work on combined staffs. When these prerequisites are met, the introduction and integration of compatible C4ISR systems becomes a coalition force multiplier and enables cohesive and effective integration of U.S. capabilities with those of allies and partners.

These coalition requirements demand emphasis on achieving the global transparency of command and control that will be indispensable for supporting U.S. engagements in crisis and conflict situations. In the not-too-distant future, networking will link sensor grids with diverse and dispersed platforms and bases, and situational awareness will encompass so much information exchange that the line between information providers and consumers will blur.

New Directions for Navy/Marine Corps C4ISR D

  1. The implications of these challenging global C4ISR D and networking requirements for the Sea Services, in some respects, are influenced by several key factors somewhat closer to home. As military services, the Navy/Marine Corps Team––complemented increasingly by the Coast Guard––is growing more dependent upon “network warfare” for several reasons: (1) a Navy and Marine Corps with fewer platforms––ships, aircraft and submarines––will need to place increased reliance on dispersed, interactive operations;
  2. the development of advanced communication and data transmission systems can only enhance the advantage of dispersed but interactive forces and tactics, such as the Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC); and
  3. the wider use of offboard/remote sensors, e.g., satellites and unmanned aerial, surface, and undersea vehicles (UAVs, USVs and UUVs), including armed, unmanned platforms, will create its own demand for networking.

Moreover, the new 5th-generation aircraft function as “flying combat systems,” comprising substantial onboard distributed computing systems, rapid upgrades through chip/software insertions, and designed and built around a 21st-Century concept of man-machine operations. All of these trends can be expected to continue––and, indeed, to accelerate––for the foreseeable future.

Figure 2 Robbin Laird discussing with F-35B team at Lockheed Martin Shown is the final F35-B test aircraft. Credit: Lockheed Martin, September 2010.

With respect to force levels, today’s fleet of some 288 ships (as of September 13, 2010) is probably the maximum that can be expected in the near term, i.e., at least for the next decade. Despite a Navy force goal of 313 ships by 2020, shipbuilding budgets are not likely to provide an increase in ship construction and force levels. Rather, delays in the aircraft carrier (CVN), landing ship (LPD), and littoral combat ship (LCS) programs – to say nothing of the Navy’s truncating the DDG-1000 program at three ships – coupled with the early retirement of ships suffering from maintenance problems and exacerbated by the restructuring of the Navy’s next-generation destroyer and cruiser programs, could lead to an even smaller fleet in the near term. Fewer ships, aircraft, and submarines will place a strain on the fleet as crises and conflicts arise and continue in various parts of the world.
Widely dispersed naval forces will see an increase in the transmission of data of all types among naval forces and Joint forces/commands.

Further, the limited size of the current and future fleet has led to the “1000-ship Navy” concept, first espoused by Admiral Michael G. Mullen when Chief of Naval Operations. This concept seeks to employ allied and even neutral navies in support of mutual national interests. In his address at the 17th International Seapower Symposium at the Naval War College in September 2005, Admiral Mullen stated that an international fleet in excess of 1,000 ships, a Global Maritime Partnership, was needed to address new challenges.

In turn, this will place additional burdens on U.S. naval networks with respect to procedures, protocols, security, language, and equipment. U.S. naval networks will operate within overall U.S. proprietary military capability, with growing reliance as well on an ability to leverage commercial networks. Global maritime security depends on global information sharing: the sea is vast, ships are far between, and to be effective they must see beyond their horizons. Networking makes that possible.

Advances in communications and data sharing must be fully exploited to enhance the effectiveness of available naval forces and to enable those forces to employ offboard/remote sensors and unmanned platforms.

This will require improvements and changes in procedures and protocols, as well as the need for increased automation, as additional circuits, sensors, and unmanned platforms demand service by the Naval Information Dominance Enterprise (NIDE) infrastructure.

Figure 3: Systems such as I Robot’s robotic Sea Glider will provide
  significant maritime domain awareness and will need to be integrated
with the fleet on flexible operations.
Credit: I Robot, 2010

Further, because available bandwidth will be hard-pressed to accommodate these requirements, new concepts in how U.S. services use the available bandwidth, including time-sharing, burst communications, data routing, assignment of priorities, and other advances will be needed in naval networks.

The wide use of remote sensors and unmanned vehicles––air, surface, and underwater––will increase the need for effective networks and data links. In 2010, the Navy and Marine Corps use a large number of tactical UAVs, primarily for ISR functions.

In the near term the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) system will provide a high-altitude, long-endurance vehicle, with an endurance of more than 24 hours; future UAV concepts envision endurance measured in months and years.

Figure 4 BAMS in Operation Credit: Northrop Grumman

ven at the tactical level, the decision to procure large numbers of the MQ-8 Fire Scout UAV for the LCS––i.e., more than 100 aerial drones deployed on board the planned force of some 50 LCSs––will demand new levels of networking.

The LCS in particular will bring new demands on Navy networking because, in addition to the Fire Scout UAV and manned helicopters, the various LCS configurations will operate unmanned surface and underwater vehicles in the anti-surface (ASuW), mine countermeasures (MCM) and anti-submarine warfare (ASW) mission configurations, as well as for other future roles and tasks.

More to the point of LCS, it will sit at the center of a network of unmanned sensors and pass information into wider area networks affecting tactical decisions.

Similarly, advances in underwater communications are making it possible to include underwater sensors in networks which can help a fleet with limited numbers dominate the undersea battlespace of a littoral region. Submarines, which now operate only mine detection/mapping UUVs, can also be expected to operate more unmanned vehicles in additional mission areas, especially in novel ISR operations and possible ASW roles.

And the expanded role of robotics to shape an insertion enterprise, with air, surface and underwater robotic vehicles operating together will require an enhanced information capability.

Notably, the new assets coming off of the amphib as a key element of the USN and USMC joint team, spearheaded by the F-35B will allow the management of the information system to operate within an enduring littoral presence mission set.

In the context of this increasing use of data transmission and communications by U.S. naval forces, potential adversaries will also have increased access to the means and techniques for interfering with advanced networks.

This became evident when Iraqi forces attempted to interfere with Global Positioning System (GPS) weapon guidance in the 2003 conflict and in recent––and often successful––foreign cyber attacks on U.S. government agencies and Congress, including the Department of Defense and various military and national networks.

U.S. adversaries have the advantage of agility in developing cyber-attack capabilities because of the nature of a large, complex, hierarchal institution such as the U.S. armed forces, and the ready availability of cyber-attack techniques (often disseminated on the Internet) and of commercial hardware and software.

As the perhaps overstated cliché goes, all it takes for potential enemies to devise and field cyber-attack weapons are a credit card and access to a local Radio Shack. (This is why the Marine Corps is embracing distributed operations and the Air Force is focusing on the deployed tactical network and cyber offensive operations to protect deployed forces.)

Also, critical will be relying on the new F-35s to spearhead a distributed decision making system which will make targeting a central node in the information management grid of limited effectiveness. Indeed, doing so will open the aggressor to counter strikes via electronic warfare means.

These security considerations will have profound implications for the Naval Information Dominance Enterprise.

Osprey: a heavier medium-lift capacity

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An Update from New River (V)

[download PDF of full report]

An Interview With Lieutenant-Colonel Garcia on the Osprey in Iraq and Afghanistan

11/18/2010 – Lieutenant-Colonel Garcia discussed his time in Iraq and Afghanistan involving both rotorcraft and the Osprey. The tiltrotor craft was used differently in the two countries due to mission differences and geographic differences. In the next posting, Lieutenant-Colonel Garcia describes the challenges of shaping a more effective maintenance regime for the Osprey. Here he describes the operational experiences.

Lt. Col. Garcia (Credit: SLD)

SLD: Could you describe your involvement in the Iraq and Afghani operations?

Lieutenant-Colonel Garcia: I was the maintenance officer for the VMM-261 during the Afghanistan deployment. I did the first deployment overall with VMM-263 in Iraq. I was CH-46 pilot in Iraq. I’ve been in the program since prior to the operational evaluation at VMX-22, so I’ve been flying for about six-and-a-half years. Before we get into the maintenance piece of it, I’ll talk a little bit about the aircraft and kind of how it operated in the theater.

SLD: Could you talk to your experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan with the aircraft?

Lieutenant-Colonel Garcia: The aircraft self deployed off of the ship. We flew into Al-Asad on one day, spent the night. The next day from Al-Asad, we got into Bastion with only single air refueling required with some internal tanks.

This aircraft doesn’t have the capability to be broken down and put inside a C5 like the helicopters can. However, it does have the capability to be able to deploy itself.

This aircraft doesn’t have the capability to be broken down and put inside a C5 like the helicopters can. However, it does have the capability to be able to deploy itself.

There are still some challenges in that with the icing protection and some related issues. But assuming that the weather is good enough, you have support from the KC-130 for fuel. You can pretty much get anywhere that you need to. With internal tanks, you can go for long distances, too. It was designed to go from the coast of California out to Hawaii without any external support.

SLD: The refueling system, is it a probe?

Lieutenant-Colonel Garcia: For aerial refueling, there is a probe. The newer models have the retractable probe, so it extends and then it comes back. We also have three tanks that fit inside the aircraft, increase our range considerably.

Ospreys Landing at Camp Bastion After "Self-Deploying" Off of Amphib (Credit: USMC)Ospreys Landing at Camp Bastion After “Self-Deploying” Off of Amphib (Credit: USMC)

SLD: How did you use the range of the aircraft?

Lieutenant-Colonel Garcia: Once we were in theater, we got to do some longer-range missions as far as Kabul, Camp Clark, out to Zaran in the west and then down to the south towards the Pakistani border. These flights supported VIPs a lot of times, and the movement of high-level personnel. We went out to Kabul to pick up the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff. I led a division of four aircrafts to go do that. Some day we’d take a C-130 to do so, but it gives the opportunity to go the distance that a C-130 would go. However, going to land in a single-ship zone it will land vertically. C-130 didn’t have the capability to do that, so that’s the flexibility that we bring.

The majority of the missions required were just local and fairly close in within the Helmand province or a little bit to the west of that. That’s where we primarily operated.

We operated there largely in helicopter distances where our speed doesn’t really help us just because of the small distances that we’re going. What the aircraft provides that the helicopter cannot is the ability to go high. We typically flew between 9,000 and 10,000 feet to get away from the ground threats; whereas, most of the helicopters flying were lower than that. So they are more in threat from ground fire.

What the aircraft provides that the helicopter cannot is the ability to go high. We typically flew between 9,000 and 10,000 feet to get away from the ground threats.

SLD: I would assume that the roles in Iraq and Afghanistan are different because the missions are different given USMC deployments?

Lieutenant-Colonel Garcia: That’s a valid point. A part of the issue also is just the way the forces are structured in Afghanistan. In Iraq, it was a lot more integrated. We pretty much operated throughout the entire country. Whereas in Afghanistan, the Marine Corps is pretty much limited to Helmand, south there and out to the west. You have a very large Army presence in Kandahar and along with the other coalition nations. It’s broken up much more piecemeal and there’s very little crossing at those borders.

SLD: It’s more of a honeycomb where you have a cell?

Lieutenant-Colonel Garcia: Absolutely. And each theater has sufficient assets to support that theater. So there’s less need for us to go outside of there. That’s kind of what limits us to those small areas. And the rugged environment puts a lot of stress especially on dynamic components.

The environment in Iraq was challenging, Afghanistan is just as much, if not more so, because of higher altitudes. We could carry less weight. So we generally took less fuel since we didn’t have to go as far and we could carry comparable weights as we did in Iraq. But the sand is very corrosive to the engines and to a lot of the components.

We have different types of aircrafts there. We did have the skids there, the Hueys and Cobras. They operated throughout the entire area. Within the Marine Corps, you had AV-8s at the time, KC-130s. We also have CH-53E and CH-53D. The Deltas towards the summer were almost entirely ineffective during the day just because of the heat and the higher elevations. So that’s kind of the niche that we fit into there.

Osprey Operating in Afghanistan (Credit: USMC)

SLD: Could you describe that niche?

Lieutenant-Colonel Garcia: The medium lift used to be traditionally the CH-46 and CH-53 Delta, medium lift capacity. Well, everything has gone heavier now. Medium lift is not medium lift the way it was in Vietnam. So now, that is the niche that we fill.

The medium lift used to be traditionally the CH-46 and CH-53 Delta, medium lift capacity. Well, everything has gone heavier now. Medium lift is not medium lift the way it was in Vietnam. So now, that is the niche that we fill.

We’ve got CH-53Es that carried the heavier weights that did most of the external carrying, most of the cargo carrying ,and we had the opportunity to carry a lot of the personnel to move them very quickly. Some of the more important roles that we played other than just moving people and things around the theater were supporting local governance, moving a lot of the governors or all the local folks from one place to another.

SLD: Presumably as we start the drawdown within Afghanistan, the Osprey will move much throughout the theater and provide a significant transition tool as the US Army draws down its forces.

Lieutenant-Colonel Garcia: Good point; we have our cell now but the mission can change.

SLD: What is the reaction of folks when they prepare to fly in an Osprey the first time?

Lieutenant-Colonel Garcia: The first time for the U.S. forces and coalition forces, you had some people who almost refused to get in. You hear the press and how bad they are, although you know nothing has happened for years. But once they’re in it, they really get to see how comfortable it is.

Going 80 miles doesn’t take them 45 minutes to an hour in the back of a helicopter. It’s a lot cooler in the back of the aircraft. It’s a lot more comfortable, a lot quieter: got a lot of converts very quickly.

With many Marines, you would get hooting and hollering in the back from them enjoying the ride: you’d think you’re on a roller coaster! But that is also the aircraft of choice for VIPs whether it is our own generals, politicians, or the Afghans or coalition members: they get to fly them around a lot.

SLD: How many aircrafts did you have?

Lieutenant-Colonel Garcia: We started off with ten. Then we got two more around February, I believe late January or February. Now we have twelve aircrafts. We generally operated about ten of those aircraft on a regular basis. Usually, one of them was in phase maintenance, i.e. scheduled maintenance at 210 hours of flight hours. The other aircraft is generally in the down status for extended period of time due to cannibalization, because the supply system is in process of development.

Now we have twelve aircrafts. We generally operated about ten of those aircraft on a regular basis. Usually, one of them was in phase maintenance, i.e. scheduled maintenance at 210 hours of flight hours. The other aircraft is generally in the down status for extended period of time due to cannibalization, because the supply system is in process of development.

The Arctic Sea Competition and Key Strategic Challenges for Europe (Part One)

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By Caroline Mükusch
German Correspondent, Second Line of Defense

11/18/2010 – The opening of the Arctic raises simultaneously energy security, environmental questions, and strategic competition.  There are five states which claims based on extensions of their rights under international law to parts of the Arctic region: Norway, Denmark (Greenland), Russia, Canada and the United States.  Norway, Russia and Canada have been the most proactive in shaping an Arctic policy.  The United States is playing the role of the reluctant participant.  For Europe as a whole, it is essential to shape an effective proactive role, which embraces energy, security, environmental and military factors.


(Credit image: http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/pdfs/arcticocean.pdf)Credit image: http://extras.timesonline.co.uk

For some years, the Arctic Ocean increasingly has become the focus of international interests. In particular the competition for resources – notably oil and gas – has significantly raised the importance of this area for the future global economy.

Experts estimate that the Arctic – in its high northern latitudes of Russia, Norway, Greenland, United States, and Canada – holds about 22 percent of the world’s undiscovered conventional oil and natural gas resource, about 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered natural gas resources, about 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil resources, and about 20 percent of the world NGL resources.

The U.S. Geological Survey posits that approximately 90 billion barrels of oil, 1,669 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids are in the Arctic. Over 400 already discovered oil and gas fields north of the Arctic Circle provide a projected 240 billion barrels oil and oil-equivalent natural gas.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that more than 70 percent of the undiscovered oil resources occur in five provinces of the Arctic Area: Arctic Alaska, Amerasia Basin, East Greenland Rift Basins, East Barents Basins, and West Greenland–East Canada. More than 70 percent of the undiscovered natural gas is estimated to occur in three provinces: The West Siberian Basin, the East Barents Basins, and Arctic Alaska. Approximately 85 percent of these undiscovered oil and gas resources are estimated to be located offshore.

Not surprisingly, the Arctic is becoming an area of great national and international interest for politics, economy, and science. (Russia warns of war within a decade over Arctic oil and gas riches.) An international race for the Arctic has emerged, including the possibility of the use of armed forces. Although Russia seems to be ahead after it planted its country’s flag on the North Pole’s seabed in 2007, Norway, Greenland, Canada, and the U.S. also claim rights to this region.

The Arctic’s Status Quo
No country completely owns the geographic North Pole or the region of the Arctic Ocean. Russia, Norway, the United States, Canada, and Denmark via Greenland, the surrounding Arctic states, have claims based on the 200 nautical mile economic zone around their coasts.  And these states are trying successively to extend their territorial sovereign rights around the North Pole in order to exclusively exploit all natural resources within its economic zone.

Upon ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a country has ten years to make claims to extend its 200-mile economic zone. Norway (ratified the convention in 1996), Russia (1997), Canada (2003) and Denmark (2004) claim their right to certain Arctic territories. Since 1982, the U.S. Senate has failed to ratify the convention.

This effort finally led to the re-development of northern military and security capabilities of almost all Arctic neighbor states. For instance, Norway’s main defense policy focuses on northern security.  The Norwegian navy currently is building a new class of ice-strengthened frigates.  Russia also is rebuilding the strength of its naval forces, currently building its submarine force to be stationed in its northern bases.

Although, all of the main Arctic states contend that the improvement of their northern military is only being done to provide an ability to respond to the expected increase in activity in the Arctic, some Arctic states are increasing their Arctic capabilities with weapon systems that are obviously designed to fight and not to act in a coast guard-type capability.

(Credit image: http://www.uscg.mil/history/docs/ArcticOverview%5B1%5D.pdf)
(Credit image: http://www.uscg.mil/history/docs/ArcticOverview%5B1%5D.pdf)

Beyond that, due to the accelerated melting of Arctic ice vast areas of sea are opening up which in turn is transforming the untouched and previously iced Arctic to an increasingly globalized maritime area attracting not only trade and energy transportation traffic, but tourist cruises as well. The Congressional Research Service remarked that an ice-free Northwest Passage could cut shipping routes between Europe and Asia by 3,000 to 4,000 miles. [1]

Hence, unresolved disputes over international borders in the Arctic and a latent conflict level raise the question: Who controls the Arctic (maritime) region?

According to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea there are three control areas:

  • Territorial water zone – 12 nautical miles from the baseline – allows coastal states to set laws, regulate use, and use any resource.
  • The contiguous zone – a further 12 nautical miles beyond the 12 nautical mile territorial water limit – allows coastal states to continue enforcing laws in four specific areas: pollution, taxation, customs, and immigration.
  • The exclusive economic zone – 200 nautical mile – allows coastal state to control over all living and non-living resources in this zone.

If Arctic states can prove that they have an extended continental shelf they can extend their control over the ocean soil and subsurface beyond the exclusive economic zone.  The imprecision of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea makes it possible for a single state to control almost the Arctic Ocean’s entire seabed.

For instance, Russia, Canada and Denmark are claiming the Lomonosov Ridge.  They argue that it is in each case their continental shelf.  The Lomonosov Ridge, which has the size of Germany, France, and Italy combined, runs some 1,800 kilometers across the Arctic Ocean, stretching from Siberia over the North Pole to Canada’s Ellesmere Island.

Access and control of the Arctic sea are of critical importance to nations’ interests.  In essence the state that controls the Northwest Passage controls who enters these waters and under which conditions.  This authority would shape future transit routes, oil and gas exploration rights, economic development, protection of minorities, and military strategies – training missions and missiles positioning.

———-

[1] (Compare: Moens, Alexander; Dowd, Alan (2010), Meeting Russia’s Arctic Aggression,  The Mark 08/11/2010.

An Update on the Eglin F-35 Training Facility

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An Interview With Colonel Arthur Tomassetti

11/18/2010 – In October 2010, Second Line of Defense visited the F-35 training facility located at Eglin AFB. This is a return visit with the first report emanating from a January 2010 visit.  This report provides an update on progress at the training facility, as the planes prepare to come to Eglin.  SLD sat down with Colonel Arthur Tomassetti (Turbo) who is the vice commander of the 33rd Fighter Wing which serves as the home to the Joint Strike Fighter Integrated Training Center, providing pilot and maintenance training for nine international partners.

SLD: What progress have you been making as the planes will be coming later than originally anticipated?

Colonel Tomassetti: We have made good progress on our building and our infrastructure and so far, for all the things that we can actually control, we are tracking along reasonably well.

SLD: Could you describe the layout of the campus?

Colonel Tomassetti: This is the map (shown in the slide show) that shows basically our world here; the flight line side and the campus side, and what’s starting to come to fruition now, these things that we used to call “new buildings,” highlighted in white, are actually real. You can walk inside.  In fact, just last week we relaxed the, “hardhats required” rule for the Academic Training Center (ATC).  So they’re starting to become real.  We start putting furniture in those buildings, within the next couple of weeks. The building refurbishments have turned out to be a little bit of a challenge.  New construction is straightforward; you tell somebody what you want; they build according to a diagram and it all works.  The refurbishments though, it seems like every time we pull down a ceiling tile or a wall, we’re finding things we didn’t expect.

SLD: And these buildings are 40 years old?

Colonel Tomassetti: Yes, they’ve been around since the late 40’s and we actually have to spend a little bit more time, tweaking those and adjusting those, more so than we originally thought.

SLD: With regard to the foreign partners, after they buy planes can they join the Integrated Training Center?

Colonel Tomassetti: What we would expect to follow, shortly after an airplane agreement, is the discussion of “What part of this training operating do they want to buy?” as well; Do they want to buy pilot training here at Eglin?  Do they want to buy maintenance training here at Eglin?  Do they want to buy Lockheed support, in home country for some period of time, until they’re up running?

SLD: They’re different packages and different options for the partners?

Colonel Tomassetti: Foreign partners are being allowed to answer the questions for themselves: “Okay, decide what you want.”  This place is open right now for all possibilities since we have to have the capability to train pilots and maintainers for all three F-35 variants regardless.

SLD: Presumably, in a financially constrained environment, being able to leverage common assets is important.  Plus the fact of trying to figure out how to do joint CONOPS from the beginning is also important.

Colonel Tomassetti: Absolutely.  Some of the other details that we’re starting to confront now are specific startup challenges.  For example, “Okay, you’ve built this dining facility; you have your first student showing up next year.”  Well, in that first class of students there’s only about 30 people in the first class for maintenance training.  Do you open up that dining facility that has the capacity to feed 600 people, just for those 30 people? Do you put those 30 people in the dorm that’s ready to hold 250 people?  If you put somebody in there, you’ve got to turn on the power, turn on the TV’s, turn all that stuff on.

So we’re starting to face some of those issues and work the realities of the, “What does it really mean to stand up the campus, and how do we go about doing that?”  The task is to include complexities of, “How are you going to logistically move people from one point to another?  Where are you expecting them to walk?  Where do you have to provide transportation?”  To, “How are you sharing the utility bills, and those things, amongst the people who are using the facilities?”  So, we’re starting to put all of the details into the plan of getting the campus up and running.

We look to what’s going on, on the airfield.  You’ll notice, probably much different from when you were here last time, there’s a lot of clearing of trees and everything, going on.  Basically, what we’re trying to accommodate now is this parking apron that goes in front of the Navy and Marine Corp hangar, this addition to the taxiways, the large aircraft loading area and last chance checks area.  Across the taxiway, there are 2 hover pads so that the STOVL airplanes can perform their vertical landings, here at Eglin main.

All that construction is under way up at Duke field, which is one of the outlying fields that we will use; basically, we’re setting up an LHA dummy deck, which is similar to what sits at the field near Cherry Point and the field near Yuma, Arizona, that currently, the Harrier pilots use to practice shipboard operations, before actually going out to a ship.

So basically, you take the top of a LHA/LHD, you lay it on the ground, and people can operate their airplanes, on approach to landing, and on takeoff.  There is a tower set up, so the landing signal officer has the right perspective to view the airplanes, to control the approaches and takeoffs; and it gives the airplane the right perspective of things to look for, when operating in a shipboard environment.  So that’s being put into place up at Duke Field.  It should be up and operational by mid-summer of next year.

SLD: So you are preparing the infrastructure for a standup capability when the planes arrive?

Colonel Tomassetti: Right.  We have a number of pilots and maintainers to produce; so, we aim to produce to that number.  What gets done with them after they are trained is actually outside of our scope. We’re sensitive to what people are going to do with those groups of trained pilots and maintainers, but again, at the end of the day, we produce a certain number.  We produce a certain number of pilots and maintainers, on the timeline that we’re asked, and to the level of training that is capable at the time, and then the Services take it from there.

Eventually somewhere, down the road – and again, we think this is probably in the 2015/2016 time frame – when we are performing sustained production, the services will shape their demand equation. The services will come to us with something that will look like a fairly repetitive, recurring requirement of, this many pilots per year, this many maintainers per year.

SLD: Currently you are creating the infrastructure, and doing an initial flow-through with some folks and after that as planes get married, mated to the training process, and the services make a determination on what their real training requirements are, then you can take the work on the infrastructure, and the initial training efforts, and then build a realistic business plan?

Colonel Tomassetti: Absolutely. I think what we’ll find is that folks will look to leverage what we’re doing here at Eglin, against what will happen at the other pilot training centers cross the U.S.  Right now, no one has said anything about any other maintenance training centers for F-35, but anybody who is going to set up a F-35 training school, wherever that may be, in the beginning, the only reference point they’ll have is what’s happening here at Eglin.  So our thought is that we will establish the template for other pilot training facilities for the F-35.

SLD: What might the number of pilot training facilities for F-35?

Colonel Tomassetti: As an example, we’ll have one Air Force squadron here; the Air Force, when it looks at the numbers it needs on that green side of that scale and the sustained production timeline, they see a need for up to 13 training squadrons for the pilots. But what would be nice if all 13 looked the same and were built on the same basic model.

SLD: What does “ready for training” mean?

Colonel Tomassetti:  We’ve gotten a lot smarter over the summer about how to answer that question. We now have certain processes in place that we didn’t have before.  We actually have hardware here now.  We have our first simulator here now.  We have our first classroom up and running for pilots.  So, a lot of the time up to now has been spent on making sure that the facilities are up and running; and that stuff really is pretty much starting to become less of a concern.  Yes, we have to go in and make sure the new construction was built right and we have to go validate everything that’s under warranty works, and those kinds of things, but that’s pretty easy.

Just by nature of putting people in those facilities, we’ll find out what works or doesn’t work. But the equipment and processes part of training is challenging, because everything about this Weapon System is new. It’s new down to the pilot’s flying gear, and in the pilot’s flying gear, it’s new down to the stuff that you can see and the stuff that you can’t see.

We can’t just take something we have, from legacy, things we’ve been using for however many years and apply it, necessarily, to F-35.  We’re actually starting with new stuff and in some cases, with blank sheets of paper.  We have to understand the ALIS computer system that is really the core of what happens in F-35.  We have one simulator here; now that we’re starting to get a good understanding of what it can do, how we can best use it for training, and we’ll start to get some of the desktop trainers in, for the maintainers here in December. Our first pieces of flying gear are arriving.  All of the pilots who are here today have been fitted, and bits and pieces of their equipment are starting to arrive.  They can actually get it, go try it on, play with it, make sure it’s actually exactly the right size and everything; and then, again, we’re waiting on the airplanes as the last piece to arrive.

SLD: And again these are joint processes you are working on?

Colonel Tomassetti: The processes, again, are another challenge because this is one where, if left to their own devices, each individual service could do this very well.  They could develop a syllabus for pilots and maintainers.  They could develop ways that you do maintenance on the airplane and the procedures that you follow; because they would just apply what they do in their legacy airplanes, add in the F-35 differences, and go forward. Well, that’s great if we were going to train in isolation, and not take advantage of the commonality that the weapon system has, and not take advantage of being co-located here at Eglin.

I’m not sure that this is completely a done deal.  We keep striving towards an integrated training approach and taking advantage of the commonality, but there’s still resistance to that.  It’s still much easier, in some people’s minds, to just do things the way they’ve always done it. That would mean stay in an isolated way of doing things, yes you’re co-located but you don’t interact, sort of mindset.

SLD: The core advantage of integration is crucial to the program and to the savings inherent in co-located training facilities.

Colonel Tomassetti: Right and there is so much potential that comes from integration that’s more than just saving money.  It’s the potential interaction of students at this early level in their career with this new weapon system and all of the ideas that can come from that.

For organizations that are going to go fight jointly wherever we go, why on earth would we not choose to start the training process off with a joint and coalition setup.  We will look for new opportunities to get cross-service interaction.  We will look for new opportunities to get some cross-service buy-in and we start small; and we can find one thing that commonality allows us to do with this airplane that legacy airplanes, as an example, wouldn’t allow us to do.  Then we can argue “Hey, would you all be in agreement if we did this very small thing the same way?” and you start with something small and people agree, yes, and then you can build on that foundation. As we have communicated to anyone who will listen, we believe that interoperability could start here at Eglin.  Take advantage of the weapon system commonality and adopt best practices available to us.  The interoperability that we want on the battlefield of tomorrow or in the disaster relief response of tomorrow, that interoperability could begin here with integrated F-35 training.

The interoperability that we want on the battlefield of tomorrow or in the disaster relief response of tomorrow, that interoperability could begin here with integrated F-35 training.

SLD: I assume you can bring in aircraft asap for the maintainers?

Colonel Tomassetti: At whatever point aircraft can be brought to Eglin, we have to ask “What is the minimum kind of airplane you could have to start some basic training.” What we tell people is, okay, even if the airplanes can’t do pilot training, if you put them here at Eglin, we’ll start doing maintenance training on them because the maintainers have to touch those airplanes for their training as well. We suggest that “Go ahead and give us the airplanes,” and we’ll let the maintainers go out there, and they’ll do practice refueling, and they’ll practice removing and replacing panels, etc.  We can start building those maintainers that will have to go out and take care of these airplanes wherever they go.  We expect to train about 100 pilots a year, here at Eglin, when we’re up and running.  We expect to train close to 2,000 maintainers a year, when we’re up and running.  Getting a start on either one of those requirements will be beneficial.

SLD: And you might end up as the only maintenance center?

Colonel Tomassetti: Right now, that’s the plan.

SLD: What has happened since July with regard to the facility?

Colonel Tomassetti:  Basically, in July, we had in place for the first time, a simulator and a classroom, and the initial versions of the flight syllabus. We decided to examine how those individual pieces function and how they might work together. We started what we called, “Small Group Trials.” We put a few pilots in the classroom.  We started them on day one, with class one of the syllabuses and said, “Go through and let’s see what we find out.” And we looked at everything from, how long does it take you to login to the system?  When you login to the system, how long does it take you to get to the first class?  When you bring up that first class, are all of the words spelled correctly?  We looked at everything from the minutia to the really important.

We looked at that whole first syllabus, about 40 academic classes, including instructor led classes and the self-paced learning.

Then we worked “Day in the Life Exercises,” where we started and pretended it was three o’clock in the afternoon on Wednesday and we were faced with the challenge of putting the flight schedule for the next day together; and the training schedule for the next day together.  Okay, how are we going to process it?  How are we going to distribute it to all the folks that need to get a copy of it? That night, when the student needs to check what they’re doing the next day, how are they going to call and check what they have on the schedule?  How are they going to get their copy of that?  How are they going to study for what they have the next day?  When they show up the next morning and they go to their classroom, how are we sequencing which classes are going on in which classrooms?  How are we sequencing students, for example, going from a classroom to a simulator?”

We looked at those, day in the life exercises, with all those pieces and parts that we had in place, and we had done the validation on to see how it fit together, and we learned a lot.  And the goal is we’ll keep doing that.

As new pieces of equipment arrive and new processes get signed off or put into place, we’ll do that demonstration/validation on them.  We’ll gather large portions of the subsystems and put them together in those day in the life exercises, and hopefully, when we have everything in place, before the airplanes arrive, we’ll be able to run (sitting at a table, or sitting in the classroom, or in the training room) those day in the life exercises for a normal day, here at Eglin.  And once we get really good at the normal day, then we’re going to inject the not so normal days.

We’re going to inject the days where we have a tornado warning.  We’re going to inject the days where we have an aircraft incident, and we’re going to do the easy, non-normal days, and we’re going to do the hard, non-normal days.  What happens when we have a foreign pilot flying a U.S. airplane that hits or collides with another airplane in the airspace and the wreckage, as a worst-case-example, goes down somewhere out in town.

The different safety systems that get in play, the different mishap reporting systems that get brought into play, the different embassy contacts that have to be made, everything you can imagine for the ultimate worst day here and we’ll make sure that we can do that sitting around the table knowing how it’s going to work and hoping that that event never really occurs, real time.

SLD: So you are shaping the operational concepts and approaches that you’re going to use, day one?

Colonel Tomassetti: Absolutely, because we want to be able to hit the ground running on day one when the airplanes arrive.

Eglin will be unique.  It’ll be the only place where you can see pilots and maintainers training on all three versions of the airplane, from both the U.S. and all the partners who are buying the airplane right now. Our goal remains to take advantage of the commonality that exists in this weapon system.

Eglin will be unique.  It’ll be the only place where you can see pilots and maintainers training on all three versions of the airplane, from both the U.S. and all the partners who are buying the airplane right now. Our goal remains to take advantage of the commonality that exists in this weapon system.

It seems to us to be foolish to set up, as an example, on any given day, airplane class teaching aircraft refueling, and we have to set up three different classrooms.  We have to have an Air Force classroom, where there’s an airman standing in front of airmen, teaching; and a Marine classroom where there’s a Marine standing in front of Marines, teaching; and a Navy classroom where there is a Sailor standing in front of Sailors teaching.  All teaching a process that is done the same exact way on all three F-35 variants.

And imagine, in each of those classes, there’s three empty seats because you don’t have enough people who need that class that day.  How horribly inefficient would that be if that’s the way we went forward, and what a waste of resources it would be if that’s the way we have to go forward. But again, it’s an uphill challenge because our systems today aren’t really set up to be integrated.

We don’t do things in legacy airplanes, necessarily, the same way.  But as much as we want to take advantage of that commonality, we want to make sure we preserve whatever unique requirements there are, and then beyond that even, unique customs and traditions as well. We want the Marines to feel that they are getting to do everything they need to do as Marines, while they’re here at an Air Force Base.

We want the folks from the U.K. or other customers to feel that they get to do things that are important to them, in their operational culture. We want to make sure that we can accommodate Service and Country unique requirements as best possible.

Effectively sharing resources is another key to success. There are shared resources out on the flight line because we didn’t buy three sets of everything.  We didn’t buy one for the Navy, one for the Marine Corps, and one for the Air Force.  For some support items we bought one, and we’re all going to have to share that one tool.

We have to share airspace, here at Eglin, with everybody else who’s trying to use the airspace.

And we have to be effective at that and that means that we need to look at things that haven’t been done here before, e.g., a day where two users use the airspace at the same time because we can de-conflict.  Hey, you’re doing something five thousand feet and below, we’re doing something ten thousand feet and above.  We can go out there the same day, the same time, and use that airspace and not get in each other’s way, or we can both get training.  What if that Special Forces soldiers from the 7th Special Forces Group, need to learn how to call in close air support

Wouldn’t it be nice if that young soldier, who that day, to get the check in the block for training, has to learn how to call an airplane in for close air support, and on the same day, we have a young student who, to get the check in the block, has to learn how to go deliver close air support to a Forward air controller on the ground?

Imagine if we could both go out to the same range, at the same time, on the same day, and we get and “X” for their folks, an “X” for our folks, and we got that without stepping on each other’s toes.  We actually got that by being efficient, at the end of the day, and we had a young soldier, maybe call in a Marine airplane or a Navy airplane, and work what would look like a joint sort of CAS mission, at the very beginning of their training, at the very beginning of their career.That is how true interoperability needs to start.  We have a weapons system available to us that has enough commonality to enable joint operations.  We have a Training center in development at Eglin AFB that can capitalize on that commonality and build strong foundations for Joint operations. Taking advantage of what is available to us with the F-35 weapon system can and will move us closer towards true interoperability for Joint and Coalition operations.

That is how true interoperability needs to start.  We have a weapons system available to us that has enough commonality to enable joint operations.  We have a Training center in development at Eglin AFB that can capitalize on that commonality and build strong foundations for Joint operations. Taking advantage of what is available to us with the F-35 weapon system can and will move us closer towards true interoperability for Joint and Coalition operations.