Code One Magazine Online: July1998 - 21st Fighter Squadron Gamblers Print Version

21st Fighter Squadron Gamblers

Article by Eric Hehs

This article appeared in the July 1998 issue of Code One Magazine.

The 21st Fighter Squadron consisted of little more than a few abandoned buildings at Arizona’s Luke AFB in the fall of 1996. "We had no personnel and no airplanes," recalls Lt. Col. James Mitchell, the squadron’s first commander. "We didn’t even have our own squadron patch."

From these inauspicious beginnings, Mitchell and a half-dozen handpicked officers had to build a functioning F-16 training unit on short order. The buildings were renovated, furnished, and filled with personnel selected from other units at Luke and from other F-16 bases. A course syllabus was written as Block 20 F-16s off the production line in Fort Worth began populating the ramp. By January 1997, the Gamblers of the 21st FS were flying their first training sorties. Today, a year and a half later, the unit is recognized as one of the premiere training squadrons in USAF’s Air Education and Training Command.

Luke AFB, on the western outskirts of Phoenix, provides a locus for USAF F-16 training. Eight flying squadrons of AETC’s 56th Fighter Wing here are dedicated to F-16 training. Coursework spans the range from instructing pilots new to the F-16 to honing the skills of more experienced pilots in the latest systems incorporated into the Fighting Falcon. The 310th Fighter Squadron, for example, specializes in training pilots in LANTIRN and night vision goggle systems. The eight squadrons combined with the 944th Fighter Wing of the Air Force Reserve also make Luke the largest F-16 base in the world. More than 200 Fighting Falcons at the base fly about 180 sorties every day. Rarely does a minute go by when several F-16s are not tearing through the air overhead.

While most of the current pilot instruction at Luke involves USAF pilots, many foreign F-16 pilots are familiar with the nearby expansive training ranges in the Arizona desert as well. Most countries that fly the F-16 have sent their initial group of indigenous instructor pilots through Luke’s F-16 training programs. And experienced foreign F-16 instructor pilots often visit Luke to master new systems being incorporated into the F-16 fleet to instruct fellow pilots at home. Training international pilots at Luke, however, did not begin with the F-16. The first foreign students made their way to Arizona from China during World War II. These students were taught how to fly and fight in the P-40 Warhawk, P-47 Thunderbolt, and P-51 Mustang. Many of these pilots went back to China to fly in the 21st Fighter Squadron, one of the most successful Chinese squadrons to fight in the Pacific during the war.

USAF pilots at Luke have since trained pilots from many other countries, including Bahrain, Canada, England, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Korea, Kuwait, Mexico, Morocco, Norway, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Turkey, Thailand, and Vietnam. Through the years, these student pilots have been trained at Luke in a variety of aircraft—the AT-6, P-40, P-38, P-51, F-84, F-86, F-100, F-104, A-7, F-4, F-5, and F-15. More recently, USAF instructor pilots have trained both aspiring and accomplished F-16 pilots from Bahrain, Egypt, Greece, Israel, the Netherlands, Indonesia, Korea, Pakistan, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, and Venezuela.

Today, the 21st FS is the only USAF squadron at Luke dedicated to training international pilots new to the F-16. The unit has eighteen Block 20 F-16s, eight of which are two-seat B models. About 320 personnel comprise the 21st. The two dozen instructor pilots in the unit average about fifteen flights per month. Ninety percent of their sorties are related to instructing students. The remaining ten percent involves continuation training for themselves. The training program begins in the classroom. It then continues through a fifty-sortie syllabus that takes students from rudimentary lessons in flying the F-16 to basic fighter maneuvers in one-vs-one aerial engagements, through instruction in the more advanced systems used in coordinated air-to-air and air-to-ground missions against multiple targets and multiple adversaries.

The unique mission of the 21st FS as well as its new F-16s make it a prime assignment at Luke. "I have someone coming to my office two or three times a week looking for a position in the squadron," says Mitchell. "The unit has a strong reputation. And the Block 20 F-16 is a big draw. The aircraft’s friend-or-foe interrogator, internal data modem, and color displays are impressive improvements."

Block 20 refers to new-production F-16s that incorporate significant avionic and structural enhancements. Many of these enhancements are supported by a modular mission computer that replaces three other computers and has faster processing and a large growth capacity. The aircraft’s improved version of the APG-66 radar, called the APG-66(V3), has many new features, such as increased detection and tracking ranges and the ability to track more targets simultaneously.

These F-16s also have an improved data modem, a ring laser inertial navigation system, a digital terrain system, an advanced interrogator for identifying friendly aircraft, wide-angle head-up display, color multifunction cockpit displays, up-front controls (a set of programmable pushbuttons placed just below the head-up display), and Block 50-style sidestick and throttle controllers. Cockpit lighting is compatible with night-vision systems.

"The Block 20 has capabilities that other F-16s at Luke do not have," says Maj. Bill Lyons, an instructor pilot at the 21st. "Pilots especially like the aircraft interrogator, which allows them to distinguish friendly forces. The system simplifies aircraft rejoins, too. Moreover, the jet performs better because it is a little lighter than other F-16s I’ve flown and more maneuverable. In addition, it seems to have a little more thrust. At slower speeds, I can still move the nose around quite a bit."

With its many new systems and capabilities, the Block 20 is essentially a new airplane packed into the effective form of an F-16. The first Block 20 rolled off the production line in Fort Worth in July 1996. The first two aircraft were fitted with flight instrumentation and headed to Edwards AFB for developmental testing. That testing is planned to continue through the end of the century to support planned software updates.

"Establishing a training wing with a new aircraft that had not completed operational testing presented one of many challenges to this program," explains Dick Steves, the Lockheed Martin program manager for the Block 20. "We managed to compress the typical schedule for fielding a new aircraft by working closely with the 21st Fighter Squadron. In effect, the first year of flying for the 21st was equivalent to an operational test and evaluation program. Through very close cooperation between the 21st, the F-16 program office in Dayton, and Lockheed Martin, we were able to learn much about system performance in the operational environment, information that is normally gained from a traditional operational test and evaluation program."

"In less than three months, we went from bare walls and no toolboxes or anything to flying airplanes," adds Lt. Col. Richard Griset, the chief of maintenance at the 21st. "Getting a logistics tail in place and functioning properly usually takes a long time for any unit. But we did it in record time with what is essentially a new type of aircraft. The airframe is about the only feature shared with other F-16s. That is, the wings and tail are Block 50 and most of the fuselage is Block 15. The avionics suite, though, is completely different. Replacing an entire avionics suite makes this a new airplane."

Griset is in charge of almost 200 maintenance personnel. Together, they have compiled an impressive track record: over 6,000 hours on eighteen aircraft and mission capable rates over eighty-eight percent, which exceeds the AETC standard of eighty-five percent. In the same period, the unit has cut abort rates and break rates in half. "I look at maintenance statistics every day to see how we’re doing," says Griset. "I’m not comparing us with other units. I just want to make sure we are improving. Anyone here will say that the first measure of our success is graduating qualified F-16 pilots."

The 21st graduated its first class of students in July 1997. Its first class of instructor pilots graduated three months later. By the end of June 1998, thirty-four students had completed training at the 21st.

While graduating students is the primary measure of success at the 21st, the unit has also proved itself in direct competition with other USAF training units at Luke by winning the base’s Frank Luke trophy. The annual award is based on combined scores from two separate competitions, called turkey shoots, held during the year. (The 21st also won the first turkey shoot for the 1998 Frank Luke trophy in April.) Each turkey shoot is broken into maintenance and flying events. The maintenance events consist of aircraft launches and recoveries and weapon loading. The flying events include air-to-air and air-to-ground components. The competition has been held at Luke every year since 1964.

The 1997 competition began in March, just two months after the 21st began flying operations. The Gamblers won the maintenance competition with a perfect score a first for any unit at Luke. "We also won the first turkey shoot we ever competed in," says Mitchell.

"We had to fly four of our F-16s against eight F-18 Hornets in the March competition," says Privette, who flew on the winning team. "We do really well against F-18s. We were allowed full-up beyond-visual-range capability with our AIM-7 missiles. The F-18s had BVR capability as well. While they went into the fight with BVR tactics, we relied on our non-BVR tactics to beat up on them. We didn’t waste time trying to get long-range identifications on targets. Taking out one opponent with an AIM-7 before the merge makes the job much easier, but we relied more on the basics of what works best for a tiny airplane that maneuvers better than anything out there. We went and fought the way we learned it. Our strategy worked. We killed five of the eight F-18s. Two others had to jettison their bombs, so they would not have destroyed their intended targets. The last one turned and ran."

The maintenance and air-to-air wins, combined with an impressive third-place finish in the air-to-ground portion of the competition, gave the 21st bragging rights for the first half of 1997. A second-place finish in the following competition the next December gave the unit the Luke trophy for 1997.

"The Block 20 obviously made a difference," says Mitchell. "It usually takes fifty to seventy-five hours for a newly produced airplane to settle in, for the gunsight and bombsights to stabilize. Our airplanes were at the thirty- to forty-hour mark in the first competition. So our early wins are that much more impressive."

Mitchell credits coordination and cooperation for the success of his unit. "The coordination between Luke, the F-16 SPO, and Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth has been incredible," he says. "We received our first aircraft at Luke in December 1996 and we were flying it within two weeks on instructor pilot upgrade training missions. We were flying student sorties within forty-five days. Doing so much in so little time with an airplane that has not been fielded before is incredible. We could not have succeeded without the coordination among the team members. I have, for example, an engineer who flies with me a couple of times a month from Lockheed Martin. He takes all of the write-ups and software anomolies when we land, gets on the phone, and has engineers working on the problems before I take off my g-suit."

"We get spoiled because we have such direct contact with the factory through Lockheed Martin representatives," says Privette. "A lot of things come up that the company needs to know right away to resolve. Most of them are software-related. The company has done a great job responding to our needs." Much of that responsiveness can be credited to Louie Heaton, the Lockheed Martin technical representative attached to the 21st. Heaton and others like him around the world function as the primary technical contacts between F-16 customers and Lockheed Martin whenever an F-16 is fielded or modified.

Heaton says many of the growing pains for Block 20 have been associated with the aircraft’s modular mission computer. "So many systems rely in some way on the MMC, we were bound to have a few problems," he explains. "Fortunately, most of these can be addressed with software changes. Now that the software has matured, though, MMC performance has greatly improved to the point of being almost trouble-free. Very few jets are returning with MMC problems."

The design of the MMC itself makes it easier to work problems. The system supports two-level maintenance because technicians work with modules (ruggedized circuit cards) that slide into the MMC instead of larger line replaceable units located at various places within the airframe. What formerly amounted to entire LRUs now fit on one of these modules. The MMC contains redundant modules, so technicians can troubleshoot by swapping modules within an MMC or between MMCs. The majority of the database of experience with the MMC is derived from the Block 20 experiences at the 21st FS. "The Block 20 flight test program at Edwards consisted of eighty sorties," explains Griset. "We’ve been flying eighty sorties every week since June 1997." Mid-Life Update F-16s, the only other F-16s with an MMC, have accumulated around 3,000 flying hours; the Block 20 has over 6,000 hours under its belt at Luke alone. The two flight test aircraft accumulated another 200-plus hours at Edwards AFB. These two aircraft, now in Fort Worth, will be used to test the next software update at Edwards this summer.

As the 21st produces new F-16 pilots at Luke, the Air Force will benefit from its experience with the MMC and with other advanced features found on these F-16s. From a meager beginning to a shining example in less than two years, the 21st Fighter Squadron continues to refine the state of the art for the F-16.

Eric Hehs