Block 52 Sans HARM
Close air support was not a role our pilots anticipated. The suppression of enemy air defense mission figures prominently for any Block 50 or Block 52 F-16 pilot, but not CAS. We don’t even do much CAS training. But we adapted once we got over there. Our aircraft and our pilots are extremely capable and flexible. We got spun up on CAS in the new age — JDAM and WCMD CAS and through-the-weather CAS. Weather was irrelevant. We dropped a lot of the JDAMs right through clouds on caves in Tora Bora. We talked to a GFAC who passed GPS coordinates to us while we loitered overhead in bad weather and dropped the bombs right where they needed to go.
– Col. Bill,
366th AEW Commander

• JDAM – joint direct attack munition; GPS-guided bomb
• WCMD – wind-corrected munition dispenser; GPS-guided cluster bomb

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Desert Storm Comparisons
My first mission in Desert Storm involved forty F-16s with two 2,000-pound bombs each. We dropped 80,000 pounds of bombs on Talil in two minutes. Ten years ago, getting a direct hit on a target took a lot more airplanes. You need a direct hit to take out a tank with a 2,000-pound bomb. And a direct hit is not very probable when you are dropping a dumb bomb from 10,000 feet or higher. In Enduring Freedom, we had fewer airplanes in the sky at one time. But we didn’t need as many. We flew to Afghanistan in two airplanes with two bombs apiece and we shacked four targets. Whatever the GFAC could see and identify as a target was being blown up.
– Col. Bill,
366th AEW Commander

• shack – direct hit

Tanker And Information War
I know we are talking F-16s here. But Enduring Freedom was just as much a tanker war and an information battle. We could reach that far into Asia only with aerial refueling. Tankers made everything possible. Information was just as critical. When you have two airplanes with two bombs apiece, you want to make sure you know what they want you to hit. We were going to hit whatever coordinates they gave us.
– Col. Bill,
366th AEW Commander

Typical Missions
We flew with F-15Es and F-16 Block 30 aircraft. We coordinated on the phone and joined them on the same tanker on the way to the theater. Sometimes six F-16s shared a tanker up to Afghanistan. We worked with the other fighters in the same target area. We sometimes worked with the same GFAC. But most of the time, they split up our six-ship package and moved us around the country. We wandered for two to three hours then spent another two hours going home. Our average mission was about 7.2 hours. Our longest mission was 9.3 hours. If we got a quick target in Southern Afghanistan, we could be back in just over six hours.
– Lt. Col. Tom, 366th Wing

Maverick Road Recce
We were often tasked to check out the roads around our ground forces. Half of these missions occurred at night. One of our limiting factors was a minimum operating altitude that made it tough to identify vehicles. We loaded up Mavericks to see if they would give us a better sensor capability. The flight leads would have one Maverick and a WCMD. The wingman would carry two JDAMs or two WCMDs. We flew with Mavericks a better part of a week, and even shot one of them against an ammo bunker just outside of Kandahar airport. Maverick is not the greatest sensor for road recce. We would much rather use a targeting pod.
– Lt. Col. Tom, 366th Wing

OPS Tempo
We were flying a two turn two. Typically, the day goes and the night goes would pass each other over the Indian Ocean. We had four different jets on the schedule because four to six jets were typically flying during the day. We did three phase inspections while we were over there, so one of our jets would be in phase. This schedule allowed for only one broken or cannibalized jet at a time. Our maintainers did an awesome job. Our jets performed great.
– Lt. Col. Tom, 366th Wing

• two turn two – launching a flight of two jets in the morning, recovering them, and launching another two jets in the evening

First Us Fighters To Qatar
F-16s from Mountain Home were the first US fighters ever to land at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. We landed on 7 November, two days before our maintainers showed up. (Their transport aircraft was delayed.) I set my parking brake and jumped down out from my jet. I walked down the row of F-16s and pinned everyone’s jet and shut them down. We used our data transfer cartridges as wheel chocks. These are nonstandard operations. Guys get this experience when they fly cross-country and when they are forced to divert.
– Lt. Col. Tom, 366th Wing

Texas 11
Before we started dropping near Kandahar, and long before Tora Bora, our first missions in early November were with Texas 11 up in the northeast part of Afghanistan in and around Konduz, a city east of Mazar-e Sharif. When Mazar-e Sharif fell, Taliban and al-Qaeda forces ran to Konduz to strengthen it, much like they retreated to Kandahar later on. One of our longest sorties in this northern part of Afghanistan began in the southern part of the country. When we got there in the afternoon, AWACS told us to contact Texas 11 on a particular frequency. We tuned the radio to that frequency but didn’t pick him up. We contacted AWACS again and they gave us the coordinates for Texas 11. The location was 300 miles to our north, well out of radio range and far enough away to require tanker support. AWACS assigned us a KC-10. We flew north, left the tanker just east of Mazar-e Sharif, and headed to Konduz.

When we arrived, Texas 11 had his team in the hills. From his voice, I could tell the situation was tense. He was on a hill with a road through an east-west valley on one side. Texas 11 had holed himself up with his team because he commanded a view of this valley south of Konduz. He could see a lot of Taliban troops moving towards Konduz. Some enemy forces had discovered his location. They set up some mortar positions on a nearby hill. Taliban vehicles were surrounding his position. Some Taliban troops started up the hill towards the group. Texas 11 had an immediate target for us. We spun around. My wingman dropped a WCMD, which hit just at the tail end of the convoy of vehicles and caught them on fire. We spun back around, and it was my turn. Texas 11 wanted me to move the next drop up the hill a bit. The second WCMD hit right where he wanted it. “Awesome. Awesome,” he said. “Direct hit. Standby for another target.” My wingman dropped the next bomb on the vehicles. My final drop was on the mortar positions—another direct hit. We dropped four weapons on the bad guys in about twenty minutes. The sun had set. Our bombs and the cover of darkness gave the GFAC a way out of the area. Texas 11 came back on the radio one last time and said, “Thanks. We’re outta here.”
– Capt. Paul, 366th Wing

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• nine-line – a nine-item checklist used for CAS missions

AC-130 Airborne FAC
I checked in with AWACS, expecting a standard mission. I was assigned to a GFAC who was working a Special Forces extraction. It took a while to get the situation together. Some Tomcats were on the scene, but they needed to get some gas and get back to the boat. A C-130 and a helicopter extraction package were coming, but they were not going to show up for an hour. So, I was the only relay between the guys on the ground surrounded by Taliban forces and the extraction package. My wingman and I alternated trips to the tanker. One of us would go to the tanker while the other monitored the area. Our job was to coordinate the time and the location of the extraction. An AC-130 showed up and took over the situation. He assigned targets to the aircraft in the area, one of the few times I got target coordinates from an airborne asset. We usually received targets from ground forces. The helicopter extraction team picked up the guys and got out of town fast. Once they left, the whole area became a target-rich environment. The AC-130 started passing target coordinates to us with its laser rangefinder. The area was thick with tanks, military vehicles, and troops. Some Strike Eagles showed up. When the shooting started, the whole area was on fire. We dropped four cans of WCMD and even unloaded our Gatling guns that night.
– Capt. Mark, 366th Wing

First Mission Nerves?
I wasn’t nervous on my first mission in theater, but the mission was taxing. Dealing with the unknown of traveling more than 1,500 miles over different air traffic control centers was hard. The administrative portion of flying through various air spaces, doing the check-ins, coordinating with tankers, paging through frequency lists, and dealing with all of those sorts of tasks was tough. Actually dropping the weapons was the easiest part of the mission. That’s why we train. But getting to the theater was a new process. After a mission or two, the process became familiar. But nothing was ever routine.
– Capt. Mark, 366th Wing

Secondary Explosions
One of my most memorable missions was a day mission over a bunker complex south of Kandahar. We were being controlled by an airborne FAC flying an F-16 flying from another base. The F-16 was controlling bombs dropped from a B-52. The Stratofortress flew over and dropped a dozen WCMDs and completely covered the whole bunker area. The secondary explosions indicated that he hit an ammunition dump. Almost every platform in the theater was coming through and dropping bombs. Stuff down there was on fire for the next half hour. The F-16 FACs searched for more targets and directed us to some bunkers south of the airfield. We hit the bunkers with our WCMDs. By the time I went to the tanker and came back, the fires had subsided somewhat. For the second half of the mission, I stayed over a GFAC, Texas 17, in case he needed any assistance, in case someone started shooting at him.
– Capt. Brett, 366th Wing

Artillery Piece
My best mission was a day mission near Kandahar. We were softening up the airfield so Texas 17 could go in there. A B-52 came through and dropped six JDAMs on some of the bunkers. I shot a Maverick at one of the other bunkers. We went to the tanker and came back. By this time, people were shooting at us out of the airfield near the terminal building. An F-14 rolled in and dropped a couple of bombs. He looked down at one of the buildings on the airfield and saw anti-aircraft artillery coming out of a building. He talked my eyes onto the building. I dropped a CBU-103 that destroyed the AAA.
– Capt. Brett, 366th Wing

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We had run out of CBU-103 that day, so we were carrying CBU-87. We each had four canisters of CBU-87. These are not precision-guided munitions. They’re more of a dumb bomb. Texas 17 was getting mortar fire from al-Qaeda forces hiding in some aqueducts that surrounded the city. A lot of military airplanes were stacked up over the airport. The F-16s were working the area, and a B-52 was orbiting overhead. Two F-14s and two F-18s were also on the scene, all orbiting as well. When we arrived, the F-16s were running low on their rockets, so they used GBUs to mark targets. Texas 17 gave them a talk-on to pinpoint the al-Qaeda troops in the trenches. The airborne FACs dropped a GBU into the trenches to mark the spot. My flight lead and I saw the explosion.

Friendly forces were located to the east, al-Qaeda to the west. A strong wind blew out of the west. We had to make sure that our bombs didn’t go long because, being dumb munitions, they could be carried by the wind. My wingman rolled in on the first pass and dropped his first canisters of CBU. He dropped two at 150-foot spacing. The FAC said the bombs were pretty good but asked us to drop the next ones 100 meters to the east. My wingman rolled in on his second pass and dropped them right where the FAC asked. Perfect hit. The GFAC wanted more CBU dropped another 100 meters east of the last drop. So they cleared me in for the re-attack. I went down the chute and put the bombs where they marked them. The FAC was excited. As I rolled down the shoot, I saw some 23mm AAA coming at me. The exploding shells looked like popcorn. I saw even more AAA on my second pass. That was the only AAA we saw that day. The B-52 followed us and laid down a bunch of Mk-82s. The FAC asked us to stick around, even though we had no more bombs left, in case we were needed to strafe.
– Lt. Dave, 366th Wing

• CBU-87 – cluster bomb

Lights Below Clouds
In early December, we were dropping CBU-103 in the mountain ranges in Tora Bora. We were working with a GFAC at night. We could see the snow on top of the mountains, which were mostly covered by a light cloud layer. We dropped on some GPS coordinates. We could see the lights from our bombs going off below the clouds. We never got feedback from the ground on those drops. In that timeframe, our forces were letting the enemy know that we knew where they were. But we rarely received formal bomb damage assessments because most of our missions were close air support. BDA is not usually associated with CAS. Our BDA came in the form of a radio call from a GFAC immediately after a drop.
– Lt. Col. Monty, 366th Wing

Wish List
We would have loved to have the BRU-57 bomb rack, which allows us to carry four CBU-103 per aircraft instead of two. That capability will come with the CCIP mod. I would have given anything to have a targeting pod. We had the HARM targeting system pod, but I didn’t see a thing on HTS the entire three months we were flying over Afghanistan. A helmet-mounted cueing system would have been great. We could have designated the ground target while looking out of the airplane and then have rolled in on it. The ability to see a laser pointer would have been useful as well.
– Lt. Col. Monty, 366th Wing

• BRU-57 – an existing bomb rack that will soon be available for Block 50/52 F-16s
• CCIP – Common Configuration Implementation Program; program for upgrading USAF F-16s to a single standard

Convoy
I was leading a two-ship on a night mission south of Kandahar. We checked in with the GFAC, Texas 17. Two F-15Es were flying road recce to the north. The GFAC asked us to stay south of the road. “We are going to take over this road,” he said. “But right now, we have to patch up our wounded.” Wounded on the ground immediately gave the mission a heightened sense of urgency. We searched the roads for a while and saw nothing. We were running low on gas, so we left to meet the tanker. As we turned to go, we noticed some vehicles, eight to ten cars, parked on the side of the road about forty miles to the west of the GFAC’s position. When we came back from getting fuel, I saw some vehicles going towards Texas 17 from the same direction of the parked cars I saw earlier. They were traveling on a road that angled south from Kandahar. I checked back in with Texas 17. Over the radio, the situation on the ground sounded chaotic. They had about 1,000 fighters, sixteen Americans, and two translators spread over about a mile.

The GFAC was unsure of the location of all of his forces. I told him about the convoy of vehicles traveling towards them. It took us a good fifteen minutes to get the directions straightened out. He was trying to figure out if the convoy could be his own troops. I was watching our fuel flow and the headlights of the approaching vehicles on the ground. As the smaller convoy got within a mile, their headlights went out. That was not a good sign. I checked fuel. I didn’t want our jets to run out of gas right when we might be needed, so I sent my wingman to the tanker. The tanker was about ten minutes away.

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I was very low on fuel, so I handed off the situation to my wingman and rushed to the tanker. When I came back, the firefight was still on. My wingman had dropped two bombs, and the F-15Es were dropping bombs. The GFAC asked for more firepower, a bomb 1,000 meters to the west of the last impact. I worked the calculation as I rolled in and asked my wingman if he had any idea what 1,000 meters was. He answered, “Yes, one kilometer.” I wanted the answer in mils. We had a little discussion about the math. I made a first pass but didn’t drop because I didn’t have clearance. I came in for the second pass and put the bomb right where they wanted it. We dropped all of our bombs. Then we stuck around with our guns to make sure everything had quieted down. We either got the last of the enemy forces, or they decided to run away.
– Capt. Craig, 366th Wing

• mils - unit of the target designator in the head-up display