“We’re going to fly faster, higher, and more often,” says Lt. Col. Steve Kopp, the commander of the 125th Fighter Squadron in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The increased thrust of the -229 explains the faster and higher. Improved reliability accounts for the increased frequency. “The reliability of the -229 has been incredible,” Kopp continues. “Block 52 units, which fly with the same engine, have deployed for ninety days without ever tapping into their spare engines. That’s unheard of when we deploy with -220s. We usually go through one or two of our spare motors during a ninety-day deployment. The engine will now be one less thing we have to worry about.”

The 125th is the flying organization of the 138th Fighter Wing of the Oklahoma ANG. Two other ANG units, which also fly Block 42 F-16s, are converting to the -229 engine as well: the 180th Fighter Wing of the Ohio ANG in Toledo and the 132nd Fighter Wing of the Iowa ANG in Des Moines. These three ANG wings constitute the Block 42 coalition. Brought together by a common airframe, the units pool assets and expertise to enhance their combat effectiveness. When they deploy for Northern or Southern Watch, for example, they combine airplanes and equipment to cover the ninety-day commitment. They rotate people every thirty days.

“Cooperation is the way of doing business in the Air National Guard,” says Col. Robert Ireton, the Wing Commander at the 138th in Tulsa. Through cooperation, the Guard has become an integral part of the total force in the last several years. “We are now indispensable,” Ireton adds. “The Air Force can’t go to war without the Guard, especially without our tanker and airlift capabilities. The Guard also makes up a huge portion of the fighter community of the total force.”

Thrust Needs

The Block 42 F-16s are modern airframes. Manufactured in the late 1980s, they average about 3,100 flying hours, which is significantly fewer hours than Block 30 airframes that account for most of the ANG and Air Force Reserve F-16 fleet. However, the LANTIRN-capable Block 42 has suffered somewhat from insufficient thrust when loaded with targeting, navigation, and countermeasure pods; fuel tanks; and ordnance. “The Block 42 is treated as a training asset in USAF active-duty units,” notes Capt. Todd Farnsley, an aircraft maintenance officer at Tulsa. “The thrust is somewhat limited for combat configurations. Keep in mind that the -200/-220 engine was designed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Pratt & Whitney has had thirty years to improve it.”

The thrust difference translates directly into combat capability. “The -220 gets us there, but the -229 gets us there quicker and keeps us sustained at combat energy levels longer,” adds Kopp. “We now have the thrust to sustain a reaction instead of depleting energy and winding up at a lower altitude and, potentially, into a more dense threat array.”

Kopp speaks from experience. He has deployed with the Block 42 coalition to Turkey for Operation Northern Watch before such deployments were even called Operation Northern Watch. “When we first deployed to Turkey with our F-16s in 1996, the operation was called Provide Comfort,” he says. “We have deployed to the region four times since then. We are deploying for the sixth time in September 2002.

“Most people in the United States don’t know what’s going on today in the skies over Iraq,” Kopp continues. “I led a mission south of Baghdad to attack a relay facility during our last deployment. I saw tons of anti-aircraft fire going off around me everywhere as I flew north. The scene through my night vision goggles looked like the Fourth of July. We can’t see as much of the anti-aircraft fire during day missions because it shows up in the sky as inconspicuous gray clouds. But at night, we can see the light show from all the aerial explosions. During the summer of 1999, the Iraqis were shooting a lot of anti-aircraft artillery and some surface-to-air missiles at us. We dropped bombs on almost every mission.”

By The Numbers

Initially, each of the three units of the Block 42 coalition own five -229 engines. “That’s all we’re getting this year,” notes Ireton. “The -229 program is being funded by congressional add-ons, which can be tricky. The Guard has to lobby for money every year to keep the program going. Our goal is to have all three units fully converted to the -229 by 2004.” With four spare engines per unit, that goal equates to sixty-three engines for fifty-one aircraft. The total cost of the re-engine program equates to about $332 million.

The effort to put -229s onto Block 42 F-16s dates back several years when Air Combat Command at Langley AFB in Virginia began studying the benefits of such a program. As the benefits became obvious, the program took shape. Adjutants general in the three relevant states, Iowa, Ohio, and Oklahoma, began working together to support the effort.

Besides increased thrust and combat capability, the new engines improve reliability and maintainability. Engine maintenance personnel, for example, have to unstack the compressor disks of the -220 engine to get to a damaged blade within the engine’s core. The -229 has a split-case design that allows maintainers to simply remove a cover and change the blade without unstacking the core. The split case alone can save two weeks of maintenance.

The first -229 engine for the Block 42 coalition was installed in Tulsa, though it was put into an F-16 from Des Moines. Technicians came down from Des Moines and Toledo to watch the installation, which verified the written procedures. The aircraft took off with the new engine for the first time last March. Tulsa personnel installed the second engine into one of their own jets to confirm the procedures in June. The rest of the first fifteen engines were installed at the home stations shortly after that.

“A higher-capacity heat exchanger is the biggest part of the job,” notes Farnsley. “The exchanger itself is available in USAF inventory. So we’ve been installing it early as our airplanes cycle through phase inspections. This approach saved us a couple of days when we finally installed the new engines. After replacing the exchanger, installing the new engine is almost as easy as swapping out one -220 engine with another -220.”

“Depending on the funding we get from congress, we will be flying with both -220s and -229s for three or four more years,” says Kopp. “The differences between the engines aren’t too great. The pilot sees some minor procedural changes. The increased thrust produces some g tolerance issues. That is, the airplane can sustain g’s for longer periods with the -229. So g awareness becomes a larger factor, especially at lower altitudes.”

Kopp says that all of the pilots in Tulsa are going to fly at least one training mission in a clean F-16 with the -229 engine. The mission will emphasize g straining maneuvers (physical exertions pilots use to withstand g forces) and high-angle gun exercises that typically involve more g forces. They will then perform offensive and defensive basic fighter maneuvers against another F-16 equipped with a -229 engine. “The pilots shouldn’t encounter anything new or unexpected with the re-engined jets after this training,” says Kopp.

Rainbowing

Shortly after pilots of the Block 42 coalition received that high-g training, they deployed in late August with their newly installed -229 engines for Operation Northern Watch. As with previous deployments, equipment is shared across the three units to cover the deployment period. The jets and engines stay; the pilots and personnel rotate. Toledo pilots fly the deployed jets for the first thirty days. Pilots from Tulsa and then Des Moines take their turns.

“We don’t send all the airplanes from one unit because the pilots have to spin up at home before they go over,” notes Ireton. “We borrow jets among units to cover this training. Since Toledo deploys first, it doesn’t have as many pilots remaining at home. So Tulsa will borrow some of Toledo’s airplanes to spin up our pilots before our pilots deploy.”

Sharing assets is nothing new for the Block 42 coalition, which has shuffled eighteen LANTIRN pods among its fifty-one F-16s for several years. (The units, in 1994, were among the last ANG squadrons to convert to the F-16. They received their first twelve LANTIRN pods in 1997 and six more in early 2000.) The units occasionally borrow LANTIRN pods from the active-duty for Northern and Southern Watch commitments.

“We are still in the hand-me-down mode when it comes to targeting pods,” says Ireton. “The Guard has only a few LANTIRN pods to share among its three Block 42 squadrons. Ideally we’d have a pod for every airplane, like the active-duty.”

What the Block 42 coalition lacks numerically in assets, it makes up for in experience and innovation. The coalition learned how to support three squadrons of F-16s with one squadron’s worth of LANTIRN pods. Their success led the Air Force to designate the 138th FW the lead unit for LANTIRN maintenance for Air Combat Command. With the help of Lockheed Martin, the 138th developed a portable test station for maintaining LANTIRN pods. The test station, called the advanced deployment kit, or ADK, can be shipped on one pallet and one munitions trailer that fits easily into a C-130. It can be set up and running in less than two hours. The Block 42 coalition has deployed with the ADK three times to Turkey and one time to Kuwait. The Air Force, impressed by the capability, subsequently purchased two more ADKs, one for Seymour Johnson AFB and one for Hill AFB. Denmark has also purchased an ADK for its F-16s.

“The LANTIRN pod was designed and fielded before the Air Force instituted a two-level maintenance sys-tem,” explains Farnsley. “LANTIRN is a good system. It works great. But it is maintenance-intensive. The ad-vanced targeting pod that will be fielded in the next several years was designed for two-level maintenance, which involves putting all the support equipment in one place. Bad parts are identified through self-tests and then simply removed and replaced. In other words, maintainers don’t have to take the pod off the airplane and disassemble it to remove a broken part. But the advanced targeting pod is not slated for Block 42 F-16s, so we need an intermediate-level repair capability within the unit to improve our readiness and to make sure our first-generation targeting pods remain viable.

The ADK is designed to complement a suite of deployable avionics test equipment called an Improved Avionics Intermediate Shop. It has been identified as a mid-life upgrade to the LANTIRN mobility shelter set. The LMSS, a large collection of test stations for maintaining LANTIRN avionics, is not being replaced. Rather, maintenance technicians at the 138th can use either system to maintain LANTIRN pods at Tulsa. However, only the ADK is deployable.

“Without an ADK, the Air Force has to send a pod to Lakenheath Air Base in the United Kingdom for repair if it breaks at Northern Watch,” Farnsley continues. “The deployed unit usually won’t see it back for at least ten days. That delay can create a nightmare for scheduling aircraft and for meeting mission requirements in theater. Theater commanders take notice when we roll into town with our ADK and our other back shop capabilities. We keep the airplanes mission-ready. We can troubleshoot a pod quickly with the ADK. We can functional check a pod fully in less than two hours.”

Pilots notice the benefits in terms of availability. With only eighteen pods, they know right away when the unit has more than two or three pods broken at one time. “Our maintenance personnel fix the pods faster,” says Kopp. “The pods stay on the jets. Our mission capable rates are phenomenal for LANTIRN targeting pods. Our utilization rate is extremely high because we have to manage eighteen pods for three squadrons. Our guys have been to other LANTIRN units to teach them how to repair and manage their pods so those units can increase their availability rates.”

Not so long ago, the Air National Guard was viewed as a backup force. The units received only older, unwanted equipment. They would do an overseas exercise every few years. They weren’t utilized much. “We had A-7s here for fifteen years,” notes Ireton. “We never deployed to an active combat zone with our Corsairs. If we are going to be a combat unit, we want to deploy. We want to be part of the total force. Our people worked hard for the LANTIRN mission. We made it happen. We’re working hard for the -229 engines. We are transforming an F-16 considered a training asset by the active Air Force into a formidable combat asset. The Block 42 coalition made the transformation through experience and dedication.”

Eric Hehs is the editor of Code One.