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En Route Briefings
En route, we briefed the flight plan with the entire crew. That gave them a sense of being in the loop. If the loadmaster knew where to look, especially going into Baghdad, that helped the crew. We wanted to integrate the crew into our combat tactics.
— Lt. Col. Jim McGann
 Long War
On my first mission, I came off the tanker and AWACS said, "Hey, help out these guys over here." Back to the tanker and then, "Help these other guys out over here." Back to the tanker for the third time and "Hey, help these other guys." When the mission was finally over, I thought, "Man, this is going to be a long war."
— Lt. Col. Andy Larson
Appreciating Minot
We arrived at Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. Dragging our stuff off the aircraft in the heat and sand, I thought, "It was never this hard in the Marines." I am a pilot with Northwest and I will never again complain about a winter layover in Minot, North Dakota.
— Maj. John Raulston
 Information Overload
We were not airframe- or pilot-limited for the first time we've employed this aircraft in combat. We typically had four to five U-2s in the air at one time. We covered various quadrants of Iraq with aircraft from three bases. One day we had six U-2 missions in the box. The limitations during OIF were a function of our ability to move and exploit the information. The limits were set by the photo interpreters and our intel collectors on the back end. They had to receive a huge volume of data, digest it, make it actionable information, and then push it back to the commanders. At one point, the intelligence community said, "We're maxed out. We can't possibly move any more electrons for you."
— Lt. Col. Troy DeVine
All Over The Place
We were flying our P-3 at 30,000 feet talking to and working with ground forces making their way across the Iraqi border. I saw the coordination between the Army, Air Force, and Navy work better than I have ever seen it happen before. We were able to identify possible targets and the fast movers would come in. After positively identifying the targets as hostile, they would take them out. We pretty much rolled right over anything that came into our path that first night. There were lots of bombs hitting and destroying their targets on the first try.
— Lt. Cmdr. Chris Saindon
Initial Strikes
We targeted SAM sites near Saddam International Airport weeks into the conflict, allowing other forces to go in unhindered. On the initial strikes into Baghdad, we often supported other aircraft inbound with our F-16s.
— Capt. Frank Bryant
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