The 149th Fighter Wing enjoys challenging pilots new to the F-16. In recent years, the Air National Guard unit at Kelly Field Annex near San Antonio, Texas, has expanded the initial F-16 pilot training syllabus to include flights with night vision goggles, targeting pods, and laser guided bombs.
To provide a new challenge for student pilots this year, the wing introduced live versions of the GBU-31 Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM, a 2,000-pound bomb fitted with a guidance tail kit that contains an inertial navigational system and a global positioning system guidance control unit which converts the weapon into an accurate, adverse-weather smart munition.
The mission of the 149th FW is to train F-16 pilots for the active duty US Air Force and Air National Guard units. Any changes to the basic F-16 syllabus, known as the B Course, are made by coordinating with the Air Force. Adding live JDAM training for the first time was the idea of Lt. Col. John Kane, the detachment commander for Exercise Coronet Cactus, the final two-week training exercise of the B Course. Kane is also the commander of the 182nd Fighter Squadron at Kelly.
“Once we incorporated using certain sensors and weapons into the syllabus, we wanted to give student pilots the opportunity to use the equipment to drop actual weapons,” explains Kane. The same approach was followed in 2001 to incorporate night vision goggles into the syllabus and in 2003 to incorporate targeting pods and laser guided bombs. “During Coronet Cactus last year, all students dropped laser guided bombs,” continues Kane. “This year we had the opportunity to drop JDAM, the logical progression as we continue to enhance the syllabus.”
The impetus to change the syllabus comes from the operational units who want pilots trained on specific sensors and weapons. “Last year was the first year we trained with GPS-guided munitions,” continues Kane.
“This year is the first year we were allocated actual GBU-31s to drop. Although the weapons are inert, they still incorporate the actual guidance kit. Everything from mission planning, through employment, to impact happens exactly like a real weapon. They just don’t explode when they hit the target.”
While the 149th trains at flying ranges near its home base outside San Antonio, JDAM training requires greater range airspace. For the second year, the wing combined weapons training with a simulated deployment to Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona, where student pilots could fly the Barry M. Goldwater Range.
Maj. Jon Stone, project officer for Exercise Coronet Cactus, planned, organized, coordinated, deployed, and managed the training. This year, Coronet Cactus included 218 personnel; fourteen F-16s; munitions; forward air controllers, or FACs, or joint terminal air controllers, or JTACs; adversary forces; airspace; communication; airlift; vehicles; and billeting. Stone even located an operational unit from which to borrow weapon pylons compatible to the F-16. “Significantly more effort was put into this deployment simply because of the opportunity to drop JDAM,” says Stone.
The positive impact of the deployment to Arizona last year on student pilots became reason enough to deploy there again. “The opportunity this exercise gives us is unmatched at home in comparison to the ranges, airspace, and support assets at Davis-Monthan,” explains Stone. “The importance of Exercise Coronet Cactus lies with the realistic training our student pilots experience to prep them for a combat theater they will most likely see.”
“The deployment simulates a micro deployment to a desert location,” explains Lt. Col. Kevin Tarrant, director of operations for the 182nd FS and also for Coronet Cactus. “We assume each student pilot will be supporting US forces in combat. Our responsibility is to prepare these pilots as much as possible.”
The deployment concentrated on current operation mission scenarios: close air support, surface attack tactics, and large force employment. “Each student flies two close air support missions, one surface attack mission, and one large force employment mission,” continues Tarrant. “The 122nd Air Support Operation Squadron from Alexandria, Louisiana, supported CAS by providing JTACs.”
Instructor pilots average more than 2,100 F-16 hours, more than 1,300 instructor hours, and more than 2,800 total flying hours. Many of the instructors are also experienced in other fighter aircraft. Most have also flown in combat. All are trained in night vision goggles, targeting pods, and inertially guided munitions and have varying degrees of experience in these systems as well. To prepare for this deployment, instructor pilots were also given academics in the bombs and in mission planning. For several, Coronet Cactus was their first occasion to drop a JDAM.
“We continue to send our instructors to real-world contingency operations to keep us abreast of current operational needs and tactics,” says Kane. “This keeps us current and makes us relevant.”
All In A Day’s Work
The student pilots sat through two mass briefings each day at the Davis-Monthan Snowbird Operations, a site provided at the base to visiting units. The briefings simulated current combat situations. The pilots were then given an extensive mission briefing of scenarios for expected target areas. “We try to make each scenario as realistic as possible by using current intelligence and JTAC support to simulate realtime combat events,” says Lt. Col. Mike McCoy, an instructor pilot and the Coronet Cactus project officer last year. “We try to maximize the quality of the training we provide by giving student pilots a taste of the operational environment with this deployment.”
Student and instructor pilots were then dispatched to missions at the Goldwater Range where a variety of realistic — but unknown — targets awaited them, including enemy airstrips, tanks, buildings, and revetments. Once airborne, the students received target sites/information at the range. Most flights consisted of two- or four-ship missions performing close air support with JTAC on the ground directing the strikes.
Every training mission included bomb loads. “The training syllabus dictates specific munitions for each student pilot to employ in that scenario,” explains Tarrant. CAS and surface attack missions were loaded with 2,000-pound JDAM and live Mk 82 (500-pound live bombs) and 500-pound laser guided bombs. For large force employment missions, the aircraft were loaded with six 500-pound inert bombs.
“Just like in an operational theater, we do not know where the targets are ahead of time,” explains 1st Lt. Thom Mueller, a student pilot. “The JTACs are our eyes on the ground. They give us the target information we need.” Each of the ten student pilots was paired with an instructor pilot for each mission.
“This exercise was an opportunity for student pilots to experience how their aircraft react with bombs aboard,” says Stone. “Because the aircraft are carrying more weight, they perform differently.”
Capt. Ryan Rensberger, senior officer of the student class, offers his own assessment. “Flying and dropping bombs over the Goldwater range is exhilarating,” he says. “These missions feel like the real thing. Everything we learned so far in the B Course is a building block to this exercise.”
Another dimension of Exercise Coronet Cactus was provided by the situational awareness data link, or SADL. The digital link permits the air defense network and all aircraft in the mission to share information. This information, which includes a track file consisting of aircraft identification, altitude, speed, direction, fuel, and the presence of other aircraft, appears on the multifunction display in the cockpit.
Through the SADL, Stone, assisted by McCoy, employed a laptop computer at the Air National Guard/Air Force Reserve Center Test Center at the Tucson ANGB, to simulate threats and friendlies in the range area, adding targets, enemy tanks, and antiaircraft positions to the mission scenarios.
“We set up simulations to give students a display they might see in a war zone,” Stone explains. “These scenarios expose students to data they will see during war when Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft and ground controllers provide good-guy/bad-guy positions. Providing student pilots a CAS nine-line briefing via SADL is another validation of the superb training we provided during Coronet Cactus.”
A CAS nine-line brief contains information needed to complete a CAS mission, including heading, distance, target description, location, elevation, friendly locations, time on target, and egress instructions.
In addition to getting bombs to their targets, pilots had another challenge one day in their second week of training. VMFT-401, a Marine Reserve unit from MCAS Yuma, Arizona, provided F-5E aircraft to simulate MiG-29s flying as adversaries in a large force employment exercise.
“During this exercise, both instructors and students fight their way from Davis-Monthan to targets at the Goldwater Range and back to base again while battling six F-5s as Red adversaries,” Stone explains.
During the two weeks at Davis-Monthan, student pilots flew 141 sorties for a total of 212 flying hours. On the busiest day, the students flew nineteen sorties in almost thirty total hours of flying. They dropped nearly 350 inert and live bombs, including eighty Mk 82 500-pound bombs, twenty-one GBU-12 500-pound bombs, 190 BDU-50 500-pound bombs, thirty-four BDU-56 2,000-pound bombs, and twenty GBU-31 2,000-pound bombs.
“Every JDAM we dropped essentially went into the same hole, a testament to the accuracy of this weapon,” Kane says. “Employing actual weapons and sensors instead of simulating them not only increases confidence in these systems but also increases confidence in our students and instructors that they can effectively mission plan and employ complex weapons systems they will be using very shortly in actual combat.”
They Also Trained
The deployment also gave the 149th FW an opportunity to train the thirteen-member ammo crews, the bomb builders, and the bomb loaders. Many had never loaded JDAMs or laser guided bombs. The tempo of operations kept the bomb builders busy working two daily eight- or nine-hour shifts for two weeks to keep up with demand. Assembling the bombs includes installing fuses and setting time delays when required.
“Preparing a weapon requires more than just taking a bomb out of a box,” notes MSgt. Kenneth Paninski, the section’s night shift supervisor. “We have to ensure the fuse is installed properly on the bomb, or the bomb will not go off properly.”
Besides building bombs, crews readied 2,000 rounds of 20 mm ammunition for each aircraft and prepared AIM-9 trainer missiles. After every mission, they checked and replaced chaff and flare containers on each F-16. “Bomb builders assemble and take the weapons to the line,” Paninski explains. “Once at the line, the loaders take over.”
The bomb loaders worked eight- to ten-hour days during the two-week exercise. MSgt. Roy Garza, loading standardization section superintendent, says that in one 1.5-hour period, crews loaded ten aircraft with six bombs apiece. “We had different bomb loads, mixed configurations,” Garza says. “We definitely had to watch what we were doing.”
The remaining personnel providing support — mission, generation flight, supply, crew chiefs, services, etc. — benefited from the deployment as well. “They covered the mission to 100 percent success,” says Kane. “We left Davis-Monthan with everyone trained and current in their specific jobs.”
The Prerequisites
Before student pilots trained with live JDAMs, they completed months of rigorous F-16 training at Kelly Annex in the B Course, training for graduates of the US Air Force pilot training course who have never flown a fighter aircraft. In Phase One, transition, the pilots learn the basics of F-16 flight instrumentation before soloing. In Phase Two, air to air, they learn basic dogfighting, advanced long-range tactical intercepts, and then air combat tactics in a four Blue vs. four Red combat configuration. In Phase Three, air to ground, they learn basic dumb bombing before progressing to laser guided bombs, and then to GPS-guided bombs. Embedded in Phase Three is night vision goggle and targeting pod training. By the end of Phase Three, students are flying large force exercises. They then graduate to their combat units.
The 149th FW produces approximately forty-five F-16 trained students a year to active duty Air Force and Air National Guard units. The B Course syllabus includes about sixty-two missions. Each phase contains specific building block rides that stair-step students’ experience to fully trained F-16 aviators.
The 149th Fighter Wing, along with the 178 Fighter Wing ANG at Springfield-Beckley, Ohio, serves as the lead unit in modifying all F-16 syllabi. “Our goal is to modernize F-16 training at all levels of student and instructor courses to take advantage of hardware and software changes in the aircraft,” Kane says.
These changes are commensurate with a shift in operational employment of the F-16 worldwide; all syllabi are tailored to meet the needs of operational group commanders. “The result is a better trained and more combat-ready graduate, requiring far less follow-on training before they are combat mission ready, and possessing the contemporary core skills defined by the Air Force,” Kane adds.
The deployment to Davis-Monthan AFB for Exercise Coronet Cactus during the last two weeks of the air-to-ground phase maximized the quality of training by giving student pilots a taste of the operational environment. “Flying in new airspace with live and inert weapons, working with JTACs, receiving information via data links, and fighting into and out of the target area against real adversaries–everything exercised their minds to the fullest to make them lethal fighter pilots,” says Stone.
“We continue to modernize and streamline F-16 training,” says Kane. “This deployment was a total wing effort. And the wing performed superbly. Exercise Coronet Cactus was once again a resounding success.”
TSgt. Gregory Ripps is a public affairs officer with the 149th Fighter Wing.
