Ammo flight puts ‘force’ in Air Force

  • Published
  • By Maj. Don Langley
  • 379th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM (AFPN) --  Without munitions, the Air Force would be just the world’s largest, fastest airline.

The 379th Air Expeditionary Wing put more than 3.2 million pounds of ordnance on target in Iraq, more than 90 percent of it precision-guided weapons. Those bombs came from the airmen in the 379th Expeditionary Maintenance Squadron’s ammo flight.

“A lot of times we’re there before the aircraft,” said Staff Sgt. James George, a munitions system journeyman working in the munitions storage area. “Our initial task in January was getting munitions out of storage and segregating (them) to the pads.”

Dozens of airmen in ammo assembled the vast stocks of weapons to provide decisive airpower. At one point the storage area had about $1 billion worth of munitions, according to Capt. Gregg Czubik, the assistant munitions flight commander.

Once the war began, the team continued assembling weapons required by air-tasking orders from the air component commander. The ammo team had to be flexible, because the ATOs were subject to frequent change, George said.

“Our biggest challenge is getting the right quantities to the bomb pads in the minimum amount of time,” George said. “We don’t support just one bomb pad, we support several, plus the chaff and flare requirements,” he said.

Once the materials are out of storage and on the pad, assembly begins, Czubik said.

“Bomb building is repetitive work,” Czubik said. “There’s an art to doing it efficiently. If it’s not well-synchronized, it becomes evident real quickly.”

Some days his airmen completed an assembled bomb every three-to-five minutes, as many as 400 in a single day, Czubik said.

The delicate assembly work takes place a safe distance from other areas of the base. Line delivery drivers like Airman 1st Class Nick Rutledge load four to six bombs onto a bobtail rig, and drive at a blazing 15 mph to the flightline. Safety is a constant theme, but they do not think much about the risks, he said.

“As long as you’re doing everything right, you don’t have anything to worry about,” Rutledge said.

If there are no unused bombs to return to the storage area, Rutledge brings his empty rig back for reloading. He said that he prefers returning empty.

“The more bombs they drop, the better,” he said.

Trailers are reloaded by “refrag” crews, who load the next shipment of bomb bodies, fin-kits and control devices on the vehicle for delivery. Their job is to have all the components ready so no time is lost when a trailer returns, said Airman 1st Class Doug Retcher, a refrag crew member.

“The biggest challenge is finding the pad that has the right bombs,” said Retcher.

Munitions are regularly moved around to keep the net explosive weight under the set limit for each pad, George said. This adds yet another logistical and bookkeeping challenge to an already demanding process; however, a high wartime tempo can actually help, he said.

“From the get-go, we saw how full the pads were,” he said. “Then we saw them empty out. Munitions went out and didn’t come back. The space on the pads just opened up.”

With air operations scaling back, the ammo flight now has the task of teardown -- disassembling unused weapons. Every component will be inspected and packed away, ready for the next air campaign.