Airborne Red Horse teams joins the mix

  • Published
  • By 2nd Lt. Anna Siegel
  • Air Combat Command Public Affairs
LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Va. (AFPN) --  The Air Force has a new capability thanks to the members of three new Airborne Red Horse teams.

Red Horse teams provide the Air Force with a mobile, rapid-response civil engineer force to support contingency and special operations in remote, high-threat environments worldwide. In wartime, the squadrons perform heavy damage repair to recover critical Air Force facilities and utility systems, particularly those used for aircraft launch and recovery. The squadrons also provide engineer support for the beddown of weapon systems and people in austere environments.

"Airborne Red Horse was stimulated by the vision of the Chief of Staff, Gen. John Jumper, based on his experiences in (U.S. Air Forces in Europe)," said Brig. Gen. Patrick A. Burns, the Air Combat Command civil engineer.

ARH squadrons parachute into remote and inaccessible airfields or are inserted by air assault helicopters, said Maj. Charles Perham, the chief of ACC's Red Horse program.

Each of the three active-duty Red Horse squadrons have built airborne teams, Perham said. The three teams are now deployed to the U.S. Central Command area of operations and are working at seized airfields for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"We're now able to meet the (chief of staff's) vision that combatant commanders will have an airborne airfield assessment and repair capability," Burns said.

"We are making Air Force airborne combat engineer capability available to the combatant commanders so they incorporate it at the planning level and use it correctly," Perham said.

Airborne Red Horse teams are significantly different from traditional combat engineer squadrons in that members are airborne qualified and use much lighter specialized equipment, Perham said. ARH teams take 21 traditional Red Horse members and augment them with six firefighters, six explosive ordnance disposal technicians, and two chemical and biological readiness experts.

The men and women who make up an ARH team volunteer from within traditional Red Horse units and have to be physically qualified, Perham said.

The equipment used, like the mobile airfield repair equipment set, has to be lightweight yet able to withstand an airdrop or sling-load stresses, said Army Capt. Andy Taylor, a combat engineer exchange officer at the ACC civil engineer readiness division. ARH engineers are also using lighter, all-terrain dump trucks, loaders and firefighting equipment that is less than one-third the size and weight of the equipment the traditional Red Horse squadrons use.

ARH engineers are trained to deploy rapidly into barren locations, assess airfield capabilities, prepare helicopter or aircraft landing areas, clear obstacles, install emergency airfield lighting systems and repair airfield damage, said Chief Master Sgt. Linnard Ford, ACC's Red Horse superintendent. They also test for potable water sources, construct force protection structures, clear explosive hazards, assess potential nuclear, biological, and chemical and toxic industrial material hazards, and provide fire rescue and emergency medical services.

The Army's airborne combat engineers have traditionally been chosen when combatant commanders needed air-insertable combat engineers. But Air Force officals were able to change that with Taylor's help, Perham said.

"Captain Taylor brought actual combat-tested Army airborne engineer experience to our team building the Air Force Airborne Red Horse capability," he said.

Many of the airborne team members spent three weeks at Army Airborne School, and all will eventually earn their jump wings, Taylor said. ARH team members also will attend a 13-day Army air assault course to learn how to sling-load their equipment and rappel from helicopters.

"It's a work in progress," he said. "The vocabulary, mentality and doctrine of the Army and Air Force are different. But we're smoothing it out."

The teams can be employed independently after ground forces have seized an airfield or as part of an Air Force Contingency Response Group package, Ford said. These ARH concepts and equipment were tested during Exercise Safe Flag at Avon Park Field, Fla., in November.

"We're now doing this for real, taking the lessons learned from Exercise Safe Flag and actually doing it," Perham said. "There are going to be some great lessons learned for us to improve Airborne Red Horse in the future. (Courtesy of ACC News Service)