MacDill tankers keep mission airborne at Red Flag

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Chris Stagner
  • Red Flag Public Affairs
NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, Nev. (AFNS) --  Members of the 91st Air Refueling Squadron from MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., are doing their part to ensure participants in Exercise Red Flag 10-1 stay in the air Oct. 19 through 30 here. 

Aircrews in KC-135 Stratotankers will fly multiple sorties per day and push more than 1.4 million pounds of fuel over a two-week period during Red Flag held at and around Nellis AFB, Nev.

"Our unit will refuel hundreds of aircraft while we're here," said Capt. Mike Fulton, a 91st ARS KC-135 pilot. "We fly three sorties per day and push approximately 4,000 pounds to each aircraft. That really adds up."

While Airmen work to keep the exercise flying, they also benefit from the training opportunities provided by rapid operations tempo and large-scale integration.

"The amount of receivers we get all at once is something we don't get to do on a regular basis," said Staff Sgt. John Brooks, a 91st ARS boom operator. "When we're deployed, we'll only get one or two aircraft here and there. But here, since the sorties are so short, we're really busy."

It's not just American planes knocking at the backdoor of the KC-135s. The crews regularly find themselves refueling coalition partners' aircraft as well.

"The only difference to us is the paperwork," Captain Fulton said. "Where we work, it doesn't matter what country they're from. We're all on the same team."

A Dutch pilot agreed.

"We work with (U.S. Air Forces in Europe) assets regularly, so this is another opportunity to better our operational relationships with our allies," he said. "Some of these guys might be the same ones who refueled me in Afghanistan."

Though refueling with American tankers is routine to the Dutch pilot, he said he still lauds what they bring to the table for training.

"Tankers allow us to get people off the ground earlier and keep them in the air longer," he said. "It gives us a longer on-station time to protect those bombing targets, and also allows the (target) bombers to swing from an air-to-ground to an air-to-air role."