Airmen keep a step ahead of enemy

  • Published
  • By Capt. Wes Ticer
  • 379th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFNEWS) --  They don't talk much about what they do, at least to those outside the small, secure compound in Ops Town. But, they do listen to what others have to say -- mostly enemy ground forces.

The 763rd Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron maintains a constant presence in the Central Command area of responsibility, leveraging their secretive RC-135/VW Rivet Joint aircraft to keep coalition forces a step ahead of enemy forces on the ground. Intelligence experts, cockpit crew, electronic warfare officers and in-flight maintenance technicians comprise the team that provides combatant commanders with near real time on-scene intelligence collection, analysis and dissemination capabilities.

The aircraft is extensively modified to house its on-board sensor suite. The mission crew can then forward gathered information in a variety of formats to a wide range of consumers via Rivet Joint's extensive communications suite.

The Rivet Joint mission supports both national and tactical requirements, demonstrating a 21st century asymmetric warfare capability.

"We are also able to provide threat tippers via a classified chat capability, which enables us to cross-cue with other intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance and combat platforms who might be in the area to see if we can share information and give our warfighters a more complete picture," said Lt. Col. Karen Bridges, the 763rd ERS commander.

Planners are able to build target packages on high value targets, can direct action by ground forces, prepare for operations such as the recent Operation Achilles, coordinate close-air support, direct CSAR operations and provide direct threat warning for coalition personnel or assets.

The 42-year-old Rivet Joint fleet is currently undergoing significant airframe, navigational and power plant improvements which include engine upgrades and an upgrade of the flight deck instrumentation and navigational systems, which includes conversion from analog readouts to a digital "glass cockpit" configuration.

The 17 RC-135V Rivet Joint aircraft undergo continuous changes to adapt to the technologies adversaries are using. Upgrades are not done fleet wide; but rather one to three different "baselines" are in the inventory at any given time. Two of the newest aircraft are scheduled to arrive in the theater this month.

Referred to as the "Baseline 8," the aircraft have several key improvements including a capability called Remote/Extended Aircrew Position Enabling Reachback. REAPER is a product of Air Force Smart Operations 21 thinking and a significant improvement for real-time collection and analysis capability. Initially, REAPER will also be used to improve training to spin up aircrews before they deploy to the CENTCOM AOR.

"This is a significant improvement to our capability," Colonel Bridges said.

During the baseline upgrades, aircraft spend up to four years at the depot where they are stripped down to the skin and rebuilt from the bare bones to include the newest technology. Although the airframes themselves are venerable, dating from 1962 and 1964, they are virtually rebuilt each time they return to the depot, Colonel Bridges said.

In addition to the upgraded aircraft, the 763rd ERS will expand to accommodate an additional crew. The additional crew is a result of the overall increase in theater operations and will provide enhanced and additional coverage for requirements in theater.

The more modern equipment is a welcome change, but crewmembers realize the key to sustained success is the maintenance effort on the aging aircraft.

"Obviously, we could not accomplish our flying mission without the dedicated men and women from both 'front end' maintenance,(379 EAMXS/55th Aircraft Maintenance Unit) who work on the airframe itself and "back end" maintenance who work on the mission equipment -- both ground and airborne -- who are part of the 763 ERS," Colonel Bridges said

"They are always there to launch and recover our jets and spend countless hours each day out in the heat and wind making sure our aircraft are not only airworthy, but also capable of performing the critical intelligence mission which is so important in this theater," she said.

"To quote Col. (Bill) Mullins (379th Expeditionary Operations Group commander), 'It takes 69 consecutive miracles' to get the jet airborne and all the mission systems on line. Without maintainers to help that keep happening every day and night, we would not be able to accomplish our mission of providing support to ground forces," Colonel Bridges said.

Recently, several of the Airborne Systems Engineers were presented coins by Brig. Gen. Blair Hansen, acting deputy Combined Forces Air Component commander, for their efforts on a mission. During the sortie, the airborne maintainers worked more than two hours to bring up the mission systems -- one of the most critical systems was particularly stubborn that day -- but they wouldn't give up. The jet refueled while they were still troubleshooting the system, and they were finally able to get everything working in time to accomplish critical parts of the air tasking order.

Those "miracles" have enabled the Rivet Joint to succeed during its 16 years being deployed to the theater. Since then, the basing options have changed, and so have the airfields from which they have flown.

From flying in a sensitive reconnaissance operations role in Operation Desert Shield in 1990, the Rivet Joint mission has rolled into the long years of combat support operations as a part of Operations Southern Watch/Northern Watch, followed again by combat operations in current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We have transitioned from a Cold War platform supporting mostly national-level tasking to one which is able to provide direct support to ground forces at a tactical level as well," Colonel Bridges said.

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