Army, Air Force open communications

  • Published
  • By Kristy Davies
  • U.S. Army Signal Center Public Affairs
FORT GORDON, Ga. (AFPN) --  The Army talking to the Air Force from the ground to the air is not a common occurrence here.

"We're in the purple (joint) business," said Army Lt. Col. Michael Shillinger, 551st Signal Battalion commander, as Staff Sgt. Robert Pangburn completed radio communications with pilots in an Air Force C-130 Hercules flying nearby.

It began as a proposal to bring additional opportunities to the communication Soldiers completing their technical training. Colonel Shillinger contacted the 700th Airlift Squadron at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, Ga., to propose joint training.

The 700th trains pilots, navigators and loadmasters to conduct air drops at Fort Gordon's Training Area 23.

It was the first time the Army has communicated with the Air Force in a training scenario here. Sergeant Pangburn, of the 551st's C Company, uttered the canned message under his breath as he practiced the strange new language of the Air Force.

"Victory main, Cobb 50 checking in as fragged," he said into the radio after receiving a call from the Hercules pilot. "Request picture or hertz."

The message explained a threat on the ground.

"We (simulated) an aerial operation where a pair of aircraft did an aerial re-supply mission over Fort Gordon to re-supply a (forward operating base)," Colonel Shillinger said. "Halfway through this operation we had to send a radio message to the pilot to say there is an air-defense threat on the ground, which means somebody is trying to shoot (the aircraft) down and here's their location. At that point, the pilots had to take action and divert off their course to evade this air-defense threat.

"In essence, that message we sent was: bad guy on the ground with a shoulder-fired missile and he's pointing at you and here's where he is on the ground," he said. "I'm a good guy and I just authenticated."

The intent for the joint training is to expose new Soldiers to communications with other services and to provide training opportunities to the Air Force.

"The way I'm building this into the scenario ... is I'm going to have students out here make this call, and if they don't make the call, then the airdrop doesn't happen, the planes get shot down and they have to eat cold meals for dinner that night," Colonel Shillinger said with a smile. "If I can get a young Soldier to talk to an airplane and coordinate an airdrop, that's something those guys will remember the rest of their life.

The colonel wants the Soldiers to "put two and two together: The messages they're sending and the traffic they're sending are, no joke, life and death," he said. "This will be a mission for a couple of the hot shots to come out and actually call in to an aircraft. This is only going to be the guys who excel, validate early and show the aptitude and drive."

The Air Force is looking forward to future training operations as well.

"It provides a realistic threat call and tactical information," said Maj. Rich Briggs, an instructor navigator with the 700th AS. "We usually give our own threat, but when the Army calls, it's unpredictable and makes it more difficult, which makes better training.

"I think it's a great training opportunity for both air crews and the Army," Major Briggs said. "We would love to be able to do this on a daily basis."

Communications from the ground to the air have been an ongoing complication in joint communications.

"We're using joint authentication procedures because this truly is the way of the future," Colonel Shillinger said. "One of the biggest problems that the Army and the Air Force have always had, or the Army's had, is talking to aircraft.

"This is graduate-level communications we're doing here," he said. "The aircraft have a whole different set of radios made by a whole different set of manufacturers and they're all supposed to be interoperable, but that's why we come out and do these things to make sure it does work. Their antennas are set up to talk to different airplanes, not to people on the ground, so that's another challenge, too, but we did talk to an airplane."

Colonel Shillinger hopes to have the Soldiers participating in the joint communications training by the end of May.

"This was step 1," he said. "Now we have to go back, get some more equipment to make this work better and then we'll build it into the scenario play we're doing.

"I was very happy with what we were able to do today," Colonel Shillinger said. "We passed the message to the Air Force in flight and they did their Air Force thing with it."