Life support keeps pilots prepared

  • Published
  • By Master Sgt. Andrew Gates
  • 455th Expeditionary Operations Group Public Affairs
BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan (AFPN) --  The cockpit of an aircraft is a self-contained environment, protecting the pilots from their surroundings.

One group of Airmen here ensures the pilots have everything they need close at hand in there, especially those items they might need just “in case.”

“We take care of the entire life-support system -- everything the pilot needs in case he has to eject,” said Tech. Sgt. Matthew Freeman, a life support noncommissioned officer assigned to the 355th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron. “We also maintain and repair everything the pilot takes out to fly, as well as everything in the survival kit.”

This means long before the pilots ever takes their first steps toward the aircraft, the life-support Airmen ensure more than 50 different items per pilot, ranging in size from Chap Stick to a 6-foot inflatable life raft, are serviceable and packed into a 13-by-15-inch space.

Taking care of all that equipment requires extreme attention to detail, Sergeant Freeman said.

“If the littlest thing isn’t perfect, it could possibly cause injury or death. For instance, although programming the survival radios here isn’t difficult, it is very involved. If it doesn’t work correctly, a pilot can’t talk to rescuing forces,” he said.

The radios are one of many differences between operations here and operations at home.

“We have to put some extra items in the survival vest -- items associated with combat instead of with a normal training mission,” Sergeant Freeman said.

Additionally, the environment here adds to the challenges because the dust tends to clog up the masks and associated equipment, Sergeant Freeman said.

“We have to clean out the equipment a lot more to keep it working,” he said.

The environment also requires a number of changes to equipment in the survival vest. Survival requirements in Afghanistan are much different from the A-10 Thunderbolt II pilots home station in Alaska.

Providing life support also means the Airmen work closely with other allied soldiers as well as other Air Force units.

“We have inspected and lent out radios to Dutch, German and Slovak soldiers and well as other support agencies doing security missions,” Sergeant Freeman said. “We have also helped inspect a C-130 [Hercules’] life-support equipment when (the crew) had to have their equipment certified to fly a mission. It’s good to know that we helped them accomplish their mission.”

Other than the environment and equipment requirements, the job here is very much the same as at home, said Airman 1st Class Daniel Matthews, of the 355th EFS life support section.

“We get a lot more fulfillment from doing the job here,” he said. “When you have everything working correctly, it ensures the pilots can put bombs on target.”

Sergeant Freeman agreed.

“When a pilot comes back and says they just got back from ‘doing escort,’ it’s kind of hard to understand exactly what they are doing. But when you see how the mission here (affects) the efforts to bring democracy to the Afghan people, it can be quite an eye opener,” he said.