Flight Risk

t Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, Air Force pilots from the 94th Fighter Squadron don desert-tan flight suits and pack 9 mm pistols in their survival vests before climbing into single-seat, F-15C fighter jet cockpits. They take off in formations of two from the base in southeastern Turkey and head east and just north for about an hour. As they avoid the unwelcoming skies of Syria to the south, they watch the Turkish mountains melt into flatlands below them. When they see the Tigris and Great Zab rivers flowing into parched plains, the pilots know they have reached Northern Iraq.

On patrol in the Northern Iraq no-fly zone, pilots constantly scan radar screens, electronic navigation aids and the landscape for signs of Saddam Hussein's weaponry. Their radios rarely are silent. The fighter jocks trade insults and warnings about the likely location of surface-to-air missiles. Aircraft from allied nations coordinate their positions. Orders from command aircraft crackle in to direct the fighters to fly shotgun for reconnaissance aircraft taking high-altitude photographs. Two or three times during the mission, the fighter pilots radio air tankers to request mid-air refueling.

"Mentally, there is a lot going on," says Air Force Lt. Col Mike Tallent, commander of the 94th. His unit is part of the 1st Fighter Wing, based at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. Since early December, 100 pilots and airmen from the 94th have been deployed to Turkey to enforce the no-fly zone.

The mental challenges far outweigh the physical demands of guarding one of the world's most closely watched borders, pilots say. That's a problem for the fliers, who, like top athletes, must be in the game or in training all the time in order to stay in peak condition. There's little time for training over Iraq and few tests of pilots' combat skills. Iraq has no air force to offer an air-to-air threat. The country sometimes launches guided missiles, and the dumb bombs it occasionally uses don't ordinarily require evasive action. Only once in a while do pilots get to attack Iraqi surface-to-air missile sites. "It's pretty boring, to be honest with you," says Air Force Capt. Brian Biebel, an F-15 pilot with the 94th.

In the post-Cold War world, routine peacetime missions, such as patrolling the no-fly zone, predominate. Since the Berlin Wall fell, the Air Force has evolved from a standby force, awaiting Soviet attack, to an on-call service. Now the Air Force conducts four times as many missions around the globe as it did during the Cold War, and does so with fewer people and aircraft. Air Force personnel spent the 1990s on a treadmill of deployments and training exercises. The sharp increase in the pace of operations prompted many service members to leave the Air Force for private sector jobs that require less time away from home. In addition to lamenting the losses, especially of highly trained pilots, Air Force commanders worried that continual peacetime deployments were too draining on the people and machines that remained. "After 90 days, if you haven't had any training-and we get limited but not a lot of training on deployments-you see skills drop," says Tallent.

By decade's end, the Air Force had no choice but to change the way it managed and deployed its forces. The new plan divided half the Air Force into 10 prepackaged combat units, known as aerospace expeditionary forces (AEFs). The AEFs offer the four-star regional combat commanders, who oversee military operations around the world, the ability to deploy air power anywhere within 48 hours. Each AEF unit comprises 12,600 airmen, 90 combat aircraft, 31 cargo and air-refueling aircraft, and 13 critical aircraft and systems for command and control, communications, intelligence, and combat search and rescue. Half the airmen in each AEF are on active duty and half are in the Air Reserve and Air National Guard.

Air Force personnel still are assigned to regular units at home bases, but train and fight in one of the 10 AEF units. Every 15 months, AEF members spend 10 months training and two months preparing for operations. They are available for deployment for three months during the cycle and then get a short stand-down period. The units are grouped in pairs, so some 25,000 airmen and pilots are available to be deployed at any given time. The rotation cycle was designed to provide more than enough on-call personnel to handle steady-state deployments, such as patrolling the no-fly zone, and also to offer a regular training cycle to keep additional AEF units in shape for operations. The first cycle began in the fall of 1999.

"What we really wanted to do was provide predictability," says retired Air Force Gen. Michael Ryan, who oversaw the creation of the AEF units as chief of staff of the service from 1997 to 2001. The AEF system did just that in its first two years. No one was deployed for more than 90 days during those years, down from an average of 120 days during the Cold War. Many weren't called up at all. Personnel knew as much as a year in advance where and when they would be deployed. As the length of deployments shrank, so did the number of people leaving the Air Force. In addition, commanders could provide pilots sufficient training and down time to keep them in top form. The AEF approach seemed to solve the Air Force's post-Cold War puzzle: how to get more missions out of fewer people while maintaining readiness. Then terrorists struck on Sept. 11, 2001.

Since the attacks, the Air Force has struggled to maintain the predictability, stability and combat capabilities offered by AEF, while performing far more operations. The Air Force has kept AEF rotations largely intact, but at the cost of extending deployments for thousands outside those units, relying more heavily on Air National Guard members and reservists and pushing aircraft well beyond normal flying hours. Airmen wonder whether the AEF approach can hold up under the strain.

Probably not, if the United States goes to war with Iraq, says Whitten Peters, who served as secretary of the Air Force in the Clinton administration. "All bets are off" if war with Iraq is added to the war on terrorism and homeland security duties, Peters says. Ryan, who implemented the AEF to relieve overextended airmen after the 1999 air war in Kosovo, agrees. "If [the U.S] goes into Iraq, the Air Force will probably put the AEF aside," he says. But Maj. Gen. Timothy Peppe, special assistant to the chief of staff of the Air Force for air and space expeditionary forces, says that with fine-tuning, AEF could work well in wartime. Air Force planners say the fate of AEF depends on how many forces are needed in the Persian Gulf region. Already, the Air Force has increased the number of personnel in the region from about 5,500 a year ago to more than 18,000 today.

PUT TO THE TEST

Staff Sgt. Matthew Robinson, an avionics systems craftsman with the 1st Aircraft Maintenance Squadron at Langley, landed in Saudi Arabia two days before Sept. 11, 2001, for the squadron's scheduled AEF rotation. He was supposed to be on a 90-day deployment to support F-15s patrolling the no-fly zone over Southern Iraq. As soon as the United States began operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan, came rumors that the AEF rotation would be extended. "We heard we'd pick up another AEF cycle because other units were performing homeland security roles," says Robinson. But in what he calls a "testament to the system," the deployment ended after 90 days and his unit was not sent overseas again until its scheduled rotation to Turkey began in December.

Kentucky Air Guard Lt. Col. Greg Nelson, who commands the 123rd Airlift Control Flight unit, does not belong to an AEF; that's a key reason why he was deployed for far more than 90 days in the year following the Sept. 11 attacks. His 17-member Air National Guard unit sets up and operates command and control systems around the world at air bases and airfields newly created or occupied by U.S. forces. Shortly after Sept. 11, his unit was mobilized for homeland defense duty at Fort Hood, Texas. In December 2001, the unit went to Afghanistan to set up communications systems at an air base. By March 2002, the 123rd was back in the United States, where it spent three months assisting in the deployment of the 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell in Kentucky to Central Asia. Nelson also went to Cuba in June to help transfer prisoners from Afghanistan to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. "It's been a high tempo for the entire war," he says.

Robinson's and Nelson's vastly different schedules since Sept. 11 illustrate the successes and challenges of using prepackaged, expeditionary forces to respond to the ongoing war on terrorism. In the case of airmen such as Robinson, who are not in high-demand career fields, normal AEF rotations have held. But for those such as Nelson, who is outside the AEF structure and who is in a key career field short on personnel, continual deployments have become the norm. Nelson's hectic travel pace also reflects the Air Force's increasing reliance on the Air Guard and Air Reserve to support active duty units.

An Air Force review of AEFs in the war on terrorism found that the two units on call during the peak of operations in Afghanistan couldn't do what was required of them without extending their normal three-month deployments. The Air Force chief of staff created a special research unit, Task Force Enduring Look, to review lessons learned from Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. The task force found that the Air Force was able to meet requirements only by deploying some AEF personnel earlier than planned, by extending deployments for airmen in high-demand careers, and by relying on reserves.

For example, between September and December 2001, 7,000 airmen in AEF units were called up before they normally would have been deployed. Just over 1,000 of the 25,600 AEF unit members slated for deployment between December 2001 and February 2002 saw their tours extended from 90 to 179 days. Some 1,800 Air National Guardsmen also were deployed. By last summer, 10 percent of AEF personnel were extending their tours beyond 90 days largely due to deactivation of air reserve forces. The increase held through the fall.

Brig. Gen. Allen Peck, who until October oversaw the AEF personnel management center, says the 10 percent deployed for more than 90 days are in critical and understaffed fields such as security, intelligence, communications, airfield and fuel operations and civil engineering. Peck says many of those specialties are needed to establish, operate and maintain air bases overseas. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Air Force has opened 13 new, unplanned bases in Central Asia-increasing by 25 percent the number of bases the service operates worldwide.

The Air Force review hailed the anti-terrorism and homeland defense operations as a "major success story" in integrating active duty and reserve personnel, but warned the service against becoming too reliant on reserves. "What happens to [reserve] units activated more than one year? What will be the long-term impact on recruiting and retention?" reviewers asked. Further, they wondered, "What happens to the AEF system if contingency operations continue against worldwide threats?"

Air National Guard Chief Lt. Gen. James Clifton says the Guard has become the "always says yes force" and worries that the high pace of operations since Sept. 11 will drive people out of the Guard. As of December, 15,974 Air Guard and Air Reserve personnel were mobilized, less than half the number called up in the months following the Sept. 11 attacks. All told, about one-third of the Air Force personnel operating in Afghanistan and in Iraq's no-fly zones have been reservists.

The Air Force's reconnaissance aircraft have been as overtaxed as its people. The review task force found that AWACS, (aircraft used for electronic surveillance), U-2 spy planes, RC-135 sensor aircraft, and HC-130 combat search and rescue planes are flying more hours than expected with an associated increase in wear and tear.

AWACS planes were even forced to cancel counterdrug missions in Latin America because of increased demands for the aircraft in Iraq, Afghanistan and over the United States as part of air patrols over major cities. For example, The Washington Post reported in early December that the 522nd air Control Wing at Tinker Air Base, Okla., where most AWACS are based, expected to fly about 16,000 hours annually, but in the 12 months following the Sept. 11 attacks flew more than 23,000 hours. The Air Force borrowed six AWACS aircraft from Great Britain to ease the strain on the fleet. Reviewers also found that training aircraft are being pressed into service for combat operations and that fighter planes are beginning to show the strain of repeated homeland defense patrols and overseas deployments. The Post reported that the 522nd has only been able to offer refresher training courses for 30 percent of its AWACS crews and, as result, the number of crews failing to meet annual training requirements has increased tenfold.

Sending AEF units on unanticipated assignments to Af- ghanistan proved a huge challenge for Air Force planners. Because the Air Force had little time to craft war plans, people and equipment ended up in the wrong places at the wrong times. Before the Persian Gulf war in 1991, military planners had months to prepare. After Sept. 11, they had just 26 days to re-orient AEF units from peacetime operations to war footing.

The AEF concept has proved its worth since the terrorist attacks, but it definitely has been stressed, says Air Force Col. Fred Wieners, director of the review task force. "We were able to get the right combat capability to the commanders, but not as smoothly or as quickly as we would have liked," he adds. Recent operations have shown that AEF units must be more quickly and accurately deployed and need more personnel who can set up and maintain bases and equipment in austere locations.

BUILDING A BETTER AEF

"I think the AEF concept has been very successful," says Peppe, the Air Force point man on AEF. "Is it perfect? The answer is no. I am not sure any of us envisioned what we are doing now for the long term. Clearly, everybody understood that war is a potential, but not a steady-state rotation like we've got now." Peppe says he considered improvements to the AEF approach that ranged from cutting deployments to two months to extending them to six months and reducing the number of units to six or increasing it to 12. Ultimately, Peppe decided the existing setup is sound and opted for incremental changes.

Peppe says the Air Force already has begun taking action to increase the number of personnel assigned to high-demand careers by shifting recruits into those fields as they graduate from basic training. For example, an airman headed for the personnel field, a noncritical career, could be diverted into a communications track. In fiscal 2002, the Air Force diverted 1,000 airmen into high-demand career fields; in fiscal 2003, the service will move an additional 2,400 airmen into those fields.

The Air Force also is reducing its reliance on reserve units and extended tours by increasing the number of active duty personnel assigned to AEF units and thus available for deployment. The number of active duty airmen assigned to AEF units will have risen from 173,000 last spring to about 260,000 this winter. Only those in training, recruiting and research and development fields should be exempt from deployment, says Peppe.

The Air Force also is beefing up the capabilities of the 10 AEF units. In June, two Air and Space Expeditionary Wings, the 4th Fighter Wing at Seymour Johnson Air Base, N.C., and 336th Wing at Mountain Home Air Base, Idaho, along with their bombers and stealth aircraft, will be integrated into the AEFs. After the reorganization, each AEF unit will have 111 multimission combat aircraft and be able to use precision-guided munitions to suppress enemy air defenses.

In addition to realigning AEF units, Peppe must sell the concept to the com- batant commanders. Their war plans still are based on specific Air Force wings or squadrons, rather the capabilities provided by AEF units. "We have to work through that with combatant commanders to show that squadron X, Y or Z could provide them a capability within an AEF," Peppe says.

Back at Langley, pilots and airmen remain bullish on the AEF. Since Sept. 11, the 94th Fighter Squadron has had one AEF rotation to Saudi Arabia, and it was not extended. Save for some combat air patrol duties over U.S. cities, pilot training has continued without interruption. Aircraft maintenance specialists' schedules haven't changed much either, except for some occasional weekend work to support the stateside air patrols.

But as squadron members and their families gather for a pre-Thanksgiving dinner of turkey, corn-on-the-cob, mashed potatoes and sweet tea before heading overseas, a sense of uncertainty lingers along with the scents of the holiday. Some in the unit are bound for Turkey to patrol the Iraqi no-fly zones, others will participate in air defense exercises in Iceland, a few will stay stateside. But experienced hands have warned younger airmen to prepare for longer deployments. Pilots hold on to the hope of returning in three months. But they are ready for other outcomes. "We watch the news too," they say.

Squadron commander Tallent rises to address the group before the meal. He thanks everybody for coming, and notes this could be the last time they will be together for a while. Then, acknowledging the likelihood of war with Iraq, he adds, "Given the world climate, we might all be together again in Turkey in short order." There are a few laughs, then someone says it's time for a prayer.