Chris Penningroth’s Weltanschauung

     Today was the final day of our bilateral exercise.  The game plan for today was for our F-15Cs to join up with a four-ship of F-15Js from Chitose to play Red Air for another large-force employment exercise.  It was basically the same scenario as yesterday, except the Red SAM was going to actually play like a Patriot, which complicated our Wild Weasel mission significantly.  Today though there were to be four of us:  Cash would lead it with Shack (known then as FNG R) on his wing, with Scrappy and me as the second element.  We were to share OCA duties with a separate flight of F-15Js, with some F-4Js and F-2s as strikers again.  My friends and fellow schedulers, Pickle and Tequila, were to be in the strike package.  It was going to be a good mission!

     The first sign of trouble was when we stepped, a JASDF T-4 had flown out to the airspace to do a weather check for us, and reported that the area was pretty much socked in, with only about eight-thousand feet usable.  So the F-15Cs decided to go train on their own in some clearer airspace elsewhere, and the F-4Js and F-2s just plain fell out.  The squadron at Chitose that was going to play Blue Air with us decided to train on their own, leaving us with a four-ship of Red Air and the Patriot. 

     My first jet for the day had a bad battery charger, so I ended up stepping to a spare aircraft (a D-model with only a centerline tank and no HARM Targeting System Pod, or HTSP).  That meant only three of our aircraft could take good HARM shots, although I could still lob them at a point in space where we guessed the Patriot might be.  It didn’t turn out to be much of a factor except I was carrying a whole lot less gas than the other three, so I ended up ultimately going home first.

     We pressed on out to the airspace, just as we did on the three previous days.  We called "Fight’s on!" and pointed at the F-15Js who obligingly pointed at us, too.  The F-15Js did the exploding cantaloupe maneuver yet again, so once again we only got to shoot them down two at a time.  I think the only thing that happened that was a bit extraordinary was that apparently everyone but me forgot about the Patriot, so I called for the shot while also trying to work the air-to-air stuff.  It was only a little thing, but it seemed to have impressed Shack (I told him later that it really will get easier after you’ve done it a couple hundred times).  Once we’d finished dealing with Red Air, we proceeded to our SEAD CAP and peppered the site with HARMs while we pretended the F-4s and F-2s were hitting the target like they did yesterday.  After we finished, we pressed out through the Red Air guys who’d reset and made us fight our way out.  That was a little tough on us, and by that time I was out of gas, so Scrappy and I RTB’d, followed by Cash and Shack.  The weather at home had improved greatly, so the three of them did two or three practice simulated flameout approaches before callling it a week.

     Afterward, we all sat down to talk about the day’s mission.  Scrappy was more fired up and enthusiastic than I’d seen him all week.  We all learned a little bit from the flight, this one and the rest from the other bilateral exercises.  After we finished our discussion, we all cruised over to the club for a social with the F-15Cs and the JASDF who’d all played in the exercise. 

     It was a good end to a good week.  I’d gotten to fly four out of five days.  I can’t remember the last time I got to fly that much.  I think it was Sep 2003.  It was a week long overdue for me! I just hope I’ve got more weeks like this in store!

     Scrappy and I got paired up again today to help a strike package perform a simulated attack on a surface-to-air missile site.  The plan was for a four ship of USAF F-15s and our two-ship of F-16CJs to take out an eight-ship of F-15Js simulating Red Air and proceed to the target area.  The F-15s were then to defeat any additional Red Air that showed up (and magically the F-15J Red Air guys would regenerate on our way out).  We were to suppress a Patriot battery which was to play Red SAM.  Then a four-ship of F-4Js and F-2s would perform a simulated bomb run on the Red SAM. 

     This mission went fairly well for the push.  While we pushed on in, the F-15s cleaned up Red Air on their side, and kindly left a couple for us to deal with, which we did.  Scrappy and I then lobbed a couple AGM-88s at the Red SAM to convince it to shut down, which seemed to work.  Then while the F-4s and F-2s screamed in to the target area, the F-15s tangled with a few Red Air while Scrappy and I kept the Red SAM suppressed by lobbing our remaining HARMs into it.  Within a couple turns in our CAP, the strikers were on and then off target.  We called the Red SAM destroyed and proceeded out of the target area.  Red Air regrouped and gave us fits trying to fight our way out.  Get out we did, and we had to run one of them down, running ourselves down to bingo fuel in the process.  We safed everything up and headed home with one more bilateral mission under our belts. 

     This time I’d like to point out that the F-15Js actually did their DCA tactics while on defense.  I think I was right yesterday.  They do the tactics they’re used to.  It almost worked for them today!

     I learned today that sometimes the best defense is your opponents’ defense.

     Scrappy, Cash, Bender, and I all went out to defend an imaginary lane in the sky today.  Four F-15Js from Chitose were to play our adversaries.  Their job would be to try to shoot us down or get by us in order to assist red strike aircraft to proceed to an imaginary target area behind us (quintessential offensive counter-air).  The four of us had to prevent that from happening.  After a simple briefing and uneventful ground ops, takeoff, and departures, all eight aircraft entered the airspace in our opposite corners (in this case the north and south sides of the airspace).  We each began holding in our respective combat air patrol (CAP) areas.  At the prearranged time, we radioed "Fight’s on!" to our respective ground controllers, who called one another to confirm the war had started; immediately our two four-ships pointed at one another at a closure rate of something like 1,400 mph. 

     As the F-15Js pressed downtrack, we continued our commit out of our CAP and prepared to shoot BVR.  Suddenly (and without warning, even) the F-15Js performed the exploding cantalope maneuver (so called because when you sketch the engagement with a red pen, it looks a lot like someone threw a cantalope at the whiteboard).  The four of us quickly recovered from our shock that OCA was performing a standard DCA maneuver.  The shock was primarily that we expected them to attack us, not to bait us.  This simplified our problem of not letting the offenders get by us.  They didn’t appear to even want to get by! So Cash and Bender fired off a simulated salvo of missiles at whomever was flying directly at us, then turned cold back to the CAP.  Scrappy and I then turned around to make sure that 1) Cash’s and Bender’s simulated missiles simulated worked and that any dead Red was turning around and squawking the correct dead-man code, and 2) that the previous Red Air that exploded backward was not coming after us now.  Happily for us, Cash’s and Bender’s missiles ‘worked,’ and even better, the remaining two Red Air were in fact coming after us.  Scrappy and I fired off a simulated salvo of our own, and within another minute the lane was ‘clear’ of Red Air.

     Since the first engagement was so much fun, we asked the F-15Js if we could try it one more time.  So we all set back up again, called "Fight’s on!" and pointed all eight noses at each other once again.  We figured this time they’d come out Mach schnell and try to mow us down for sure.  But no kidding, as we approached each other from a distance, they did the same thing as before.  We obligingly handled them pretty much the same, only this time we were lower on missiles, and our ground controllers with dice in hand let us know that this time some of our missiles hadn’t worked.  So Cash and Bender ended up pitching hot one extra time and cleaned off their rails, and one of the Red Air managed to get a couple shots off at Scrappy before all Red Air was defeated. 

     All in all, it was a decent day’s work.  Unfortunately, we were hoping to get to some visual merges.  It had been a relatively clear day, Scrappy thought he saw one about 10 miles away from him.  Cash, Bender and I never did get tally on any of them.  All we ever saw was blips on our radars.  After we all bingoed out, we safed our simulation switches and proceeded back home. 

     As we debriefed the events of the mission, we wondered aloud why on earth the F-15Js kept trying to do defensive tactics when they were supposed to come after us or try to get around us.  As best we could tell, our Japanese allies haven’t really been doing any offense since, oh, about 1945.  We figured we’re going to have to teach them eventually, otherwise we’re never going to get any practice playing defense while we’re stationed in Japan!