Carrying a Message to the Senior Airfield Authority

FM 3-04.120, Air Traffic Services Operations, blows. I’m just going to state that right out front. I’m not sure who wrote it, or what their method was, but it left some pretty large gaps in doctrine. Those gaps are now being addressed as we conduct the process of writing mind-numbing mind-altering aviation doctrine. I swear to you that we are trying to fix that problem.

But sobriety keeps getting in the way.

See that over there? That's all the money you
won't be getting for airfield management
training this year. Or ever.

Why is there nothing addressing the critical gap of knowledge about airfield managers (AFM) and senior airfield authorities (SAA) in our current Army doctrine? Why isn’t it all spelled out for us like a checklist in an appendix, where we can gloss over the topic and get back to the business of flying helicopters? It’s a big topic over at the Air Traffic Services Senior Leaders’ Conference this year, being hosted this week by the good folks from the Air Traffic Services Command  (command motto: Bring us your tired, your weary, your wretched masses yearning to have their facility training programs violated by our quality assurance inspection team). ATSCOM has done the best that it can in a rapidly impending atmosphere of budget cuts and doom regarding defense spending. It’s true, we are continuing to dump millions into AH-64D Longbow software updates, as well as the M-model Whackhawk and F-model Chinoodle modifications, but those are the money-maker platforms for aviation right now. Unfortunately, as the aviation budget shrinks, the ATS community will have to do more without resources. Not to mention, all the ATS budget will be sucked up by ATNAVICS radar repairs anyway.

So, where does that leave training dollars for SAA and AFM training? Nonexistent. I’m sorry, but here is the part where I tell you to go put on your big boy or girl panties (or maybe you’re a dude who likes to wear big girl panties, I dunno. Maybe you also fly a Whackhawk?) and drive on, my friend. If you’re waiting for ATSCOM to produce AFM and SAA training for everyone in every brigade, we should probably address a little something called “expectation management.”

The truth is that ATSCOM has tried to get to the root of the problem with digitally exportable training packages (now available online), mobile training teams that come to your brigade or battalion, and a week-long contingency airfield management workshop that allows you to pet the wild theodolite in its native habitat. In trying to address the gaps in doctrine that discuss the roles and responsibilities for an AFM and SAA, we’ve nested ourselves with existing joint and federal regulations and are expanding on the unique considerations and limitations associated with austere airfields. The Air Land Sea Application (ALSA) Center even joined the fray, uniting all of the branches in one room for a Beyond Thunderdome-style cage match where the victor would receive top billing on the new and improved Airfield Opening multiservice tactics, techniques, and procedures guide.

And still, we have a C-17 stuck in the mud on FOB Shank. Not kidding. C-17. In the mud. At Shank airfield in the middle of Logar Province. Nosnatchistan. Aces.

And there is probably some SAA standing on the roof of his TOC, looking out towards the airfield that he is endowed with authority and responsibility for (as per the joint task force commander), and asking himself what he did do deserve this in the first place. I’m sorry, sir. According to regulation, it’s all your fault. It’s a bummer, man. You should probably fire your airfield manager and start chain smoking Marlboros now. Maybe you’ll get lucky, by the time the accident investigation team wraps up their report, a stray enemy mortar will land on your plastic port-a-john, and the airfield will be the least of your concerns. 

Yes, the SAA has been delegated authority and responsibility for this strip of airfield and its associated surfaces and hazards. At the same time, blame should not rest completely on the SAA. ATS company commanders (who typically get the title of AFM thrust upon them), controllers, and pilots share that airspace and that blame. Especially the commanders.

Yesterday, I heard the commander of ATSCOM announce that they were developing a course for would-be ATS company commanders. It would run in conjunction with ATSCOM’s previously developed week-long airfield management work shop. This would give the unfortunate slob who find himself staring down the barrel of an ATS company command, and likely AFM duties, a foundation to be an effective leader to his new-found Minions.

Let’s consider this for a moment.

When a company commander in the Armor is suddenly told that he will have to conduct Infantry operations in the mountains of Againistan, he scratches his head, busts out the old doctrine, has a powwow with his officers and NCOs, and develops a training schedule that will meet the intent for his mission. He’s a captain and commander, and the success of his unit as part of a larger organization depends upon the foundations he puts in place before going to war.

Two other things this week caught my attention, along with COL(P) Macklin’s announcement.

I found a scribble on post-it note from when my boss gave this totally awesome synopsis about the battle of Shiloh. In case you don’t follow military history, it was the 150th anniversary of the battle a couple of weeks ago. He geeks out on history. Yes, I took notes during the lecture. This particular note was significant. He mentioned that, during the early days of the all-volunteer force that would comprise the Army of the Potomac, leaders were learning combat operations as they went. At camps of instruction all across the north, young officers learned how to engage their formations by candle light, and then taught it during daylight to their forces. He called it the greatest “ad hocracy” ever. I agree. Shiloh, in case you fell asleep during American history class, was the first significant victory for the northern Army. I might also add that it was totally done by a volunteer force of citizen soldiers.

The second thing I found was a return of A Message to Garcia to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s reading list. I love this essay because it takes on different meaning as you get older, as your views on the world change with the levels of increased responsibility you face. Message, which has developed a cult-like following around the world, fell away from the reading list for a while and then popped back up recently when GEN Dempsey slotted it in again. Written and initially printed in 1899 in a small publication called The Philistine,  it was the brainchild of Elbert Hubbard. It examines the actions of a young officer named Rowan who is given a specific task, to carry a message on behalf of the President of the United States to the rebel fighter Calixto Garcia in the mountain jungles of Cuba. If you haven’t read it, or you claim that you’ve read it but you really haven’t, you should check it out. It's short. In all truth, Hubbard was a soap seller turned craftsman, integral to the expansion of the arts and crafts movement… which is pretty much what everyone remembers the man for. Pretty chairs. Nice furniture. Bungalow houses.

So, what does the rambling of a teetotaling socialist craftsman and book printer from East Aurora, New York, have to do with the military, aviation, and air traffic control company commanders? Elbert Hubbard, who was coincidently killed when the Lusitania was sunk by a German Unterseeboot in WW1, wrote a theme that resonates for most senior leaders who have high expectations of their junior officers: if I give you a job, go figure it out and do it.

Sometimes you get jobs or missions that you have no prior knowledge of or experience in. That’s pretty much the nature of the game for most air traffic control company commanders. It is up to us to do the job of self-education, followed with the job of training our formation. You don’t need ATSCOM to babysit you through the process. You should feel offended that they even made that assumption about you!

GEN Dempsey charged forward with the program to redefine Army doctrine, leading the charge with a concept that we’ve discussed before: mission command, the decentralization of decision-making to the lowest tactical level that can effectively achieve success for the commander’s mission, in line with the commander’s intent. More importantly, like the message of A Message to Garcia, junior leaders are empowered with the ability to make sound decisions within the commander’s guidance to support the commander’s end state.

The commander’s end state is pretty clear: don’t put a C-17 in the mud at the end of the runway at Shank airfield.

Just like the officers who paved the way before us, the Grants and Shermans of the world, we have an obligation to ourselves and our formations to learn by night the things that we may be required to teach and do by day.

So, forward I go to rewrite FM 3-04.120 into something usable for the warfighters. Hopefully it doesn’t just gather dust on a shelf in a tower facility somewhere when it’s all said and done.

Now, the question is, when this manual is ready for everyone to use and train with, who will help me carry a message to Garcia?

"It was a dark and stormy night...," or why vignettes can be like herpes in doctrinal manuals?

So like I was telling you last time, I was up at Langley Air Force Base last week (base motto: our Joint Strike Fighters are awesome and are so expensive they must run on pure gottdamm panda blood). I was doing what I do best, writing some seriously heavy stuff. Since the Air Land Sea Application Center is supposed to produce publications that the warfighter can actually use to fight wars (or as toilet paper in a pinch), there was some serious discussion about vignettes.

Vignettes are these awesomesauce little stories in manuals that are suppose to make the material both relevant to the reader and engaging while emphasizing the doctrinal message in the body of the publication. It’s basically a “no sh*t, there I was” story about whatever specific chapter of a manual you’re reading. Frankly, I think they add nothing to an ALSA pub, the place where the venerable and divine JFIRE manual comes from (which would be more divine if they would remove the section on Joint Air Attack Teams because that stuff gets planned at echelons so far above the warfighter’s reality that that particular reality has special parking at the commissary and lives in housing where one rarely finds weeds, rust, or cheap beer in cans).

On the first page of the old 2007 version of the MTTP for Airfield Opening there was a vignette. This immediately became a discussion point for the writing group. The discussion went like this:

“WHAAAAA?”

“This adds nothing to the chapter."

“It adds humor to the chapter."

“No, it adds herpes to the chapter."

“F*ck it. Delete it, dude."

And then we deleted it. Buh-bye, retarded little vignette. Your 15 minutes of fame are now done. Vignettes should add something to the discussion or make you feel like reading more (which is especially important when you need to trick people into reading a particularly boring manual like, say, JP 3-30, Command and Control for Joint Air Operations, or the Utility and Cargo manual for the Whackhawk pilots).

But for posterity, I have captured that little deleted nugget of joy here. You might enjoy it, I guess. Then again, I have yet to meet someone who would actually enjoy herpes, but there is always a first time for everything.

It was 0200 on a cloudy, moonless night. A few minutes earlier, a special tactics team (STT) had just departed the aircraft to conduct a high-altitude low-opening parachute technique (HALO) insertion onto the airfield. As the STT prepared the drop zone, the aircraft came around to conduct a low-level airborne insertion of our team. Recent intelligence revealed that the airfield runway had two major craters and was also covered by debris consisting of damaged vehicles and dirt mounds. The area was also considered an uncertain environment, although it was expected to be a relatively permissive entry for our forces since no significant activity had been seen in or around the airfield for the past 24 hours by surveillance platforms. Our team inserted and immediately conducted a sweep of the runway and surrounding areas to identify hazards, mark unexploded ordnance (UXO), confirm surveillance information, and establish security around the airfield. Airborne engineers began the task of clearing the runway and at first light airfield opening leadership arrived via helicopter after the airfield was secured. Within 12 hours, airfield opening forces began to open and establish the airfield. Over the next several days, additional forces continued to arrive, and the airfield was fully operational. Although some areas of improvement were identified, one of the major successes noted was the seamless transition of airfield responsibility from initial forces to airfield opening and follow-on forces. This success was mainly attributed to the detailed planning of all participants for several weeks prior to the event.

1LT, special tactics team (STT), USAF

Yeah, I know. It was written by a 1LT in a Special Tactics Team. This is like listening to a PFC straight out of AIT in his first Air Traffic Services Company tell his facility chief how to integrate the larger airspace construct for flight following procedure development. Someone is going to get his head bounced off a console station, and it's probably not the NCO. Given the amount of critical data that a senior airfield authority and airfield management team needs to accomplish their nearly no-fail mission when they transition a new airfield from the seizure bubbas to the follow-on force, we couldn’t figure out what the benefit of that vignette was. And we were a pretty savy group too. The vignette pretty much said everything that everyone already knows: gee, opening and running an airfield is hard and dangerous and (when worded properly) a little sexier than everyone else’s job. Well, no sh*t, Sherlock! Why do you think they wrote a manual about it?

Mainly, I think we just resented that the vignette from a 1LT. After all, 1LT is 2LT… with intent.

So, after a couple  several  many  too many beers, this is what we writers came up with as a translation for the vignette of awesomesauceness:

It was a dark and stormy night. We showed up to the airfield. Nothing happened. We found some craters. We didn’t fill them. We found some explosive sh*t. We left that for the explosive ordinance dudes to deal with. No one shot at us. We landed a couple helicopters. We didn’t f*ck that up too egregiously. Once we’d stood around long enough, and looked requisitely sexy enough for some photographers from the New York Times, we left the airfield to the real controllers.

1LT (who was only allowed to speak when a Tech or Master Sergeant was present), special tactics team (STT), USAF

Moral of the story: don’t add vignettes to manuals. Doctrine writers will get drunk and laugh at delete them later.

"WHAAAAAA?"

I took off for the week to go write a multi-service publication about opening airfields. Since I’ve been well educated by my Minions, I’ve become my boss' go-to chick for all things airfield and tactical air traffic control related. I think it’s because he likes me finally. That, or he might be weirded out by me. I don’t know. I think I’ll favor the first one.

So, he likes me, and he said that I could go to Langley Air Force Base to rock out with the multi-service tactics, techniques and procedures (MTTP) gurus at the Air Land Sea Application Center, ALSA. Unlike joint pubs where everyone tries to out-do each other in awesomeness and attractiveness, multi-service ALSA pubs are supposed to be for the actual warfighters to use. So, when the chance came up to develop the Airfield Opening MTTP a little further for the poor beleaguered Senior Airfield Authorities of Army-land, I said that I would do it.

I feel bad for accidental SAA’s. This is, like, the one time that I have ever felt smarter than that guy about something. Just that once and it will probably never happen again!

When it comes to writing a publication about airfield opening, it should come as no surprise that the Air Force showed up with a whole entourage. I sit at the end of the table in the working group conference room with the token Marine Corps guy. We pretend that we understand what the Air Force is talking about when they say things like “employ the CRG to replace the STT and the AWG with their 89th Wingity Wing MFGSHSUS, 64th Squadron SUSHI.” Actually, I just nod my head and pretend like I know what they're saying because I can usually depend on the Marine Corps guy to speak up and admit that he has no clue what the Air Force is saying. He’s a stand up dude, that Marine. Takin’ one for the team!

So, since I’m speaking for all of Army Aviation about this really complicated Airfield Opening stuff, and every accidental SAA in the Army is looking to me to do the right thing, I felt a little thrown-under-the-bus when MAJ Braveheart, our working group coordinator, told me that some LTC (no doubt suffering from a severe case of ELTCS) from Leavenworth said that the Army didn’t need any more information about doing the SAA job because enough of it existed in joint and Army service doctrine.

Today, when choosing between importance and impotence to describe my job as a doctrine writer, impotence won.

The Marine Corps dude laughed at me.

I pretty much did this...