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?

Engaged?

The most difficult task any planning staff in an aviation task force can do right now is engagement area development. Honestly. It is. I dare you to walk up to any new pilot on Mother Rucker and ask them about EA development, and they would give you the same blank stare that they typically reserve for an instructor pilot who asks them about the requirements to enter Class B airspace. There might even be a ribbon of drool coming from their mouth after a second or two. It's not their fault though. This is part of the insidious nature of the quick reaction force mentality of today’s attack reconnaissance aviation. Engagement area development has little to no place in the QRF world of gimme-grid-freq-call-sign-and-we’ll-figure-it-out-enroute because it requires more than just using what you have on the rail to achieve an effect that you may not be totally sure of. There is little planning in QRF planning. Let’s be honest. It requires highly adaptive and responsive leaders who have a high level of shared situational understanding with the ground force commander to really get any semblance of mission success… without causing unforeseen area of operations lunacy later.

First of all, what is an engagement area, and how does one develop it?

An engagement area is an area in which the commander intends to contain and destroy an enemy force with the massed fires of all available weapons. The size and shape of the engagement area is determined by the relatively unobstructed visibility from the weapon systems in their firing positions and the maximum range of those weapons. Sectors of fire are usually assigned to subordinates to prevent fratricide. An EA should have four things:

1.) multiple battle positions from which to attack

2.) obstacles to channel the enemy and permit use of direct and indirect fires

3.) standoff from the enemy, to minimize enemy counter fire while maximizing the friendly probabilities of kill

4.) continuous visibility of the targets

The two most significant things to me would be items 3 and 4, and I’ll tell you why. It focuses the planning staff and the training of young pilots in the formation. But more on that in a second.

This has practical application in many different facets of everyday life. Have you ever gone genocidal on a hill of fire ants with a big stick and a can of Raid? Yeah, THAT is EA planning and execution. You massed all available weapon systems to achieve the desired effect, minimizing your own exposure to counterattack through standoff and a fire distribution plan. Look at you… all tactical. That's hot. 

EA development is simple when you know what it is, but the subtle nuances can lead unforeseen difficulties. Let’s go back to items and 3 and 4 now.

Number 3 is simple. If you don’t know what a system looks like on the sensor you’re  using, how can you engage it?

I have to know how to find and kill what the ground force commander wants dead. This means two things: I have to know how to use the systems on the aircraft to fix the enemies disposition and then I have to know what effect I want to have on the enemy, based on what the ground force commander really wants.

Item 4 is a little tougher. There is a subtle difference “dead,” you know.

In order to achieve “a high probability of kill,” I have to know what kind of kill the ground commander wants. Does he want a mobility kill? What about a personnel kill? A firepower kill? Or does he want a total kill… the infamous K-KILL? All of these have different requirements for individual weapons and targets. While one AGM-114P+ (our UAS brethren’s missile of choice) can be enough for a sedan full of Haqqani fighters, one AGM-114R (your standard HF radar missile) is not going to  even make a dent in a reactive-armored T-72 main battle tank, the preferred tank of all good communist oppressors and soviet-backed warlords the world over.

In short, one Hellfire missile does not equal one dead tank. 

Despite the increase in knowledge on the part of our ground forces on what varying weapons may be hanging from the racks of an AH-64D, this hasn’t gotten us back to positive effects based planning. We, as aviation specialists, have to ask the right questions. “What effect do you need?” Not “what weapon do you want.”

So, this is important to note because the ignorance of real weapon effects is an epidemic across the Army today. This is because we neither understand how to predict them, nor how to train for them. We’re still focused on the need for grid-freq-call sign-use-what-you-got. In the effort to return the Army to standards and effective training for the next war, we have an obligation to young pilots to foster tactical curiosity about the enemy they will face in the future.

At some point, we will hand the young LTs and WO1s a can of Raid and a stick, pointing them in the direction of a former soviet-funded nanny state to do their worst. We should probably engage that issue now. 

Additional Doodies

I promise! No air ground integration gripes today. Today we are going to let the company commanders of the Army Aviation community breathe a collective sigh of liberating relief. We're going to talk about something near and dear to your hearts: additional duties. And then we're going to say all the things you always wished you could say to the people who gripe about them…

Catharsis, my fellow signers of the commander’s hand receipt. It's healthy.   

Ahh, additional duties. We’ve all had them. The AER officer, the Aviation Life Support Equipment dude, the voting assistance officer, the snack-o… all of these duties are assigned for three reasons:

Additional duty orders dating to the Civil War. And you
thought you had it rough when you were getting ready
for the Command Inspection Program!

1. Provide diligent oversight and management of critical tasks within the company or troop that one person cannot manage alone to ensure accountability, safety, good performance, and standardization.

2. Provide a school-trained or certified point of contact for issues or concerns regarding the maintenance or management of a specific program, who is also a user of their own program and thereby provides a sense of “ownership” to ensuring that systems function smoothly.

3. Give the commander something to discuss on your OER… other than your self-proclaimed awesome skills at flying. Which really? You’re not as awesome as you think you are, especially when you’re a CW2 with 310 hours and you’re six months out of flight school.

The positive side of additional duties is the benefit of being able to give a diligent officer a measure of additional responsibility... one that extends beyond their primary duty of sitting around the pilots’ office, telling dick and fart jokes, and pretending to study emergency procedures and limitations in order to avoid the wrath of the company’s standardization pilot. The commander, 1SG, and platoon leaders cannot hold down all the jobs associated with a functioning line aviation company, and still effectively manage the primary task of leading that company. If they attempted this, they would be huddled under their desk, nursing the hidden fifth of Jack Daniels in their desk drawer and chain smoking.

In embracing the fact that, if you’re an untracked warrant officer, you’ll probably have an additional duty, you will realize that this is part and parcel to being an officer in Army Aviation. Suck it up. Drive on. Get over yourself.

With that said, don’t write an Observations, Insights and Lessons Learned paper about why your additional duty blows. In the subversive wording, we didn’t find a single viable solution to any of the problems you posed that would benefit the Army. An OIL paper is supposed to propose a viable Army-wide solution to problems. Your paper proposed one underlying theme: that you didn’t really want to do your assigned duty.

I’m sorry you got stuck with that additional duty (not really). I’m sorry that you had several additional duties to manage, along with being a competent pilot in command (also not really). Seriously? Everyone has to do that. Your whines, gripes, and general malaise about your pitiful situation in life while deployed to a large and well-furnished base in Iraq don’t impress me.

Well, if your additional duties are really that difficult to manage, I guess we can make them your primary duties… and you can enjoy the remainder of your deployment watching your buddies “act as a combat multiplier for the commander by moving parts, people and things throughout the southwest part of Iraq.” If you really believe that your job is to “get things done,” then part of that means that you might have to say no to the occasional game of Call of Duty with your buddies at their CHU or B-hut while you’re deployed, and buckle down, and get your chores done.

And anyway, everything we do in aviation supports the GROUND FORCE COMMANDER, not the aviation commander. Perhaps a little perspective is in order…

PERSPECTIVE. Now you have it.

… Well, okay… maybe a little AGI. Come on. Can you blame me?

Okay, now for an actual “lesson” for Aviation Company and Troop commanders:

In preparation for deployment, you’ll have to ensure that your night vision goggle (NVG) program is functioning smoothly because your goggles will break the moment you get downrange and take them out of their stylish, padded purse. Part of this program is completing period inspections for adequate function and safety. You don’t have to go off the FOB to find a certified inspector. Inspections can be done internally to the unit, provided you have inspectors assigned and trained with orders. Link in with your CECOM LAR and the Army Material Command and to have several people in your company attend this one-day training. Do it before you deploy, if you can. Get your fellow company commanders on board and make it a group thing (kinky). You can even have your trainer to come to you (help Uncle Sugar get his money’s worth from their services). This limits having to take your NVGs off-FOB for inspection and keeps your resources in the fight.