Air Guard Squadron Makes Mark in Operation Iraqi Freedom
By Samantha L. Quigley
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Aug. 24, 2004 – The most recent deployment for the Air National
Guard's 107th Fighter Squadron was one of firsts, the unit's commander said here
today.
Lt. Col. Glenn Schmidt said the 107th became the first F-16 Fighting Falcon
unit to be based in Iraq when it established its base in Kirkuk when it
deployed for three months in February. It also was the first F-16 unit to
employ the Theater Airborne Reconnaissance System, or TARS, as well as the
first to employ the Litening advanced targeting pod, he added.
TARS collects intelligence information from the battlefield's second echelon
and beyond, in adverse weather and all light conditions. Litening, a
multipurpose targeting and navigation system, gives tactical aircraft 24-hour
precision-strike capability against both land and sea-based targets.
Weapons officer Lt. Col. Nate Dickman, pilots Lt. Col. Leonard Isabelle and
Maj. Brian Bracken and maintenance operations officer Maj. David Spehar joined
Schmidt at the Pentagon to discuss the firsts and their mission in Iraq.
When the squadron – based at Selfridge Air National Guard Base, Mich. -- got
word it was being sent to Iraq, it was in the middle of close-air support
training. The squadron flies mostly CAS and reconnaissance missions.
The combination of TARS and Litening allowed the group to be flexible in its
mission. Not only could the F-16s help ground troops out of sticky situations,
they could do reconnaissance at the same time, the officers said.
For example, Bracken said, if the unit was called upon to hit a target, the
TARS pod on one F-16 would take "before" and "after" images to document exactly
what kind and how much damage was done. Images taken while flying CAS missions
were also used to update maps used for planning ingress and egress routes. The
images were processed within 30 minutes of landing. TARS will have data-link
capability for real-time imaging sometime next year, Schmidt said.
The squadron didn't have planned targets, Schmidt said. Missions were driven by
need, and were mostly reactive in nature, he added.
"We quickly became (the ground troops') No. 1 go-to squadron for support," he
said. "They would ask for us by name."
When the squadron was told it was being sent to Iraq, the call for volunteers
went out. Schmidt said there were more volunteers than spots to be filled and
there was no need to mobilize anyone. The 107th finally deployed with 280
personnel and 10 aircraft. "I didn't want to take additional people and put
them in harm's way," Schmidt said. The group racked up around 3,000 flight
hours in more than 800 sorties.
Spehar said that during the three-month deployment, about a year's worth of
flying was logged. This required another first for an F-16 unit: heavy
maintenance while deployed in a war zone.
To keep the sand from doing more damage than the repairs were doing good, the
maintenance crew used hardened aircraft shelters, Spehar said. He added that
Selfridge and a Air National Guard unit based in Richmond, Va. -- the only
other Air Guard unit to have the TARS pods -- are constantly writing and
rewriting guidelines for field maintenance.
In addition to their close air support and reconnaissance successes in Iraq,
one fact made the squadron's largest deployment since the Korean War especially
successful: Everyone came home.
Most of the 107th arrived home June 4. By June 10, all deployed squadron members
were back in Michigan.
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