[MilCom] 107th Fighter Sqdn; 127th Wing Michigan Air National Guard

[GG]

Press Service <afisnews_sender at DTIC.MIL>  sent Tuesday, August 24, 2004
10:32 PM :

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.

Related Sites:
127th Wing,
Michigan Air National Guard
http://www.miself.ang.af.mil/MissionStatements/127Wing.htm
F-16 Fighting Falcon http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsID=103
Litening Advanced Targeting Pod
http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsID=114
_______________________________________________________
NOTE: View the original version of this web page on DefenseLINK,
the official website of the U.S. Department of Defense, at
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Aug2004/n08242004_2004082409.html.

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