As the ground war rages on in Iraq, lessons learned from the streets and the skies are being brought back home.
Iowa Flags is a unique training opportunity for soldiers.
It re-creates their overseas missions, right in the middle of Iowa cornfields.
US troops rush to help an American soldier, wounded by an improvised explosive device. Other soldiers stand guard against the enemy, as troops attend to the wounded guardsman.
At the command center, surveillance technicians learn that enemy fire hit their unit. They instruct a medivac helicopter to rescue the wounded soldier.
Meanwhile, the unit moves to a safer location. However, as they wait for help, the enemy attacks again.
Commanders call in F-16's, not only to protect the Blackhawk helicopter but to hunt down insurgents.
The wounded guardsman is loaded safely onto the helicopter, allowing the troops to return to their mission, while fighter jets patrol overhead.
Colonel James Fredregill of 132nd Fighter Wing Air National Guard Commander, "That particular mission is something that we have never trained to before."
A surprising fact considering more than half the men and women participating in Iowa Flags have already served in Iraq.
Before heading off to war, army guardsmen train with other guardsmen, and airmen train with other airmen. Yet, when they get into theater, they're expected to work together. In fact, the lives of the troops on the ground depend on the surveillance and protection the airmen provide.
Brigadier General Douglas Pierce of the Iowa Air National Guard says, "It's a whole different ball game to be standing on the ground trying to describe a target to a pilot that's up at 20-25,000 feet."
Joining the 300 Iowa troops for various missions are members of the civilian air patrol, which are often called up during natural disasters and other problems here at home.
Usually this Cesna 182 is used to help search for missing children, but for this exercise its posing as an unmanned aircraft, searching for Osama Bin Laden.
Major Steve Pohl of the Iowa Air National Guard explains, "... and the fighters will get above them, and you've got army guys on the ground that need assistance. So, we have to figure out how do you get past a pilot-less airplane that are guys in our boxes can't call to and say 'hey get out of the way.'"
WOI-TV: Iowa Army & Air Guard to Run Joint Exercise
:: Kudos to IAWG on taking CAP back to it's roots, supporting the warfighters...
Why isn't NHQ PR'ing the heck out of this?
While using Skylanes to simulate Predators isn't necessarily a primary mission for CAP, it is an ingenious solution to a complicated and expensive training challenge.
It's a interesting tasking for our aircrews to be involved with... It's an updated version of the old target towing mission that CAP performed back in WWII. You'll find a more detailed digest of the Iowa Flag in this thread on CAPtalk.
I'm disappointed in the AF for forcing IAWG to dip into their state funding, and not funded this as an AFAM...
The irony here is that CAP manned aircraft are flying for $100 an hour, simulating UAVs that cost $3,800 an hour to operate. In a perverse sort of way, this validates my argument... that while it makes all sorts of sense to employ UAVs in combat, CAP airplanes are the better deal in the skies over the US. Send every airframe General Atomics can build to fly over indian country, we'll cover the skies here at home.
I've trained with the folks in IAWG, and their willingness to lean forward and integrate with the Air Force / Army team should be commended. I wish that I could have that attitude bottled, and then injected into each and every Wing Commander serving today.
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