Page 3 - Nellis, Creech, NTTR Bullseye 12-11-15

BULLSEYE
www.aerotechnews.com/nellisafb
DRAKEN, from page 1__________
need for outside-agency support to help
fill the number of aircraft that fly as
adversaries.”
Though Draken is here for adversary
support, they are not scheduled to partic-
ipate in Red Flag or Green Flag exercises.
“We hope to support Red Flag and
Green Flag,” said Terry Scott, director
of Nellis operations for Draken Interna-
tional. “Currently, we are supporting the
USAFWS. We hope and think that in the
future we will be supporting Red Flag and
we’ve talked casually about that. It’s going sure our employment and execution is as
to be determined after the trial period.
“After the trial period, the 57th ATG
commander will make an evaluation
on us to determine if we are suitable to
support Red Flag sorties. At Draken we
feel very strongly that we can do this very
effectively and I think the Air Force is
ADVERSITY, from page 1 _______
where it was my mother, four siblings
and me. That’s when everything was just
really confusing.”
Tippitt’s mother worked every
single day, and still works the same
job she did when Tippitt was seven.
With Tippitt’s mother working the
night shift, Tippitt and her siblings
were often alone, before her grand-
mother came for them.
“All of the sudden, I could remem-
ber being whisked away from school
one day by my grandmother and
when we left with her we never got to
come back,” Tippitt said. “She took us
to this house in Fort Worth, and all
of a sudden we were in this house for
at least a month or two where all of
us kids were alone. We had no lights,
no gas, there was nothing really. We
had to eat lemon cake mix.”
With Tippitt’s grandmother never
around, the house became a wreck.
“At that age, you do whatever you
want. If there is no gas and no water,
you are outside going to the bath-
room, using the neighbor’s water.
One time, my brother set the mattress
on fire because he was upset,” Tippitt
said. “More than anything, I remem-
ber my grandmother finally coming
back to the house after being away
for a while and she was very upset.
She put us all in a row and beat the
hell out of us with a very thick rope
that they use to lasso horses or cows.”
After being beat by her grand-
mother, Tippitt and the rest of her
siblings moved from place to place
before settling in the housing proj-
ects.
“We moved to some apartments,
and the abuse continued. Mean
things were said and done. Then we
moved from the apartments to the
Butler housing projects,” Tippitt said.
“It was a chaotic home. I will say that
there were a lot of drugs, alcohol, a lot
News
going to be very happy with the product
we’re providing to them.”
The current exercise started on No-
vember 30 and will go through Decem-
ber 16. They are scheduled to return
again in April, where they will complete
the remainder of their current contract
which will expire in June.
“It’s a three-week trial period for
the Air Force to evaluate us to provide
adequate adversary support,” said Scott.
”It’s also a time to where we at Draken
learn what the Air Force requirements
are and fit into the system here to make lars and cents. The Air Force is able to
seamless as possible.”
Draken was required to have a certain
number of aircraft that were readily
available to deploy within 60 days of
completing the contract.
“Our A-4s were purchased from the
New Zealand air force,” said Scott. “We
of partying, and drug addicts. There
was always someone in the home.”
With the house always full of
people, Tippitt was counted on to
clean up and serve guests while they
were there.
“When people came to the house,
I always had to keep the house clean,
wash the dishes, and basically be a
servant to anyone that was there,”
Tippitt said. “If it wasn’t done, I
would get the hell beat out of me
and also I wasn’t able to go to school.
School for me was a great place to go.”
Tippitt and her sister were often
times subjected to sexual passes made
by the male guests.
“There were several nights where
men would try to come into me and
my sister’s room and they would try
to talk us into being with them or
touching them,” Tippitt said. “I’m
blessed that I never got molested. It
was like that from seven to 15 years
old.”
brought them back and refurbished
them. Before, the New Zealand air force
had a modification and effectively what
that did was put an F-16 avionics radar
suite in the airplane.
“So when we go out and we fight —
for example, F-15, F-16 and F-22’s — we
look electronically very much like what
an F-16 would look, so we blend in very
well with the current aggressor force that
is out here.”
Employing Draken instead of using
Air Force assets comes down to dol-
produce three to four sorties through
Draken for the same cost as one F-15
sortie.
“When we closed the 65th Aggressors
we recognized the need for adversaries
was still as great, if not more so,” said
Shepherd. “So while we still have that
great need to produce adversary aircraft,
Master Sgt. Vickie
Tippitt, a member of
the 926th Force Support
Squadron and the Nellis
Air Force Base Yellow
Ribbon representative,
sheds a tear during an
interview to discuss her
rough childhood and
how the Air Force saved
her at Nellis Air Force
Base, Nev., Oct. 20, 2015.
Tippitt, who plans on
sharing her story with
the base populous Jan
21. as part of a new
Storytellers program
for the base, hopes to
connect with other
Airmen who might have
went through the same
struggles through their
Courtesy photo childhood.
When Tippitt was 15, she would
sneak out of the house and see her
mom with her sister so she could get
out of the harsh environment that
she lived in.
“I finally ran away when I was 15
years old. We piled our clothes into
trash bags and threw them out of our
window. When it was time to go to
school, we were standing at the bus
stop with our trash bags waiting to
run away to our mom,” Tippitt said.
When Vickie Tippitt was a teen-
ager, she worked as a lifeguard in the
summer, and then on a whim, she
decided to check out a U.S. Air Force
recruiter’s office.
“I was a lifeguard and I was going
for lunch one particular day, so I de-
cided to go to the mall to go shopping
and I went to a different area of the
mall near the back where I noticed
there were all these different recruit-
ing agencies,” Tippitt said. “They had
Navy, Army and then I saw Air Force,
3December 11, 2015
Facebook.com/NellisBullseye
we simply don’t have the Air Force assets.
Draken has been contracted because they
can do it cheaper and because they can
still represent adversary tactics.”
According to Shepherd, Nellis AFB
is a test base to see if contract adversary
air will work for the Air Force and DOD.
“I think this is the way of the future
for the Air Force,” said Shepherd. “We
painted ourselves into a place where we
need outside agencies to come and help
us. Financially, we simply just don’t have
the money and resources to do that in
our Air Force. So when it comes time to
train America’s best — whether it is the
USAFWS, our test squadron, Red Flag
and Green Flag, we need the help of other
agencies to come out here. Draken is do-
ing that currently and we’ll see how this
experiment goes. If the experiment goes
well, we plan on rebidding a longer-term
contract.”
and I knew when summer time was
over, I had no idea what I would be
doing. So I decided to go into the Air
Force recruiting office and as soon
as I walked in I told the recruiter I
wanted to join the Air Force.”
After joining the Air Force, Tippitt
found out how her grandmother was
able to take her and her siblings away
from her mother.
“My grandmother called the wel-
fare office and had informed them
that my mother had died. She told
them that she wanted full guardian-
ship of all of us kids. They told her
she needed to produce a death cer-
tificate,” Tippitt said. “At one point,
she used to be a mortician and that
fell into her profession. However,
she wasn’t able to produce a certifi-
cate and called back saying that she
thought she was dead because she
was a drug addict. They believed her
and she took full guardianship. My
mother spent time in jail for it, and
she never did drugs.”
Tippitt, who plans on sharing her
story with the base populous Jan 21.
as part of a new Storytellers program
for the base, hopes to connect with
other Airmen who might have went
through the same struggles.
“When airmen hear these stories,
it’s going to transform lives,” 99th
Air Base Wing Chaplain (Lt. Col.)
Dwayne Jones said. “We are going
to hear that there is hope, we can
be resilient in difficult times. If life
dealt you a bad hand, there is always
an opportunity for a new beginning.”
Now that Tippitt has fully left her
past behind, she looks back in aston-
ishment.
“I never thought I would be smart
enough or courageous enough to
leave that type of environment,”
Tippitt said. “Today, I don’t consider
myself a victim, I just consider myself
being able to take up for myself and
able to take care of myself.”