Page 5 - Aerotech News and Review, October 2, 2020

163rd Attack Wing navigates a DOMOPS perfect storm

Air Force Reserve photograph by Master Sgt. Gregory Solman
An MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft flown by 163rd Attack Wing pilot Lt. Col. Paul Brockmeier, with sensor operator Master Sgt. Anthony Martinez, views the smoky San Gabriel Mountains of
southern California in transit to a fire mission in northern California, late August, 2020. “The beauty of the sunsets doesn’t begin to mitigate the tragedy of the fires,” said Brockmeier. “But it’s always
a beautiful evening when you’re flying to the aid of your fellow Californians.”

by Master Sgt. Gregory Solman landing sites for Army National Guard Chinook not staffed like an active-duty base. When you dinary cooperation that could minimize bureau-
March ARB, Calif. and Black Hawk helicopters, setting the stage throw DOMOPS in the mix, and we go 24 cratic delay and provide for a timely response.
for the 40th Combat Aviation Brigade’s dramat- hours, we have to get very creative with our “We started to work all the mission-planning
As if hardened by fire, the California Air ic rescue of 396 citizens trapped in and around manpower scheduling.” products and what is ultimately a rigorous pro-
National Guard’s 163rd Attack Wing, March campgrounds, according to the California Na- “It is not as if you can throw any 8- or 9-man cess of coordinating with the Federal Aviation
Air Reserve Base, Calif., has steeled itself to tional Guard’s Joint Operations Center. team at an aircraft and you’re fine,” Weddington Administration, all of the air control centers on
the toughest domestic operations tasking in its “We had air crew members with family and continued. “You have to task people who are the west coast—L.A., Oakland, Seattle Center,
history. friends at those lakes, and told them to get out signed off, qualified and skilled to do the very and northern and southern California TRACON
Launching the MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted of there,” said Capt. Eric Jeppsen, 196th Attack particular jobs that are required for launching [Terminal Radar Approach Control Facilities],”
aircraft from its southern California base, and Squadron chief of current operations. “The in- and recovering aircraft. You can’t swap out Pe- Jeppsen explained. “We have military liaisons
navigating some of the nation’s busiest and frared capability cut through the smoke. We’re ter for Paul. It has to be Peter doing his job, and at these centers, so we began reaching out to
smokiest airspace, the wing has flown up to thousands of feet above a fire so fierce it was Paul doing his.” them, telling them what we would like, what
three MQ-9s simultaneously, for the first time generating its own weather, in this case, caus- A testament to the “train as we fight” tenet of we’re thinking, where we’ve got to go. They
ever, in response to one of the state’s worst ing thunderstorms. Our role was helping intel the wing, the three lines of operations across the help coordinate with the centers to help deter-
wildfire crises. determine where the helicopters needed to go.” state were spun up without complications due mine the best routing and altitude so that we
After having contributed Airmen to both CO- “It’s important that we’ve got three lines to two critical preparatory steps that seem to don’t disrupt commercial air traffic flow, or at
VID-19-related and civil unrest missions ear- flying now,” said Maj. Josh Weddington, com- have anticipated the crisis to come: a “ground- least minimize the impact.”
lier in the summer, the 163rd took on wildfires mander, 163rd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron. breaking exercise” conducted by the Operations When the (then)163rd Reconnaissance Wing
mid-August, flying continuously since. “At this “At one point, we were doing two fire-mapping and Maintenance groups last year, according to pioneered the use of RPAs for firefighting in
point, we’ve flown over 24 different fires,” said missions providing intelligence and surveil- Weddington; and the ever-expanding establish- 2013—amidst concurrent battles abroad in the
Maj. Lee Nichols, senior intelligence officer in lance to incident commanders on site, while ment of the wing’s legal authority to fly any- Global War on Terrorism—the initial sortie of
the 163rd Operations Group. “That’s meant performing damage assessment with the third where its aircraft are needed, clearing the way an MQ-1 Predator in the domestic airspace in-
doubling our support of any year in the past.” sortie. At any point, we could be mixing these for unprecedented “dynamic tasking,” accord- volved days of negotiations with the FAA and
The wing was first activated to assist the De- missions between fire mapping and/or flying ing to Jeppsen. air-traffic controllers, and required the written
partment of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal over fires to help the incident commanders mar- The prescient Ops and Maintenance exercise approval of the Secretary of Defense. Then,
Fire) on the now practically contained LNU shal their forces on the ground to extinguish “was a pilot program to see if it’s doable, and Jeppsen recalls, the Emergency Certificates
Lightning Complex fires ravaging forests north- the fires.” what the impact would be, from the operational of Authorization to fly RPAs for California
east of San Francisco. By mid-September, the Pilots, sensor operators, and intelligence of- risk management perspective,” Weddington re- DOMOPS were limited to “specific geographic
wing had flown the length of the state, launched ficers have flown in from Reaper units in eight calls. “We knew we were eventually going to locations, to specific fires Cal Fire is asking us
over 70 sorties, and crossed the 1,000-mission states as distant as New York to bolster the have to exercise this option. So, we tried every- to help out on…We’d work it out with the FAA
hours mark, racking up more than 600 hours on 163rd crews’ jump to 24/7 operations. “The thing from launching from different spots, to to say, ‘We want to fly from March Air Reserve
station, when the MQ-9s’ combat-built intelli- guest help has been hugely instrumental to surg- improve our launch and recovery efficiency, to Base, via this routing, to get to this very specific
gence, surveillance and reconnaissance sensors ing to three lines,” said Jeppsen, a combat pilot moving to three-line operations, to see how we point, and loiter within x-amount of miles to
were penetrating fierce firestorms to provide with the wing’s expeditionary unit who’s been could surge, and what effect that would have on support fire operations there.’ It’s easy to do a
real-time full motion video of the ground to taking the stick for fire missions when neces- the Formal Training Unit,” the wing’s priority, cookie-cutter launch under those conditions.”
first responders, mapping fire lines, and prov- sary. “The timing has been difficult.” as the heart of its national school for training As the support of the 163rd’s RPAs became
ing damage assessments. “Our primary mission at the 163rd is to RPA pilots and sensor operators. more crucial in subsequent fire seasons, the
The culmination of wing efforts came on a conduct Formal Training Unit operations,” The ability to navigate at will throughout the local and federal airspace-controlling agen-
night in early September, when an MQ-9 track- said Weddington. “Even though we’d like to state also required diligent negotiations, the
ing the Creek Fire near Fresno, Calif., spotted say that we’re built for 24/7 operations, we’re building of informal relationships, and extraor- See STORM, Page 7
Aerotech News and Review
October 2, 2020 www.aerotechnews.com ........ facebook.com/aerotechnewsandreview 5