A Fine Mess

After sitting a few days in Germany after our Purgatory in the Sandbox, we recuperated quite well. German cuisine and beer can do that for you. As can sleeping in a real bed again.

However, we were all eager to go home. We were a few days late when we were finally alerted for a westbound sortie. But it was disappointing when our crew bus pulled up to our aircraft and we unloaded our bags to find the filthiest jet we had ever seen. Dirt was caked on the pallets and a fine sheen of dust settled over everything in the aircraft – even the cockpit. It was unacceptable. Knowing that US Customs would never allow the aircraft to pass inspection, our loadmaster passed our concerns to maintenance. The aircraft and cargo needed to be cleaned.

Maintenance deferred to the aerial port, the organization responsible for loading and unloading cargo. The aerial port personnel were quick to point out that the cargo had been loaded downrange – in the Sandbox – so they weren’t responsible. True, it was loaded downrange, but it still had to be cleaned. We could not transport dirty cargo in a dirty aircraft back to the States. We repeated our concerns that the aircraft and cargo needed to be cleaned. Or downloaded. But the aircraft would still have to be cleaned even if the cargo was taken off.

The aerial port supervisor – a civilian ironically named Mr. No (not sure how he spelled it, but that was actually his name) – refused to comply. His people would not clean the aircraft and cargo, nor would they offload the cargo. We were now in a pissing match with Mr. No, who promptly called our local command and control organization, the Air Mobility Command Center (AMCC). Instead of backing us, the AMCC tried to get us to take the cargo as is. They’re supposed to know our rules and regulations as well as we do, yet the AMCC sided with Mr. No. We stood our ground.

The AMCC bumped the problem up the chain of command – to Air Mobility Command’s Tanker Airlift Command Center (TACC) near St. Louis. A full colonel there tried to assure us that Customs would clear the aircraft. But we were far from assured that he could vouch for Customs. When the rubber hit the road, it would be the aircraft commander facing a $10,000 fine and I’m pretty sure that Finance would not reimburse a Customs fine on a travel voucher. We stood our ground.

The aerial port found a local US Customs representative and asked him to come out to “pre-inspect” our cargo, basically to ask him if the cargo would be cleared if he was the inspector stateside. He took one look at the mess and shook his head. We had our first ally in our struggle.

Hours passed. Nothing was being done. We figured out that the AMCC was letting us “burn” until we reached the end of our duty day, four hours after our scheduled takeoff, at which time we’d go back to crew rest and they’d simply alert another crew on the same jet. This was technically against the rules, but so was allowing a filthy jet to head back to the States. The AMCC would probably find a young active duty crew eager to get home, who either wouldn’t know about the regulations concerning a dirty jet or could be coerced into bending the rule. Full colonels have a way of convincing junior captains into doing whatever they want.

Mr. No grew impatient. He should have waited for our four-hour rule. But he called out the big gun – the aerial port’s operations officer, a major who came out to the jet armed with the latest regulations in his hand in an attempt to get us moving. It was Mr. No’s downfall. The major had brought us the written guidance backing our position: dirty cargo could not be transported back to the States. The cargo had to be cleaned.

Within 10 minutes, we had every available airman in maintenance and in the aerial port sweeping and vacuuming the jet. There was too much grime and dirt for a thorough cleaning, but they made a definite improvement. Once we felt it was within acceptable limits, we accepted the jet for flight. It was an extremely late takeoff, but we were finally heading home.

After landing on the East Coast to download the cargo and refuel the jet for the remainder of our journey to the Pacific Northwest, Customs officials met our jet as expected. They came aboard, poked around the usual places, and checked our paperwork. It was obvious that something was bothering them.

“Kind of a messy jet, isn’t it?” one of them asked. “It’s a good thing I’m in a good mood tonight; I’ll clear you this time. Merry Christmas!”

And it was only October.

Groundhog Day

Three days after arriving at the American airbase, we were still there, waiting for parole. It seemed tantalizingly close, yet as the seconds turned into minutes and the minutes turned into hours, we still were not alerted to fly. There we sat on Bravo alert, in our cramped tent, waiting for the pager to tell us to go to work. And the damned thing never went off.

Before we had been set up on Bravo, we had relatively more freedom. We had one day to enjoy our allotment of three beers, make a morale call home, watch the Sunday football games on a wooden screen at The Bra, and basically have the run of the base. It was initially pleasant to be set up for our Bravo with an expected alert time, which meant that we would eventually be allowed to leave. But as the time passed after our expected alert time, we learned that they were trying to fix our jet; the yaw damper was out and they gave us an estimate time to repair it.

That time came and went as well, as did all of the subsequent times they gave us. A Bravo alert can run up to 48 hours before we must be released or alerted, so our waiting turned into a kind of Groundhog Day. I’d sleep whenever I was tired, I’d sneak out for a bite to eat when hungry, even ventured out for a quick run in my civilian athletic clothes. I lost myself in reading, watched a movie or two on my laptop, and sneaked out to call home and grab a coffee. We were supposed to remain by the pager so that if we were alerted, we would be immediately ready to go to work. Yet at any given time, the five of us on the crew were scattered to all four corners of the base; it would have taken some time just to get the whole crew back together.

Most of the time, I was good and stayed in our tent. Depending on the sleep schedule of one or the other of us, the lights would either be full on or all off. The only constant was the monotonous hum of our air conditioner; during the nights it was quite chilly, but it barely kept pace with the searing daytime heat of autumn in the Persian Gulf. Afternoon windstorms were also quite common, rattling the sides of the tent like a tarp over a pickup’s bed on the freeway, and occasionally yanking the door of the tent wide open. In order for the door to stay closed, we would have to slam it a few times until it latched. It was like trying to sleep in a frat house without the partying.

As the maintenance crews tried to fix our jet, we learned more about its woes. A flight control module for the aircraft’s elevator was bad, but even after it was replaced, the whole jet shuddered when the flight controls were moved. Boeing was looking into the matter, which meant that nobody had any idea what was wrong with the jet. It all boiled down to the fact that we were leaving nowhere quickly. With three days left before our scheduled return date to our home station, the forecast for an on-time arrival looked grim at best.

So our Groundhog Day continued. Eventually, after more than 45 hours into our 48 window of availability, the pager finally went off. Another jet had come in, so we no longer had to wait for them to fix the other jet. We hurriedly packed the last of our bags and donned our uniforms.

Freedom was waiting.

Doin' Time

After our two-stop in the Afghan sandbox, we flew westbound toward our final stop of the day, an American air base in the Persian Gulf region. Thirty-four thousand feet beneath us, the city of Dubai unfolded from the sun-baked desert like a mirage, a rich tapestry of skyscrapers and man-made islands as out of place as a monkey driving a car. I immediately thought of another desert city half a world away, Las Vegas, yet the contrast couldn’t be more startling. While Dubai is known for its opulence, there is a noticeable lack of greenery in the city on the shore of the Persian Gulf compared to landlocked Las Vegas. Dubai is marked by its uniform shade of brown, at least from my vantage point in the sky.

Dubai’s man-made islands, two palm tree shaped island chains and a third collection of blobs vaguely resembling the earth’s continents, seem like the excesses of a society trying to mold the natural environment into an unnatural one. The islands are to be sold to the wealthy seeking beachfront villas, yet only a few of them seem to have been fully developed. It seems that erosion is a process that the builders cannot fully tame, requiring continual dredging and relocation of the dirt and sand to shore up the islands’ foundations. Experts have said that in the case of an earthquake along a nearby fault line, the islands would liquefy like sand in a sifter and sink into the depths of the gulf.

Sometime later, we were cleared for our final descent toward another Persian Gulf nation. There was an indistinct haze marring the horizon, enveloping the line between sea and sky in a choking layer of suspended dust. Soon, the coastline vaguely appeared, muted by the dust, and as I looked down, I had a hard time pinpointing exactly where the water and the land met, even from a few thousand feet directly overhead. Beyond the beaches lay a dry, dusty, brown world, unadorned by a single tree or blade of grass. Just a vast sunburned terrain stretching for miles; how anybody ever chose to call such a place home is beyond me.

Yet as we flew on, signs of life arose from the desert: highways connecting scattered villages, pipelines and power transmission lines, a vast refinery in the distance. A line of hundreds of gravel trucks snaked their way off-road through the desert like ants seeking out a picnic feast. At the terminus of the motorized ant path, a pack of earth movers chewed into a massive sand dune, emptying its remains one bucketful at a time into the waiting trucks. Nearby, an island of greenery appeared in the sea of sand, a desert estate with actual grass and a garden of trees and shrubs, perhaps the home of some wealthy desert nomad who hit the big time selling sand.

As we flew farther into the desert, the American airbase emerged from the ocher haze, far from any other sign of civilization. After landing, we taxied among rows of air force and navy airplanes, a collection of aircraft larger than many nations’ entire aerial forces. We shut down the engines and exited the aircraft into a blast furnace; it was only ten in the morning, yet a 95 F temperature was magnified by a 17 knot steady breeze. Welcome to fall in the Persian Gulf.

A bus eventually arrived and took us to the host nation’s immigration and customs, where signs advised us to treat the officials with the utmost respect; it is quite common for an unwary glance, foul temper, or some other perceived insult to result in deportation from the nation. Knowing the purgatory awaiting us beyond them in the American base, it was tempting to cast a disparaging look in order to be expelled onto the next airplane leaving for Germany. However, we were soon approved for entry and we were on our way.

The base is a work in progress, as it has been for years. Rows of motley temporary buildings with window air conditioning units like a trailer park on steroids are home for most of the base’s inhabitants; they are temporary housing in name only, since they have been used since at least 2003. Overflow housing consists of a handful of quonset hut tents; our crew of five was given a small tent with four bunk beds, a refrigerator, and two dim lights hanging from the canvas ceiling. A canvas air conditioning duct ran along the spine of our dusty quarters, complete with Velcro tabs to adjust the amount of air desired. New permanent buildings are slowly being constructed nearby, but since we are considered transient personnel, we merely rated a forgotten tent at the edge of the base. The latrines were a short walk away, across a white gravel landscape, entirely devoid of any sign of organic life. Nothing grows here, not even weeds. During the day, the entire scene is blindingly bright, making me squint even behind my sunglasses.

The perimeter was marked by an earthen mound stretching from horizon to horizon. Guard towers, razor sharp barbwire fences, light stanchions, and electronic intrusion devices further ensured our safety. The chow hall was a 15 minute walk to the other side of the base. The central part of the base is affectionately called The Bra; a double white tarp, shaped like a brassiere, covers an open air pavilion around which the Base Exchange, laundry facility, movie theater, fitness center, coffee shop, and, most importantly, the bar are located. We are authorized three drinks a day and few people let their allotment go unused.

Military protocol and regulations cover every aspect of life here to a suffocating degree. Only the duty uniform and a PT uniform are authorized for wear – no personal clothing is allowed, even caps. The PT uniform consists of a gray polyester T-shirt with a subdued but reflective air force emblem, a pair of ill-fitting blue shorts known for riding up the leg inappropriately, white socks, and athletic shoes. In a cruel twist of irony, the uniform is manufactured with low-bid federal convict labor instead of a high-quality athletic apparel manufacturer like Nike or Under Armour. The shirt must be tucked into the shorts, even while exercising. At night, we must wear a reflective belt, and if a backpack is worn, it too must wear a reflective belt, even in areas where vehicles are not allowed.

Offenders of any aspect of uniform wear have been yelled at across crowded dining halls by self-appointed uniform police, usually colonels and master sergeants. God forbid that you don’t tuck your shirt into your shorts while running; some do-gooder will literally chase you down and admonish you for single-handedly causing defeat in the war. They have lost sight of the big picture here by focusing on the minute details; the spit and polish military is dying a slow death. Sometimes it is amazing that we still have the most powerful military in the world.

Burdened by cradle to grave regulations, airmen are beaten down to submission. Perhaps one out of ten people can be seen smiling at a given time, but I am probably being overly generous with that percentage. Most of the happier people are civilian contractors, who are immune from byzantine clothing restrictions and who are paid far more than the airmen who form the backbone of the base workforce. The 1,000 yard stare is the common emotion displayed among military personnel. People here count the days until they can leave; ask anyone and they will usually know down to the exact hour. This place can really suck the joy out of serving the nation.

Sleep is the best way to pass time in this white-collar prison. It is the ultimate time machine; you wake up and it is time to leave. I have slept more than 12 hours at a stretch in the past. When I do get out, I do so at night, when it is considerably cooler. Night time is the right time here; the base is more crowded after sundown than a shopping mall full of teenagers on a Friday night. If you venture out during daylight hours, the base resembles a ghost town. Searing heat is common well into the fall.

At least our time here is limited; as a transient aircrew, we will leave as soon as our number is called and we are given a jet to fly. Until then, here we’ll sit, biding our time until our parole is approved. Maybe I’ll get some more sleep.

Afghan Two-Stop

It was a black night over the Black Sea as we approached our tanker. With two planned stops in Afghanistan, we would need at least 90,000 lbs. of fuel out of the 100,000 lbs. that we were scheduled to offload. With two qualified air refueling pilots in the seat, our plan was for me to take the first half of the gas and the other pilot would get the second half. So I crept slowly forward until we assumed the contact position, slightly less than 20 feet aft and below the KC-135 tanker. Since we were already heavy – with a full load of cargo and 80,000 lbs. of fuel already in our tanks – I had to be especially patient when moving the throttles. There is always a delay between power adjustments and a noticeable effect during heavyweight refueling. Add too much power too soon and you’ll quickly develop too much smash, leading to excessive closure – an obviously dangerous situation.

The boom operator flew the boom into our receptacle and we were taking gas. I made it to roughly the halfway point before I strayed too far left of centerline, and the boom operator disconnected. I had picked up slightly more than 40,000 lbs. I transferred the controls to the other pilot and he maneuvered back in for the rest of the fuel. As we approached the 90,000 mark, I noticed that we were approaching our minimum maneuvering airspeed, Vmma (pronounced V mama), the first margin approaching our stall speed. But before we could tell the tanker to accelerate, we stopped taking fuel. Our tanks were full after taking a total of 87,000 lbs. of fuel, short of the 90,000 we needed and well short of the planned 100,000 lbs. offload the mission planners determined we’d need.

After separating from the tanker, we picked up our flight plan to Afghanistan. I checked the fuel calculations in the computer, and sure enough, we wouldn’t have enough fuel to make it to our final destination. We’d have to get some at one of our stops in Afghanistan, perhaps 10,000 lbs. at most. Still, it was fuel that we’d be taking from an aircraft that needed it in country. Ten thousand pounds of fuel is a lot of gas for a fighter jet.

A few hours later, we arrived at our first stop, a Marine airbase. It was still dark and we were descending into a valley surrounded by mountains to an airfield none of us had ever been to before. Finding the runway was easy enough; missing a mountain was another thing. But with NVG goggles, terrain charts, and our GPWS and TAWS systems, we easily touched down and were soon offloading our cargo. As we finished up, I noticed two Marine Cobra helicopters takeoff – lights off- in a scramble. Marines on foot were taking fire somewhere in the valley and the two gunships wasted little time in responding.

We took off just before dawn with an empty jet, and proceeded to our next stop to pick up a load of cargo bound for the States. The sun rose above the low-lying clouds and the already white-topped peaks of Afghanistan, heralding the approach of the notorious Afghan winter. Above us, a brilliant deep blue sky stretched from horizon to horizon, nearly unblemished in its splendor. It was short-lived; we soon descended into another valley, one capped with clouds trapped by the peaks surrounding it. Before long, we were on the ground at another airbase, ready to upload our cargo, pick up a little gas, and be on our way.

We took off approaching the 18-hour mark in our day. As soon as we lifted off, we turned sharply, watching small walled courtyards and square fields from nearby villages pass under us like an ancient chessboard. Reaching our desired airspeed, I pulled the stick back, raising our nose above 20 degrees in a zoom for the overcast clouds above us. They can’t hit what they can’t see, so as soon as we reached the sanctuary of the clouds, I relaxed my tactical climb for the more sedate, and comfortable, climb typical of civilian airliners everywhere.

Another three hours of cruise and our day would be done.

Autobahn Blues

Sometimes you just know it’s not going to be a restful crew rest. I knew it as soon as we pulled up to our hotel near an American airbase in Germany. It was tucked away in a corner of a nearby town, right next to a bustling autobahn, 50 feet away at best from the cars and trucks speeding by. The sound of the racing traffic was simply deafening, even inside my room conveniently facing the autobahn. It was the closest you’d find to a Motel 6 in Germany, simple Spartan rooms next to a busy highway. But this place included breakfast – frühstück in German – so that made it a Motel 7 – Motel Sieben in German.

Most of the crew immediately made their way to breakfast – it was about 9 am – but I wanted to get a run in before I ate. After changing, I found a road leading under the autobahn that quickly petered out into a gravel road next to a fallow field, left dormant for the coming winter. The grass on either side of the road was thick with dew and the air was achingly chilly, making each breath almost painful. At the end of the field, I turned onto what we call a horse trail in Texas, a hardpack lane with grass in the middle, which ran alongside a gurgling irrigation ditch. I soon came across the airbase and emerged onto a paved running path that led across the approach lighting for the runway, just outside of the fence line. A hawk was circling over the end of the runway, looking for prey. As a C-130 lifted into the air, heading toward me, the hawk dove for the ground, either to catch its morning meal or to avoid the quickly approaching aircraft. The C-130 roared overhead and climbed into the gunmetal gray sky; I watched it as I ran until it was but a speck in the heavens.

I made it back to breakfast after logging four miles. The breakfast was decent, but since it was included in the room rate, I certainly had nothing to complain about. After eating my fill, I went back to my room to shower and get ready to sleep the rest of the day away. It was nearly two in the morning, Pacific Time, but despite how tired I was, sleep would truly be a challenge. My room had an aluminum shutter that could be rolled down in front of the window, like a blast shield, and it made my room as dark as a crypt when it was closed. It did mute the sound of the autobahn somewhat also, but I still had to sleep with foam earplugs in. Heck, I could still hear the rumble of heavy trucks passing even through my earplugs. I could also hear an occasional takeoff from the nearby airbase, especially when a C-5 took off. I finally drifted off to sleep, but it wasn’t restful. I may have slept maybe six hours total.

Later that evening, we walked over to the main part of town for dinner at an Italian restaurant. It wasn’t far; we just had to cross under the tracks at the bahnhof. Monday nights are slow wherever in the world you are, but it was especially slow that night in our tiny burg; however, we made the best of it. After a few hours, we all wandered back to our rooms to surf a dozen or so television channels, only one of which – CNN – was in English. You’d think after staying in German hotels through the years, I would have mastered a little more of the German language than I have, yet Pidgin-German remains the extent of my limited vernacular.

We spent a total of three nights there, waiting for a mission downrange. I made further use of the running trails – my best escape from the monotonous routine - and made nightly strolls into town for dinner. Sleep was always a chore, especially when our mission reporting time necessitated a change in sleep patterns. Finally, early one afternoon, we were alerted for our flight downrange, slightly tired but ready to leave our motel behind. It’s never good to start a long flight already tired, especially when the flight involved two stops in Afghanistan before a final stop for another crew rest at an American airbase in the Persian Gulf – where our accommodations there would make us long for the days spent at the Motel Sieben.

Autobahn and all.

Pearl Harbor Day

December 7, 1941; a date which will live in infamy. Yet today Pearl Harbor Day lies in the shadow of another date that lives in greater renown: September 11, 2001. Just as Katrina overshadows the deadlier hurricane that obliterated Galveston, Texas in September 1900, the events of 9-11 now eclipse one of the most iconic dates in American history. Not to take anything away from 9-11, but the lessons we didn’t learn from Pearl Harbor continue to haunt us to this very day. Americans seem to relish playing the role of Sisyphus, the Greek king condemned to eternity to pushing a boulder to the top of a mountain, only to watch it roll down the other side. With a sigh and a short memory, we trot down after the rolling stone to push it back to the summit.

In the months following the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, Congress and the American people asked how we could be taken by surprise. The commanding General and Admiral in the islands were both summarily relieved of command and the conspiracy theories that arose in the years after blamed even the President for letting the Japanese pull off a stunning surprise victory.

It was hardly a surprise.

As early as 1921, General Billy Mitchell predicted that the Japanese would launch an air attack upon Hawaii, an alarming prophecy that was lambasted by his peers and ignored by his superiors. Mitchell, an early aviation pioneer and staunch advocate of air power, is perhaps best known for his court marshal following his spat with the Navy. He boasted excessively how air power had made the centerpiece of the fleet – the battleship – obsolete. The Navy disagreed; how could the flimsy bombers of the day vanquish the unsinkable battleship? So Mitchell pulled a couple of captured German battleships from mothballs, anchored them off the Virginia coast, and with the naval brass watching from a safe distance, his squadron of bombers quickly proved his point. Ever defiant, the Navy claimed he cheated and when he did not back down from his rhetoric, he was sacked.

Moral: Americans do not like others to question their preconceived notions. And more often than not, our preconceived notions color our views of foreign affairs and warfare. We are always fighting the last war. Visionaries like Mitchell are seen as anachronistic barbarians, more easily dismissed than heeded. It is easier to change our behavior or concede our beliefs than to force adversaries to make concessions. In the midst of two asymmetric conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, our national leadership has declared that all future warfare will follow the current model. State versus state warfare is a thing of the past; low-level regional conflicts against non-state actors is the new vogue. They think it’s a new type of warfare, yet it actually extends to the beginning of recorded history.

To meet this new challenge, ex-Secretary Rumsfeld and current Defense Secretary Gates have slashed weapon systems left and right. Can’t use the F-22 to bomb terrorists, they say. The Comanche, the Crusader? Nope, don’t need them either. We’ve gotta make the army lighter and more organic. Hell, nuclear attack subs don’t fight terrorists either, yet we’re not scrapping them fortunately. But to look at the next 25 years, as the Defense Department’s QDR demands, the brain trust at the Pentagon doesn’t seem to think there’s a single nation out there that we might disagree with enough that might lead to warfare.

In a joint Indian-American exercise a few years back, the underdog Indian Air Force gave our F-15 drivers in the red, white, a blue jerseys a bloody nose. On the way out of the debrief, one of our boys, ever defiant even in defeat, seemed hopeful about the future, especially given the fact that the F-22 was slated for a large production run. We’ll get ‘em next time! The F-22 would ensure American aerial superiority over every nation on earth, unlike the aging F-15 so easily trumped in the mock war of the Ganges. By the time the rest of the world closed the technology gap with the F-22, perhaps 30 years in the future, we’d be off to the next generation fighter, thereby ensuring the home team would always enjoy a home field advantage. But with the recent cut in production for the F-22, we'll have to hang on to 35-year-old fighters barely better than anything our adversaries may soon have.

Then there’s North Korea, nipping at our heels like your aunt’s chihuahua, its eyes bulging out of its quivering skull like some kind of possessed rat. The North Koreans are just deranged enough that they might decide to end the cease fire and resume the war. Yes, the Korean War is still officially a war. There never was a peace treaty. No winner, no loser, just a draw. Who knows what may spark another confrontation? Another crop failure, China finally cutting off their allowance, a South Korean fishing boat straying across the watery DMZ – it could be anything. And North Korea is just dangerous enough militarily to cause some real pain for us and our allies.

The most obvious candidate is Iran. We’re trying hard to avoid warfare, but as they march farther down the road to the nuclear arms club, we’re going to have to do something. We’ve already used all our instruments of national power, except the military one, with little effect; what other tool in the toolkit will convince them to listen to us? Economic? We’ve had an embargo since the ’79 revolution and you can see how well that’s worked. Diplomatic? They won’t talk to us directly, so we have to use intermediaries like a kid passing a note in class. Informational? Let me know when that Voice of America broadcast starts to change the hearts and minds of the mullahs in Tehran. Intelligence? The CIA has been a dirty word in Iran since the Eisenhower days – think we’ll find willing recruits in Tehran today? At some point, we either have to accept the fact that they’ll get the bomb and hope nobody gets nuked, or we’ll have to actually do something militarily about it. Those are really our only two options and neither one looks promising. But if we have to go to war, we’d better have something more than a lighter, more agile army and a bunch of UAVs.

Back to Pearl Harbor. It perhaps is our biggest Achilles Heel. What worked for the Japanese will work for other nations, just as the Germans marched on Paris using the Schlieffen Plan time and time again. Who might have the most to gain from dusting off Yamamoto’s war plans and taking out the largest, most powerful bastion of military strength in the entire Pacific?

China. Don’t think Pearl Harbor couldn’t happen again? I hope not, but we have to be ready. And paring down our military to deal with non-state actors with visions of grandeur is playing into the hands of Beijing. Think about it; what is a bigger threat to the very existence of our nation and its liberties – Islamic terrorists seeking a new Islamic Caliphate or China? Sure Al Qaeda might take out an American city eventually – and that would be a disaster of epic magnitude – but our nation would not perish in its aftermath. But if the Chinese decided to go head to head with us, their missile technology is nearly good enough to wreak some serious havoc upon our nation.

What would be China’s motivation? Taiwan. They unswervingly claim that it is an integral part of China; they call it the One China Policy, which is the Chinese equivalent of America's Manifest Destiny. The United States is probably the only reason Taiwan is still free. If China decided to take the island by force, they’d have to neutralize an American response before it started. And they wouldn’t have to send a fleet of carriers halfway across the Pacific to do it like the Japanese did. Hawaii would face a rain of ballistic missiles, taking out every military facility in the islands, including our carriers. There would be other targets also: Alaska, Guam, Japan, and Okinawa. Every runway and port from which an American counterattack might originate would be rendered unusable. There might even be a space Pearl Harbor as well; take out a few military and commercial satellites and we lose communications, intelligence gathering, and precision navigation abilities. The Chinese would consolidate their hold on Taiwan before we could reconstitute our forces, effectively taking us out of the fight with a sucker punch in the first round.

We’d lose more than our Pacific military muscle; we’d lose the ability to project American power anywhere in the Pacific. Our diplomatic muscle would perish as well – why would the Chinese need to listen to us without a military threat? They already own most of our debt. We would have no recourse but to concede Taiwan along with our role as superpower. Some Americans may not think that our superpower status is vitally important, but that role guarantees the success of American commerce, and champions human rights the world over. Our entire way of life could change in the blink of an eye, forever changed simply because we have a preconceived notion that we do not want questioned.

We have to be ready for another Pearl Harbor as well as another 9-11. We cannot pretend that we only face one threat. America needs military forces able to deal with the kind of low-level asymmetric conflicts like we are currently facing, but to redefine the entire Department of Defense to face only one kind of conflict is to set us up for another Sunday morning surprise. Let’s quit fighting the last war. It’s time to be prepared to fight the next war, whether on the plains of a broken African nation, the deserts of Iran, or the Far East.

We, as a nation, have vowed to remember 9-11; nearly our entire military has been remade in a model to ensure that we will not let it happen again. But let us not forget Pearl Harbor. Let’s stop pushing the heavy stone up the mountain. Let us ensure that another Pearl Harbor can never happen again.

Intercept

We watched the horizon change from pitch-black to gray to a dozen shades of color from violet and blue to red and orange before the sun finally split the horizon with a fiery flash. I lowered my seat and moved my sun visor forward, trying to spare my retinas from the solar assault. It did little good. Until the sun rose higher into the sky, we were essentially flying blind.

I glanced at the mottled panorama passing by beneath us, sullen gray clouds tinged with red from the sun and muted fields of green visible through scattered cloud breaks. England. With the Atlantic behind us, there were less than two hours remaining before we’d touchdown in Germany. We were cleared to a point above East Anglia, then out over the Channel, where we said goodbye to London Military Control and switched to Dutch Mil.

“Good morning, Reach,” the controller answered. “Would you care to participate in a practice air interception?”

There is really only one answer to that question. With our affirmative reply, he cleared us for a descent and began vectoring a flight of two Dutch F-16s toward us. We picked them up on TCAS first, noting their excessive rate of closure. Soon we picked them one of them visually, rapidly approaching from our eight o’clock position. We never saw his wingman, yet our TCAS informed us that he was in our six o’clock position – the kill position. Had we been a hostile aircraft, we never would have made the Dutch coastline.

The F-16 off our wing settled into a wingtip formation with us, perhaps 50 feet off our winglet. We waved and took a few pictures before he waved back, turned up his afterburners, and surged ahead. It sounded like thunder, even over the sound of the airstream, our engines, and the electronic hum of our cockpit. We watched as the fighter broke left and dove downward toward the Channel, quickly lost to our eyes.

...For Spacious Skies...

With a full load of cargo bound for the war, we lined up on the runway in Southern California for our flight to Germany. We would meet a tanker off the coast of New England some six hours later, so it was important to take off on schedule. At the designated time, the co-pilot pushed up the throttles and we accelerated quickly and majestically rose into the air. We hadn’t even climbed more than a couple of hundred feet before the greenery seemingly so predominant at eye level was quickly replaced by the desert that Southern California really is. Here and there I could still see blossoming isles of green amidst the desert – a golf course here, a park there – but as we continued our standard instrument departure, even those oases of incongruous emerald were lost to my sight.

Following the magenta-colored line on our flight displays depicting our departure routing, we made a broad turn to the south. The Channel Islands were visible just offshore, and hundreds of boats of all shapes and sizes were plying the waters of the shimmering Pacific. We continued southward until we were no longer a traffic conflict for other airborne arrivals and departures for the half-dozen or so airports scattered beneath us. So Cal Departure Control finally gave us a turn to the east, and we soon climbed out over Palm Springs and the Salton Sea. It was clear ahead of us for probably a hundred miles, and I could already see the Colorado River snaking its way through the otherwise barren desert. It was a good day to be flying.

We crossed central Arizona south of Flagstaff; the Grand Canyon was just a little too far north for a bird’s eye view, but was still a spectacle, as always. Continuing eastward across the parched landscape, we passed Albuquerque and the Rio Grande Valley before losing sight of the earth completely due to a frontal line over the Texas Panhandle. Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri all passed beneath us sight unseen obscured by the undercast. Somewhere over the Midwest, we ran out of daylight; the shadow of the earth arced into space above us as we flew into the darkness beyond. The amber lights of cities appeared across Indiana and Ohio sparkling brilliantly 35,000 feet below us. I could almost make out Lake Erie to the north by the cities clustered along its darkened shoreline.

The tanker crew began calling us; they were eager to arrange an early rendezvous. Instead of meeting at the tanker track off the tip of Long Island as scheduled, they would fly westbound to meet us over western New York State. They figured that the earlier they gave us the required fuel, they’d head home early for the night. It made little difference to us; we still had a seven-hour flight across the pond. So we agreed to help them out, as long as they could give us a little extra fuel. I didn’t need the refueling, but another pilot did, so I hopped out of the seat so he could get the gas.

Air Traffic Control helped us coordinate a new rendezvous point and we descended to 20,000 feet. We started looking for the tanker, a KC-10, and it wasn’t long before we saw it at our three o’clock position, 1,000 feet above us. We continued on a converging heading as the tanker grew larger, its lights and rotating beacons somewhat reminiscent of the mother ship from Close Encounters. The KC-10 is a large, make that gargantuan, tanker; receiver pilots refueling with the KC-10 for the first time often underestimate how close they are. They might call 100 feet in trail while they are actually 200 feet or farther away.

The pilot crept in slowly and steadily and we were soon taking fuel. I noticed the lights of New York City growing brighter as we approached; our next turnpoint on the flight plan was JFK airport, so we’d fly just south of the city. I was sitting just behind the pilot, so I’d have a bird’s eye view from the left window, directly into the heart of the Big Apple. I was not disappointed; the elegant iridescent lights of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge crossing the Hudson, the stark outline of darkened Central Park, the twin transcendent spires of the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings bathed in illuminated splendor, the abounding radiance of Times Square, and a playoff game in progress at Yankee Stadium. I could practically see the pulse of the city through its lights.

The tanker dragged us along Long Island out to Hampton VORTAC, a navigation station at East Hampton; we had already received enough fuel to finish our flight to Germany, but they kindly allowed several of us to get some practice time on the boom. Reaching Hampton, we turned north along the New England coastline while our tanker turned south for its base. As the city of Boston glittered west of us, Boston Center cleared us direct to our coast-out point off the coast of Nova Scotia. They soon handed us off to Moncton Center and we left the States behind. Our passage of American skies was complete as we were soon cleared to our 50 West crossing point, somewhere above the dark restless Atlantic.

Back on the Line

Two weeks at home went by quite fast and I soon found myself at the top of the scheduler’s list of available pilots. I was still a little fatigued from my last trip, but I knew the odds against two bad trips in a row were low. So on a cool, misty Sunday morning I loaded my gear into my truck and headed toward base for yet another flight. Autumn was in full swing, bringing its usual wet and dreary days to the Pacific Northwest, so despite the fact I’d be away from my family for at least the next 11 days, I would not miss the steadily shortening days of fall.

After loading our gear into the aircraft, we started our pre-flight checks, assuring us that everything would work as advertised. Our auxiliary power unit, hydraulic pumps, airflow manifolds, and electronic alarms combined in a cacophony of sounds that assaulted our ears, even through my foam earplugs. Before long, we were ready. After starting our engines and finishing our last checklists, we taxied toward the runway through the steadily increasing rainfall.

It didn’t take long to leave the dreary landscape behind. We climbed from the dismal morass into a sky of boundless blue, leaving the layer of clouds beneath us like a sea of gray. Mt. Rainier rose from the clouds like a majestic island, its crown already dusted in white from its first snowfall of the season. As we rose higher, Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helens were visible as well, likewise endowed in a splendor of white. As we headed south, the other grand peaks of the Cascades shared similar fates, as far south as California’s Mt. Shasta.

We soon descended over the San Bernardino Mountains of Southern California and easily spotted our destination. My co-pilot reported that we had the airfield in sight to SoCal Approach Control as I maneuvered for a right base. We configured for landing and I flew a visual final for the runway. After touchdown, I eased the thrust reversers out and gently applied the brakes. After taxiing clear, we preceded to the ramp and shut down.

It was a glorious day in Southern California: 79 degrees and sunny, the antithesis of cool and rainy Washington. I passed on the crew bus ride to base operations and enjoyed the warmth of the sun on my face as I walked across the ramp. We had a long flight ahead of us, an aerial refueling flight all the way to Germany. So I’d soak up all the sunshine I could, especially since the same weather we left behind in the Pacific Northwest likely awaited us in Northern Europe.