thedrifter
10-30-02, 06:40 AM
BY T.M. SHULTZ
Oct 28, 2002
The Middle East slammed down on Yuma County over the weekend as thousands of Marines from around the country slugged it out with three divisions of Iraqi forces in a mock air-to-ground battle that had theater ballistic missiles raining down on Yuma, a car bombing northeast of Wellton and a major terrorist cell threatening the civilian population of a tiny desert town between here and Tucson.
And you thought it was just another Friday night.
"It's a huge job to bring it all together and fly with everything that we've got here," Maj. Chris "Stretch" Connelly said.
Connelly is the CH-46 helicopter division head at Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron-1 (MAWTS) at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma.
Twice a year, in the fall and spring, MAWTS instructors take aviators and various combat support service officers from the Marine Corps and other sister services through a complex, six-week course known throughout the U.S. military as WTI.
The elite Weapons and Tactics Instructor course begins with two and a half weeks of book learning, transitions to aviators flying short sorties with their own aircraft communities, and ends with a massive military exercise called FINEX that uses every aircraft on the Yuma flightline.
Helicopters, jets, surveillance planes, refueling tankers — even unmanned aerial vehicles are thrown into the mix.
The students are given an overall scenario, then must plan and execute the missions themselves. The only time a plan would be stopped is if a safety-of-flight issue arose.
Otherwise, even a bad plan must be played out.
"Regardless of whether it's a tactically sound plan, we still execute it for the learning value," Maj. Wayne Herbert explained.
Herbert spent Friday night in the Tactical Air Command Center (TACC) set up at Yuma's air station especially for the WTI course. The TACC comes from a squadron at Cherry Point, N.C. In real life the squadron provides the tactical command post for the Marine general running the 2nd Marine Air Wing.
The command post — full of classified information and resources — can pick up at a moment's notice and go anywhere in the world to run a war.
While Friday night's overall FINEX scenario was patterned after the Gulf War, some of the problems incorporated into the exercise involved situations American forces have encountered recently in the ongoing war in Afghanistan, such as communications between small teams surrounded by the enemy, Connelly said.
One problem the students didn't learn about until a few hours before the start of Friday's FINEX concerned an Islamic terrorist cell that popped up in a place called Combat Town out in the desert east of Yuma.
"They've got communications abilities we can't allow to stay there,"Connelly said. "In other words, they might be able to pick up our communications and warn forces out to the east what's coming."
So the Marines had to enter the town, recover intelligence items of interest, destroy the terrorist cell and take control of the town.
An infantry company of Marines (for real) would actually be inserted into Combat Town by helicopters first.After that, Connelly said, those Marines would be bussed away and any further scenario of troops on the ground would be notional — Marine-speak for imaginary.
To plan this, the students flew their helicopters from Yuma's air station to the infantry company waiting out in the desert, landed andfigured out the details in the short time remaining before FINEX's 3 p.m. start.
The goal of the various missions flown during WTI is to present the students with something other than what they're expecting.
"Obviously the enemy rarely does what we want him to do," Connelly said.
So MAWTS instructors overseeing WTI spin little "wrinkles" into the program.
"The hard part about it isn't so much the problems we present them, it's the situation that they're presented in," Connelly continued.
About half of FINEX occurs after dark. Pilots are flying their aircraft, they might be on night vision goggles, they're attempting to put bombs on target or do whatever their mission is, and then they get an unexpected problem thrown at them.
"All of a sudden you give them something that isn't necessarily difficult to figure out if you're sitting here in this office, but it is difficult to figure out out there."
Just about everything on the battlefield boils down to communications. And with today's modern communication links, sometimes it's a case of too much of a good thing. That's why working through a FINEX scenario, where all of the communication links are put into play, is so helpful — it teaches students what they don't need to know, as well as what they do need to know.
"Just like anything else, you get to a point where maybe it's too much information coming through," Connelly said. "There's only certain pieces which are useful."
That's why debriefings are so critical to the success of WTI, Connelly said.
"We talk about those things and about what we could have done better. We're always asking for feedback from these guys."
---
T.M. Shultz can be reached attshultz@yumasun.com or 539-6852.
http://yumasun.com/artman/uploads/2002art/1028-ordnance.jpg
Ordnance Crews ready an F/A-18 Hornet for Friday's bombing runs over the Barry M. Goldwater Range. Photo by T.M. Shultz
Sempers,
Roger
Oct 28, 2002
The Middle East slammed down on Yuma County over the weekend as thousands of Marines from around the country slugged it out with three divisions of Iraqi forces in a mock air-to-ground battle that had theater ballistic missiles raining down on Yuma, a car bombing northeast of Wellton and a major terrorist cell threatening the civilian population of a tiny desert town between here and Tucson.
And you thought it was just another Friday night.
"It's a huge job to bring it all together and fly with everything that we've got here," Maj. Chris "Stretch" Connelly said.
Connelly is the CH-46 helicopter division head at Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron-1 (MAWTS) at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma.
Twice a year, in the fall and spring, MAWTS instructors take aviators and various combat support service officers from the Marine Corps and other sister services through a complex, six-week course known throughout the U.S. military as WTI.
The elite Weapons and Tactics Instructor course begins with two and a half weeks of book learning, transitions to aviators flying short sorties with their own aircraft communities, and ends with a massive military exercise called FINEX that uses every aircraft on the Yuma flightline.
Helicopters, jets, surveillance planes, refueling tankers — even unmanned aerial vehicles are thrown into the mix.
The students are given an overall scenario, then must plan and execute the missions themselves. The only time a plan would be stopped is if a safety-of-flight issue arose.
Otherwise, even a bad plan must be played out.
"Regardless of whether it's a tactically sound plan, we still execute it for the learning value," Maj. Wayne Herbert explained.
Herbert spent Friday night in the Tactical Air Command Center (TACC) set up at Yuma's air station especially for the WTI course. The TACC comes from a squadron at Cherry Point, N.C. In real life the squadron provides the tactical command post for the Marine general running the 2nd Marine Air Wing.
The command post — full of classified information and resources — can pick up at a moment's notice and go anywhere in the world to run a war.
While Friday night's overall FINEX scenario was patterned after the Gulf War, some of the problems incorporated into the exercise involved situations American forces have encountered recently in the ongoing war in Afghanistan, such as communications between small teams surrounded by the enemy, Connelly said.
One problem the students didn't learn about until a few hours before the start of Friday's FINEX concerned an Islamic terrorist cell that popped up in a place called Combat Town out in the desert east of Yuma.
"They've got communications abilities we can't allow to stay there,"Connelly said. "In other words, they might be able to pick up our communications and warn forces out to the east what's coming."
So the Marines had to enter the town, recover intelligence items of interest, destroy the terrorist cell and take control of the town.
An infantry company of Marines (for real) would actually be inserted into Combat Town by helicopters first.After that, Connelly said, those Marines would be bussed away and any further scenario of troops on the ground would be notional — Marine-speak for imaginary.
To plan this, the students flew their helicopters from Yuma's air station to the infantry company waiting out in the desert, landed andfigured out the details in the short time remaining before FINEX's 3 p.m. start.
The goal of the various missions flown during WTI is to present the students with something other than what they're expecting.
"Obviously the enemy rarely does what we want him to do," Connelly said.
So MAWTS instructors overseeing WTI spin little "wrinkles" into the program.
"The hard part about it isn't so much the problems we present them, it's the situation that they're presented in," Connelly continued.
About half of FINEX occurs after dark. Pilots are flying their aircraft, they might be on night vision goggles, they're attempting to put bombs on target or do whatever their mission is, and then they get an unexpected problem thrown at them.
"All of a sudden you give them something that isn't necessarily difficult to figure out if you're sitting here in this office, but it is difficult to figure out out there."
Just about everything on the battlefield boils down to communications. And with today's modern communication links, sometimes it's a case of too much of a good thing. That's why working through a FINEX scenario, where all of the communication links are put into play, is so helpful — it teaches students what they don't need to know, as well as what they do need to know.
"Just like anything else, you get to a point where maybe it's too much information coming through," Connelly said. "There's only certain pieces which are useful."
That's why debriefings are so critical to the success of WTI, Connelly said.
"We talk about those things and about what we could have done better. We're always asking for feedback from these guys."
---
T.M. Shultz can be reached attshultz@yumasun.com or 539-6852.
http://yumasun.com/artman/uploads/2002art/1028-ordnance.jpg
Ordnance Crews ready an F/A-18 Hornet for Friday's bombing runs over the Barry M. Goldwater Range. Photo by T.M. Shultz
Sempers,
Roger