Iron Falcon means air superiority, record-breaking maintenance for Nomads

  • Published
  • By Chrissy Cuttita
  • Team Eglin Public Affairs
EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. (ACCNS) --  Remaining "Mighty Gorillas" of the 58th Fighter Squadron and their supporting Nomad team redeployed Dec. 6 after effectively deterring "red air" targets in a more than month-long exercise over Southwest Asia.

"All together, with a lot of fantastic Nomad support, the Mighty Gorilla team of pilots, intelligence, operations desk, life support, and maintainers achieved 100 percent mission success," said Lt. Col. Mark O'Laughlin, 58th FS Commander. "From flying 10 F-15s 18 hours across the Atlantic and into Southwest Asia, to fighting advanced advisories such as the United Arab Emirates F-16 Block 60 Fighting Falcon and the Royal Air Force Typhoon, it was an incredible experience for all the 58th FS pilots."

While the Nomads gained highly visible feedback for their war fighting performance Oct. 25 - Nov. 30, maintainers and pilots said they also broke an exercise historical record by providing the most amount of aircraft and maintaining the highest fully mission capable rate in an exercise.

"We had flown over 200 sorties while maintaining over a 95 percent mission capable rate which is very impressive with 30-year-old F-15s," said Chief Master Sgt. Donald Mottor, 58th AMU Superintendent, who was told it was the highest rate ever obtained by any unit over the course of the past 11 exercises.

An additional achievement obtained during the exercise was upgrade-training for pilots.

"We handpicked four 4-ship flight leads to upgrade to mission commander during the four-week Advanced Leadership and Tactics Course," said Col. O'Laughlin. "The missions included; offensive and defensive counter air, combat search and rescue, time sensitive targeting, and tactical support of maritime operations. They were part of a large class of which included other upgrade pilots from the United Arab Emirates, France, Saudi Arabia, and the United Kingdom."

To be upgraded to mission commander, pilots normally have to demonstrate they could manage a large force exercise first in a simulator and then in air.

"It was more robust then we would have here for upgrade training," said Capt. Jason Trew, 58th FS pilot. "Instead of leading an eight-ship we led a 24 ship, a four-ship team from each nation on the 'blue air' side. The four of us were able to each fly 12 large force exercises in four weeks. This was definitely the highlight of my F-15 career."

The 58th FS commander credits a majority of the pilots' success to the world class standard that resulted in losing only one of 250 sorties for maintenance purposes.

"All of my maintainers performed extremely professionally and built outstanding relationships with our coalition partners," said 1st Lt. Blake Bradford, 58th Aircraft Maintenance Unit officer in charge of all deployment logistics, manpower sustainment, and sortie production. "We received positive feedback from the 9th Air Force commander and the other coalition units for the outstanding job the maintainers did during the temporary duty."

The day in the life of maintainers during Iron Falcon filled 24-hour operations in three daily shifts. At the beginning of their work day maintainers would arrive on base, prepare for the day's flying or fixing requirements, sign out their tool kits, disperse to the flightline to prepare the aircraft and perform a walk on the ramp to detect or find any possible foreign object damage. Once aircrew arrived they would launch and recover aircraft throughout the day.

"Working with our host nations was a great experience for our Airmen," said Chief Mottor. "Having our aircraft on the same ramp as the Royal Air Force, Saudis and French air forces, allowed for more interaction between us then we are accustomed to. No doubt, if there is a conflict in the future we will all be stronger because of this exercise."