combat aircraft

that school at Luke [AFB] in 2012. I am
one of the handful of CAS experts at the
195th. We had some tough weather the
 rst week but I got to work with Italian,
British and Czech JTACs and they were
getting better and better each day. Today
I took o at 10.00 local time and checked
into the airspace at 10.15 with JTAC team
‘Tempo’, which was on the ground at an
air eld. They wanted us to get situational
awareness on their location as they moved
from one end of the air eld to the other.
They also wanted us to scan out in front
of them to make sure they were not going
to get ambushed. As a two-ship with two
targeting pods, we were able to do that
with no issues and we were able to see the
enemy forces as they set up for an attack
on the friendly forces.
‘We simulated a GBU-12 drop in the front
door of a very large hangar where enemy
forces were dismounted and getting ready
to attack. As the friendly forces pressed

farther west across the air eld they came

under attack a second time from enemy

forces that had dismounted from a vehicle,

so we attacked them with APWKS [the

Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System].

They are a great tool because we have

the ability to pick o individuals with

that weapon and can drastically decrease

collateral damage’. APWKS is a fairly new

upgrade for unguided rockets to provide

them with a precision capability. It means

the F-16 can now attack small targets with

high precision and at a much lower cost

than would be the case using weapons

such as guided bombs.

Exchange expertise

Bringing a vast amount of local

knowledge was Lt Col Lorenz ‘Enzo’

Scha elhofer, who joined the 162nd FW

as an exchange pilot from the German

Luftwa e. Scha elhofer has around 3,000

hours in fast jets including the Tornado

An unusual formation of an Arizona F-16C

with a Czech Air Force (Vzdušné síly

Armády České republiky) Mi-35 ‘Hind’.

http://www.combataircraft.net // December 2018 65