This image: The
resident 908th
Expeditionary
Air Refueling
Squadron is the
USAF’s largest
KC-10A Extender
unit.
Bottom left to
right: KC-10
crews receive an
intelligence brief
prior to their daily
missions.
The boom
operator looks
after the weight
and balance of
the huge KC-10, as
well as being on
call to top up the
receiver aircraft
as required.looking for air assets that might impede
US and coalition forces.’
The primary role of the Raptors in
OIR is defensive, enabling the coalition
freedom of maneuver through control
of the air. ‘Take the security forces on the
gate,’ says Royal Air Force exchange pilot
and squadron director of operations,
Sqn Ldr ‘Duzza’. ‘Each day they are
ready to defend the base and we are
safe because of them, but they’re not
shooting their weapons every day. It’s
the same for us in the air. We deter.
Two years ago this was an extremely
kinetic air-to-ground operation and
almost every Raptor sortie was either a
deliberate strike or a CAS mission. There
were sorties when they’d clean the jets
o [of weapons]. The pilots would check
in with a JTAC [joint terminal attack
controller], execute some CAS and then
head home. We still do occasionally go
kinetic to target ISIS on the ground, but
our role now is mainly defensive and we
achieve that task by being present andbeing ready to ght air-to-air if required.’
In the past there were fewer coalition
forces on the ground in northern Iraq
and Syria, but now the area is a complex
hotbed of local forces and state actors.
‘The ying is physically stressful,’
‘Duzza’ adds. ‘If you’ve ever been in an
airline seat for numerous hours then
imagine doing that but also ying
the aeroplane, dealing with tactical
problems, refueling at night or in bad
weather, monitoring a wide variety of
air activity, and intercepting potentially
hostile aircraft that could pose a threat
to friendly forces. It’s physically and
mentally exhausting.’
Lt Col ‘Habu’ adds, ‘We try to ensure
everyone can get into a routine on a
particular shift for a few weeks. Our
maintainers are essentially doing
‘24/7’ ops. They’re out there in the
heat xing airplanes. We bring the LO
[low-observable] maintenance into our
overall schedule — it’s just one more
system we have to manage.’Certain scheduled maintenance is
completed before the unit deploys
down-range. Unlike some air arms, the
USAF squadrons tend to take their own
jets when they deploy, as it enables
better eet management. Some
maintenance is deferred, while other
pre-emptive work is completed by
the Raptor Aircraft Maintenance Unit
(AMU) before hitting the road.Depth in support
Col Dan ‘Curly’ Rauch is the 380th
Operations Group commander. He says
the co-location of the units at Al Dhafra
is signi cant. ‘Here we have well-
established contracts and the biggest
CRC in the world with ‘Kingpin’. It’s a
unique location, with all these guys
working together in the whole gamut
of air power. We operate from two,
mile-long runways, we have the only
combined U-2/Global Hawk squadron,
the biggest KC-10 unit and the only
combat-coded E-3 squadron.’http://www.combataircraft.net // August 2018 35
28-39 Al Dhafra C.indd 35 21/06/2018 17:22