well as to increase our situational awareness
when we’re in a large force package. These
additions have taken the F-16 to a whole new
level of being able to execute tactically.”
Training in Korea
‘Crush’ said their squadron trains against
“the airplanes we know they have and the
surface-to-air missile systems we know that
we would have to defeat in order to succeed.
When we exercise we fly more sorties in
a compressed timeline over that week to
represent our expected combat turn pattern.”
‘Alamo’ further explained that they “train
very specifically to what we might expect
to see if we were to go to war with North
Korea and what AAA [anti-aircraft artillery]
pieces they have, the SAMs [surface-to-air
missiles] they have. We can very specifically
train to what we know is in theatre.
“The guys back in the States don’t know
exactly where it is that they might be going
to fight and so don’t know exactly what
that country’s capabilities might be. Here,
because we always know we have to be
ready to ‘fight tonight’, it really gives us
something to focus on and gives us drive
as a squadron to really be as tactically
prepared as we possibly can, to go out
and do the job we’ve been asked to do.
“Here in the ‘Fiends’ we’re able to escort
ourselves to a target and take care of any threat
that might be in front of us. But our primary job
is to get our bombs off the jet and on the target.
“In training, we practise air interdiction
missions. That’s where I go out, take care
of the air threat in front of me, ingress to
a target area that has some surface-to-air
threats, find my target on the ground with
the targeting pod, drop my bombs on it and
then egress out of the target area to safety.
“Typically, we’ll deal with what we call a
‘pop-up’ threat, where there’s an air threat
that’s just taking off from a highway strip
and so we’ll have to have another air-to-
air engagement. That involves detecting
the threats, identifying them and then killing
them as we egress from the target area.”
A challenge of the Korean environment is
the smog. ‘Alamo’ laughed and said: “Some
days it’s worse than others. It’s interesting
what you can see on the ground once you get
to about 10,000ft [3,048m] here: you can see
the separation of the Korea haze, and then
just the beautiful blue sky. Sometimes it has
what we call a ‘milk bowl’ effect, where you
take off and you just have no horizon at all.”
Capt Dover from Kunsan said of the haze
in Korea: “The ‘milk bowl’ is when we don’t
have definitive clouds, but the haze decreasesthe visibility to the point that the horizon is
difficult to recognise. This can be especially
difficult to deal with over the ocean, as it
can be disorienting while flying in air-to-
air sorties. We’ll always prioritise safety, so
some training days are lost to weather.
“Another local term for the weather is ‘Korea
VFR’, meaning the weather is technically
good enough to fly VFR [according to visual
flight rules], but definitely not the crisp blue
skies found in other parts of the world.”Korean allies
Although the USAF has a major presence
on the peninsula, it routinely trains with its
Republic of Korea Air Force (ROKAF) allies.
Maj O’Connor said the Korean F-16s are
“a little bit different to what we fly, but for
the most part it’s the same airframe”.
“So we’re already starting from a common
reference point. We have a common
language that we can speak, even though
we speak English and they speak Korean.
“We can speak ‘airplane’ to each other.
That’s a great starting point for us, and then
the relationship grows from there. It’s a great
building block to have this similar knowledge
of what we do tactically in the jet.”‘Hawg’ driver
Also assigned to Osan AB are the A-10s of
the 25th FS ‘Assam Draggins’. Maj ‘Riddler’
Werlin, an A-10 pilot who was on his second
assignment to Korea when AFM visited,
echoed the words of his F-16 pilot compatriots.
“What’s different, exciting and awesome
about flying the A-10 in Korea is that we
train in the area that we would employ in
and are tasked to protect every day.
“Tomorrow I have a check ride, and there’s
a very good chance that it will be in the
exact same chunk of airspace that I would
fly in if it was in combat. That makes it
exciting as well, because we know the
threat is within reach of us at all times.
“There are also some challenges – probably
the biggest is the weather. In the A-10 we
rely more on our eyes than other aircraft do.
The visibility here is probably the worst I’ve
ever seen anywhere around the world, and
that forces us to change tactics sometimes.Above: Ladder door ‘nose art’ worn by A-10s of the
25th FS ‘Assam Draggins’.
Left: The ammunition loader for the A-10’s GAU-8/A
Avenger 30mm cannon. The chequerboard tail
markings were previously used by the 51st FW’s
F-86 Sabres in the Korean War.A-10C 80-0153 ‘OS’ of the 25th FS ‘Assam Draggins’. Despite being close to a potential battlefront, the
squadron was among the last to receive the ‘precision upgrade’ that transformed the old A-10A model
into the digital-era A-10C.
50 // JULY 2018 #364 http://www.airforcesmonthly.com
USAF in Korea
Korean
standoff