Daily Deployed: RPA crewmembers prepare to fight each day they arrive for duty

DAILY DEPLOYED

RPA crewmembers prepare to fight each day they arrive for duty

 STORY BY RANDY ROUGHTON// PHOTOS BY STAFF SGT. VERNON YOUNG JR.

6 July 2015

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The Airmen of the 432nd Air Expeditionary Wing at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, have a much different deployed experience than most other members of the Air Force. While they operate from Creech and come home to their families at the end of their shift, they’re responsible for missions happening across the world in Iraq and Afghanistan. This brings a whole new layer of issues these Airmen must overcome to perform their duties.
(U.S. Air Force video // Andrew Arthur Breese)

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After working the night shift as a newly arrived remotely piloted aircraft pilot at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, Maj. Jeremy slept on a mattress that snugly fit in his closet. He resorted to the unusual sleeping arrangement to get the rest he needed during the day as his three children played freely in the house.

Maj. Jeremy, a 432nd Air Expeditionary Wing MQ-9 Reaper pilot, spends time in his closet sleeping. During the day, Jeremy set up a bed in his closet to prevent his children from awakening him. His shift work demands that he work while his children are in bed and sleep while his children are awake.

At night, once the children were in bed, Maj. Jeremy gave his wife, Nikki, a kiss before he began his 35-minute commute from their north Las Vegas home to his midnight shift at Creech AFB, where he still pilots an armed remotely piloted aircraft 7,000 miles away in Afghanistan.
Unlike deployed manned aircraft pilots, Maj. Jeremy returns home after each shift fighting the war. However, he describes himself as feeling like “a ghost in the morning,” because he had to spend so much of his time catching up on his sleep while the rest of the family members went about their daily business. Some of the most heart-wrenching moments involved missing his children’s activities, such as his oldest son’s Little League baseball games and then 4-year-old daughter’s first dance recital.

Maj. Jeremy, a 432nd Air Expeditionary Wing MQ-9 Reaper pilot, enjoys some play time with his son. Jeremy values the quality time with his children even more because of his demanding work schedule. While working the swing shift, Jeremy found it hard to get in quality time with his children because of the conflicting schedules.

“Leaving home to go to a war zone is a mindset,” the former C-5 Galaxy pilot said. “It’s a huge emotional roller coaster, leaving the stressors of my family behind and inheriting new stressors on the way to work. It was a huge mindset change, and I had to have that capability to be able to wear different hats, being Dad and going in and fighting the war.”

Col. Jim Cluff, 432nd Expeditionary Air Wing commander, stands in an MQ-9 Reaper hangar doorway at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, May 4, 2015. The 432d is the first wing totally dedicated to operating remotely piloted aircraft: the MQ-1 Predator, MQ-9 Reaper, and RQ-170 Sentinel. The wing has flown aircraft in Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom for intelligence surveillance reconnaissance and tactical missions, flown by pilots and sensor operators in the United States.

Most of the 432^nd Air Expeditionary Wing “Hunter” Airmen use their commutes to prepare their minds to be in a wartime mindset at work, said Col. Jim Cluff, the 432^nd AEW commander.

Col. Jim Cluff, 432nd Air Expeditionary Wing commander, is photographed at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada. The 432nd AEW is the first wing totally dedicated to operating remotely piloted aircraft: the MQ-1 Predator, MQ-9 Reaper and RQ-170 Sentinel. The wing has flown aircraft in Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and tactical missions, flown by pilots and sensor operators in the United States.

“I ask them every time they come through that gate to have a deployed mindset and a warfighter mentality,” Cluff said. “But then I want them to undeploy every day and every night when they drive home. It puts a lot of stressors on our Airmen when you ask them to do that every day.”
Each shift is like a police stakeout from thousands of feet away. The pilot flies the RPA while working with his sensor operator and intelligence analyst to look for patterns of life and day-to-day interactions on the ground. The crews provide around-the-clock intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support to troops on the ground. In addition, the RPAs often search for high-value terrorist targets and sometimes launch missile strikes.

Airman 1st Class Tyler, a 432nd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron MQ-9 Reaper maintainer, inspects the wing of the aircraft after a training mission at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada. Maintainers provide a visual inspection to the remotely piloted aircraft to detect cracks and prevent possible malfunctions for future missions. As an RPA maintainer, he works closely with pilots, sensor operators and intelligence officers to complete each mission objective.

“All of those (missile strike) decisions are made away from Creech AFB and Cannon (Air Force Base, New Mexico) in the theater, as they should be,” Cluff said. “In the end, we all have a vote, as well. My Airmen have a vote at the end of the day because they’re the ones pulling the trigger and guiding the weapon. If they’re not comfortable with the shot, they won’t take it. (RPA crewmembers) are professional Airmen, they are professional aviators, and that profession brings responsibility. That responsibility is if I’m going to take a life today, I’m going to take a life knowing that it’s the right thing to do.”

An MQ-9 Reaper flies a test mission over Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, May 6, 2015. The MQ-1 Predator is an armed, multi-mission, medium-altitude, long-endurance remotely piloted aircraft that is employed primarily as an intelligence-collection asset and secondarily against dynamic execution targets.

In addition to conducting missile strikes, RPAs are also used to gather intelligence. That information is then collected, processed, exploited, analyzed and disseminated through the Air Force Distributed Common Ground System. The DCGS, which consists of 27 geographically separated network sites, produces intelligence information from data collected by sensors on the MQ-1 Predator, MQ-9 Reaper, RQ-4 Global Hawk and other intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms. The 480^th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, executes worldwide DCGS operations.
RPA pilots can fly up to almost four times the average of 300 hours flown by manned aircraft pilots. While most people connect RPAs with protecting troops and hunting terrorist targets, they can also save lives, as the RQ-4 Global Hawk and RQ-1 Predator did in damage assessments and assisting aide convoys after the earthquake in Haiti in 2010. They also continue to deal with myths about the job. They particularly dislike the word “drone,” because they feel it carries a connotation of an aircraft potentially delivering a strike without human decision-making.
“Every Predator can fly for almost 24 hours,” Cluff said. “That is a lot of video to look at, and it takes a lot of people to do that. So it’s a manpower intensive operation we are involved in.

Maj. Bishane, a 432nd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron MQ-9 Reaper pilot, controls an aircraft from Creech Air Force Base, Nevada. Remotely piloted aircraft pilots work closely with intelligence officers, sensor operators and maintainers to complete mission objectives. RPA personnel deal with the stressors of a deployed military service member while maintaining the normalcy of a day-to-day life through programs designed to enhance communication skills, family and spiritual growth.

“We fly airplanes from here around the world 7,000 miles away, and there’s always a man or woman in the loop. That loop just happens to be 7,000 miles wide, and there is always somebody involved in the decision-making.”
Another myth many people have about RPA pilots is that they are nothing more than glorified video game players, said Maj. Bishane, an RPA pilot who volunteered for RPA duty.
“What I tell people is ‘Yes, if you play video games, there are certain skill sets that may translate,’” Maj. Bishane said. “‘However, the individual you’re watching is a real person, and perhaps the family, and it starts to sink in that this is a real-life thing happening, and you have to manage your emotions appropriately. Because if a ground commander decides you need to pull the trigger and execute the strike, this is an individual that perhaps you’ve been watching for a long time, and you start to learn about them in some respects. Now you have to execute that strike and you may see the aftermath, in terms of a funeral or something like that. Yes, you’re looking at them through a screen, so you’re not necessarily right there. However, you start talking about how much you’re watching the target, and it becomes a more intimate ballet with you and that target.’”
RPA pilots obviously don’t face the same immediate physical risks their counterparts in manned aircraft experience directly over their targets. However, combat, whether from directly over the enemy or from a world away, still delivers an emotional toll. A 2011 study at the School of Aerospace Medicine at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, found that almost half of RPA pilots experience high operational stress severe enough to disrupt their personal lives.

A remotely piloted aircraft maintainer assigned to the 432nd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron removes wheel chalks from a MQ-9 Reaper after a training mission at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada. Aircraft maintainers and pilots work together to greet the aircraft upon each landing.

“There is a safety net physically, but emotionally we have to put up with a lot,” Maj. Jeremy said. “We have so many different roles to play, switches to flip and different hats to wear that the emotional and mental toughness you need to do it is sometimes as dangerous as the physical aspect of being in the war.”
Chaplain (Capt.) Zac does his part each day to help take care of the wing’s Hunter family during visits with the 432nd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron Reaper weapons expediters, followed by chit-chats with maintainers in an RPA hangar.

Airman 1st Class Zack Snell, a 432nd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron MQ-9 Reaper aircraft maintainer, performs pre-flight checks prior to a mission at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada. Snell, a dedicated crew chief, performs daily maintenance tasks to prepare himself and the aircraft for future deployments. Maintainers work closely with pilots and sensor operators to load artillery and equipment essential to each mission. The pilot trusts the hands of the maintainers to deliver a well-equipped and mechanically sound aircraft.

“Take it easy,” he tells them as he says goodbye with a handshake. “Holler if you need anything.”
The chaplain is part of a unique human performance team that combines chaplaincy staff with a psychologist, a physiologist and a physician that are available 24/7 to provide counseling and guidance.
“There needs to be a daily presence,” Chaplain Zac said. “Sometimes I can look in someone’s eyes and say, ‘Airman, you don’t look like you did yesterday.’ But that means I or the chaplain’s assistant were there yesterday. That daily contact gives us the ability to notice those things and intervene before it’s too late.”
Post-traumatic stress disorder amounts to a small percentage of what the human performance team sees in RPA crewmembers. More often, they see combat stress and relationship issues, he said.

Airman 1st Class Zack Snell, a 432nd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron MQ-9 Reaper aircraft maintainer, performs pre-flight checks prior to a mission at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada. Snell, a dedicated crew chief, performs daily maintenance tasks to prepare himself and the aircraft for future deployments. Maintainers work closely with pilots and sensor operators to load artillery and equipment essential to each mission. The pilot trusts the hands of the maintainers to deliver a well-equipped and mechanically sound aircraft.

“We’re in combat. As a result, we are deployed in place, and that brings certain stresses and difficulties in people’s lives,” he said. “Most of the things we deal with are relationship oriented, but that’s a part of being away from your family so much and being in a difficult environment.
“We have to have relationships, and the only way we can have relationships is through access. So we have to have the same clearances other people have. We have to be able to walk where they walk and work where they work,” Chaplain Zac said. In doing that, we build relationships, which allows us to have proactive care rather than reactive care. We don’t just want to put people back together. We want to prevent people from breaking in the first place.”
One of the ways Maj. Jeremy stays strong is by remembering conversations with some of the service members RPAs protected when he was deployed . That’s how he and his fellow RPA crewmembers know the importance of the job they’re doing on this small base in the Nevada desert.

A MQ-1 Predator and a MQ-9 Reaper assigned to the 432nd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron remain ready for their next mission at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada. The two aircraft have provided intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance during Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.

Fortunately, Maj. Jeremy no longer sleeps in his closet. He now works a day shift so he can make his son’s baseball games and other family activities. Still, there are days when he wonders if he can continue to successfully balance his family responsibilities with the demands of a continuous wartime mission. However, there are always those days that reinforce the importance of the RPA mission.
“Some days, you go to work and think this is awesome,” he said. “Other days, you feel really burned out and think, ‘Do I really want to do this for another 10 to 12 years? But then I hear from some of the guys we support and leave work in a completely different mood than when I went in.”

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Maj. Jeremy’s struggle to balance mission and family is typical of the life of remotely piloted aircraft pilots. Manning remains a critical issue for the Air Force as MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper operations have surged nine times in eight years. The Air Force needs 1,700 pilots but only has 1,000 fully trained, according to Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Welsh III. The service needs 300 newly trained pilots annually, but is only getting about 150, with almost 250 leaving the field each year, Welsh said.
Earlier this year, Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James announced short-term actions in an “RPA get-well plan.” Those actions included incentive pay increases and bonuses for crews, directing additional funds to the mission, augmenting current crew manning, increasing the number of pilot graduates and increasing the use of Guard and Reserve Airmen, as well as contractors. Also, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter approved resetting the combat air patrol planning guidance to show the decrease in patrols from 65 to 60 to alleviate the RPA community’s state of constant surge. The Air Force also plans to mobilize reserve component forces to take on three patrols and is working on funding actions to relieve RPA crewmembers’ stress. The service recently added almost $8 million into the RPA program to increase technical school capacity, increase reserve component manpower augmentation days and contract some downrange and recovery efforts.

- See more at: http://airman.dodlive.mil/2015/07/daily-deployed/#sthash.TKHpJXnn.dpuf