Frozen Tundra Warriors: Airmen Cope with Extreme Weather to Maintain Their Missions at Two North Dakota Bases

FROZEN TUNDRA WARRIORS

Airmen cope with extreme weather to maintain their missions at two North Dakota bases

STORY BY RANDY ROUGHTON

18 May 2015

Airmen from the 5th Maintenance Group prepare a B-52H Stratofortress for takeoff on Minot Air Force Base, N.D., Jan. 12, 2015. Aircraft maintenance Airmen provide maintenance and upkeep to the jets, even during the cold winter months. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Brittany Y. Bateman)

Within seconds of exposure to the North Dakota cold, painful things begin happening to unprotected skin. The nose and lips begin to tingle before numbness sets in. Throw in the brutal Midwest wind on top of sub-zero temperatures with ice and snow-covered roads and sidewalks, and accomplishing the mission while keeping Airmen safe becomes serious business at both Grand Forks and Minot Air Force Base in the Peace Garden State.
Andy Swenson, the 319th Air Base Wing safety manager at Grand Forks AFB, thought of the 264 Critical Days of Winter as his answer to the Air Force’s 101 Critical Days of Summer after he arrived on base 11 winters ago.
“If you’ve ever been off base at a deployed location, you know you’re the odd man out there, and you feel like you’re the target, and your awareness is naturally heightened because of it,” Swenson said. “Well, up here, I think everyone understands that the winter is really the bad guy, and we can’t afford to ever lose sight of that. But those of us who work inside and occasionally go outside have it easy. It’s the cop at the front gate and the civil engineer going from building to building who have it hard.”

Airman 1st Class Patrick Boylan, 91st Missile Security Forces response force leader, performs an outer perimeter check on a launch facility in North Dakota, Feb. 12, 2015. Security forces have several layers of cold weather gear for warmth. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Brittany Y. Bateman)

Grand Forks AFB leaders call their Airmen the “Warriors of the North,” while Minot AFB commanders call their people “Tundra Warriors.”
The missions are different, but both North Dakota bases recognize a different type of war their people must fight more than half of the year – a war against some of the most extreme winter conditions in the nation, which can often last from October, when the land becomes a sea of white after the first snowfall, until May and sometimes early June, when spring finally arrives in North Dakota.
“As Warriors of the North, we take great pride in getting the mission done despite the harsh conditions,” said Col. Paul E. Bauman, the 319th ABW commander at Grand Forks AFB. “Our Airmen are our greatest asset and ensuring their safety in this climate is a top priority. I am extremely proud of the way our Airmen adapt and innovate to accomplish our mission each and every day. I am honored to lead such remarkable men and women.”

A member of the 5th Security Forces Squadron Delta Flight, awaits further instructions during a recapture exercise in the Weapons Storage Area at Minot Air Force Base, N.D. Jan. 30, 2014. Airmen in the area respondto a simulated security incident at a structure in the WSA with their fellow 5th SFS defenders to hone their skills in regards to recapture procedures. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Stephanie Sauberan)

At Grand Forks AFB, Airmen 1st Class Julio Duran-Sangabriel and Dylan Harrison, 319th Civil Engineer Squadron pavements and equipment technicians, clear snow from the flightline to keep the RQ-4 Global Hawk ready to fly. Members of the 319th Security Forces Squadron check identifications at the base gates, search vehicles and conduct perimeter checks, along with supporting Cavalier Air Force Station an hour and a half away.
Across the base, Staff Sgt. Victoria Dames, a 319th SFS military working dog handler, showed off the “dog booties” used to protect MWD Arco to keep his paws from being cut by ice and hardened snow. One night, during his first month after arriving at Grand Forks from Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana last winter, Capt. Kendall Benton, the 319th SFS operations officer, spent more than four hours rescuing motorists who had slid into the ditch on an icy Highway 2, between the city of Grand Forks and his home in Larimore.
About 200 miles west at Minot AFB, 94th Missile Maintenance Squadron members fight the elements to keep satellite and land-based communications available for crews working underground at missile sites. Members of the 91st Maintenance Operations Squadron often have to shovel their way just to get to missile sites to do their work a couple of hours from Minot AFB. When winter settles in at Minot, the maintainers sometimes leave the base in morning darkness, and by the time they return about eight hours later, it’s already dark again, the end of another one of North Dakota’s short winter days.

Airmen from the 5th Security Forces Squadron Delta Flight perform a security sweep during a recapture exercise in the Weapons Storage Area at Minot Air Force Base, N.D. Jan. 30, 2014. During every shift, Airmen perform a minimum of one exercise in the WSA to ensure they know the proper procedures should a crisis arise. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Stephanie Sauberan)

Airman 1st Class Joseph Ryan Houseman, a 5th Security Forces Squadron response force member and installation entry controller, tries to keep warm in his Humvee. His upper body is warm enough, but a bottle of water is frozen in the floorboard because the vehicle doesn’t have ground heaters. At the gate, 5th SFS members rotate each hour, but when the temperature drops to minus 40, they have to switch every five minutes. They can only stay so warm, even wearing a parka, hat, mask, thick gloves, thermal underwear and two layers of socks.
“They say our main mission in security forces is to provide uncompromised security for America’s strategic forces,” Houseman said. “That’s what we do, and we try not to let the weather bother us.”
Across base, the B-52 Stratofortresses sit on a flightline usually covered by snow for much of the winter. Maintainers in the 5th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron perform heavy maintenance, such as brake and tire changes on the B-52, taking advantage of work and rest cycles to help each other avoid frostbite and hypothermia. Breaks are encouraged because of the conditions on the flightline. When the conditions reach a certain point, as they did when the base faced minus 45 wind chill temperatures throughout a two-week period in February 2014, maintenance has to be temporarily shut down. Jobs that normally take six hours to complete in warmer weather take twice that time during the winter, said Senior Airman Dylan Walls, the 5th AMS aircraft assistant dedicated crew chief.

Senior Airman Steven Fisher, 5th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron weapons load crew members, prepare to move a Cluster Bomb Unit 103 at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., Feb. 10, 2014. B-52 weapons loaders are trained and certified to load a variety of nuclear and conventional munitions in support of combatant commander requirements. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Jonathan Snyder)

“During a normal duty day, we’re looking at six hours to be out in the cold, performing our job,” Walls said. “If the mission requires us to stay outside longer than that in order to get our planes ready to be fully mission capable, we do it. We have work and rest cycles, depending on the cold and its severity, and we try to adhere to that as best as we can, but we also have to continually work on the aircraft.”
While the missions are quite different, with Minot AFB remaining focused on the B-52, and the Global Hawk now the mission at Grand Forks AFB, both bases rely heavily on cold-weather clothing and the wingman concept to protect their Airmen during the harsh North Dakota winters.
Civil engineers keep the flightline cleared of snow, which can be especially challenging after a heavy snowstorm, like the blizzards that usually hammer the state each winter. The squadron is manned 24/7 from the first week of November through early April, with the addition of 15 extra winter overhire civilian employees, said Greg Stoik, the 319th CES horizontal section construction foreman.
“We are maintaining an active runway here, and we have to keep it as such,” Stoik said. “It has to be open at all times, and our mission is to keep the runway and taxiways open so when the Global Hawk and (unmanned aerial vehicles) are prepared, they can go.”

Airmen from the 91st Missile Security Forces “trip-out” to a missile alert facility in North Dakota, Feb. 12, 2015. Security forces have several layers of cold weather gear for warmth. The Humvees they travel in are heated, and they’re able to switch out if necessary so that individuals don’t have to stay in the cold for dangerously long periods of time. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Brittany Y. Bateman)

No matter what the conditions are, there are some jobs that have to be done regardless. Civil engineers and security forces members at both bases are some of the Airmen who don’t have the luxury of staying in their dorm rooms and homes when the North Dakota winter deals its worst to the area.
“The most important thing about security forces is our job doesn’t stop on account of the weather,” Benton said. “We do the exact same job regardless of the weather conditions because we have to. We don’t have a choice. But to mitigate that, we do our extra training – peer and leaders at all levels, we make sure people are dressing and layering appropriately for the cold.”
Just because the state enjoyed a considerably more temperate winter this year, Airmen at Grand Forks and Minot know better than to be complacent.

- See more at: http://airman.dodlive.mil/2015/05/frozen-tundra-warriors/#sthash.jLEB6d0h.dpuf

Global Hawk Takes Northern Route, Helps Make Maintenance More Efficient

Staff Sgt. Ryan Conversi's eyes remain focused on a pair of industrial-strength laptop computers as the time approaches for the next launch of an RQ-4 Global Hawk on the Beale Air Force Base flightline.
One of the computers is a vehicle test controller and the other contains Sergeant Conversi's technical orders. Both help the 12th Aircraft Maintenance Unit crew chief communicate with the operator as he prepares for the Global Hawk's next journey over Canada on the way to a forward operating location in Southwest Asia.
Since April, when the 12th Reconnaissance Squadron's Global Hawks began flying the northern route, maintainers have noticed an ability to get the aircraft serviced and back into the forward operation location more efficiently. The aircraft previously flew from Beale AFB to Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., before continuing the route to Southwest Asia. The aircraft must return to Beale AFB for critical routine maintenance, so the new route decreases the time required to transport aircraft between the two locations.
"We're constantly swapping aircraft out for maintenance to provide the forward operators with fresh aircraft," said Capt. Gary Toroni, the 12th Operations Support Squadron flight commander. "The ability to fly through Canada also affords us the opportunity to not only have the aircraft out there in a short time period, but also bring them back so we can do service and maintenance and be able to get them forward-deployed."

The 12th AMU is the first of its kind to provide maintenance and generation capabilities for the remotely piloted aircraft. Sergeant Conversi and Staff Sgt. William Murray, a 12th AMU avionics specialist, have both noticed a decrease in manpower needed for maintenance in the first month the Global Hawk has flown the new route. The aircraft usually can be prepped within three hours after landing on the Beale AFB flightline.

"As far as flying over Canada to the (area of responsibility) goes, it just reduces our timetable for getting the jets transferred over there," said Master Sgt. Edwin Sims, the 9th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron production superintendent. "It's basically more efficient. Otherwise, we have to go to a staging point in between and have people set up there before the aircraft even gets there. Now, we prep it to go here and it flies all the way. Now all we have to worry about are the jets coming back, so it cuts down on our maintenance."
The Global Hawk's first flight on the northern route to Southwest Asia in April marked its first over Canada on a non-training mission. The new route has increased the Global Hawk's efficiency by about 50 percent, Captain Toroni said.
"Efficiency relates to effectiveness, so if we're able to get the aircraft operating without the variable of sending it to the East Coast before we forward deploy it, we've got manpower back here to do other missions, whether they are for Haiti relief or continental United States missions," he said.
The Global Hawks are assigned to the 380th Air Expeditionary Wing from Beale AFB and provide a broad spectrum of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance collection capability to support joint combatant forces in real-time peacetime, contingency and wartime operations.

An Eye on Haiti

From thousands of miles away, Capt. Kyle Blaikie had an eye focused on earthquake-ravaged Haiti. The eye, on board the RQ-4 Global Hawk he was flying remotely from Beale Air Force Base, Calif., provided images showing the areas most in need of attention. The information provided by the RQ-4 was invaluable not only to the US military personnel across the services responding to the crisis but also the host of international aid organizations helping in the Haitian effort.

"It feels good to know that the imagery the Global Hawk community collected directly impacted the relief workers and first responders on the ground," Captain Blaikie said. "Without the Global Hawk imagery, nobody knows how difficult and drawn-out relief response would have been and how much more the Haitian people would have suffered. It felt great knowing I had a hand in making the overall relief efforts more efficient and knowing the Air Force is using cutting-edge technology in humanitarian relief efforts and supporting first responders."

Similar 9th Reconnaissance Wing missions supported Southern California wildfire response, but this was the first time Global Hawk was used for disaster relief operations in the Caribbean, said Col. Bradley G. Butz, vice wing commander of the 480th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing at Langley AFB, Va. Forty-five pilots and 45 sensor operators from the 12th Reconnaissance Squadron guided six Global Hawk missions over Haiti and produced about 2,600 images, said Capt. Gary Toroni, the squadron's operations flight commander. These images proved crucial in pinpointing areas where people needed help. They also assisted American troops and international aid workers by showing areas that were safe to enter. Image analysts looked at the condition of airfields, bridges, railways, roads and seaports to make sure aid arrived via safe entry points.

Global Hawk Airmen were eager to help. After the earthquake made international news, Captain Toroni started getting calls from Beale Airmen asking if they could help.

"The dynamics of assisting the warfighters on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq has its own place, but it was special to be able to come together with all of these other agencies at a moment's notice," Captain Toroni said. "Global Hawk doing this type of mission kind of expands our footprint into what we can accomplish. For Beale Air Force Base, that's huge, to not only be combat and security oriented, but also to have this evolution to more humanitarian assistance."

Missions normally take 45 to 90 days to plan. But 12th RS mission planner Greg Gustafson prepared the Haiti plan in less than 12 hours. The aircraft was on its way 24 hours after the earthquake. The Global Hawk flew to Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., where it was based during Haiti operations. The mission also depended on 200 maintenance specialists, Captain Blaikie said.

"It wasn't just the pilots, but also the maintainers, wing leadership and contractors," he said. "It took our entire base."

Images from Global Hawk were processed two ways. In about 12 minutes, images could be enhanced so analysts could tell host nation officials they were seeing a crack in the highway instead of a shadow on the image, Captain Toroni said. With the other method, analysts produced a raw image that was available in a couple of minutes.

These images were valuable in guiding pilots to safe landing areas. The destruction was shocking, even to Global Hawk pilots who had seen combat damage.

"I would say what we saw from the images could be compared to seeing imagery of battle damage assessment," Captain Toroni said. "There were buildings that looked like a bomb had gone off inside them. They were pretty extreme."

"When I was able to see some of the imagery, I began to feel like I was actually helping the larger humanitarian relief mission," Captain Blaikie said. "I didn't realize that on the first mission, but it hit home that we were actually directly supporting what was going on. A lot of times we were taking pictures of the highways so Marines and Soldiers could travel across with certain trucks. They were the people who were actually going in to provide relief. We were just there to provide any support from the Global Hawk we were able to give them."

The eye on Haiti helped keep people safe as they brought aid to Haiti.