'Compass Call'ing: Are you listening?

Published April 7, 2013
By Staff Sgt. David Dobrydney
455th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan -- Even in the air, they have their ears to the ground.

Linguists, from the 41st Expeditionary Electronic Combat Squadron, often fly aboard the EC-130 Compass Call, where they are trained in the art of employing electronic attack for the purpose of denying, degrading and disrupting enemy communications.

"We're a precision electronic attack platform," said Tech. Sgt. Dallas Allen, 41st EECS cryptological language analyst. "We can go out and ... stop [the enemy] from communicating with each other."

When on a mission, the Airmen of the Compass Call employ precision electronic attack capabilities in support of U.S. and Coalition tactical air, surface and special operations forces.

"You really have to have a lot of confidence in yourself when it comes to identifying certain kinds of communications," Allen said. "Sometimes you'll be listening and think 'did I just hear him say that? or did I expect him to say that?'"

The linguists' confidence comes from the amount of practice they go through while at home station, added Allen.

"We have to spend hours in the listening lab studying our language," he said. "We go to simulations and that's where we're able to hone our skills. We listen to known communications so we can practice identifying them."

The linguist career field is relatively small, with the group of linguists who fly even smaller. Allen said there are probably less than 1,000.

Given the size of the career field, the linguists have shorter deployments than other Airmen. Allen added however, that their time spent at home is shorter as well.

"It's a leapfrog effect," Allen said, "we're constantly out here."

Senior Airman Whitni Orgass, another cryptological language analyst, is on her first deployment. She said working in a deployed environment helps knit the crews together.

"You get to know the crew members and even the maintainers much better," she said. "It's a lot of fun."

The missions can last anywhere from two to 15 hours, based on the need of troops on the ground.

"Some nights we might not have anything, other nights we may be extremely busy," Allen said.

Allen said that before he became a cryptological language analyst, he was a crew chief, ironically on the RC-135 Rivet Joint, another reconnaissance airframe. He said that while his new job is challenging, it's also very fulfilling, to the point that he just recently reenlisted.

"When we get feedback from [the ground troops] ... it makes you feel like we're really coming together as a group."