Bagram C-130 crew airdrops GPS-guided supplies in Afghan valley

Published June 18, 2010
By Major John Puckett
455th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan -- Earlier this month in Afghanistan, a small unit of coalition ground forces found themselves in a tight spot. The unit had already traveled a great distance to support an operation aimed squarely at the Taliban and they'd exhausted their food and water. Navigating through a deep gorge in a mountainous river valley, the situation was quickly deteriorating. Now the supporters needed support.

That's when they called the 455th Air Expeditionary Wing.

"A major part of the Wing's mission is to supply the fight," said Col. Jack Briggs II, commander of the 455th Air Expeditionary Wing. "And the Wing's airlift squadron, the 774th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, performed that mission in an outstanding manner by flying a C-130 aircraft into a hostile environment to supply ground forces that were essentially trapped in a river valley."

Rugged mountain sides rising up from the valley created a narrow 'V' and supplying the ground forces with food and water meant flying a C-130 through the 'V.'

A tight fit? Certainly. And a tight fit made even more dangerous by hostile forces that were positioned in the rocks taking aim at the big airplane.

"After we received this mission and started planning for it, we knew it would be a special flight," said Maj. Eric Dolan, navigator of the C-130. "We did a pre-mission analysis to see if we split that 'V' and dropped in the valley, would we then have enough power to climb out."

Joining Major Dolan on this emergency airlift mission to resupply the depleted ground unit was the crew of pilot, Capt. P.J. LaBarbera; co-pilot, Capt. Lance Hollaway; Joint Precision Airdrop System operator, 1st Lt A.J. Standeford; engineer, Senior Master Sgt. Cyrus Snider; and two loadmasters, Tech. Sgt. Matt Ericson and Staff Sgt. Brad Emmett.

The entire crew hails from the Air National Guard's 182nd Airlift Wing in Peoria, Illinois, and they're flying in Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. And though they train as realistically as possible in Illinois, their mission into the 'V' confirmed that some circumstances and surroundings just can't be simulated.

"The mountains in Illinois aren't as high and treacherous as they are here," joked Sergeant Emmett.

Complicating the already hazardous airlift mission was the weight of the load that had to be dropped--too heavy for the C-130 to split the 'V' and climb out. So the crew decided to halve the load and make two flights. This meant, fly the mission to drop one load on target and return to Bagram Airfield to reload and fly the 'V' a second time.

"The entire mission probably lasted more than eight hours," Major Dolan said. "It was sort of complicated. We had to fly between the rocks, find the drop zone, deliver the load and turn around and do it again."

Bad weather made the flights even more difficult.

"I couldn't actually see the mountains or the drop zone," Captain LaBarbera said. "We were completely IMC--instrument meteorological conditions--the whole time. And on top of that, we had a malfunctioning anti-icing system which meant ice was building heavy on the left wing."

Safety of flight was obviously important, but successful completion of the mission meant delivering the goods on target.

"The drop zones we're trained to hit are fairly large," Sergeant Snider said. "But this mission didn't have a standard-sized drop zone."

In aircrew-talk, 'not standard-sized' means small, like hitting a postage stamp from thousands of feet up.

The coalition ground force was growing desperate and, by the time the C-130 lifted into sky, gave word that recovering just a fraction of the load might save them. The 774th EAS responded by hitting the postage stamp of a drop zone with every load and the ground force recovered them all, sixteen in total.

Sergeant Snider credits Lieutenant Standeford's use of JPADS, the , in contributing to the accuracy of the drop and helping the crew hit the drop zone.

"JPADS is like a smart bomb for beans and bullets," Sergeant Snider said. And according to him, both flights of the mission were conducted with 'bingo' fuel, meaning as little fuel as possible, to avoid any extra weight.

"When you're flying low and slow, flaps down and no maneuvering, you don't want to be too heavy in case you have to climb out."

And in that position, what happens if enemy fire starts coming in?

"We've got a plan for that," Sergeant Snider said. "It's called, hope they don't hit us."

Airdrop Mission