TINIAN, Northern Mariana Islands: Resources are key to executing combat airpower, anytime, anywhere, and without fuel, planes don’t fly.
To combat potential fuel shortage issues, fuel distribution operators assigned to the 3rd Air Expeditionary Wing exercised alternative refueling methods during Exercise Agile Reaper March 23-1 at Tinian International Airport .
“As the lead logistics planner for the 3rd AEW, one of the main things my team and I wanted to exercise was how we rapidly support and sustain the F-22. [Raptor] sortie generation in a contested environment with limited resources, fuel storage capacity and personnel,” said Capt. Alex Sparrow. “For this exercise, instead of using large storage bladders and a large amount of airmen, we decided to use only a small team of petroleum, oils and lubricants, airmen and R-11 vehicles, establishing daily refueling through our own exercise. tactical airlift to wear down only one C-17 directly to the R-11s, creating a possible true picture of limited storage capacity for sortie generation.”
In order to refuel the F-22 Raptors flying out of Tinian, C-17 Globemaster IIIs assigned to the 517th Airlift Squadron, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, and Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, out of Andersen Air Force Base. , Guam, daily and landed in Tinian, where two R-11 refueling trucks were waiting to unload more than 12,000 gallons of fuel.
“This fuel was returned to our parking area where we did a full lab sample to include fuel water content, particulate matter and fuel color as well as separator differential pressure,” he said Tech. Sgt. Jordan Laughlin (service title). “This allowed us to verify the quality of the fuels with less leakage than normal operations. Now that this fuel has been cleared by lab samples, we will now turn around and put this fuel into the F-22s.”
In an agile combat employment environment, resources are limited, which means that in order to still meet Air Force fuel standards, adequate sampling must be done to ensure that the fuel that go to the plane be clean.
“Daily fuel quality control operations at domestic station locations look very different. This kit and these test sets are the most agile way to verify fuel quality in an ACE environment,” Laughlin said.
That fuel is also filtered through the truck, pushed into a storage tank with a filter, and then filtered two or three more times before entering an aircraft like the F-22 Raptor.
“In this situation, since we’re in an ACE environment, it’s important that even though we’re not having as many leaks, we still want to verify the quality of that fuel to maintain it. [the Air Force] standard to ensure pilot safety,” added Laughlin.
Testing of this method during AR 23-1 required higher headquarters logistical discussions at both the Pacific Air Forces and Air Force Petroleum Agency levels.
“For this type of supply and attrition scenario during the early planning stages, we coordinated with PACAF A4R [POL] and AFPET to make sure we had the right mindset of what we wanted to achieve moving forward,” Sparrow explained. “When we were officially on the ground here in Tinian, it became a large-scale team effort between our POL team on the ground, the crew, our air mobility cell and myself – communication and effort had to be fluid to ensure success.”
As the focus shifts from the Middle East to the Pacific, exercising ACE and logistical issues such as fuel or communication in a degraded and contested environment is paramount to mission success.
“We have to be ready for contingency operations at a moment’s notice, so we’re working to train and exercise our team’s capabilities and establish the right tactics, techniques and procedures to make our Airmen successful in a fight ” Sparrow said. “Every day, every exercise, every mission we are learning better ways to support and sustain our exit operations. Our primary goal from a logistics standpoint for this exercise is to identify areas to improve support and sustainment of the output generation in a contested environment, capture and export the data to our command and HQ and then relentlessly close the gap. We need to instill a fighting mentality in our teams.”
During AR 23-1, Airmen of the 3rd AEW POL demonstrated that even without fuel bladders or storage containers, it is possible to maintain sortie generation in a potentially austere, contested, and degraded environment.
“Fuel is always going to be one of the biggest issues when it comes to Agile Combat employment, and it’s very important in days like today when we’re trying new ways to get fuel,” Laughlin added. “We showed today that you can do it without having a large stock on hand in a radius. This has shown that we can do it and we will continue to build on it.”
Date taken: | 02/03/2023 |
Publication date: | 03.07.2023 00:57 |
Story ID: | 439746 |
Location: | TINIAN, MP |
Web Views: | 5 |
Downloads: | 0 |
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