I hope this is helpful for others...
I've beaten up Ken White a bunch about how METT-TC is only practical and relative to one's experience. Sometimes, we must see to understand. I've started writing again. Here's my take on Aerial Recon. For the pilots, let me know if I got anything technically wrong, on specific note, I can't seem to remember if Blackhawk door gunners have .240's or .50's.
v/r
Mike
Aerial Reconnaissance
Forward Operating Base (FOB) Warhorse, Iraq, August 2006
The birds arrive on time. The churning blades of the two Blackhawk helicopters bounces the exhaust fumes and sand melting off the concrete tarmac into a whirlwind of rotor wash blurring my sight. The turbine engines squelch a high-pitched whine deafening communication. The late summer sun stokes with temperatures peaking at 120 degrees scaring my exposed skin. The black haze of burning trash chokes my breath leaving a lingering taste of decomposing excrement. I return back to my second home. This is my Iraq, a hot, bright, sweaty, loud, bleak, dark suck.
Major Diambatista taps my shoulder and points towards the birds. It is time.
I motion towards my key leaders to move out along the flight line and board the aircraft. While seemingly a monotonous, routine task, the hazards of taking the wrong path can be deadly. In order not to have one’s head removed by the dipping of the blades in rotation, one learns to enter the aircraft either at a 45 degree or 90 degree approach in relationship to the direct view of the pilot. Thankfully, pilots and flight crew have a crew chief to guide you safely into the bird.
Awkward superseeds graceful. We stumble into our seats. When moving in full kit, sixty pounds of body armor, helmet, rifle, pistol, bullets, water, radios, night vision goggles, first aid pouches, batteries, maps, and food, I bumble into my seat. Weapon placed muzzle down, round chambered, selector switch on safe, I fasten my quick release safety belt, take off my helmet replacing it with the internal headset of the helicopter, The loud pitch of the helicopter’s rotors succumbs to the vacuum of the headphones seal quickly replaced by the intermittent chatter of the pilots’ pre-flight checks and bull#### talk of their post-mission adventure to salsa night and Green Beans, the Starbucks of Iraq. First Sergeant Timothy Metheny gives me the thumbs up signaling that everyone was accounted for and ready. Within the gap of the pilot’s conversation, I intervene with a comms check to let them know that we are settled in.
I have always had a deep love and respect for the aviators. While Special Forces are deemed the quiet professionals, the pilots are best considered the casual professionals. Both groups preferring dude to sir, the true depth of a good aviator is never quite known until you really need him.
The pilots respond to prepare for takeoff. I reach into my pocket and pull out my map ready to absorb and try to relate the sights that we are about to see. The crew chief takes his seat, and the flight crews assume their positions as door gunners, pulling the .240 caliber machine guns into the ready, locking and loading their ammunition, and alerting the pilots that they are ready.
I look around. Sergeant First Class Byron Bates smiles at me. Staff Sergeant Clint Keeley pulls out his camera ready to record still photo and video of our adventure. Sergeant First Class Mitchell Gonzales, Grumpy Bear, chuckles in his perpetual ways. The others stare intently with maps drawn focused considering the unknown of where we’re about to enter. The boys are ready.
In my ear, I hear the pilots preparing for take-off. The rotors rotation picks up pace, the mechanical beast shakes, in a fight to escape and defy gravity, the engine spews greater effort. The stress and energy and physics collide. Gravity, in a last effort, refuses to adjust. To this day, I still stand in awe and wonder over our capability to transcend land. More throttle applied, fuel to the spark to turn the rotors, we lurch forward ascending into the air.
Looking down, scaling quickly up and out, the tarmac is but a memory minimized as the world changes within my sight. Mesmerized as we climb upwards, the tarmac is now observed in relation to brigade and battalion headquarters, the dining facility, the barracks, and the walls of defense of the forward operating base, FOB. We move past American territory.
We see the world from a different perspective. Time is no longer quantified by measure of outside the wire.
The pilot surges forward gaining speed. We lean to the left as we escape the FOB, and I observe an Iraqi woman drying clothes on the roof of her home in the clustered sea of stacked residence garnering towards a major city.
“To your left, you’ll see the Diyala River. To the south, you’ll see the city of Baqubah. As we move a bit further, to your right, you’ll see the small village where we killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi back in June,” Major Diambatista, our tour guide, messages squawked into my headset.
Arched high in the sky, I sit transfixed observing the lush palm groves, the intermittent canals, the ink spots of hamlets and villages coalescing within the constraints of the natural habitat. From the air, the topography, the terrain, seem so peaceful, yet impermissible to the foreigner. The people wave as the door gunners point their weapons towards their location.
Deep inside, it was one of the most volatile places in the world.
"How the #### are we going to penetrate that?" I wonder.
The flight continues for another hour and a half, showing us the physical landscape of Diyala Province, and my men and I received a glimpse of the geography that we would soon endeavor.
Military doctrine defines an aerial reconnaissance as denoting a preliminary survey conducted to gain, or collect information. And so it was, this adventure would be our final attempt to observe from the periphery before we plunged into the depths. We are now blessed with a little bit more of knowledge- peering behind the curtain to gain some understanding.
Now, I have to come up with some semblance of a plan.
