fate of guard fighters, The

National Guard, Jul 1999 by Calvert, Brian R

Air Guard A-lOs Rocked the Serbs. Why Were the Other Fighters Left Behind?

Last month, as Air Guard A-lOs flew over Kosovo, destroying nemy tanks and artillery, many Air Guard F-16s and F-15s sat idle on their home tarmacs. Either their engines were too old, their communications systems too weak, or their weapons systems too out-dated to get in the war.

The recent campaigns in Kosovo and Iraq have thrust forward these issues for Air Guard fighter commanders, issues Guard officials struggle to rectify. After decades of use, the fighters are old and lack the capabilities to join the fight with their active-duty cousins, pilots say. The bodies, the engines, the instruments all could use upgrades to make Air Guard units more enticing to theater commanders, who are ultimately responsible for which units deploy.

The quickest way for the Air Guard fighters to enter the fight would be to add equipment to the current fighter to make their targeting capabilities match the active duty, said Lt. Col. Brock Strom, who heads the National Guard Bureau's program for fighter modification. These "pods," cylindrical, technological gizmos, mount underneath the aircraft. From there they talk to computers in the cockpit, to either laser-target enemies or drop precision munitions on specific grid coordinates using the Global Positioning System.

Units like the 183rd Fighter Wing in Springfield, Ill., were in "hot pursuit" of such capabilities, until the Kosovo conflict "kind of put everything on hold," said Col. Tim Weaver, vice commander for the wing.

The 183rd, like many Air Guard units, has served time in multiple countries over the years: Thailand, Kuwait, and Panama, with its next rotation scheduled for Saudi Arabia. The unit has seasoned pilots and "excellent maintenance crews," Weaver said.

Their jets have large engines that "can carry iron," Weaver said, but they need the pod modifications.

Not only do the modifications make the aircraft more accurate, he said, but they make missions safer. With precision-guided munitions, their F-16s could drop bombs on target from greater altitudes, decreasing the risk to pilots, especially for close air support, the primary mission of the unit.

Without laser-guided munitions, fighter planes have to fly lower than 3,000 feet to be perfectly accurate.

At that altitude, "a high powered rifle could bring down a jet engine," Weaver said.

Concerning Kosovo, Weaver said the unit would have liked to join the fight, but that may have disrupted its rotation to Saudi Arabia this fall.

"Plus, they were looking for laser [guided] shooters, and we didn't have that," he said. "So we were on the back of the line on that."

The laser-targeting pods are familiar to most Americans because they saw them on television during the Persian Gulf War. The pilot locks the laser onto the target, and the "smart bomb" follows. Similar weapons were used in Kosovo.

Pods come with a price tag of about $1.5 million, and the bombs are relatively inexpensive, Strom said. The Guard is looking for enough money to outfit eight pods per Air Guard squadron, about 160 in all. Even the oldest aircraft, with "Block 30" engines and avionics, could be made combat effective with the addition of the pods, Strom said.

The F-16s from most Air Guard fighter units, including the 183rd, are Block 30-model aircraft, which date back to the 1970s. These older aircraft require more upgrades to make them compatible.

There are two types of pods: the LANTIRN and the Litening. The former is older and requires more maintenance, the latter faster. Congressional support is growing to add money to next year's defense budget to buy the new Litening pods, while other fighters could be upgraded with LANTIRNs from the active duty.

In a perfect world every Guard aircraft would have Litening, but Strom said he would settle for LANTIRN. They do the same job, and with them the Guard could keep up with the active duty.

The 183rd wants the Litening, which requires less maintenance, Weaver said. The Air Guard wants to upgrade most of its Block-30 fighters with the newest version of the Litening, which won a recent Air Force competition.

The pods are not the only equipment that would help the Air Guard join the fight, though they would be one of the most effective.

To be fully compatible with the active duty, Air Guard F-16s and F-15s would need all of the following: rebuilt engines, night vision capabilities, centralized controls, data transfer cartridges, updated simulators for pilots, modem test kits for the new equipment, and the money and manning to keep everything in working condition.

The pilots would be safer as smarter computers are now able to practically protect the aircraft without much pilot participation, as well. To completely remake the Air Guard fighters, with engines, radar and weapons systems would cost nearly $270 million.

Four other units in the Air Guard are scheduled to get LANTIRN pods, but have not yet received them, Weaver said.

Ironically, many of the pods are made right in the state of Illinois, not far (physically) from the 183rd.