New de-icing fluid keeps AWACS jets fit to fly

by Air Force 2nd Lt. Michael Trent Harrington
JBER Public Affairs

2/13/2015 - JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska -- Like a certain beloved percentage of Americans who buy their Thanksgiving turkeys three hours before dinner is supposed to begin, the pilots and maintenance crews of the 962d Airborne Air Control Squadron proved last month that sometimes one's got to go to great lengths to thaw a bird in a hurry.

The introduction of a new de-icing fluid - and 18 months of what 962d superintendent Chief Master Sgt. Dwayne Ward calls the best operations-and-maintenance relationship in the Air Force - allows the 3rd Wing's pair of E-3 Sentries to answer the alert call
no matter how frigid and frozen the otherwise-friendly skies might be.  

"If anybody in the E-3 community is going to be able [to] or have to do this," said Air Force Lt. Col. Eric Gonzalez, 962nd AACS commander, "it's going to be the Alaska guys. It's going to be us."

The 52 days of snowfall, 128 days of cold rain and nearly 100 days of chilly fog which Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson has averaged for the last decade (per 14th Weather Squadron statistics) all suggest he's right.

The 962d AACS bears a key burden in the Alaskan NORAD alert mission.

The E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System doesn't quite "scramble" to meet stray Cessna Skywagons from Merrill Field or Russian Bears from Moscow - such pedestrianly tactical jobs are reserved for planes named after patriotic birds of prey - but according to NORAD factsheets, it is critical in telling the afterburning jets that do the scrambling what all might be out there.

"We have a legacy aircraft," said Air Force Master Sgt. Fred Armand, 962d AACS flight engineer, using the officially polite term
for less-than-sleek and less-than-new aircraft. "We hold an alert requirement in potentially six-plus months a year of bad weather."

"We need to be able to prove we can launch a safe flight," Armand added, "whenever higher headquarters might want it."

Before any flight below certain wind and weather thresholds, maintenance crews have to both de-ice the plane to remove ice and snow that have built up overnight, or in a few blizzardy minutes since the plane moved outside to run its engines.

Lest all that work be instantly undone, the plane must be covered with an anti-icing agent in the crucial few minutes between
de-icing and take-off, said Air Force Staff Sgt. Colby Lehman, a 703d Aircraft Maintenance Squadron computer and electronic warfare technician.

The rules allow only two minutes between de-icing and anti-icing, and a limited amount of time to get off the ground from there, Lehman said.
If the crews break either of those windows, the entire process has to be started all over again, and the E-3 won't be able to keep up with the rapid timeline for responding to an alert.

Elsewhere, they can just shut it down and call it a day.

Here, the AWACS may not have that option - because with this kind of mission, even in this kind of environment, that can't happen, Gonzalez added.

Now the squadron's work will be turning the proven concept into a capability they can build upon and teach the world.

"We're the experts," Armand said. "We're the northernmost E-3 base, and this is how we prove we can get the job done."

"We're setting the tone for dealing with inclement weather, at home or deployed," he noted and, Gonzalez added, it's likely the first time it's ever been done.

For the men and women of 962d AACS operations and maintenance, the biggest thing for now is knowing that they can do it and - in the future - do it better, said Air Force Lt. Col. Steve Eschmann, 962d AACS assistant director of operations.

The key ally to readying a 38-year old airborne early warning and control airframe is a truck with a sunroof-and-windshield-wiper combo and a boom operator suspended some 50 feet in the air.

The boom sports a set of triggers shooting air, de-icing and anti-icing fluids along the plane's 152-foot length.

Few in the squadron admit they thought saving the world could come down to unit togetherness and the sweet, juicy goodness of $11-a-gallon de-icing fluid.

"Now, for higher headquarters [Alaskan NORAD] missions in the future," Eschmann added, no matter how foul the weather gets, "we know we've done it and we know it can be done."

The iceman cometh, and the AWACS will go anyway.