74th FS supports 1AD during exercise IRON STRIKE

by Airman 1st Class Ryan Callaghan
23d Wing Public Affairs

12/11/2014 - FORT BLISS, Texas -- Fighter planes, helicopters, artillery and ground troops teamed up for a large-scale, integrated training scenario during Exercise IRON STRIKE, Dec. 1-13, 2014, at Fort Bliss, Texas.

Exercise IRON STRIKE is a joint-service, combined live-fire exercise hosted by the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division and supported by the 74th Fighter Squadron supplying close air support via the A-10C Thunderbolt II. Joint terminal attack controllers from the 7th Air Support Operations Squadron ultimately control the airspace over the battlefield, serving as a liaison between the aircraft above and the artillery on the ground. Additional assets included U-28As, MQ-1B Predators, MQ-9 Reapers and F-16 Fighting Falcons.

"We want to work toward that seamless combined-fire mentality so we can get the most lethal firepower on the target simultaneously," said U.S. Air Force Capt. Kyle Spain, 7th ASOS executive officer and IRON STRIKE USAF lead planner. "The purpose is to train and certify the gun crews and to demonstrate joint-fire integration with the close air support (CAS) and the artillery on station at the same time."

Maj. Dan Edgar, 74th FS assistant director of operations, said that IRON STRIKE permits a realistic training experience never before available to Moody's A-10 pilots.

"Normally we work with just the JTAC portion," Edgar said. "But here, instead of simulating the artillery and Apaches, we have real artillery; we have a real armor division driving through the desert, real paladins lobbing artillery, and real Apaches coming in to clean up.

"Most of us (pilots) have done some integration with some Army movement on the ground, but never with dedicated armor and artillery battalions. We've never done this level of integration before."

Furthermore, Edgar says it's a big exercise with a lot of players, but the A-10 plays no small role.

"This exercise brings together a couple different parts of CAS and the armored division," Edgar said. "It's meant to integrate the Army scheme of maneuver via their armor on the ground and their rotary wing Apaches, [with] the JTACs and the A-10s.

"(In addition to CAS, we also) serve as the airborne forward air controller.
Whether we're talking to an Army guy or a JTAC, we can give them the longer range picture that we can see from above. If we happen to see an enemy convoy coming toward the friendly location, we're able to confirm with the JTAC that there are no friendlies in that area, and then call in the artillery or call in a set of A-10s to hit them."

Working cohesively with an artillery unit presents a slew of complications for an A-10 pilot, Edgar says, and explains that they must either fly above, next to or in-between friendly ordnance.

"[When we] integrate with the artillery," Edgar clarifies, "[we] can fly over it if [we] can find out the highest point that artillery piece will fly, or deconflict laterally, meaning avoid the gun-to-target line. [Additionally we] can do it with timing: they shoot, then stop, then [we] run in and execute [our] attack and egress, and then they shoot again during our egress."