Air University Review, May-June 1983
What does the future hold for the Strategic Air Command’s tanker force? The case can be made that SAC tankers are the most important combat support aircraft in the U.S. Air Force inventory. Not a wartime, peacetime, or contingency deployment plan can be made that does not employ tankers.
The tanker mission involves more than the mechanical act of "passing gas." Equally important is the coordination of times, places, altitudes, fuel offloads, and receiver flight status. Timely response to short-notice requests for tanker services is imperative to the fighter or bomber pilot who finds he is riding on empty. Getting the fuel to the combat aircraft in wartime is vital. The security of the air refueling formation is paramount, and tankers are unarmed.
In exercises such as Red Flag and Bold Eagle, while every one of our aviation contemporaries—SAC bomber crews, Tactical Air Command fighter pilots, Navy and Marine fighter pilots, and Marine tanker crews—flies under wartime pressures, constraints, and threats, SAC’s tankers operate at relatively high altitudes; they are under ground-controlled intercept (GCI) or air route traffic control center (ARTCC) clear voice control, immediately accessible to all "friendly " aircraft and completely immune to "enemy" attack. Of what real value is that kind of training? Granted, it allows other exercise participants to join in their mock air battles and provides them with more flying time. However, it could lead our customers to think that there will always be a convenient, secure tanker always ready to meet their needs. Furthermore, our tanker crews can develop a "noncombatant mentality" that has them ignoring threat briefings, forgetting that they are a legitimate part of the overall combat effort, and it deprives tanker crews of opportunities to develop judgment that may help them accomplish their mission when the balloon goes up.
Tanker operations during the Vietnam War were conducted in areas relatively safe from attack by short-legged MiG-21 interceptors. The situation would be drastically different in any war in Europe or the Middle East. Tankers would have to operate within range of enemy fighters to be of any use to our fighter and attack aircraft. The MiG-23 Flogger—with its combat radius of 520 miles and centerline fuel tank and minimal allowance for dash or fight—provides the primary threat to the tanker force. The Soviet Air Force has MiG-23s in virtually all the East European Warsaw Pact countries. Furthermore, Floggers serve in the East German, Czechoslovak, Hungarian, and Bulgarian air forces. A number of air forces in the Middle East are equipped with Floggers, with the Libyan and Syrian threat being most apparent.
The Marines are approaching the problem realistically. At the Weapons and Tactics Instructor Course, Yuma Marine Corps Air Station, Arizona, Marine KC-130 tankers routinely participate in low-level refueling exercises. Using the terrain to mask radar detection, KC-l30s have refueled fighters and attack aircraft at altitudes as low as 200 feet. Rendezvous and refueling missions are regularly flown between 1000 and 1500 feet above ground level and are conducted without radio communications. Procedures for these types of missions have been incorporated in Navy/Marine refueling manuals. The Marine philosophy was related to me recently by a Marine tanker pilot, "Unlike you Air Force gas passers, we intend to live through the next war. We practice like we plan to do our job in combat." The Marines use KC-130s with drogues, which are more adaptable to low-level refueling. Although C-130 was not designed for low-level flying, the Marines and our own Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Service have developed procedures for refueling at low altitude. The KC-l35, like the B-52, could possibly be modified for low-level flight and refueling.
The Air Force should consider flying tankers in Red Flag and Maple Flag exercises under realistic threat and electronic countermeasure (ECM) environments. It would be interesting to see how many survive under present procedures. We need to know how far from the battle and at what altitudes tankers would have to operate to survive and provide successful refuelings. We also need to determine the number of fighters needed to protect tankers. What will be the effect on the fighter/attack force from missed refuelings?
If our tankers are going to have to operate within range of Soviet fighters, our crews need to be given a fighting chance for survival and success. There is plenty of room on board the KC-135s for ECM gear. If we want to exploit one advantage our fighters and fighter-bombers have over the Soviets, we have to keep our tanker force intact.
There is an assumption that tankers will not be attacked. The Warsaw Pact pilots will be concerned with dealing with the immediate threat presented by NATO fighters and attack aircraft. For the first few days of fighting in Europe, that may well be the case. However, once the war stabilizes, the enemy will have time and reason to attack tankers and thereby limit the range and duration of our combat aircraft, disrupt resupply efforts, and cause havoc with SAC plans for using tankers to refuel B-52s and FB-111s in their primary mission—should they have to be used. It is not unreasonable to expect that the Soviet Air Force will develop a refueling capability that will enable its heavier fighters like the Tu-28 Fiddler and MiG-25 to range out over the North Atlantic and attack our tanker force and transports.
SAC operational readiness inspections (ORIs) routinely deal only with the simulated war support for the bomber force. While this is a vitally important mission, it is only one of the missions that tankers must be ready to perform. Tankers will be used to refuel our tactical and airlift forces as well. We need to test our ability to mobilize and deploy a complete tanker squadron. Our crews should get the feel of flying in a cell of 12 to 15 aircraft with receivers in tow. How effective will we be at operating from locations with minimal support and limited communications? Although existing training procedures allow us to acquire some experience in small deployments and we do fly some cell formations, we are not getting that experience often enough nor in any suitable depth.
Tanker squadrons should be randomly selected to perform no-notice ORIs in conjunction with full fighter squadron deployments to Europe or the Pacific area or, in the interest of saving resources, to a Red Flag exercise. The tanker single integrated operational plan capability could still be evaluated while valuable experience in executing rapid, squadron-size tanker deployments was being acquired.
The tanker force is not expendable. Realistic training and new procedures must be evaluated and adopted to make our tanker force combat ready. Our training has to catch up with the rest of SAC and the Air Force. The tanker force must test itself and evaluate itself under realistic combat conditions if we expect to perform our mission when there is no time left to get ready.
Laughlin AFB, Texas
Contributor
Captain William T. Cahoon (B.S., Purdue University) is a T-38 instructor pilot with the 86th Flying Training Squadron (ATC), Laughlin AFB, Texas. He recently completed a tour in SAC KC-l35s at Robins AFB, Georgia. Captain Cahoon is a graduate of Squadron Officer School and was a Distinguished Graduate of Air Force ROTC.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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