LITTLE ROCK — The hallways in the 61st Airlift Squadron headquarters building are unusually quiet today.
Most of the squadron climbed onto a plane bound for Iraq on Wednesday in a rare full-squadron deployment. The 61st, like all six flying squadrons in Little Rock Air Force Base’s 19th Airlift Wing, has continually deployed crews and planes to support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for more than eight years.
As the demand for both people and planes skyrocketed in recent years, squadron deployments gave way to more frequent deployments of small groups and individuals on varying schedules to locations with crews from other units.
“This deployment will make our squadron a family again,” said Capt. Anta Plowden, a pilot.
He remembered when he’d been at the squadron nearly a year and some of his fellow pilots came home from a four-month deployment and offered to show him around the base, thinking he was brand-new. He had returned from a deployment just as they had left, so their paths never crossed.
This deployment is different. This time, like in the beginning years of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they head to the 777th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron in Balad, Iraq, as the 61st Airlift Squadron rather than as individuals.
The drawdown of troops and equipment in Iraq and the buildup of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan will both ride on the shoulders of the Air Force’s cargo plane fleet. And Little Rock Air Force Base, the largest C-130 Hercules cargo plane base in the world with more than 5,000 military personnel and about 100 planes, will be a major part of the effort.
As the 61st heads to Balad to move troops and supplies around and out of Iraq in the beginning of the drawdown, the 19th Airlift Wing’s 41st Squadron continues its rotation of airmen and planes to Kandahar, Afghanistan.
Both squadrons have additional crews on alert to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan as demand increases in coming months.
“I can’t tell you when that will be. I don’t know,” Lt. Col. Ken Kopp, operations director for the 61st, told the crews at a pre-deployment briefing last week.
Kopp told them that he knew Christmas was coming, but added that they couldn’t go far to celebrate, since the deployment call could come at any time.
At the same time, airmen from every squadron on Little Rock Air Force Base are deployed somewhere in the world - more than 700 in all, according to Col. Mike Zick, 19th Airlift Wing vice commander.
The 19th’s 50th Airlift Squadron just sent several crews and planes to support operations in Africa. A chunk of the 53rd Airlift Squadron is in Iraq right now. The 50th will replace the 61st sometime in the spring, reinforcing a decades-old rivalry.
In February, President Barack Obama announced plans to reduce forces in Iraq in accordance with the 2008 U.S.-Iraq security agreement, with the majority of the drawdown in both troops and equipment to happen in the next nine months.
By Aug. 31, 2010, about 50,000 troops will remain in Iraq. The presence of U.S. forces in Iraq will be over by the end of 2011, according to the Pentagon’s current timeline. Many of those troops and their equipment will be hauled out on Little Rock Air Force Base C-130s.
“It’ll be a little bit easier getting up and doing the mission, knowing that you’re taking some of these guys home one last time,” Plowden said of the 61st’s Iraq deployment.
At the same time, U.S. forces in Afghanistan will grow to hover around 100,000. Most of the 30,000 troops and equipment Obama pledged to the Afghanistan theater will arrive over the next six months, with the fastest and safest route into that landlocked country being by air.
Gen. Duncan McNabb, commander of U.S. Transportation Command, told the Defense Writers Group on Wednesday that his command has worked for years to develop supply lines into Afghanistan.
There are only five mountain passes that can be used as land routes for supplies into Afghanistan from the nearest seaport - Karachi, Pakistan.
Roadways in Afghanistan are primitive and lined with roadside bombs. The AirForce has increasingly relied on airdrops and C-130s, which can land on even the most rugged dirt strips. For example, according to the Combined Air Operations Center, 2 million pounds of supplies were airdropped for the entire year in 2005. In September 2009 alone, more than 4 million pounds were dropped.
“If I have to bring this stuff all in by air, it will be a lot more expensive,” McNabb said. “But if we need to do that, we can, and that’s our ace in the hole.”
The buildup will involve about nine more combat brigades, each having 3,500 soldiers and Marines. Each brigade requires more than one cargo ship or 50 to 60 C-17 cargo planes to move all of its equipment. The C-17 is a jetpropelled cargo plane that is larger than a C-130.
“Right now, the transportation and movement is not the long pole in the tent; gettingthose bases built and ready to receive the forces is,” McNabb told the group.
And most of those bases will be resupplied by airdrops and C-130 deliveries on patches of dirt.
Lt. Col. Gil Martinez, 41st commander, is scheduled early next year to take command of the 772nd Expeditionary Squadron in Kandahar - the 41st’s primary deployment location. Historically, the squadron deployed about 25 percent of its crews at any given time. With the Afghanistan buildup next year, that number is expected to grow to about 40 percent.
For the maintainers who keep the planes in the air, this deployment is not much different from previous rounds because they usually deploy together.
For Capt. Brad Allen, amaintenance officer at Little Rock Air Force Base, it is a nice surprise. Initially he was to deploy to Afghanistan to oversee maintenance with a group of maintainers different from what he works with every day at the Jacksonville base.
“Now I get to go with my planes and my people,” he said in the crowded hallway of the 61st as the pre-deployment frenzy of checklists and packing was at its height. “This is my flight, my people. We’re going together, and that’s the best. It will make the relationship between the operators [flying crews] and the maintainers stronger.”
And these maintainers have their work cut out for them. The 61st flies the C-130E, the oldest model in the fleet.
“They are more maintenance-intensive,” he said, “but these maintainers have bettertroubleshooting skills because of it.”
The majority of the 61st Squadron will miss Christmas. The squadron Christmas party was held before Thanksgiving this year.
Kopp noted that since he came back to the 61st from a previous assignment, he noticed that the crews weren’t as close as they used to be.
“You spend four months together with all the folks in your squadron, and you’re going to get closer because you’re there together,” Kopp said. “I’m hoping that will work back here with the families as well.”
Most of the 61st spouses are used to holidays spent apart. Deployment is part of the job at Little Rock Air Force Base.
Caroline Dunlap and her husband have spent every Christmas apart since getting married four years ago. She’ll spend Christmas with their 6-month old son Austin this year. Last Christmas she discovered that she couldn’t take down the Christmas tree alone while in her final months of pregnancy, so it stayed up until March.
She laughed at the memory as she told the story.
“The good thing is we’ll have support this time. They are going together,” said Jessica Saum, whose husband is also a pilot.
“But it may be hard finding someone whose husband is still here to help the rest of us fix things.”
Kelly Otter, wife of the 61st’s commander, Col. Bill Otter, said that it makes a big difference on families when a squadron deploys as a group.
“You know you can call anyone and they’re in the same boat,” she said.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/10/2009