Testing tactical aviation decision-making

LCol Jason Adair took a sip of coffee and flipped open his map. The rain, intermittent for the past five days, was drumming a steady beat across the roof of the canvas tent, muffling the sound of a generator that kept a welcome blast of warm air blowing over the small bench on which he was sitting.

The warmth was a brief respite from what had been a tough week for the commander of the 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (3 PPCLI). He and his battalion–a parachute company, a mountain operations company, and a rifle company, with attached engineers and mortars–had fought a relentless and well-armed enemy to the edge of the Battle River.

They were cold and tired and it was only going to get harder. In a few hours, if the weather cleared, Adair would lead almost 300 of his soldiers in an aerial assault across the river onto a landing zone (LZ) well behind enemy lines.

The LZ, designated Objective Vader, had been overrun 24 hours earlier and was believed to be within range of active enemy artillery. Recent intelligence reports indicated most of the enemy force had retreated westward, and one of his sniper platoons was about take out any remnants, but the situation remained uncertain.

The assault would take place in three waves with two CH-147 Chinook helicopters, escorted by four CH-146 Griffons. The first wave of 70 soldiers had gathered with him at the tactical aviation unit’s headquarters; the other two were making their way by truck to a forward staging area.

And reaching the potentially hot LZ was only the first step. From Objective Vader, the battalion would still have to hike several kilometres over “crappy” terrain with fully loaded rucksacks to the edge of a village they planned to attack at first light.

“If we can pull it off,” Adair said, perhaps with a presentiment of what was to come. “It always goes sideways. Anytime you move that many people at night, you have to be patient.”

The air assault, known as Operation Veritable, would be a critical piece in the battle plan of Task Force Nemesis. Its commander, BGen Trevor Cadieu of 1 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group, had manoeuvred his mechanized and armoured units to the eastern bank of the Battle River where they were now in a defensive holding position–a spider web, he called it–in anticipation of a counter offensive. Despite the recent loss of air superiority and the presence of mobile surface-to-air defence systems, especially SA-8 missiles, the insertion of 3 PPCLI by tactical aviation was critical to shore up an exposed and vulnerable southern flank.

Ten minutes before midnight, the four Griffons and two Chinooks lifted off the grass airfield in the village of Provost and began making their way toward the river. The rain had let up but the sky was a dark mass of clouds and lightning had been reported near the forward staging area.

Launch authority for the mission had been touch and go all day. LCol Trevor Teller, commanding officer of the tactical aviation detachment, had granted mission authorization despite short notice for the operation. But without his usual planning cycle, he wasn’t about to risk aircrews until he had better situational awareness on the LZ, and assurance that the artillery fire had been neutralized and attack helicopters were available to provide close air support.

The weather was also complicating his decision-making. A prairie thunderstorm had crossed through the area just hours before and its remnants were lingering throughout the area of operations.

Even after he had granted launch authority, and as the Griffons were spooling up, an issue with a radio in one of the Chinooks had prompted the aviation mission commander (AMC) and the tactical operations centre (TOC) to pause the operation.

As the helicopters finally made their way toward the LZ, a lightning bolt danced across the sky to their left. First one; then a half dozen. Despite the importance of the mission, the pilots didn’t hesitate: Abort.

Back at the airfield, under the still blades of one of the Griffons, the after-action review was calm but critical. “Chaos” and “a dog’s breakfast” were the initial consensus. In addition to radio issues, there were questions about when the escort helicopters should have launched, and which of the Chinooks would serve as the medical evacuation aircraft in an emergency. More important, there was some confusion between the AMC and TOC about the criteria for aborting the mission, and whether shutting down the helicopters when they landed had negated a small window to still complete it.

With the tactical aviation unit unable to guarantee airlift into the LZ the following night, Adair and 3 PPCLI attempted to reach Objective Vader by road. Twenty-four hours later, as they made their way to the brigade staging area (BSA), they were struck by an improvised explosive device and then had to fight their way in. The casualties were devastating, knocking out about 40 per cent of the force.

Fighting a near peer

Exercise Maple Resolve is the culminating event in a series of training exercises to confirm the high readiness of the Canadian Army battle groups and the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) tactical aviation detachment that comprise its stand-by force, a final test of each unit’s ability to conduct operations anywhere in the world.

Conducted by the Canadian Manoeuvre Training Centre (CMTC) in Wainwright, Alta., the two-week, $32 million exercise combines a complex mix of live and simulated elements with more than 6,500 personnel in a major force-on-force conflict. The scenario for 2016 involved a multinational coalition response to a near-peer enemy that had invaded a fictitious island not dissimilar to Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

As the primary training audience, 1 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group (1 CMBG) of the 3rd Canadian Division was tasked with fighting a brigade-strength enemy, backed by a full division, to the edges of a major city, played by Edmonton in the exercise.

The nature of the scenario, which involved the full spectrum of operations, marked a significant change in training, acknowledged LCol Todd Strickland, the deputy commanding officer of CMTC. “Fighting a near-peer brigade is something we haven’t done in a while.”

For the soldiers of 1 CMBG–armoured, artillery and light infantry units–and their tactical aviation detachment of 408 Tactical Helicopter Squadron (THS) and elements of 450 THS, that meant working with a complex network of real and simulated players and assets over the 680-square-kilometre training range: a multinational divisional headquarters above; a Stryker brigade combat team from the U.S. Army’s  4th Infantry Division to the right; the British Army’s 1 Armoured Infantry Brigade to the left; and elements of the U.S. Marine Corps, other government departments, the Red Cross, and local citizens, some involved in insurgent groups bent on destroying their supply routes.

In total, more than 3,000 members of 1 CMBG, the tactical aviation unit and other elements were fighting a nimble enemy, while 2,000 personnel from multiple countries provided real and simulated “enablers” such as unmanned aerial vehicles and aggressor and supporting air power, as well as the exercise control staff. “This is what it takes to replicate the current battlespace,” said Strickland.

In the scenario, the tactical aviation detachment was temporarily based in the town of Provost; in reality, 408 Squadron had set up a camp of humming generators and helicopters over a square kilometre alongside the runway at Airfield 21, a permanent air strip in the Wainwright training area. Though it was a mobile unit and always prepared to move, maintenance containers, trucks and command tents were arrayed in fixed positions just a few hundred feet from eight Griffons, three Chinooks and six UH-60 Black Hawks.

Complex risk management

As much as Maple Resolve is a test of command decision-making and the processes that support it, the exercise is also an assessment of the operational readiness of the RCAF’s individual helicopter aircrews, maintenance technicians and logisticians.

“I’m interested in how the unit itself integrates all of the different elements: logistics, operations, flying operations, as well as ground-based force protection,” explained Col Scott Clancy, commander of 1 Wing Kingston, responsible for confirmation of the tactical aviation detachment.

“I’m interested in how the Tactical Operations Centre takes large pieces of information and synthesizes them down to key nuggets that the commanding officer can use to make decisions. And then understand the impact of those decisions.”

Consequently, the exercise serves as a supreme test of risk management. While Op Veritable was just one of many missions the tactical aviation unit would execute over the two weeks, it was a microcosm of the complex risks that would have to assessed, accepted and supported.

Because the mission was critical to the commander of Task Force Nemesis, it was deemed a priority. But Teller was not about to risk the lives of his aviators or the soldiers they were carrying unnecessarily.

“There is an omnipresent level of risk that we need to be comfortable with,” he said. Mission acceptance, however, hinged on certain conditions and Mother Nature was forcing his hand.

Missions are typically assessed using a scorecard that has its genesis in the Afghanistan campaign. Though the tool is still evolving, it forces the leadership to deliberately evaluate and assign a score to the level of risk they are being asked to accept. “It forces me to ask the questions: Is this risk acceptable and, more importantly, where can I mitigate given the importance of the mission and the timing,” explained the thoughtful and soft-spoken Teller, the first CH-146 flight commander when the air task force was stood up in Kandahar in August 2008.

The scorecard considers the nature of the mission, how it is organized, the number and type of aircraft involved, the degree of reliable intelligence, the availability of supporting enablers, and the environmental conditions. For Op Veritable, landing in an unprepared zone was assessed as medium risk to the aircraft, but with limited time for planning, Teller was hesitant to mission accept without assurances that he would have the close air support of attack helicopters, better situational awareness on the LZ, and priority of fires to neutralize direct and indirect enemy artillery. He was also concerned about sustaining protection of the helicopters as they flew over the same route multiple times in a short time span.

“[The tactical aviation detachment] sort of dropped a grenade on the table in front of the air task force commander and said, here [is our plan] but these are the enablers we think we need to get there,” he said. Though the commander mission authorized, he told Teller to withhold launch authority until he had those enablers.

The lack of preparation was also problematic for Teller. 408 Squadron’s planning cell is one of the unit’s strengths and he had sought to protect their critical time and space. Located in a corner of the Tactical Operations Centre–a 24-hour hive of activity that ran as much on coffee as generator power–the planning cell often had up to eight mission files in some stage of development and, under ideal conditions, anywhere from 36 hours to two weeks to work out the details of a complex mission, especially when it required the support of assets like unmanned aerial vehicles or attack helicopters that the unit did not own. The closer to a mission the planning began, the less likely enablers would be available.

“If you don’t get [the planning] right, the execution will be messy,” Teller said. “It is inevitable. So we have paid a lot of attention to trying to make sure we are doing this right. ”

But he could see that space steadily eroding as the number of no-notice missions and urgent requests increased. In a briefing with his command team 48 hours after Op Veritable, he warned that the “brigade is moving very quickly in its planning cycle” and his ability to guard their planning capacity was “waning.”

Consequently, he would accept a little more risk to provide the brigade with aviation support as it prepared to surge across Battle River. “I will not try to make that up by reducing the aviation effect. That is not a tacit acceptance of risk; that is saying we have a lot of gas left in the tank as far as I’m concerned, and if [a mission] comes and we can plan for it, I will accept a little more messiness on the execution side as long as the missions are enabled.”

Despite the outcome of the mission, Clancy, commander of 1 Wing, was impressed with how the command team and aircrews handled the situation. They had asked the right questions during the after-action review and raised the key issues before accepting. And although the process of mission authorization and launch authority had been “messy,” staff members in the tactical operations centre had quickly devised a conditions checklist to improve the process and were now implementing it while still on the exercise.

“This is joyous for me,” he said. “I see an organization that is being led well, where the leadership at all levels is engaged in refining what they are doing, being honest with the criticisms of what they are doing. [Teller] and his leadership team have pulled the guys together so that they feel open enough to talk through those things.”

Cold weather maintenance

No matter the prowess of its aircrews, however, no aviation detachment survives long without its logisticians and maintainers. “The guy fixing the vehicles knows that if we are not mobile, we are not tactical aviation,” said Teller. So confirmation of their ability to conduct operations is equally important.

For 408’s logistics team, aircraft and vehicle technicians, the “battle rhythm” is often dictated by the events of the previous night. What breaks the night before must be repaired; what runs out of gas must be refueled. But it is also driven by the pace of activity that originates in the planning cell. Once mission requests become operations, ensuring all helicopters and vehicles are ready to launch is critical.

“It tests the limits that we can impose on the aircraft,” said Warrant Officer Stephane Paquette, the squadron’s aircraft servicing officer and its administrative orchestra conductor. “We have to make sure the aircraft are ready to go at all times. Back home, sometimes there is leniency with the flying programs so we can wait. The priority to get an aircraft flying may not be that high. But here, every aircraft needs to be ready to go at all times. It gets stressful. To me, these exercises…help prepare you mentally to deploy.”

One of the paradoxes of moving maintenance operations from a large, warm hangar to a cold and wet grass field while working from the back of a small truck, is that everything usually takes longer, but the operational tempo demands faster than normal turnaround. And if a mobile repair team is sent forward to fix a downed helicopter, there are fewer technicians to do the work.

“We still have the same amount of work here, but we’ve lost manpower to repair those aircraft,” said Sgt Ibrahim Baghdadi, the day crew chief and a veteran of the Afghanistan campaign who maintained the D-model Chinooks. “Every day is a learning curve on these aircraft.”

As the squadron’s aircraft maintenance officer, Capt Nadine Dale has the longer-term maintenance program of the Griffons firmly in mind. But on operations she is also the voice of reality: “I coordinate with Ops on what the schedule is and what configurations they want, and I bring a bit of reality to what they are asking for based on what is actually available.”

And at 20 years of age, the Griffons are showing typical signs of midlife wear and tear. But their age has provided the RCAF with a lot of data about what is most likely to break, allowing the technicians to reduce and refine major inspections. “An older aircraft gives you a little more data to work with, so you know what you need to be looking at,” she said.

In fact, the biggest issue is spare parts, said Baghdadi, noting that “when an aircraft goes down, sometimes the system is old and the companies are not making these parts, so we have to figure out which base has it to try to reconfigure the numbers around it.”

So, too, is the challenge of keeping aging fuel trucks running and mobile. Scattered between the main airfield and forward arming and refueling points (FARPs), the bowsers are the lifeline of the detachment.

“I like to say to the CO that they are like yo-yos. A snap shot in time at 14:00 today will see three serviceable, and an hour later you could have none or all six up and running,” said Capt Alex Wakeham, 408’s chief logistician. “The lifeline of this unit is aviation fuel; without that you are not going to have rotors turning. So they are our top priority.”

Like Jackson Brown’s salute to his roadies, the logisticians are the first arrive and the last to leave. While their daily routine tends to find a steady rhythm after the initial rush to set up camp, the movement of food, fuel and ammunition, as well as vehicle repairs is at the mercy of the operational tempo.

Wakeham, part of the first rotation into Ahmed Al Jaber Air Base in Kuwait in 2014 to set up Operation Impact, had participated in enough exercises to understand the complexities “that we are going to encounter out here. In the last nine months we have had lots of good, challenging deployments with 408. All of the section sergeants that we have here from electrical mechanical engineering, food, supply, transport are phenomenal.”

Though he oversaw a team of 30 managing four lines of operation–supply, transport, food, and maintenance–the maintenance and force protection of the fuel trucks were his greatest concerns. For Op Veritable, the FARP was to be the lynchpin between making one ingress into the hostile landing zone and multiple flights. But those strategic points were now being targeted by insurgents.

“This (truck) is a high-value target and it’s not armoured, so it draws a lot of attention,” said Capt Adam Gushaty, an aerospace engineer and the deputy senior aircraft maintenance engineering officer for 450 Squadron, during a stop at one of the FARPs. “And all the noise and lights make it easy to find, which is why it is embedded with army units or highly mobile.”

Integrating with the Army

As with all exercises on the road to high readiness over the preceding 12 months, one of the objectives of Maple Resolve is to further how the Army and its tactical aviation detachment work together.

Air-land integration is well understood, but making the most of the recently acquired Chinooks is still a work in progress, said Teller, a former captain and major with 408 Squadron who returned last summer to assume command after serving as chief of staff for 1 Wing.

“We are progressing the ability to use the Chinook to its capacity as forward as possible. Those of us from Afghanistan have a very clear idea that this should be hauling people and stuff all day. We are not there yet. The brigade service battalion (BSA) really should be the primary user of this platform. Instead of the BSA having to drive 80 kilometres both ways to sustain the brigade, what I’d like to see is us drop stores forward and now it’s only 10 kilometres from the fighting force. We’ll move 150,000 pounds every day, all day. We need [the army] to understand the efficiency of this.”

Through brigade meetings and rehearsal of concept drills, Teller had a firm understanding of BGen Cadieu’s primary objectives and felt confident about the overall strategic intent. But he acknowledged that the onus was on him to understand how the Army operated in various situations and then influence how the helicopters could best be used.

“If we can live and plan and execute in tandem, we are integrated. And I feel we are fairly well integrated. But if I can better demonstrate what the Chinook or Griffon does on a day-to-day basis, we will form those relationships in a war fighting environment [so that] they will want to call on us.”

The Army knows what a Chinook can do–3 PPCLI is dependent on tactical aviation for its transport–but it is still learning how to integrate it into the battle rhythm, added Clancy, noting that there are still some challenges with “how they support it, and more importantly, how it facilitates their logistics support.”

“Too many times in the past have we seen the Army push air and aviation assets off to air integrators, tactical air control parties and things like this. The reality is aviation needs to be manoeuvred liked a manoeuvre element, like you would manoeuvre an infantry battalion on the battle space. But this is a change in mindset. When I joined, aviation was just a peripheral thing. Now it is a centre point to how you do business.”

Most importantly, though, the exercise affirmed one of the tenets of 1 Wing’s still developing tactical aviation force employment concept of deploying Griffon and Chinook squadrons as a combined detachment to deliver firepower, reconnaissance and mobility under the command of a tactical aviation commander, supported by his own headquarters, logistics and maintenance.

The concept was first confirmed during Maple Resolve 2015, with 430 Squadron Valcartier integrating a subunit of Chinooks from 450 Squadron. Teller and his team were able to observe and draw on the leadership experiences of both squadrons before they began their high readiness training. “408 Squadron has achieved all of my integration goals with respect to bringing 450 (THS) into the fold,” said Clancy.

Teller, too, was impressed by how far “we have progressed the aviation detachment.” He credited the challenges presented on earlier exercises such as Unified Resolve for solidifying a command team.

“We came together at very few touch points, and we are very effective for a group that has not had long periods of time to gel as a team. That speaks to the dedication of the people,” he said. “I think what you are seeing is a culmination of the team’s ability to plan and understand each others’ capabilities, and to synchronize activities in the Ops centre and the flights so that when a mission like [Op Veritable] comes, everybody’s individual responsibility is contributing to enabling the mission and its execution.”

Maple Resolve gave Teller the opportunity to “test drive” how to arrange, protect and sustain the detachment, and understand “what time and space factors really matter to me,” he said. “I have a responsibility to say this thing is ready to fight as a formed detachment. That is really what the force employment concept is about, that melding. No one squadron can do this. It’s immensely helpful for any future decision-making I’ll have to make, to have seen this.

“This exercise really affords me the opportunity to develop as a commanding officer, to make those battalion level decisions, those major muscle movements in a complex, dynamic and changing scenario. It’s very much a test of decision-making, and it should be.”