By Gary ‘Chainsaw’ McCollum, Col, USAF (Ret)
Author’s Note: Although I’m the “reporter,” the story that follows describes the superhuman efforts of so very many Dragons and their spouses. This story of courage and tenacity in the face of severe adversity was “written” by the men and women of the 3rd SOS.
A pre-flight inspection of an MQ-1B Predator at Ali Base, Iraq. The Predator is a medium-altitude unmanned aircraft system. (USAF photo by A1C Christopher Griffin)
My family was two days out from our door-to-door move to Air War College when the AFSOC Vice Commander phoned me with news that the leadership wanted me to lead the standup and then command a special operations MQ-1B Predator squadron. “Pred-a-what, Sir,” I asked. Like most people at that time, I had never heard of a Predator and had no idea what one did. When I visited my new chain of command at Hurlburt Field to get information on how all of this was going to work, everyone from the group commander to the AFSOC Director of Operations told me the same thing, nearly verbatim, “Chainsaw, we’re not exactly sure what you’ll be doing or where you’ll be doing it, but it’s really important. Don’t screw it up.” Alrighty, then. As I was to learn, the MQ-1B Predator was an armed, remotely piloted aircraft (RPA), approximately the size of a Cessna 172, that Air Combat Command (ACC) was flying to conduct intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and precision strike missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was the weaponized version of the RQ-1 Predator, designed and built by General Atomics in 1995 as a technology demonstrator for medium-altitude, long-endurance ISR. By 2005, it had been armed with the AGM-114 Hellfire laser-guided missile 26 │ AIR COMMANDO JOURNAL │Vol 8, Issue 1
and was operating with a crew of two, a pilot plus an enlisted intelligence analyst trained as a sensor operator (SO). The “cockpit,” which was housed in a shipping container consisted of two identical flight stations inside the ground control station (GCS). The crew was augmented by a mission intelligence coordinator (MIC) at a computer station inside a centralized operations facility, which also hosted communications, weather, and an instructor/evaluator pilot mission commander (MCC) who also served as supervisor of operations. Because there was a communications time delay between control input and performance feedback while flying the Predator via satellite control, we needed a small, forwardeddeployed launch and recovery element (LRE) of operations and maintenance personnel who would launch the aircraft via line-of-sight control, then hand over control of the aircraft to crews in the US who executed the mission via satellite link. At the end of the mission, the LRE would again take control of the aircraft to land, rearm, refuel, and relaunch the Predator for its next mission. Keeping the majority of the Predator crew force in the US maximized the efficiency of the available manpower, since none of the traditional pre-deployment preparation, training, travel, or post-deployment recovery time was required. Predator crews were “deployed-in-garrison.” www.aircommando.org
