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 Illinois C-130 crew airdrops GPS-guided supplies in Afghan valley By Maj. John Puckett,  455th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
 BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan - Earlier this  month in Afghanistan, a small unit of coalition ground forces traveled a great  distance to support an operation aimed squarely at the Taliban and exhausted  their food and water. While, navigating through a deep gorge in a mountainous  river valley, the situation was quickly deteriorating. Now the supporters  needed support. They called on Airmen from the 455th Air Expeditionary  Wing for support. "A major part of the wing's mission is to supply the  fight," said Col. Jack Briggs II, the commander of the 455th AEW.  "And the wing's airlift squadron, the 774th Expeditionary Airlift  Squadron, performed that mission in an outstanding manner by flying a C-130  (Hercules) aircraft into a hostile environment to supply ground forces that  were essentially trapped in a river valley." Rugged mountain sides rising up from the valley created a  narrow 'V' and supplying the ground forces with food and water meant flying a  C-130 through this narrow path. Hostile forces positioned in the rocks taking aim at the  aircraft made the path even more dangerous. "After we received this mission and started planning  for it, we knew it would be a special flight," said Maj. Eric Dolan, the  navigator of the C-130 and a member of the Illinois Air National Guard.  "We did a pre-mission analysis to see if we split that 'V' and dropped in  the valley, would we then have enough power to climb out." Joining Dolan on this emergency airlift mission to  resupply the depleted ground unit: the pilot, Capt. P.J. LaBarbera; the  co-pilot, Capt. Lance Hollaway; the Joint Precision Airdrop System operator,  1st Lt A.J. Standeford; the engineer, Senior Master Sgt. Cyrus Snider; and two  loadmasters, Tech. Sgt. Matt Ericson and Staff Sgt. Brad Emmett, all members of  the Guard's 182nd Airlift Wing in Peoria, Ill. Though they train as realistically as possible in  Illinois, this mission confirmed that some circumstances and surroundings just  can't be simulated. "The mountains in Illinois aren't as high and  treacherous as they are here," Emmett joked. Complicating the already hazardous airlift mission was  the weight of the load that had to be dropped--too heavy for the C-130 to split  the 'V' and climb out. So the crew decided to halve the load and make two  flights. This meant flying the mission to drop one load on target and returning  to Bagram Airfield to reload and fly through the mountains a second time. "The entire mission probably lasted more than eight  hours," Dolan said. "It was sort of complicated. We had to fly  between the rocks, find the drop zone, deliver the load and turn around and do  it again." Bad weather made the flights even more difficult. "I couldn't actually see the mountains or the drop  zone," LaBarbera said. "We were completely IMC--instrument  meteorological conditions--the whole time. And on top of that, we had a  malfunctioning anti-icing system which meant ice was building heavy on the left  wing." Safety of flight was obviously important, but successful  completion of the mission meant delivering the goods on target. "The drop zones we're trained to hit are fairly  large," Snider said. "But this mission didn't have a standard-sized  drop zone." In aircrew-talk, "not standard-sized" means  small, like hitting a postage stamp from thousands of feet up. The coalition ground force was growing desperate and, by  the time the C-130 lifted into sky, gave word that recovering just a fraction  of the load might save them. The 774th EAS responded by hitting the postage  stamp of a drop zone with every load, and the ground force recovered them all,  16 in total. Snider credits Standeford's use of JPADS in contributing  to the accuracy of the drop and helping the crew hit the drop zone. "JPADS is like a smart bomb for beans and  bullets," Snider said. Both flights of the mission were conducted with  "bingo" fuel, meaning as little fuel as possible, to avoid any extra  weight, he said. "When you're flying low and slow, flaps down and no  maneuvering, you don't want to be too heavy in case you have to climb  out," Snider said. If enemy fire started coming in, Snider said they had a  plan for it. "It's called, hope they don't hit us."
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