Apache squadron takes deployment training over water

Courtesy Photo | A UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter from 3rd Battalion, 501st Aviation Regiment, Combat Aviation Brigade, 1st Armored Division, turns toward the Pacific coast while flying in support of AH-64 Apache helicopters from the CAB’s 3rd Squadron, 6th Cavalry Regiment during overwater training at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego, California, April 7, 2015. The training requires CAB pilots to navigate over open water, both day and night, in preparation for 3rd Squadron’s deployment to the Persian Gulf region later this summer. (US Army photo by Capt. Dan Burgess, Combat Aviation Brigade Public Affairs, 1st Armored Division)  

FORT BLISS, TX, UNITED STATES

04.10.2015

Story by Sgt. Alexander Neely 

1st Armored Division Combat Aviation Brigade

By Sgt. Alexander Neely
1AD CAB Public Affairs

The Combat Aviation Brigade’s Heavy Cav squadron took to the sea to prepare for an upcoming deployment to the Middle East.

Third Squadron, 6th Cavalry Regiment, the Army’s first heavy attack reconnaissance squadron, performed overwater training exercises at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego, California, from March 31 to April 10.

The training – first utilized last October by the CAB’s 4th Battalion, 501st Aviation Regiment prior to its deployment in December to the Persian Gulf – requires AH-64 Apache and UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters to fly over the ocean during day and night hours.

“The main objective was to familiarize our crews with overwater operations,” said Lt. Col. R.J. Garcia, commander of 3rd Squadron. “There are specific crew actions and techniques that have been developed to operate over water, and deploying the battalion to Miramar for this training allowed us to execute these as a crew and collectively as platoons.”

The two-week training exercise, bringing 150 of the squadron’s 500 Soldiers to Miramar, allowed flight crews to establish a greater understanding of how to navigate a landscape with few landmarks.

“The hardest part about a landscape with little contrast is it can start to give you visual illusions,” said Cpt. Brian Anderson, commander of Alpha Troop, 3rd Squadron. “So our goal was to conduct exercises to allow our pilots to become familiar with the landscape and learn how to navigate properly together.”

The pilots are required to navigate with specialized onboard equipment and communicate on a more consistent basis throughout an overwater flight compared to how they normally operate over land, said Anderson.

“At night is perhaps the toughest to navigate, as your sense of landscape is mostly based on visual,” said Anderson. “So in preparation, our Soldiers trained with night vision goggles and performed many overwater night flights.”

The training regimen was in preparation for a deployment to the Persian Gulf region later this year, when Heavy Cav will replace 4th Battalion in Kuwait to conduct security and other partnership operations with the Kuwaiti and other allied forces in the region.

The overwater flights in Miramar, said Anderson, were designed to mimic the geography and weather the Heavy Cav anticipates dealing with while deployed.

It is these sort of exercises, combined with integrated training with the squadron’s new RQ-7B version 2 Shadow unmanned aircraft systems, that Garcia said he hopes will enhance the unit’s abilities downrange.

“It was great training and ultimately built confidence in our ability to execute attack-helicopter operations,” he said. “Most importantly, we are very excited about sharing our lessons learned, so that the Aviation Branch as a whole can collectively improve this capability.”

• Date Taken: 04.10.2015
• Date Posted: 05.13.2015 15:43
• Story ID: 163200
• Location: FORT BLISS, TX, US