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NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, Nev. – Over the Nevada Test and Training Range, aircraft from all over the globe blast through the Nevada sky in a simulated war scenario called Red Flag where units can test their abilities against some of the military’s premier aircraft while also receiving some of the best training offered in the world.
During the simulated dog fights, going full blast on the afterburners can bring the fuel gauge all the way from full to a depressing empty in a timeframe of less than an hour. When this occurs, aircraft can find their best friends in the sky; the 92nd and 93rd Air Refueling Squadrons located out of Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash.
“This exercise would be a very short exercise if tanker aircraft would not be able to participate,” said Capt. Tyler Todd, 93rd ARS pilot. “With how these guys are going at it during Red Flag by going full blast, they would probably run out of fuel within 30 minutes to an hour. That’s where we come in.”
With the KC-135 Stratotanker being the aircraft of use by the 93rd ARS; it’s not the pilots that supply the gas to other aircraft, but their trusted Airmen known as a boom operator.
Senior Airman Eric Medina, a 92nd ARS boom operator, joined the U.S. Air Force after he was fascinated by aviation and feels he lucked out by having the title boom operator.
“This is the best job I’ve ever had. The high of this job is the satisfaction of the job that I get to do on a daily basis,” said Medina. “Not a lot of people can say they do in-flight refueling and the truly enjoy the deployments and the trips I get to go on, which is a bonus. The only thing that I wish was a little different is that we are always on the road, so I don’t get to spend a lot of time at home, but besides that, I truly enjoy what I do.”
In Medina’s Air Force career, he has already deployed five times and has been on numerous temporary deployments.
“Usually, we deploy twice a year as refuelers and then TDY’s can vary but usually it’s about two or three a year,” said Medina. “A deployment for us is about two to three months which makes us deploy a lot more often than other career fields where when they deploy, it’s usually for six months but they won’t deploy as often as we do.”
During his deployments and TDY’s, Medina has been able to work with hundreds of aircraft in the Air Force’s inventory as well as coalition partners.
“Since I’ve been a boom operator, I’ve been able to refuel a lot of different aircraft,” said Medina. “We were able to refuel the F-22 here at Nellis, and in my Air Force career I’ve been able to refuel a B-52, B-2 as well as the B-1. Working with coalition partners, I’ve had the chance to refuel the wedgetail from the Australian air force.”
While in the air, Medina is usually alerted when an aircraft is 10 minutes out from arriving, which is when Medina will start preparing to conduct in-air refueling.
“I have a checklist that I have to run from beginning to end whenever I have to refuel aircraft. About 10 minutes prior to in-flight refueling, I will head to the back of the aircraft so I can start preparing,” said Medina. “Whenever the aircraft is within a half mile, I will take over the radios from the pilots to start the process. From there, we begin the refueling process. If the aircraft has a wingman with him, we will refuel them as well so they can continue their mission.”
While taking off for a mission during Red Flag 16-3, the KC-135 that Medina and Todd fly on is capable of offloading over thousands of pounds of fuel to aircraft that are participating in the exercise.
If the crew runs out of fuel that would normally be used for refueling, the KC-135 can offload its own personal fuel to help other aircraft.
“For the amount of fuel that we can carry or offload onto another aircraft, we are usually limited by the takeoff weight when we go on a mission. Usually, we can carry over 150,000 pounds of fuel whenever we go out on a mission,” said Todd. “For an example, when we take off, we can take off with as much fuel as the entire weight of the aircraft if it didn’t have any fuel on board. If we reach empty in the tanks, we can use our own fuel to continue the refueling process.”
For the tanker community, even though they aren’t the personnel that drop bombs on targets or fire missiles from fighter jets, they still play an integral part in continuing the mission.
“As a tanker pilot when I was on a deployment, we were a force enabler,” said Todd. “We were there to support the mission. We don’t shoot missiles, we don’t do what fighter pilots do but we bring the fight to where it needs to be and we stay there for as long as we have to.”
To add onto Todd’s statement, Medina left off with one simple message. “We will have gas in the air 24/7, 365.”
| Date Taken: | 07.29.2016 |
| Date Posted: | 07.29.2016 17:48 |
| Story ID: | 205535 |
| Location: | NELLIS AFB, NV, US |
| Web Views: | 110 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, In-Air Refueling: gas station in Nevada skies, by SSgt Jake Carter, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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