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Combat Hammer: Death from above
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A F-22 Raptor takes off for a Combat Hammer mission at Hill AFB, Utah. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Michael Means)
Flying effortlessly at over fifty thousand feet above the barren desert terrain are two F-22A Raptors inbound to their assigned targets. Opposing them, are a horde of enemy aircraft and innumerable surface to air missile systems. The Raptors, cruising in at over Mach 1.5, are from the 7th Fighter Squadron -also known as the “Screamin’ Demons”. The two stealthy aircraft dispatch their aerial adversaries almost effortlessly and proceed to drop their deadly payload of 1000 lbs GBU-32 Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) satellite guided bombs on to their unwitting targets. The 1000-pound bombs obliterate their intended victims despite intense enemy jamming of the Global Positioning System (GPS) signals that help guide the weapons to their final destinations. The Raptors, having dropped their lethal cargo, begin the journey home while eliminating any remaining air threats.
The enemy targets bombed by the F-22s are not located in some faraway foreign land, but are situated in the desolate desert wastelands that comprise the Utah Test and Training Range (TTR) near Hill AFB, Utah. The 7th Fighter Squadron, along with several other United States Air Force (USAF) flying units, were participating in the service’s air to ground Weapons Systems Evaluation Program (WSEP). Known as Combat Hammer, the air to ground WSEP is one of the most important exercises run by the USAF says Lt. Col. Dean “Osto” Ostovich, commander of the 86th Fighter Weapons Squadron (FWS).
Ostovich, whose unit manages Combat Hammer, stated that the goal of the exercise is to “evaluate the effectiveness, maintainability, suitability, and accuracy of precision guided munitions and other high technology air to ground weapons”. Unlike with experimental or developmental weapons testing, Ostovich explains that all the aircraft, pilots, maintainers, and weapons systems being evaluated at Combat Hammer are operationally fielded assets.
As Ostovich explains, the entire process of weapons handling is evaluated from start to finish during a Combat Hammer event. “We start with a squadron. Their munitions handlers start to assemble the bombs two weeks beforehand from off-the-shelf parts. Often we bring in those munitions from Afghanistan or Iraq”, he explained. Sample weapons are shipped in from those combat zones in order to validate their effectiveness, Ostovich said. He further added that the bombs are often stored outside exposed to the elements, which potentially leads to degraded performance.
During the evaluation process, the participating units must select the appropriate weapons for the sortie based on the “type of target and the type of effect” that the mission objectives require, Ostovich explained. Telemetry data is gathered to determine “what’s working, and what’s not”, he said.
The data gathered during these live weapons drops is not only crucial to maintaining the long-term effectiveness of the American arsenal, but is immediately applicable to the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Ostovich says. “The more you use them, the more issues you find”, Ostovich explained. Recently, he added, “we sent a team into the field” to determine how to “reduce the number of duds” in the Afghanistan theatre.
One of the issues discovered by the 86th FWS team was a software glitch with the USAF’s new GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb (SDB). The new 250 lbs precision weapon, which has a tiny warhead in order to reduce collateral damage is designed to be highly accurate, but was mysteriously landing by as much as 100ft to 150ft off target every so often. The 86th FWS team eventually traced the error to a software glitch, which was then immediately corrected and tested at Combat Hammer, Ostovich said.
A F-16C Fighting Falcon fires a AGM-65 Maverick missile during Combat Hammer. (U.S. Air Force photo/Capt. Amber House)
Keeping up with new software modifications is a particular challenge for the Air Force, Ostovich explained. Ostovich, who is a F-16 pilot and a graduate and former instructor at the elite USAF Weapons School, uses his mount as an example. The F-16, he says, receives new updated software every two years or so. Similarly, he explains, weapons systems also change software every two years. The software on the aircraft must work seamlessly with the software in the weapons systems. It must also be verified that the software on the aircraft and weapons system are working together correctly. Combat Hammer is one such evaluation that verifies that everything is in fact working correctly, Ostovich said, adding, “It’s difficult to keep up”.
Change isn’t limited to new software, the latest Combat Hammer exercise at Hill AFB featured the USAF’s newest aircraft, the F-22A Raptor, and the unmanned MQ-9 Reaper combat drones. These new aircraft flew alongside older aircraft such as the F-16C Fighting Falcon, F-15E Strike Eagle, and the B-1 Lancer bomber which also flew during this round of the WSEP evaluations. Some 51 aircraft and 600 airmen participated in the exercise, Ostovich said, flying some 332 sorties and dropping some 292 precision-guided weapons. Ostovich added that the entire exercise was conducted under “GPS denial”, making for a unique experience for the participating aircrews.
Because one of the goals of Combat Hammer is to “provide a realistic threat scenario”, Ostovich explains that the aircrews have to “press forward, fight through against air and surface threats, strike their targets and fight their way out”. While the surface to air threats are provided by ground based simulation systems, the “Red Air” threat is provided by other USAF aircraft- in this particular case F-15C Eagles flying out of Mountain Home AFB and F-16C Fighting Falcons from the elite 85th Test and Evaluation Squadron.
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Raptor 106, 7th Fighter Squadron flagship, drops a 1000 lbs JDAM during Combat Hammer (U.S. Air Force photo/Capt. Christopher Johnson)
The addition of the F-22 to the Combat Hammer exercises is a “game changer” according to Ostovich. “The Raptors- they’re so good, it was impressive to see how easily this two-ship defeated the air and some of the surface to air threats”, Ostovich raved, describing how a flight of two F-22s savaged the defending “enemy” forces despite being overwhelmingly out-numbered.
A MQ-9 Reaper combat drone flying over the ranges at the Utah TTR during Combat Hammer. (U.S. Air Force photo/ 1st Lt. Max Reele)
On the other end of the performance spectrum from the supersonically cruising F-22s are the unmanned MQ-9 Reaper drones. These slow, but long endurance drones are a recent addition to Combat Hammer, Ostovich explains. Like heavy bomber aircraft like the B-1 Lancer, the Reapers don’t deploy to an exercise such as Combat Hammer- they fly their missions from their home bases. In the case of the Reapers, that home base is Creech AFB, just north of Las Vegas, Nevada.
Despite being flown remotely from hundreds, if not thousands of miles away, Ostovich explains that unmanned machines such as the MQ-9 Reaper and it’s older cousin the MQ-1 Predator are extremely effective weapons systems. The drones are in high demand for their close air support (CAS) capabilities, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan.
For training for the high-demand urban CAS mission, Combat Hammer includes three mockup Afghan villages where aircrew can practice striking ground targets in densely built-up areas. “No kidding, we run CAS scenarios with 9-line messages inside this village”, Ostovich said. There is one village setup at Hill AFB, named “Geckostan” after the call sign of a A-10 Warthog pilot. Two others similar villages have been setup at the Eglin Ranges in Florida and have been named “Taterville” and “Ostoburg”, the latter being named after himself by one of his subordinates, Ostovich noted. The urban CAS mission is an especially difficult task, Ostovich explains as targets are often fleeting or obscured. Other factors that complicate matters, are the presence of civilians and potential collateral damage he said.
CAS training is not limited to precision-guided bombs and missiles; Ostovich explains that because of the potential for collateral damage, training with guns remains important. Strafing, as air to ground gunnery is known, is practiced against an armored personnel carrier being towed behind a tank to simulate a moving target. The gun, Ostovich adamantly emphasizes, is extremely important. “Only a fool discounts the importance of the gun”, he added.
In the long run, Ostovish says the goal is to integrate Combat Hammer with the Army’s Special Forces and the USAF’s Combat Controllers to support the specialized CAS training required by those elite units. Ostovich mentioned that he has already had discussions with the Army’s elite 7th Special Forces Group (co-located at Eglin AFB, Florida, with the 86th FWS) about their forthcoming participation in Combat Hammer along with the USAF’s 23rd Special Tactics Squadron. Ostovich said that other AFSOC units and several “other government agencies” are also discussing participation in Combat Hammer.
There are 18 to 20 Combat Hammer events per year at either Hill AFB or Eglin AFB, Florida, said Ostovich. The Combat Hammer exercise at Hill AFB is the larger of the two, Ostovich explains, with up to six units participating over the course of three weeks. Hill AFB also has much larger ranges covering a vast area of some 120 thousand square miles of airspace and allows pilots a far larger, more permissive “shoot cone”-nearly twice the size of the Eglin TTR. Ostovich said that in the future, the majority of Combat Hammer exercises would take place at the Utah ranges.
Also in the future, Ostovich said there are plans to run combined WSEPs where the Combat Archer air to air evaluation and the Combat Hammer air to ground evaluation would be merged. One such combined event has already taken place at Eglin AFB where the participating aircraft took off armed with both live air to air and air to ground munitions. After completing the air-to-air phase, the participating aircraft moved on to dropping live precision-guided bombs. Ostovich explains that the combined exercise is probably a more realistic presentation of what actual combat might look like. As the goal of WSEP is to evaluate the complete system of the aircraft, weapons, and aircrew under realistic conditions, the combined WSEP may be the shape of things to come, Ostovich said.
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