MARCH AIR RESERVE BASE, Calif. - A lightning-fast response to California's lethal wildfires has scorched launch precedent and incinerated red tape between the California Air National Guard's 163d Attack Wing and the federal authorities vital to flying remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) in the domestic airspace.
Fighting the Rim fire in 2013, as what was then designated the 163d Reconnaissance Wing, A irmen operating the MQ-1 Predator RPA battled the largest fire in the history of the Sierra Nevada, threatening one of the nation's irreplaceable treasures, Yosemite National Park. Opening a new era for the RPA, the battle-tested Predator flew where other aircraft dared not go, its sophisticated array of sensors giving firefighters a real-time picture of the disaster unlike any they'd ever seen, they testified after taming the blaze.
But, as it happened, the Rim fire flared when then-Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel was out of the country and difficult to reach. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), responsible for ensuring the safety and integrity of all civil airspace, including commercial jet traffic, had never before processed such a request. The approval took three full days while the wing, and the state it serves, smoldered.
In dramatic contrast, on Oct. 10, Gov. Jerry Brown declared a ninth county in California to be in a state of emergency. In just 30 minutes, Secretary of Defense James Mattis approved the use of the 163d Attack Wing's MQ-9 Reaper RPAs. Tasked to cover an area more than double the size of the 2013 fire—and not for designated sorties, but for round the clock operations—the FAA followed with an authorization in three hours. The Wing's first Reaper took off an hour later.
"The comfort level of the SecDef, the confidence level of the bureaucracy part of it, is getting greater," said Brig. Gen. Dana Hessheimer, who relinquished command of the 163d Attack Wing, mid-mission, and now serves as the Director of the Joint Staff of the California Military Department."They're more willing to give us the approval because we're doing everything right."
Hessheimer notes that the impressive turnaround from notification to launch speaks to the wing's emergency preparedness at a time when the Reapers were scheduled to be an entire day out of operation, according to their proscribed maintenance schedule."For us to ramp up and, no kidding, get ready to launch in four hours, when we didn't have maintainers at the wing, and it wasn't a scheduled 'fly' day, well, that was pretty amazing. And that is a tribute to the crews and the 163d itself."
"The wing responded extremely well on this because they knew how bad it was up north. Doing our Title 32 [State] mission, and helping the people of California, was their priority," Hessheimer added."Nobody said 'No.' They said, 'We'll keep pressing ahead and let you know when we're comfortable with the takeoff time.' We haven't missed a beat since we started."
"It was a full team effort," said Lt. Col. Micaela Brancato, deputy commander of the 163d Mission Support Group. "Typically, in the past, it's been a 16-hour turnaround for tasking like this, and we did it in five. When the tasking came down, people were more than willing to step up and make it happen. They know how important it was to the state as well as to the entire enterprise of remotely piloted aircraft, because this is really proving concepts of how you can use this platform for good—and being able to help here at home."
That maintenance-turnaround feat speaks to a milestone the wing reached under Hessheimer's command earlier this year. Hessheimer prioritized a transition of the wing's RPA flight operations from the Southern California Logistics Airport (SCLA) in high-desert Victorville—the base from which the Predator launched in 2013—to March Air Reserve Base, in the thick of Class Bravo airspace, 60 miles east of Los Angeles. The complicated move took years to accomplish. “The maintainers would have needed another hour and a half just to get to SCLA," Hessheimer reckoned."Flying out of March gave us the ability to reduce our response time."
Once airborne, the wing also responded on the fly to new mission objectives, according to Maj. Jason Flowers, chief of wing plans, such as the request by analysts of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for geo-location of both ravaged and unscathed structures, permitting damage assessments crucial to funding the disaster recovery properly.
Earlier, two Reapers swapping every 12 hours covered six different fires, utilizing electrical/optical and infrared sensors, had assiduously mapped the contours of the disaster areas."Firefighters want to know the perimeter of the fire, so they could compare how it's spread since the last time they checked, and where it spreading, for instance, if it's going toward the next village or not," Flowers explained."If the fire has died, it's a little harder for our sensor to detect." Beyond that, the FEMA mission recruited the Reapers' Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), a sensor unknown to the Predator in 2013. Flowers suggests that fighting the fires at home will help the wing fight future wars abroad, by increasing operators expertise at employing SAR.
"The American people need to understand that the Reaper is not just a hunter-killer," Brancato said."This is a very capable asset that really can help, whether it's disaster or search and rescue. We don't even know its full capability, because we haven't been able to fly in U.S. airspace. Now we're setting precedents: SecDef approval in 30 minutes? Unheard of."
"It's unfortunate that it takes events like these to be able to innovate and make progress in this mission, but that's what it's taken," Brancato concludes."And we're moving in the right direction."