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somewhere and to-conduct fighter operations. We probably
need to explore how to do that in an organized fashion.
We should, in my opinion, be able to set up and do it in 3
days. It took us a week or two to get into the swing of
things. We were often prodded and pushed by the calamitous
nature of things. In my experience, there is no way of
preparing to do this; that is, set up an airfield in the
middle of nowhere. I don't know, maybe;if we trained to do
that. We had UTCs [Unit Type Code] designed to do that, and
maybe we already have that in place; I just don't know. I
don't think that we just do that: pick up a wing and go
somewhere and set up for a few weeks and then come back,
because there are very definite deployment, employment, and
redeployment aspects of the airfield itself that go far
beyond just moving a wing of people and aircraft. The
airfield itself needs the preparation and the entire gamut
of airfield operations organized to prepare to move, set up,
and operate.
S: The cease fire has been in effect for almost 2 weeks now.
The United States Army has brought in its helicopters to
take the place of the F-16s who have now gone back to their
main operating base. How did that all come about?
M: The Army, in trying to relocate their forces from the
Iran/Kuwait theater back to an operating location from which
they could redeploy, had higher headquarters folks come in
and talk to us about ramp space. They were adamant about
getting out of the dust and the dirt and getting onto some
hard surface and living like normal people, and we were
sympathetic to that. So where we could, and understanding
that we were still conducting fighter [b(l)sec3.4(b)(5)]
operations, and the F-15s are
still flying CAP, we felt that we needed to cooperate with
14
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