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File: aabgb_06.txt
As far as the support around here, King Khalid Military City
is a fairly bare base as far as our operations. The first
days we were here we were working out on the parallel
runway, just as the A-lOs do now. As we came in, we saw
there were places available and with a great deal of work,
that we could make suit our requirements much better; i.e.,
then called the French ramp, a new piece of asphalt; really
large, about 1,000 feet by 500 feet, that they had just
constructed. We realized that with just a little bit of
work; i.e., pounding ground rods into the asphalt, drawing
lines, and moving our equipment, we could work out of that
much better, so we did that.
We moved our airplanes on about the third or fourth day from
the taxiway to the French ramp. We generated our own four
hot pits dedicated directly to the F-16s, which freed up all
of the A-10 pits whicb we were using--we were sharing--so
now we have pretty much our own autonomous little lot down
there in the middle of the ramp which has now gone from the
French ramp to being called the Viper ramp. The A-lOs
pretty much work at this end of the runway. It is working
very smoothly.
We obviously had nothing in the way of munitions. We had to
fly in considerable munitions, and we do spend a lot of
airlift just to keep bombs in the airplanes. We drop 192
tons of bombs a day out of here just for the F-16s, so they
are resupplied daily. Obviously with the fog of war,
occasionally we won't get all the dedicated airlift that we
need, but one way or another we make do. We haven't missed
a single sortie because we haven't had some type of bombs to
offload onto the aircraft.
We are a long way from home stations, and we do have
airplanes break as often as they fly out of here, but the
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