KC-135 participation in Virtual Flag

Posted on the MAF DMO IPT Community of Practice dicussion forum:

From: Gibbons, Michael W Maj 931 ARG/OSTK Subject: RE: Tanker White Cell Participation in Virtual Flag

BLUF: Tanker participation in Virtual Flag exercises as part of the White Force is beneficial.

BACKGROUND: Virtual Flag 08-1's purpose was to exercise the TACS [theater air control system]. This was a joint exercise with significant Army and Navy participation. The White Forces purpose is to control and add realism to computer generated sorties. In our case, the ATO [Air Tasking Order] had three KC-135R's in three different orbits. We monitored and transmitted on the radios as if we were actually flying the missions. We could fly the sortie to wherever was necessary in case of retrogrades or mission changes. The benefit of having a tanker person controlling the computer generated sortie is the added realism for C2 [Command and Control]. Anyone that attends a VF [Virtual Flag] in the future needs to understand that their role is to teach. Having people involved at this stage will help ease the transition to actually flying a distributed mission in the exercise in the future.

PROBLEMS/SHORTFALLS: The biggest issue that we saw was that the ATO was totally unrealistic from a tanker point of view. Our receivers were generally F-15C's that were not scheduled to refuel until they had been airborne for 3 hours. The other issue was that the KC-135 computer model burned less than 10 Klbs of fuel while orbiting for 3 hours. We worked around these problems, but it would be nice to have them fixed prior to the next exercise.

RECOMMENDATIONS: A tanker planner should attend future VF planning conferences to ensure the plan is realistic. At the current level of involvement, only one White Force tanker person is necessary. However, two is nice, so that you can take a break during the three hour exercise period. Generally, it would be best to send a pilot from the appropriate MDS [Mission Design Series] that will be simulated during the exercise (KC-10 pilot to simulate KC-10's, KC-135 pilot to simulate a KC-135).