Update from James!

Hello, everyone!

It’s been a long time since I have written any updates, and I realized that I shouldn’t let Kim do all the talking for me.   So, I decided to give you all my own twist on the last year, and hopefully it will be worth the read.

Interacting with public art in Tokyo

One of the biggest bits of news in the world of my career this last year has been the process of becoming a 4-ship, SEAD flight lead.  In October, I enter the Flight Lead Upgrade (or FLUG), which transitions a wingman (someone who always follows) into a flight lead (the guy running the show) using a combination of flights and simulators.  For many reasons (to include bad weather, poor maintenance, and a portion of our squadron being deployed for 8 months), this process took me longer to finish than most, but I am proud to say that I only had to repeat one ride through the whole course (and that was the most exciting flight anyways, so I didn’t mind too much).

We start the upgrade focusing on Air to Air (or A-A: employing guns and missiles against other aircraft).  My first flight was Offensive Basic Fighter Maneuvers (or OBFM – better known as dogfighting).  Starting from varying positions of advantage, the goal of OBFM is to maneuver your jet until employing a valid gun shot.  I could talk a lot more about this, but I would need a white board and the use of my hands as a visual demonstration, and most of you probably don’t care that much anyways, so I will move on.  Next was High Aspect BFM, which is essentially the same as OBFM, except both jets start from a neutral position and the fight is concluded with valid missile shots.  My third ride was what we call Air Combat Maneuvers (or ACM) and it was the first opportunity I had to lead an entire 4-ship.  This ride is fun because it lets us dogfight as a two-ship against a single adversary.  This means that you are constantly whipping your head around as you keep track of the two other jets turning within a mile around you.  Around this time I started my simulators, which included two separate sims focusing on tactical intercepts (or maneuvering your formation – 2 or 4-ship – from a long range in order to intercept another formation).  I then did both a sim and a flight of Defensive Counter Air (or DCA).  DCA is all about defending a point from multiple enemy aircraft (like 20 of them).  The flight was really fun, because I was able to do this while I was TDY in Guam and we had 16 Blue (good) aircraft against 14 Red (enemy) aircraft (but they got to regenerate multiple times, so it was more like 16 versus 40).  I led one 4-ship, but there was also a 4-ship of American F-15s, a 4-Ship of Australian F-18s, and a 4-ship of Japanese F-15s.  I also got to aerial refuel in the middle of the fight, which was a lot of fun. 

A picture of me at Green Flag before start

The next phase was Air to Ground (or A-G: dropping bombs/shooting missiles at the ground).  I had a Basic A-G sim and then a flight where I got lead a 4-ship at low level into a target area, pop up quickly, and then roll into the target to drop my bombs out of a dive bomb attack.  But the majority of this phase is spent practicing what the Block 50 F-16 does best: Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (or SEAD) and Destruction of Enemy Air Defenses (or DEAD – pronounced “deed”).  The whole point of SEAD and DEAD is to find and suppress/destroy enemy Surface to Air Missile (or SAM) sites so that all our other fighters won’t be in danger of getting shot down.  They are very complicated, but exciting missions and on my FLUG certification flight, I got to demonstrate to my squadron commander all that I had learned by leading a 4-ship of SEAD.

However, learning how to lead another three jets around is only part of the difficulty of the FLUG. 

One of the most challenging aspects of the upgrade is the process of learning how to fully brief and debrief each sortie.  On average, we spend about an hour to an hour and a half in our flight briefs, then go fly for an hour or two, and finish it off with a two to three hour debrief after we land.  The real trick to briefing is being able to correctly, yet succinctly, talk through tactics, while building a coherent picture of what we are likely to encounter during the flight.  In the debrief, we use Debrief Focus Points (or DFPs) to highlight where our game plan broke down, analyze any execution errors and contributing factors that led to our mistakes, come up with a route cause for each DFP, and then pull any applicable lessons learned.   Finally, we grade the objectives we established in our brief to measure how well we did overall.  It is a very long, but thorough process, and the time we take to learn from our mistakes is what makes us the best in the world.

Landing at Misawa after coming home from Green Flag

Over the last year, the Air Force has paid for me to go to some pretty great places.  Last August, I got to spend over a month in Fairbanks, Alaska at Eielson AFB to participate in Red Flag Alaska – a flying exercise where we get to work with other airframes and other countries.  For being a very small town in the middle of Alaska, Fairbanks has a ton of great local restaurants.  While there, I was also able to escape back to California for a weekend to see all of the family, which was my first time back since moving to Japan.  Then, almost a month later, I went to Tucson for a weeklong conference, and got to briefly see my Uncle Tom and Aunt Cindy.  In February, I took my second trip to Guam for another international flying exercise called Cope North.  Guam can be fun, but we had to stay on base this year, which was not as fun as staying downtown (especially since I didn’t have hot water in my room for the first week).  It was also a lot less fun because I was attached to our sister squadron, and I was the only representative from the Samurai.  Lastly, I went to Nellis AFB in Las Vegas this past June for a three week, joint exercise with the Army called Green Flag.  While there, I got to enjoy some time with my parents who came out to visit for a day, and we enjoyed some good food and walked around the strip.  I was hoping to get away and see more people, but unfortunately, we had almost zero down time while I was there, and had to focus almost entirely on work.  Also, as we flew home, we stopped through Alaska for a few days and I got to see Jon and Claire who just happened to be in town as well. 

Another great thing about this past year was getting to take a lot of vacations (also thanks to the Air Force, in a way).  We started out by spending a few days in Tokyo and Kyoto with my parents, then traveled to Italy around Christmas, and just recently came back from Hawaii.  Of course, Kim has blogged all about those trips, but I’ll just highlight some of my own favorite parts.  Although it was wonderful to explore Tokyo and go to the Toyota factory with my parents, my favorite part of our time in central Japan was while we were in Kyoto.  In one day, we saw a 600-year-old temple, a castle with “chirping” floors (the guy who lived there was so paranoid, he had the floors specifically designed to alert of any intruders), and the Fushimi Inari Shrine (a mountain trail, miles long, in which the path proceeds beneath a seemingly unending tunnel or Tori gates).  Then, in Italy, it was great to see all of our friends in Aviano and reconnect with them.  But of all the amazing things we saw, I have to say that seeing the David in person was one of my favorite things we did.  As an artist, I could truly appreciate the amazing detail of the stonework and the immaculate accuracy of the human form.  And finally for Hawaii, I loved being able to eat at my favorite restaurant ever – BLT steak.  But other than food, the opportunity to take a relaxing vacation, not filled with stress or much sightseeing was the best part.  So much of my life is so busy that having some real down time is almost invaluable, and I enjoyed all the time with Kim with nothing on our schedule. 

At the entrance to the Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto 

In Florence, duh

Other than work and travel, I have been continuing to fill my time with lots of drawing and writing.  In the last year, I have painted an original mural in our squadron, designed the label of a wine bottle, the cover of a CD, multiple images for the Lady Samurai (our spouses group), the logo for Kim’s youth group, a shirt for Red Flag, and the patches for Red Flag, Green Flag, and our upcoming deployment.  Besides drawing, over the past four years, I have been attempting to write a novel.  I don’t ever except to get it published, but I find it relaxing and a good way to keep my mind engaged.  I have now written over 250 pages and 75,000 words, but with so much else going on, it progresses slowly. 



A digital version of the mural I painted

 

Our Red Flag Alaska Patch

F-16 w/ cherry blossoms for the Lady Samurai



Another image for the LS - this one goes on a reusable grocery bag that they sell

 In more personal matters, I have been working a lot this past year on being more of a leader in our household.  Around the New Year, Kim and I realized that, although we talked a lot about how we wanted to run our household right before and after we got married, we haven’t updated those plans even though we have been through two moves that have taken us half way around the world.  So we decided to sit down and come up with a new series of expectations and a way to measure our success.  I tried to think of the best system for this, and being right in the middle of FLUG, I thought about the way we debrief our sorties, and the solution came to me.  Kim and I agreed upon a list of objectives for different areas of our life (spiritual, marital, social, etc.), and we now sit down once a week to review them to see if we are meeting our goals.  It has not only been a great way to grow as a family, but it has also been a way for me to lead our family and guide us toward our future.

Grilling out on our new (used) grill!

Well, speaking of the future, the next few months will be busy and exciting, as always.  In another month or so, I will be deploying with our squadron to the Middle East to support the Army through Close Air Support (or CAS).  After a few months downrange, I’ll come home and our PCS (permanent change of station, or “move”) will be right around the corner.  I will start the assignment process and hopefully by the New Year, we’ll know what our next base will be.  Kim and I would love another overseas assignment, but you never know what the Air Force has in store for you, so we’ll just have to wait and see.   In that time, Kim and I are also hoping to take a few last trips.  We would love to get down to southern Japan and see Hiroshima, and if it works out, we may just try to get to Thailand (that would be especially nice once the next winter rolls around – did I mention we had 250 inches of snow here this past year??). 

I told you we got a lot of snow...

As always, Kim will continue to keep you up to date on everything we’re doing, but hopefully you enjoyed hearing my perspective as well.  I hope you all are doing well and, as always, I would love to hear how your lives have been and although we keep nice and busy, Kim and I are always up for a good chat.  Our American phone number (719-694-1096) will forward to my computer (or even our house phone if my computer isn’t on), but it’s just like making a normal long distance call.  We only ask that you take our time zone into consideration before calling (as much as we love to talk, we also love to sleep).

Have a great rest of the summer, and when I get back from my deployment, I will try to send another update telling you all about it!  Take care!

Love,

James

I leave you with this - enjoy