(Photo by Mike Kaplan)

Oh, boy! Another generation.

Report immediately to your duty station in utility uniform. Shelter exercises. Disaster exercises. Meet the timing criteria. Get everything done two hours ago. Fix that #*!$&% bomber! We are the best at what we do because we have these monthly 'mini-wars' here. They usually kick off Monday morning and end sometime late Tuesday. We practice a lot of the things we'd need to do if we were ever called upon to fight a war for real. We race around for nearly 48 hours straight-maintenance, munitions, security, administration, intelligence, operations, the Battle Staff, all of us-all for one purpose: get our airplanes ready to fight.

But then, when the mysterious 'scenario' decides that everyone has hustled enough, the 'war' ends. The maintenance troops, who have already busted day and night to upload their airplanes, download and reconfigure their machines for daily training missions. The cops take down the cones and red ropes around all those planes on the flightline. Shelter exercise checklists are put away. Things are usually back to normal on Wednesday. The generation is over. Right ?

Not so fast!

The wing's mission-your mission-is deterrence. Keep a force on constant alert to prove to our country's enemies that we can and will defend her at all times. And that an attack against us would be useless and costly. We've just spent all those hours getting all those machines ready for war. The final chapter- go out there and simulate fighting one!

Air Traffic Control calls it 'Busy Helpmate', but we flyers fondly refer to it simply as 'The Stream'. Beginning at about 11:00 AM on Thursday, we launch over a dozen FB-111A bombers, two at a time, every 20 minutes on what will be a nine hours, 5,000 mile trip covering eight states, two Canadian provinces and six assigned targets. Let me take you through the war we fight-after the generation.

For the maintenance troops and crewmembers, the work never really stops. On Wednesday, maintenance reconfigures the bombers and tankers for the Stream. Meanwhile, the crewmembers complete mission planning for the flight ahead. The aircraft is preflighted once again by the crews who will fly it, and they receive specialized route briefings and detailed target study. The Thursday morning mass briefing for the crewmembers resembles something straight out of 'Twelve O'Clock High' Roll call. A time hack. An overview of the strike routing. Last minute changes or notices. A weather briefing. Then, just like the eve of any battle since they started having battles-words of encouragement from the wing commander. The main message-fly safe, fly smart.

We're off!

Simulating a fast-reaction scramble take-off, we blast out of Pease and head west, leveling off at 27,000 feet. The mountains over New Hampshire, Vermont and upstate New York are splashed with the color of changing foliage, and you take a moment after the formation is rejoined to check out the scenery before getting to work. Before long you're in Canada, following the shortest 'Great Circle' route to the low-level track still over 1,200 miles away. You radio back to Pease via high-frequency radio that you are airborne and on your way 'to war'. You can hear the bomber formations ahead or behind you, guys cursing or sweet-talking their airplanes, running checklists, or discussing a radar aimpoint. You listen to the high-frequency coded messages from all over the hemisphere that - 'Had this been an actual emergency...' like the TV says- you would execute your sortie and send you off to war. Or you can turn on the satellite communications system and let a satellite print the message out for you on a tiny printer crammed into the 'Switchblade's' tiny cockpit near the navigator's right elbow.

But there's plenty of time for all that. You run a few checklists, take a few radar fixes, then watch your wingman out there on your right wing and listen to the Canadian Air Traffic Controllers with their thick French accents! For the past three hours, a Pease's KC-135 has been slowly converging on your formation. At a predetermined time, you establish radio contact with him and confirm your refueling plans. By that time, he is sorely needed - you've already exhausted almost three-quarters of your available fuel. Your pre-strike refueling will gulp down 28,000 pounds of fuel per bomber. After refueling at 21,000 feet, things happen very quickly. Get an update on the weather in the low-level route. Check out the terrain-following radar system. Get the weapons ready for 'release'. Tighten the accuracy of the inertial navigation set.

The wingman takes 10 minutes spacing on the leader and waits its turn for entering the low-level route. For the next two hours, one Pease bomber will cross the entry point near Aberdeen, S.D., exactly 10 minutes apart-a 'stream' of fast, ground-hugging attackers. You lower your visors, get your charts out, engage the terrain-following radar, sweep the wings back until you can't see them out the canopy windows anymore, and speed earthward. You are now 400 feet above the endless plains of South Dakota, North Dakota and Montana, skimming over the earth at 520 mph. The radar automatically controls your altitude over the buttes and ridges. The auto-pilot, tied into the navigation computers, steers you to each pre-programmed turnpoint, expecting the worst and hoping for the best. Both pilot and navigator keep close watch on the time and heading to each turnpoint. The pilot visually checks the aircraft's position with the ground, and the navigator watches the myriad of grain storage bins, farms and buttes on the radar scope, guiding the aircraft to the bomb runs.

Now, you're IP bound. The target is invisible, but by laying your radar crosshairs on a preplanned 'offset' aimpoint, the computers will steer the bomber to the target, open the bomb doors and drop the'weapon'. The aimpoints become smaller and more precise as you get closer to the target, the final offset might be two or three grain storage bins or a single oil pumphouse in the middle of a huge oil field. You use terrain 'pointer systems', a careful offset crosscheck, and a lot of patience to find the right pumphouse. You check your switches, nudge those crosshairs exactly on the aimpoint one last time, and watch the countdown.

Bombs away!

A radio tone, broadcast to a Strategic Air Command Radar Bombing Scoring site, cuts exactly when the bomb would have been released. The RBS site then computes how close to the assigned target the bomb would have hit, and the score is transmitted back to Pease. The next target is less than 90 second away. While you work to shack-aim the new offsets, the RBS site is busy 'launching' surface-to-air missiles and 'firing' anti-aircraft artillery at you, which your electronic track-breakers are hard at work defeating. The pilot watches for visual timing points, calling them out as they zip under the nose at 300 feet per second.

Bombs away!

The last release is a simulated Short-Range Attack Missile launch. At exactly the same instant, the RBS site will plot the bomber's position, and the SRAM computer will record the bomber's position at launch. The result is the missile's computed miss distance. The low-level route lasts anywhere from one hour to well over two hours and usually incorporates two separate bomb runs (the Operational Readiness Inspection low-level route is two hours 13 minutes long and has four bomb runs and one ECM-only run). After the last release, you climb out of the route and rejoin your wingman near the exit point.

Your next task is the post-strike refueling. You have a token onload of only 10,000 pounds, an 'insurance factor' against adverse weather or other unforeseen circumstances. After that, another three hours eastbound towards Pease. You have required 'strike' reports to send out via high-frequency or satellite communications, but mostly you try to unwind, watch the scenery and the Aurora Borealis in the northern sky and wait until you hear the familiar voices of the Boston air traffic controllers vectoring you home. You try to stay awake as you head into debrief maintenance and operations, explaining how your bomber performed and how well the wing's plan worked for you throughout the mission. But you're waiting for that last, all-important item, your bomb scores.

After all the recalls, the exercises, the hard work, the long hours and the hustle of the past few days, the bottom line is always this: Bombs on target. The generation isn't over until those scores come in and the Battle Staff tallies the damage the wing did to the 'enemy' and rates your ability to accomplish our mission. But remember: Never think that one person, or one crew, or one squadron can ever take sole credit for that bottom line. Everyone in this wing had a vital role in that bomb score.

So when the next generation begins, and you're rolled out of bed to respond to a recall, or you've been on line for 24 hours or nothing seems to be going right out there, try to keep the 'bottom line' in mind.

Because we, everyone at Pease, are the bottom line!