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1-10 Attack Aviation: Watching Mosul from above

Courtesy Photo | Chief Warrant Officer Two Steve Workman, a Kiowa pilot with the Company A "Rogues,"...... read more read more

MOSUL, IRAQ

07.06.2006

Courtesy Story

101st Combat Aviation Brigade

Flying over the skies of Mosul, Iraq, just a few hundred feet above the ground, are the pilots of 1st Battalion, 10th Aviation Regiment. They fly day and night, looking for suspicious activity, and working in direct support of their infantry counterparts patrolling the city on the ground, the 172nd Stryker Brigade.

The "Dragon" Battalion is an OH-58D Kiowa Warrior armed reconnaissance helicopter battalion from the 10th Mountain Division, Fort Drum, N.Y., which has been attached to the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade in support of Task Force Band of Brothers, the task force patrolling Northern Iraq. While the remainder of the 10th Mountain Division went to Afghanistan, 1-10 Attack has been assigned where its Kiowa Warrior assets can be utilized best, patrolling the city streets of Mosul.

Maj. David Bingham, the battalion's executive officer, explained how the battalion ended up in Mosul.

"Originally, it looked like we'd replace 2nd Battalion, 101st Combat Aviation Brigade in Key West, Iraq," Bingham said. "They were in direct support of the 172nd Stryker Brigade there. We skipped the usual stop at Kuwait and flew straight to Q-West. At the time, the big focus was on the elections in the December, 2005, timeframe. Then the assets became needed elsewhere. For awhile, we were split in three locations and had Forward Arming and Refueling Points operating here in Mosul, as well as in Q-West."

The Battalion started arriving in Mosul in October and was split between Mosul and a company at Tall"Afar, Iraq by February. Since October, the pilots have logged roughly 17,000 hours in and around Mosul. The battalion also has a company at Forward Operating Base Sykes near Tall'Afar, Iraq, which patrols the area there as part of Task Force No Mercy with 1st Battalion, 101st Combat Aviation Brigade.

During the first three months of their deployment to Iraq, 1-10 Attack patrolled the Mosul area with the Apache attack helicopters of 2nd Battalion, 101st Combat Aviation Brigade. Together, the two aircraft worked in what are known as "pink teams", an old term from the Vietnam era in which an attack aircraft flies in the skies high above the area, and a scout helicopter maneuvers lower, using it's capabilities to watch the city streets below.

"I loved it (flying in pink teams)," Chief Warrant Officer Two Steve Workman, a pilot with Company A, 1-10 Attack said. "You have a pure gunship above us, what better thing is there to cover us?"

The battalion executes a variety of missions in the Mosul area, Bingham said. The primary mission, of course, is working in direct support of the 172nd Stryker Brigade.

"We kind of live for that 10 or 15 minutes of excitement when the ground guys call us up with something to do," Company A pilot 1st. LT. Jared Sutton said. "You get pumped up to help them out."

"Being there for the ground guys is really what it's about for us," Workman added.

"If there's a patrol in the city, we want to be overhead and support those guys no matter what they're doing," Workman said. "If they're waiting on the Explosive Ordinance Team to show up to remove an Improvised Explosive Device (IED), we'll stay overhead and support those guys. We still get a few deliberate missions like cordon and searches or cordon and knocks throughout the week. Or if not much is going on, we might be doing route recons."

"We (1-10 and the 172nd) have a pretty good relationship," said Chief Warrant Officer Three Dean Leasure, an Alpha Company maintenance test pilot. "They like us being overhead when they're on the ground and especially when they're dismounted, and we like them on the ground when we're flying around." He said it is a mutually supporting relationship that increases the effectiveness and security of both of the combat systems.

The pilots added that much like a policeman on patrol, they have no real "average" day. Bingham said the Kiowa's will provide security for convoys. If a vehicle breaks down, the Kiowa is on hand to provide security from above. The Kiowa will also look for suspicious activity on the ground, such as people digging or weighted down vehicles, as well as suspicious things that could be IEDs and call them in to the Stryker brigade below. They have found several IEDs this way, Bingham said.

"Mosul's the second largest city in Iraq, with a population around 1.8 million people," Bingham said. "There's a lot of clutter in the city, so it's a challenging task looking for things that aren't supposed to be there."

During IED attacks, the Kiowa teams will look for the triggerman responsible, Bingham added. Just the presence of a Kiowa in the air will stifle many possible attacks, the pilots said.

The pilots will also support Military Police units and coalition training advisors who work with the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police.

"Us being overhead is a HUGE factor," Company A pilot Chief Warrant Officer Two Brian Parks said. "The enemy really doesn't do a whole lot when we're overhead. The ground guys will tell us they're taking fire and as soon as we roll over top of them, it's done."

Another day, the pilots may be providing security for a Medical Evacuation helicopter transporting wounded Soldiers to a treatment facility, Sutton said.

Besides the variety of the missions, although the pilots acknowledged flying so much can become repetitious, it can also be enjoyable, Leasure said.

"For me, it's almost like we're not really in the desert sometimes," he said. "Of course we are, but you've got the river that runs through here, the trees and the green grass. It's really nice in the spring and the winter, you've got green hills all around. I was in Baghdad for OIF One, and it's about 10 degrees cooler here, so I'll take every degree I can get!"

Because the Iraqi Forces are taking more and more of a role in the patrols of Iraq and its cities, the pilots said they are flying a little less than they did at the beginning of the deployment, but still an average of four to six days a week.

After all this time in the air, the pilots who were new at the beginning of the deployment said they all have picked up invaluable experience and lessons learned.

"I had zero experience coming over here, I was fresh out of flight school," Workman said. "I've tripled my flight time over here, made pilot in command and got all the experience of working with the ground guys. It pretty much shaped my career. This experience is irreplaceable, what I've learned over here."

"You can't replicate that in the rear," Parks said.