Seattle Post-Intelligencer
January 15, 2002

Keeping Whidbey's Ace Fighting Fit

By Mike Barber, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Reporter

WHIDBEY ISLAND NAVAL AIR STATION -- The 15-member Navy ground crew started at dawn, swarming over the EA-6B Prowler jet like workers on a queen bee. By midafternoon, it's in pieces, broken down to "parade rest" for a detailed inspection.

If the technicians find something amiss, it's up to Petty Officer Gary Martinez, a 25-year-old avionics technician from Pueblo, Colo., to find the parts needed to fix it. Martinez, a member of the VAQ-141 Shadowhawks squadron, is working the "rob squad," a detail of skilled sailors who cannibalize parts from an older Prowler to keep the newer plane flying.

"We usually pick on another squadron for parts. When we're deployed at sea, parts get a priority, and there are no problems; on shore, though, it's hard to find parts," Martinez says. "The planes are getting old."

So old, in fact, that the U.S. military's ability to fight may hinge on Martinez's ability to scrounge parts from planes that have been in service longer than he's been alive.

The EA-6B Prowler, an electronic jammer able to blind enemy radar and disrupt communications, is so crucial to success in modern warfare that scarcely a mission is carried out without one in the air. Yet that means the Vietnam-era jets flown by the Navy and Marine Corps, which bristle with the latest electronic warfare devices, are on old airframes fast wearing out.

Of 122 Prowlers flown by the Navy and Marines, 31 recently were grounded for maintenance, including eight with potentially cracked wings, said Capt. John Scheffler, Prowler program manager at the Naval Air Systems Command at Patuxent River, Md. That left 91 Prowlers, most of them based at Whidbey, to support the war in Afghanistan and all other U.S. air operations worldwide.

More than half, however -- 51 -- are barred from making certain quick maneuvers because their wings are deteriorating. What's more, it's hard to find spare parts, including replacements for old navigational computers built before Microsoft created Windows.

Though long a problem in need of attention, the increased strain on the aged aircraft in missions from Kosovo to Afghanistan raises questions about whether there will be enough radar jammers if the war on terrorism spreads, particularly to countries such as Iraq, with sophisticated air defenses.

"This ugly, bulbous aircraft is the key to victory," said Rep. Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican and ex-Prowler electronic warfare officer.

The four-seat Prowlers, which carry a pilot and three electronic countermeasures officers, average nearly 20 years old. The first arrived at Whidbey exactly 31 years ago, carrying 1960s technology. The newest was built 10 years ago.

Each has undergone upgrades over the decades, mainly to modernize the secretive electronics technology carried in its nose and tail -- an anything-but-sleek design that prompts its nickname as "the Electric Sky Pig."

The Prowler's significance has grown in the wake of 1995 Defense Department budget decisions to phase out the Air Force's EF-111 Raven and retire its F4G Wild Weasel, planes with comparable functions. The Prowler now is relied upon by all the services.

"Basically, no one goes into bad guy country without these things," said Chief Warrant Officer Daryl Hagemann, who oversees repairs at Whidbey.

Once designed almost exclusively to suppress Soviet radar and anti-aircraft batteries with electronic jammers and HARM missiles, the plane's responsibilities have grown in an increasingly high-tech world of laptop computers, cell phones and satellite communications, said Douglas Swoish, who commands Whidbey's Prowler wing.

The Pentagon wants the Prowlers to keep flying until at least 2010, but no replacement has been designated. The Navy wants to spend $1.05 billion to replace it. Candidates include unmanned remote-controlled planes, modified commercial aircraft or, the likeliest choice, a version of the F/A-18 Hornet jet fighter -- the plane flown by the Navy's Blue Angels -- and tentatively nicknamed the Growler.

In the meantime, the Prowler is slated to undergo another nose-to-tail upgrade throughout the electromagnetic spectrum, and the Navy has implemented a new inspection maintenance program to keep the $52 million planes flying.

But as it has for generations, the Navy is leaning heavily upon crews of skilled twenty- and thirtysomethings to keep the planes airworthy.

"It breaks down quite often compared to the F-18s, but it's an older plane," explains Petty Officer Jason Dunham, a skilled metalsmith who has earned coveted aviation warfare wings.

"But as far as what it does, no one can beat it," says Dunham, who oversees 15 sailors tending the planes round the clock.

The squadron, VAQ 141, returned in November after extended sea duty, sending some of the first Prowlers into Afghanistan off the USS Enterprise. The Navy gives ships at sea priority for parts, but on shore it's a different picture.

"We've got to do everything with virtually nothing," says Petty Officer Robert Tiedemann, 31. As an aviation maintenance structural mechanic, he's one of the crew responsible for anything that has to do with the plane's skin and structure, as well as hydraulics and corrosion control.

On one recent day he and his crew replaced the same horizontal stabilizer -- a small wing at the tail of the plane -- three times, finding weaknesses in the stabilizer's internal ribs each time.

"We have very high standards," Tiedemann explains. "We know our pilots and crew personally; our friends and brothers operate this aircraft."

It's up to the 1,000 technicians of the Aircraft Intermediate Maintenance Detachment to rebuild the engines, fix the wings and keep the secret "black box" avionics systems at peak performance.

"We take the bad parts and turn them into good ones," Cmdr. Tim Matthews says point blank.

In the avionics section, he strides a hallway two football fields long, lined with the million-dollar electronic transmitters that provide the Prowler's main punch. In the engine section, the time between overhauls has been halved, from 1,100 hours to around 500, for safety.

The often unsung aviation mechanics, however, can tear down the J-52 Pratt & Whitney jet engines to "virtually nothing" and build them up again. It dramatizes the demands for more man-hours being worked, without overtime, to keep the planes flying.

"My job is to make sure what goes out of here is in good condition," says Petty Officer Bobby Metts, an aviation maintenance technician working on a wing. "It could mean the life or death of an aviator. We have been pushing harder than ever (since Sept. 11.) We are a few levels removed (from missions), but we feel the importance of what we do."

Despite the long hours, Tiedemann, with almost 10 years in the service, likes his work.

"What drives me is I love aircraft, I love working with my hands -- I love my job," Tiedemann says. "The way I look at it is the better I do, the more we accomplish."

A special pride overtook the already motivated group on Sept. 11.

The squadron was aboard the Enterprise, heading home after six months at sea, when the ship suddenly stopped dead in the water. As the aircraft carrier made a tight, 180-degree turn they learned what had happened and saw the pictures of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on their TV screens.

"At first some people griped about having to go back for extended duty after we had been at sea for six months," Tiedemann says.

"But when we saw what happened, we wanted to be a part of it, of the war on terrorism. We felt the weight of what we do more heavily."