Seattle Times
January 21, 2003
Pg. 1

Despite Its Aging Aircraft, Whidbey Poised To Prowl

Naval Air Station Planes Deployed To Persian Gulf

By Hal Bernton, Seattle Times Staff Reporter

WHIDBEY ISLAND NAVAL AIR STATION -- Lt. Ariel Klein spent a week in September flying over Iraq, belted into a rear jump seat of a Prowler jet patrolling a no-fly zone. His job: operating the powerful electronic equipment that disables and destroys enemy radar. It was a quiet week spent crisscrossing a flat expanse of desert. "Sightseeing," as Klein called it.

Within a few months -- perhaps a matter of weeks -- Klein may be back in Iraq. But this time, he would be in the thick of it, flying over Baghdad amid the flak and missiles expected during the first days of a new Gulf War.

The Prowler's electronic-warfare mission helps keep U.S. fighter planes from getting shot out of the sky. It's a crucial job that the EA-6B aircraft have handled since first deployed in 1972 during the Vietnam War. If the United States invades Iraq, Pentagon planners will be looking to the Prowlers to deliver one more time even as the aircraft enters the twilight years of its military service.

"They won't attack a target without the Prowlers," said Klein, a 28-year-old, redheaded bachelor from New Jersey whose flight shirt bears his squadron nickname, "The Kid."

"We'll be actively jamming everything we can find," Klein said.

Most of the nation's Prowlers are based at the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, which supports 15 squadrons, each of which has four aircraft. During the past decade, hundreds of crews and maintenance workers have been shuttled between their Northwest island base and the Persian Gulf, where they helped enforce southern and northern no-fly zones over Iraq.

Quickening pace

And now as tensions build in the Persian Gulf region, the pace of the deployments quickens.

Three Whidbey-based squadrons are now stationed on three U.S. aircraft carriers likely to serve in a new war, and two more squadrons are based at airfields in the Gulf region.

Klein's 193-person squadron -- VAQ-132 -- is now back at Whidbey after six months duty. This squadron -- The Scorpions -- is also on alert for possible deployment to the Gulf aboard a Virginia-based aircraft carrier, the USS George Washington.

Despite its frontline mission, no Prowler ever has been shot down, according to Cmdr. Chuck Luttrell, the chief staff officer. But, on average, at least one a year has been lost to service, with the aircraft suffering numerous accidents that resulted from mechanical failures or pilot error. Since 1980, these accidents have claimed the lives of 30 crew members.

Luttrell has firsthand experience with the perils of flying the EA-6B. He ejected from a plane that crashed off the California coast in 1996. Two crewmen died and Luttrell barely survived, suffering numerous broken bones and hypothermia while waiting for rescue in the chilly Pacific.

But he still flies.

"My wife came to visit me in the emergency room, and said, 'If you're thrown off a horse you get right back on' -- so I didn't have a choice," Luttrell said.

For the military and the squadrons, the age of the aircraft is a major concern. The average EA-6B is about 20 years old, and one of the aircraft in The Scorpions squadron is older than Klein. The Pentagon has struggled to find a successor to the EA-6Bs and expects to begin to phase out the aircraft as early as 2009.

Maintenance problems

Meanwhile, the squadrons must contend with serious maintenance problems, which sometimes have been exacerbated by high demand for the aircraft, according to a U.S. General Accounting Office report released last November.

Inspections have discovered metal fatigue that will require the Navy to replace the centers of 67 wings, according to the General Accounting Office. To ease the stress on the planes, some aircraft are restricted in the types of flight maneuvers they can perform. These restrictions are lifted only if the aircraft is trying to evade enemy fire.

Planes also have been grounded for checks involving the premature failure of bearings that caused some engines to fail, according to the GAO report. Bearing failures may have caused two Prowler crashes in 2001, one off the Atlantic coast and one off Washington's Olympic Peninsula. Since then, more than 50 engines have had to be overhauled. Just what causes the bearings to fail is unclear, and engine oil is closely monitored in flight checks, Luttrell said.

Maintenance crews also have to deal with a multitude of other repairs. Spare parts may be hard to come by, so maintenance crews are adept at cannibalizing parts. Last week, maintenance workers at the Whidbey hangar took a rudder from a training aircraft and put it on one of the aircraft in Klein's squadron.

"The real heroes are the maintenance crews," said Cmdr. William Reavey, commanding officer in the Scorpions squadron. "It takes more and more of a heroic effort to keep them airborne. These guys just keep doing it, and it totally amazes me every day."

Still impressive

But the Prowler EA-6Bs, which fly at speeds of 600 mph, are impressive. Snub-nosed and painted a dull gray to help conceal their presence over enemy territory, they have been continually upgraded with new electronic equipment to try to deal with improvements in air defenses.

Much of the electronic equipment is packed into a pod that's mounted along the aircraft's side. The pod generates its own juice with the aid of a ram-air turbine. Klein controls the pod from a seat in the rear of the four-person plane. He can look at the sky through a bubble top or sideways through window panels. His forward vision, however, is blocked by a control panel. A computer monitor flashes green and black images akin to a 1980s video game; rows of toggle switches activate electronic jamming.

The aircraft are also equipped with missiles, recently upgraded with global-positioning navigation systems, which can hone in on and destroy enemy radar. One squadron aircraft was painted for Christmas with a Santa Claus straddling a missile.

Though the Prowlers are old, they still fly hard. During the last deployment aboard the USS George Washington, the Scorpions squadron carried out 97 percent of its scheduled flights, including Afghanistan missions that required crews to fly for up to eight hours. On just one flight did a crew experience mechanical trouble, with a drop in oil pressure that forced the aircraft to fly on just one of its two engines.

Returning to Whidbey Naval Air Station just five days before Christmas, Scorpions squadron members were grateful to share the holidays with their families. Shore-side life is now savored a day at a time, with the squadron small-talk focusing on who might play in the Super Bowl.

But everyone is expecting to be called up soon.

Reavey, the squadron commander, hasn't bothered to unpack gear stowed in two red metal boxes stacked in his office. And squadron members already have had briefings on what threats they might face in a new war with Iraq.

Some Whidbey Island fliers can offer experience gained in the first Gulf War. About 10 percent of the flight crews joined in the bombing runs over Baghdad a decade ago.

Luttrell, the staff officer, recalls his first day in combat when he mistook the flashes of Iraqi missiles for the flashing lights of friendly aircraft. Later, he learned it was important not to dodge every missile that came into view.

"At night, you can see so far away that if you started reacting to every missile -- pretty soon, you'd be chasing the stars," Luttrell said. "So you wait, see how they're moving with our plane, and how they're tracking before you try to evade."

Back then, Iraq was largely unfamiliar ground. Still, the U.S. electronic warfare was able to largely disable Iraqi air defenses during the first two weeks of bombing raids.

In a second Gulf War, Luttrell said, the United States would benefit from better technology and crews with more experience with Iraqi air defenses. Though Klein saw no action on his recent missions over southern Iraq, other crews have been fired at during no-fly patrols. Just yesterday, allied jets struck eight unmanned Iraqi communications-relay stations after Iraqi air defenses opened fire, the U.S. military said.

Baghdad defenses also have improved, said Benjamin Works, executive director of the Strategic Issues Research Institute. During the last decades, the Iraqis have been able to smuggle microwave systems and other air-defense equipment into theircountry. They have also been able to monitor -- and learn -- from the performance of other air-defense systems, such as those Serbia deployed.

"The air defenses over Baghdad have to be taken deadly seriously," Works said. "They are known to be substantially better than the last time around."