VIDEO: Dover C-17 crew tests its mettle in simulated combat

Don’t ever let anyone tell you the C-17 Globemaster III is just a lumbering hulk of an aircraft whose only use is ferrying supplies from the United States to Europe or the Middle East.

I got a small taste of just what the Globemaster really can do May 19 as a Dover Air Force Base bird, manned by eight crewmen pulled from active duty and Reserve squadrons, participated in the biannual Mobility Air Forces Exercise in the Nevada desert.

The MAFEX is a graduation exercise for students at the U.S. Air Force Weapons School at Nellis Air Force Base, Las Vegas. The students give cargo carrying aircraft such as the C-17 and its cousin, the C-130 Hercules, problems in which their crews must work with fighter pilots as well as information gathered from unmanned aircraft, satellites and other intelligence sources, to successfully wend their way through an area infested with enemy combatants. The planes then must fly in and out of a simulated combat zone, all the time executing real time maneuvers to outwit a waiting enemy.

What these airplanes do during these mobility exercises is not for the faint of heart.

Refueling

Our C-17, tail number 7176, was wheels up at around 1 p.m. The mission’s only passengers were a crew of eight, 2nd Lt. Jennifer Guerrero, the base public affairs officer for the trip, and Senior Editor Grace Jean of National Defense, the magazine of the National Defense Industrial Association, and me.

Over Nebraska, we were met by a North Dakota-based KC-135R Stratotanker for an aerial refueling exercise. It’s a delicate balancing act, bringing two multi-ton aircraft together from bases thousands of miles apart, and then linking them together at 40,000 feet in the air.

We shimmied back and forth a bit due to the turbulence of the Stratotanker’s jet engines. Just above us, the 135’s boom operator, the man charged with making the actual hookup between the planes, watched from behind a glass panel in the plane’s belly.

Pilots Capt. Jason Pennypacker, a Hartly native, and Capt. Patrick McClintock performed two practice hookups.

“Nice plug,” McClintock said as the refueling boom first found its mark and thunked into its receptacle above our heads.

Pennypacker likened the procedure to “driving a car behind someone at 100 mph and staying one foot away from his back bumper.”

The pair then relinquished the controls to Lt. Col. Richard Sheetz and Lt. Col. James Dignan for two more practice hookups.

Sheetz noted the plane’s nose would dip slightly, as if meeting some resistance, as we approached the tanker, but would level out the closer we got.

“Sort of like putting your finger through Saran Wrap,” he said.

Rough ride ahead

We then were given a very thorough briefing by loadmasters Senior Airman Kristopher Mack and Senior Airman Marc Anderson on what was to come. The only enlisted personnel on the crew, they were responsible for making sure the plane’s cargo — us — stayed safe and secure.

For this part of the exercise, the pilots were to fly the Globemaster down a series of desert valleys as they approached a dirt-strip landing zone. Once at the zone, and while the plane’s engines were running, we were to pick up six ground troops, then take off again, all while under simulated attack.

Unlike the refueling exercise, we were not allowed in the cockpit during this part of the mission.

“We’ll be flying into hostile airspace,” McClintock briefed us. “As important as it is for us to get in, it’s equally important for us to get out.”

Afterward, we’d fly to Creech AFB, just north of Nellis, where we’d take on some additional ground personnel, also with engines running, and then make our mission ending stop at Nellis.

While flying into the dirt landing zone, the loadmasters mentioned we’d be “pulling some negative Gs,” military-speak meaning we’d have a few moments of weightlessness on the trip.

Anderson, who is enrolled in the Delaware State University’s pilot training program and aims at an eventual commission himself, gave us one last bit of advice.

Hold on, he said. It’s going to get a little rough.

I swear he had a gleam in his eye when he said that.

Mission: possible

I don’t like roller coasters. I steer clear of them like cats avoid water. But this time there was no choice. We didn’t find out until the next day exactly what was going on during the next stomach-churning 45 minutes and frankly, I’m still glad.

The C-17 cargo deck has just six tiny windows, none of them near any seats. As the main part of the exercise began, our only window on the world was a circular piece of Plexiglas.

Pennypacker and McClintock did the flier’s equivalent of revving the engines, and we went in.

As the Globemaster bucked up and down due to air current coming off the mountains below, all we could see were patches of azure-blue sky suddenly turned into a dusty brown, rock-strewn landscape that appeared to be going by at warp speed.

Mack, who has flown combat missions in the Middle East, mentioned the terrain looked like “Nevada-stan.”

I tried to write down what was happening, but my notebook mostly is full of indecipherable scribbles. The only legible entries are “What a ride!” and, somewhat further down, “Will it never end?!?”

The scenario was that we were avoiding surface to air missiles and shoulder-launched rockets fired by enemy combatants, as well as evading threats from enemy aircraft above. Pilots in F-16s and F-22s, as well as ground-based personnel, kept up a steady chatter to McClintock as he monitored the radio, allowing Pennypacker to concentrate on his flying.

Throughout, the four jet engines whined loudly as the plane’s airframe made little metallic groaning noises in protest.

3rd Airlift Squadron weapons officer Capt. Bradley Rueter told us the next day we had flown a zigzag pattern through a series of desert valleys, making turns that required 60-degree banks and quick jumps over ridges separating the valleys. The maneuvers gave us inertia that at times pushed us deep into our seats, and at least twice allowed us that momentary period of weightlessness as we’d drop precipitously over a mountain top.

“Sometimes we were in a valley and there was no way to snake around it, so we’d do a ridge crossing,” Rueter said. “You could see a large mountain ahead of us. We’d climb up to make sure we’d clear it, and then go down again.”

Everything seemed anticlimactic after we finally reached the landing zone. After the bumpy ride in, touch down on the dirt strip was surprisingly smooth. We came to a halt in less than 3,500 feet, and Pennypacker kept the brakes locked and the engines running as six dust-covered troops clambered aboard. We were on the ground for five minutes, tops. The ride out, though still rough, was almost a picnic compared to how we flew in.

At Creech, we picked up more passengers, although this landing took place on a paved runway.

Thirty minutes later, we were on the ground at Nellis, the mission complete. We taxied in past C-17s and C-130s from other bases, past various fighter aircraft, as well as Nellis’ famed USAF Thunderbirds, whose red, white and blue F-16s were parked nearby.

Rueter, who had helped plan a similar scenario when he attended the Nellis weapons officer school, said we had flown only 500 feet above the undulating terrain at a groundspeed of approximately 400 mph.

Under those conditions, a pilot making a bad decision could expect approximately 20 seconds of life before he, his airplane and his crew, would hit the desert floor.

After we landed, the pilots of all 40 cargo aircraft went into a briefing to find out how well they had performed the simulated mission. Results of the exercise weren’t released, but we were relieved to know evaluators had given the Dover crew a thumbs-up for their performance.

Rueter called the experience a valuable one for the crew, who could be called upon to fly such a mission — for real — at any time.

“One of the unique opportunities this gives Dover crews is that we don’t have much terrain back home,” he said. “We have to go elsewhere. We like to take advantage of any time we can get over this kind of terrain.”

“It’s a shame we only get to do this twice a year,” he added. “It’s that valuable.”

McClintock was upbeat about having taken part in the MAFEX and how the experience would serve Dover crews when flying into Iraq or Afghanistan.

“I can take this knowledge back and teach it to our younger folks who can employ it in our current conflict,” he said. “But I’ll tell you what. I’ve been doing this for about 10 years, first in the C-5. I have never flown an airplane like we just did or been in an exercise of this magnitude.”