Editor's note: This article originally appeared in the Dayton Daily News on March 18, 2003.
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE - In many ways, preparations for war with Iraq have meant business as usual at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base - where gearing up for the next war is Job One.
In other ways, the looming war has dramatically transformed daily life on the base.
Laboratory researchers and project managers aren't thinking in terms of some future war. They're thinking about this one, which might start at any hour. And they have been deeply involved in developing, upgrading or supporting nearly every weapon the Air Force is likely to use when it begins the air attack.
The base itself has become the U.S. hub for C-141 airlift operations supporting the buildup, run by the air Force Reserve's 445th Airlift Wing. And the base has been shipping out thousands of chemical defense suits to airmen around the world as the Air Force's distribution center for the vital gear.
But hundreds of base workers have felt the impact in the most personal ways, as they have been deployed to the war zone or mobilized to support deployment efforts.
Among them are more than 300 base personnel who have been deployed worldwide. Base spokeswoman Susan Murphy said most are deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, the war against terror that includes the buildup in the Persian Gulf.
Separately, more than 300 reservists with the 445th have been activated, many for duty at Wright-Patterson, in C-141 staging areas overseas, or as flight crews flying cargo and troops "downrange" - the military's intentionally vague term for deployments to the Persian Gulf region. Additional 445th reservists have volunteered for active duty.
Preparations for war and the war on terrorism have made themselves felt in many ways.
One day last December, Defense Department employee Barry Roland found himself viewing the morning rush at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base from a new perspective.
Instead of sitting in his car in the line of traffic as he had done for 21 years at Wright-Patterson or the old Defense Electronics Supply Center in Kettering, Roland was wearing an orange vest and checking government ID cards at one of the gates.
He was one of approximately 140 civilian volunteers who have been trained to supplement the base's overworked security force since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. Just this month, approximately 150 Ohio Army National Guard military police began augmenting the force.
But pulling gate duty was a big change from Roland's daily routine as a professor (now a director) with the Defense Acquisition University, which trains defense workers in weapons acquisition.
"Our jobs are training acquirers. You do all that stuff (to support the armed forces) but you don't see instant results." As a gate guard, he said, "The gratification was immediate."
Outside the fence, the most visible sign of stepped-up activity are the giant C-141 cargo planes that take off and land at Wright-Patterson. They belong to the 445th Airlift Wing, an Air Force Reserve unit that has been busier than ever since the terrorist attacks.
Missions have included ferrying medical personnel and supplies to the East Coast; transporting bodies of U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan; bringing home wounded soldiers, and hauling Taliban prisoners to the detainee camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - to name just a few examples.
Across the airfield, the National Air Intelligence Center posts pictures of Saddam Hussein and maps of Iraq on an Internet site recruiting intelligence analysts. But what hand NAIC might have had in developing the U.S. evidence for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the secretive analysis center won't say.
"We've been very busy lately, but all the details of everything that we would tell you are still classified," NAIC Spokesman Rob Young said.
NAIC doesn't hide the nature of its work: Outside the building stands a Russian-built MiG-29 fighter jet, a symbol of the foreign airborne weaponry its analysts study.
Young wouldn't say whether NAIC produced any of the intelligence on Iraqi weapons that Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the U.N. Security Council. But after the 1991 Gulf war, the organization showed off some Iraqi antiaircraft missiles it had studied.
One of the most publicized efforts at Wright-Patterson in support of Operation Enduring Freedom was the arming of Air Force RQ-1 Predator spyplanes. The Reconnaissance Systems Program Office at Wright-Patterson had just begun test-firing missiles from the remotely piloted planes when they were pressed into service in Afghanistan.
The reconnaissance office is a part of the Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson's host unit. The armed Predator is just one of many examples of ASC's efforts to field new combat capabilities, be they entirely new weapons or upgrades of old ones.
The newest major system ASC sent to war was the RQ-4 Global Hawk, a high-flying, long-duration robot spyplane still in development. Since the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom, Global Hawks have flown more than 1,000 hours on 50 combat mission, returning more than 15,000 images of potential targets, according to the reconnaissance office. The Air Force ordered two Global Hawks deployed to the Gulf region last month.
Much of the work at Wright-Patterson has focused on upgrading older weapons.
For example, a 1980s-vintage B-1B bomber recently demonstrated the ability to drop three kinds of weapons at four different targets on a single pass. The F-16 Program Office also scrambled to upgrade the ground-attack targeting pods on certain fighters.
But perhaps the most critical role Wright-Patterson plays in the buildup for possible war with Iraq is the same one it played in the 1990 buildup for the Gulf War - making sure combat units have all the weapons and ammunition they need for battle.
That job falls to the Air Force Materiel Command, which has its headquarters at Wright-Patterson. It's a job that modern warfare demands be done ever more quickly.
"The reality of the 21st century is we have to be rapid and integrated," Maj. Gen. John L. Barry, AFMC's chief of plans and programs, said in October. The command has been working to head off supply shortages by predicting what frontline commanders will need and have supplies on the way by the time the need arises.
"These tools we have now to do prediction are not as good as we want them to be. . . . (but) We've made a lot of progress since Desert Storm," Barry said.
The heart of AFMC's wartime support is its command center, where AFMC monitors the Air Force's global supply chain and respond to urgent needs. It's also where AFMC's top commanders - including Gen. Lester Lyles, AFMC's commander and one of the Air Force's top generals - keep abreast of the war.
The command center kicked into action within hours of the terrorist attacks and has been running around the clock ever since. It has been lightly staffed, but that could change any time, a spokesman said Monday.
"If a war begins, there will be more briefings. Gen. Lyles will be down there every day, finding out what's going on," AFMC Spokesman Dave Levingston said.
About the Author
