The rescue of the F-15E weapon systems officer (WSO) missing in Iran after his fighter was shot down was one of the most complex and dangerous missions the U.S. military can undertake. These kinds of operations can come in many forms. In this case, before the WSO was finally recovered from the mountain crevice where he was hiding, a forward arming and refueling point (FARP) deep inside enemy territory had to be rapidly set up and secured so that it could act as a staging area for the aircraft, equipment and troops taking part in the mission. This is an exact mission set U.S. special operations forces train for extensively.
To get more insights about how such a FARP would be set up and operated, we reached out to Kyle Rempfer, a former Special Tactics Squadron (STS) airman who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. STS units are an elite cadre of operators who work to control aircraft in the air, including from airfields they establish deep inside contested territory, and direct airpower onto the enemy, among other duties, including rescuing personnel trapped behind enemy lines. They are often paired with special operations units, such as SEALs, Delta Force and Rangers, to bring their unique skills to their missions.
Air Force Special Tactics – the Air Force’s ONLY Special Operations Ground Force
Rempfer, a journalist and former colleague of the author at Military Times, offered unique insights into the process as someone who trained for these missions.
Some of the questions and answers have been lightly edited for clarity.
Q: What happens in the Special Tactics Squadron level when the word comes out that there’s an aircraft down deep into enemy territory?
A: By this point in the campaign, Air Force Special Tactics teams – which are made up of combat controllers (CCTs) and pararescue jumpers (PJs) – would have surveyed or identified scores of Iranian runways and austere airfields that can be used for landing zones or drop zones down the line. Even if CCTs hadn’t set foot on these sites, they’d have pulled imagery of the locations and started using tools like AutoCAD, a surveying and mapping software, to sketch out the dimensions of an airfield and identify what type of aircraft could land there. Is this a site that could only work for a light short take off and landing (STOL) aircraft, or could we land something bigger like a C-17? Those types of questions are on their minds. And since this event appears to have happened near the Isfahan nuclear facility, it can be assumed that Special Tactics has been scoping out landing zones in that area since at least this war started, maybe far earlier.
For this mission, the Special Tactics team just needed someplace to land a couple of MC-130J Commando IIs. Those are designed to infiltrate and exfiltrate special operations troops into and out of the hinterlands, so an agricultural runway intended for crop-spraying planes would fit the bill in terms of dimensions. But on the ground, the soil strength might not hold up for repeat landings, or perhaps the recent weather has eroded the area or left it muddy. That can have an impact, and there are tools like dynamic cone penetrometers that Special Tactics teams use to assess soil strength. They’ve used those and a host of other tools to scout airfields all around potential conflict zones in Africa, northern Iraq, Syria, etc., but given the tight security in Iran, that probably was not feasible to do in advance here. So the soil strength might have been a known-unknown going in.
Q: What would happen once the FARP is set up?
A: They can do these fast. Everything is prestaged, even inside the MC-130. AH-6 Little Bird helicopters were probably offloaded and taking off within minutes, not hours, and beaming toward the WSO’s beacon. At that point, the team at the FARP site is pulling security and talking to all the aircraft overhead. Those pilots and aircrews are using sensors to monitor all the roadways that plausibly lead to the site, and potentially even putting warheads on those roadways to make them unusable. We know there were some diversionary bomb drops as part of the rescue, so they could also take that time to put big potholes in the roads.
Q: Can you talk about what systems, personnel and equipment would have secured the site?
A: The people who are surveying and setting up the landing zone and FARP are probably CCTs [Combat Control Teams] from the 24th Special Tactics Squadron. They would have had imagery to look at ahead of the mission, but you might not know what level of stress the ground can take until you physically get there. CCTs are trained to inspect that, blow up obstacles on the runway if needed, scan enemy activity around the landing site, etc., and then set up the austere airfield to start accepting planes and helos. They might not have had time to do a full-on reconnaissance mission, of course.
CCTs have dirt bikes, something like a Kawasaki KLR 250, that they can drive up and down the airstrip for quickly setting up lights and visually inspecting the terrain. The lights they’d use to create the airstrip would be set up to infrared mode so only people with night vision devices can see them. This isn’t the early days of Afghanistan, though, and night vision devices have proliferated to such a degree that infrared lights are no longer the game changer they once were. However, it still prevents civilians from seeing the operation at night, and that is important given reports that Iranian state media was mobilizing the population to look for the downed airman.
Q: Who would be brought in for force protection?
A: The CCTs of course are not alone at the landing zone. They had DEVGRU (SEAL Team 6) for security and dozens of aircraft backing them up with an absolutely jarring amount of aerial firepower. CCTs are usually also certified JTACs so they can manage the aircraft stacks not just for landing the MC-130s and AH-6s returning from the WSO rescue, but also the dozens of aircraft overhead that can fire at targets as necessary.
Q: Reports indicate that the WSO climbed up a 7,000 foot crevice and hid out there with intermittent communications while the Iranians were looking for him. How does that complicate things? And what would the team on the ground be doing?
A: I imagine that all the communications would have been encrypted – not anything that the Iranians could listen in on. For the guys on the ground, the biggest situation is monitoring to make sure that other forces aren’t approaching the area and protecting that forward arming and refueling site, because while it’s not a base, for all intensive purposes it is the center of mass of the most U.S. forces, the safest zone you have. So basically probably just protected that site.
Q: What would be happening in the air?
A: You would have ISR assets that would be scanning the area, and not just the immediate area, but probably any roads and highways leading up to where that FARP site was set up. They would be watching anyone who could possibly be approaching.
That whole area would just be soaked with ISR assets, and I know the Iranians knocked out two Reaper drones during the operation. So presumably, there was plenty of ISR.
There would be a mix of attack and surveillance aircraft. There would be dozens of aircraft available for this mission. That is great for the team on the ground, but just like an air traffic control tower at Ronald Reagan Airport in DC can be overburdened, so will the JTAC who’s on the ground controlling all these different pilots and aircrews calling in to report threats they’ve spotted, relay their fuel or munitions status, report radio chatter they’re picking up from the ground, etc. This could require multiple JTACs on the ground, and probably also pilots in A-10s or F-35s who can act as an extra layer of forward air control in the sky, handling aircraft check-ins and keeping track of specific assets so the JTACs on the ground aren’t losing their minds mind handling a massive air stack behind enemy lines.
Most CCTs also have a JTAC certification, so they can help call in airstrikes as needed to protect the FARP site. And attack aircraft, like A-10s, or multi-role fighters, like F-35s, also have pilots who are certified as Forward Air Controller (Airborne) — or FAC(A). The E-3 can also provide a command and control function to help manage this complex battlespace.
Q: How difficult is a mission like this? What are the dangers?
A: This would have been a hot refueling site, with engines running refueling, and you’re doing all that blacked out, and you have to probably keep the amount of radio chatter on the ground to a minimum because you don’t know if maybe Iran does have something where they can break through the encryption.
So I would imagine that the danger is even more than just the IRGC coming in and shooting at you. The danger is the technicalities that you’re dealing with, with the forward arming and refueling sites and all these aircraft moving around under night vision in blacked out conditions in a tight area. It’s a small airfield, you have to keep your signature low.
Thankfully, they were able to get more aircraft in to usher everyone out. But that just shows how even what they were dealing with, the runway probably wasn’t built to handle these kinds of aircraft, or not maintained.
Clearly this kind of operation – where you’re coming in, setting up an airfield, whether it’s for a follow-on parachute jump or even just air landing more troops and supplies – would be repeated in most of the other scenarios people are talking about. For instance, going in and digging out Iran’s enriched uranium. I think it would have to be pretty similar. You would send in a special tactics team with some Ranger recce guys, and the Ranger reconnaissance company would maybe parachute in, and check out the airfield, and they would start bringing in the MC-130s. It’s going to be a remote, austere airfield. It’s not going to be easy to land aircraft there, it’s not going to be well maintained, and you’re going to run into a lot of problems on the ground with aircraft.
In addition to the fixed-wing planes, the U.S. also destroyed a reported four Little Birds on the way out. Imagine if you’re trying to do sustained operations bringing aircraft in, that all those aircraft are wearing down that obscure runway as you’re coming in, and you’re having more and more troops flow in. Your signature is going to be bigger and it’s going to be there for a longer time.
So this is how you create a window into a country to conduct follow-on operations. In this case, it was just to look for one guy and pick him up. But, they’re obviously looking at runways and airfields all across the country, whether they’re actual runways that are in use by the Iranian government or municipal governments, or if they’re just like roads that they can use or dirt fields that they think they can land on. So this rescue mission was probably a snapshot into larger operational planning.
Q: After the rescue of the pilot, the search for the WSO seemed to turn fairly quickly from a traditional PJ mission to a Tier One rescue operation. Can you talk about that transition and how those two fit together?
A: That’s right. From my understanding, there were two missions. The first was a traditional CSAR mission that was launched in daylight immediately after the F-15E went down. This likely involved the PJs from a rescue squadron that was on standby. They were aboard HH-60W Jolly Greens and had refueling support from an HC-130J. That mission is obviously very risky and time sensitive. They’re flying low and slow, in daylight, and vulnerable to ground fire. We saw people shooting at them with small arms, which probably won’t do much barring really lucky shots, but the crews are still exposed to man portable air defense systems (MANPADS).
You can see Iranians firing small arms at the CSAR aircraft in the following video.
This initial CSAR package successfully recovered the F-15E pilot, who would have had a beacon and survival radio. But obviously the WSO was still at large. Perhaps they knew his location but couldn’t get to him before the region came alive like a bees’ nest – with everyone from locals to actual security forces scouring the scene. At that point, it appears the mission shifted from a more traditional CSAR operation conducted by a rescue squadron to something we’re actually more familiar with from Afghanistan and Iraq – Tier One raids into denied territory. This makes sense to me because this was the single most important mission going on, and it makes sense to flood this with assets to successfully pull off a second pick up. In a bigger war, I doubt downed aircrew can expect JSOC rescue parties every time one of them goes down.
A lot of people were surprised that MC-130s and AH-6s were used for this, but it actually reminds me a lot of the early Afghanistan missions Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) conducted in fall 2001, before the Taliban fell. At least one of these involved Air Force Special Tactics CCTs parachuting into a remote part of Afghanistan, setting up a dirt airstrip, landing two MC-130s, off-loading a couple of Little Birds and then flying those around all night striking Taliban targets.
This rescue raid isn’t too different. It sounds like Air Force Special Tactics CCTs surveyed the airfield in advance – maybe in person, maybe just using satellite imagery – and then brought in the MC-130s that held the AH-6s to actually conduct the rescue that grabbed the WSO. This sort of scheme makes sense given the distance inside Iran. The MC-130s can bring extra fuel and ammunition to set up a mini-special ops refueling and re-arming site.
One thing to note here is why the commandos reportedly blew up the MC-130s on the way out. If the government’s version of events is accurate, this might have been because the runway was not suitable for the MC-130s and those planes got stuck or damaged landing there. The CCTs may have known this was a possibility but determined it was the least bad option. There’s also the possibility the aircraft were more damaged by enemy fire than we’ve been told. We may never know.
Q: What would be the biggest danger from the Iranians? Indirect fire like artillery? Drones?
A: Hard for me to say. If the team had the element of surprise, which it seemed to, then the Iranians would have been caught off guard enough that they didn’t have time to stage artillery or have drones already scanning the area. In that case, I could see the biggest threat being local police or civilians stumbling upon the site early in the mission. As the operation gets underway, the noise signature would probably attract more and more attention. And then you have IRGC teams speeding to the scene. If they’re moving fast, they might only have small arms, maybe some belt-fed machine guns, small caliber mortars, and potentially MANPADs. The longer the U.S. team was on the ground, the more time Iran had to rush forces to the scene and that’s when things appeared to get dicey, the Army’s Delta Force reportedly had to blow in place the MC-130s and call in a quick reaction force (QRF) for pickup.
This is also why having so many aircraft overhead would be useful. Not only are those planes there to strike targets, they can listen to enemy communications and local civilian radio chatter, they can use their sensors to scan all the routes leading up to the airfield, and they can use jamming and spoofing to befuddle the Iranian response. All that helps buy time.
Q: What kinds of geospatial tools would have been used to find and prep the site and carry out the mission?
A: I imagine in advance of this mission the airfields and runways in this area were pre-scouted using satellite imagery. I’m probably too out of date to go into specifics even if I wanted to, but we have very high resolution satellite imagery that’s available in the commercial space and is very impressive. Additionally, aircraft can fly over sites and scan the terrain using LIDAR to build 3D maps of the environment. Suffice to say, the CCTs would have a great picture of the environment before going in, but being physically on the ground shows new problems — can the soil hold up to landing an MC-130? How fine is the sand? When the AH-6s take off, are they creating a brown-out environment?
In an ideal scenario, the CCTs could parachute in before the main mission, conducting a high-altitude, high-opening (HAHO) jump and then confirming on the ground that the site will work to land an MC-130. We don’t know if that’s what happened, but if the reporting is accurate that an MC-130 got stuck and had to be blown up in place, then perhaps they made a mistake or – my bet – they knew the runway was rough and accepted the risk.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com