a map plus verbal updates from elsewhere, as required.’ He has seen this problem before and is confident it will be resolved quickly.
I also note how the personnel dynamics start to shift. When the Boss is in the GCS as an SO crew member, he is subject to the supervisory authority of the lower-ranked Auth in the Ops Room next door. In this instance, the Auth will not approve take-off as the lack of a ‘satnav’ could potentially reduce crew situational awareness. The Boss is confident that the problem will be sorted before the Reaper reaches its operating area in Iraq and that it is safe to send the aircraft there. However, it is the Station Commander back at RAF Waddington who legally ‘owns’ the risk involved and only he can allow the Boss’s plan to proceed. It will have to be the Boss who phones the Station Commander, wakes him up in the middle of the night in the UK and asks him to give permission to proceed with the flight. So, the Auth gives the Boss approval to leave the GCS to take charge of the situation temporarily; the Boss then phones the UK and gets agreement for the flight to transit with the limitation; the Auth then approves take off; and the Boss takes his seat again as the SO under the supervision of the Auth. Simple.
It all seemed quite convoluted but the underlying principle is that the person with supervisory authority over the aircraft is responsible to the legal owner of the risk; in this case the Station Commander. If the Auth had simply decided to launch the Reaper without getting authorisation from above – and if anything then went wrong – it would have been his neck and career on the block.
Flight preparations proceed an hour behind schedule. Everybody seems happy with the outcome except, perhaps, the Station Commander in the UK who is now probably trying to get back to sleep.
‘So, what happened to “kick the tyres and light the fires”?’ I ask. The old-school fighter pilot adage.
A crisp, ‘Very funny!’ from somewhere tells me to shut up.
The checks restart and they will mostly be familiar to anyone who has flown anything from a light aircraft to a jumbo jet: airframe checks; engine checks; area of operations and maps; comms (lots of different types in this case); clocks (important when working across several time zones); radio frequencies; and weather.
There are also numerous system checks that differ from conventional aircraft and indicate that this Reaper is to be piloted remotely. The ‘command link’ is one example. It connects the pilot’s and SO’s controls in Nevada to the aircraft via fibre optic cable and satellite.
Then there is the preparation to electronically take control of the aircraft. Somewhere at a runway within a reasonable transit time of the Reaper’s operating area in Iraq, a separate Launch and Recovery Element (LRE) will ensure that it takes off and lands safely. It looks like a vastly bigger version of a radio-controlled model aircraft take-off. Once the Reaper has safely climbed a few thousand feet into the air, the flick of a switch diverts the electronic control signals from the LRE crew in the Middle-East to the crew members in front of me, who are now actively controlling the Reaper.
As the Reaper continues to climb I can work out most of what I see on the pilot’s screen. To the left of his main screen the aircraft’s indicated airspeed is around 110 knots. Ominously, the number 88 is highlighted in red. This is the stall speed at which there is not enough lift from the air under the wings and the forces of gravity take over. Bad things happen after that. There are also a couple of unfamiliar hieroglyphics, so I ask.
‘These markings indicate the weapons I have available. Four Hellfire laser-guided missiles – two on the left and two on the right – and one GBU-12 guided bomb.’ The former weigh 100lb each and the latter 500lb. Either can be immensely damaging or immensely helpful, depending on who you are and what is happening at the time.
Meanwhile, the SO is checking the camera pod in its ‘normal’ and ‘infrared’ modes. Later he will check that the laser for guiding the weapons onto their targets is working. For now, however, he catches me out: ‘Do you want to jump in the seat and try the controls?’
‘Sure.’ As we swap seats I know that I am about to impress the hell out of him. I have flown light aircraft in the past and have also spent many hours on computer games.
The left-hand control allows me to zoom the picture in and out. He gets me to zoom in quite close to watch a car driving on a road that cuts diagonally across the screen in front of me. The right-hand control moves the crosshairs in the centre of the screen.
‘Now keep the crosshairs on that car,’ he tells me, pointing at the screen. ‘It’s perfectly safe,’ he adds, reading my mind. I am sure I hear a chuckle from the pilot or MIC, but I am about to show them some moves. Some really bad moves, as it turns out – at least initially. The left and right movement is quite straightforward, but the up and down control seems to be the wrong way round. Worse, the joystick seems unusually big and clunky and not nearly as good as some on computer games. When I mention this later I am told that the manufacturers used old F-16 controls that were surplus to their requirements. And I believe it.
If I was laser-guiding a missile at this point, the safest place in the world would be in the car that was now dancing all over the screen. Everywhere except near the crosshairs. In my defence, the problem was made worse by the one to two second time delay between me moving the control in Creech and the satellite delivering the signal to the aircraft. It took a couple of minutes for me to start to coordinate the moving, time-delayed, three-dimensional challenge in front of me. It took roughly the same time for the others to stop laughing.
Before I know it my familiarisation exercise is over as the flex crew arrives to take over temporarily and give the duty crew a break. The delayed start of the mission means we are not yet into the designated operating area. The Reaper will get there by the time we have eaten and return.
The Squadron Commander reverts back from SO to Boss mode. He goes to confirm with the Auth that the ‘satnav’ capability has returned as anticipated, and to find out what caused the problem.
A short walk and a couple of security barriers away is the chow hall, or what the British call the mess or canteen. Hot and cold food is available twenty-four hours a day. It is a barn of a building that can feed hundreds of people at a sitting, at tables that are laid out in precise rows. Americans are often criticised for their diet and I am impressed to see some crisp salad in the fridges alongside the cheesecake, opposite the counter where burgers, steak, pizza and other local delicacies are churned out. Just as I am about to rewrite my prejudices about Americans and food, a young airman comes over and grabs a handful of salad to add some colour and texture to his massive double burger and cheese. Or perhaps to help his stomach process the pound of beef that is coming its way. From his physique I do not have to be Sherlock Holmes to work out that this is his standard diet.
My two hosts from 39 Squadron regale me with tales about the merits of living and operating at Creech. It boils down to this: Creech is a base that is at war and everything is available twenty-four hours a day to support that effort. I will get to experience what happens at RAF Waddington in a few weeks’ time.
Re-entering the GCS, each of the crew gets a quiet update from their counterpart in the flex crew as they settle back in for the next few hours.
‘Eyes on!’ The change in the pilot’s tone is enough to tell me that the transit is over and we – or at least the Reaper that the crew is flying – are overhead today’s Named Area of Interest. For my benefit he adds, ‘This is a Daesh area.’ The use of the official UK term – Daesh – does not escape my notice. It feels out of place, forced, like middle-aged parents using text-speak to – LOL – get down with the kids.
From the rear of the GCS, the MIC outlines the latest intelligence picture as he absorbs the information from multiple
