Story and photos by
Staff Sgt. JEFFREY ALLEN

Related Story
Pack Like a TACP

Down & Dirty
Before they can call in air strikes during wartime,
these elite airmen have to pay their dues

Deep in the Florida backwoods with the sun still hours from rising, 27 airmen stand at attention in their underwear as a group of men tear through their gear like a pack of wild animals. Dense fog would have made the night pitch black if it weren’t for the vehicle headlights shining like daggers into the weary eyes of the airmen.

Some might have concluded that this was simply a nightmare, a bad dream. But that would have required sleep ... and sleep just wasn’t in the cards for these poor souls.

“ I was so exhausted I hallucinated,” said Senior Airman Anthony McCarthy.

Such was the life for class Falcon 61 in a weeklong field-training phase of the tactical air control party, better known as TACP (pronounced Tack-P). It’s a week of sleep deprivation (only getting about two hours of sleep per night), non-stop physical activity, tactical maneuvers, wilderness survival and navigation training. It’s high-risk technical training that marks the midpoint of the 73-day course conducted by Detachment 1, 334th Training Squadron at Hurlburt Field, Fla.

This training is designed to introduce students to Army life in the field.

In a sense, the airmen are training to be soldiers. Somewhere between swatting away the swarm of insects in the jungle and eating dirt in a low crawl, they must wonder if they’d enlisted in the right recruiting office.

TACPs live, train and deploy with Army units. When deployed, the TACPs live under austere field conditions and are responsible for the coordination, de-confliction, and execution of all Air Force attack aircraft. Their mission is to advise Army combat commanders on the use of Air Force air power during combat.

“ We are on the front lines, and we act as a liaison between the Air Force and the Army for close air support missions,” says Staff Sgt. James Kattner, one of the instructors. “Life with the Army is quite different than life with the Air Force, and field training helps prepare the students for the transition. All this training is to give them [students] a basic introduction to how the Army operates.”

What an introduction it is. Living out of and hauling around their 70-pound rucksacks, students learn to carry everything they need to survive on their backs. Rarely are the students seen without an M-16 in their hands or the distinctive orange Kevlar helmets, which have been painted to make them visible to hunters, strapped to their heads.

Their home for the week is a circle of shallow holes in the forest floor, which the students dig themselves.

The little downtime the students receive is divided between eating, sleeping and pulling security. The primary focus of the week is basic navigation with a map and compass and a GPS (global positioning system). Other blocks of instruction include: basic field skills, small unit tactics and field hygiene, to name a few.

“ I got right at eight hours of sleep the whole week; I was beyond exhausted,” said Airman 1st Class Marcus O’Connor, one of the students. “The toughest part was setting aside the pain and exhaustion that my body was experiencing and still accomplishing the task at hand. [The training] taught us how important it is to stay focused and keep your cool no matter what the situation. It’s all about staying alive!”

McCarthy, another student, agreed that the toughest part of the training easily proved to be the sleep deprivation.

“ It was constantly a challenge to maintain clear thought,” McCarthy said. “My body was exhausted, and my mind was spent. [I was so tired] I experienced vertigo and even hallucinated. I certainly gained more respect and understanding for what the instructors have gone through, and I achieved a [higher] level of confidence from overcoming all the obstacles.”

To successfully complete their field training, students must survive evaluations on vehicle navigation as well as day and night ground navigation.

While wearing their overloaded rucksacks, teams spend the day practicing land navigation under the scrutiny of the instructor. Fighting their way through thick, and at times, almost impassable underbrush, students trade off leading the team to different points on the map. This continues until students successfully reach all of their points and satisfy the instructors’ insatiable thirst for perfection.

“ It’s hard on the students, but that’s because it’s stuff they need to know,” Staff Sgt. Casey Fiscus says. “We want them to get to their assignment with confidence in themselves.”

The stakes are raised during the evaluation phase. Failure is not an option. Students failing any of the navigation phases are washed back to the next class. It’s for their own safety and that of those around them.

The phase begins with the students being taken to a starting point, where the clock starts ticking once they are read their coordinates. With only two and a half hours to complete the evaluation, students kneel over their laminated maps and race to plot their starting point, finishing point and route of travel.

After a quick verification by the instructor, the students secure their gear, find their azimuth and head into the forest. If successful, students find a numbered marker at their point that is verified with a radio call back to the instructor base camp. They remain in the woods fighting off the bugs, snakes and the sandman, while waiting for an instructor to pick them up.

Sending students into unfamiliar woods in separate directions at night with 70 extra pounds on their back can be a disaster waiting to happen. Everything from getting lost or suffering from dehydration, to breaking bones or encountering an over eager hunter are possibilities.

One way instructors reduce risk is by equipping students with a GPS transmitter and a radio. The GPS transmits the location and course of travel to a central computer, which allows instructors to monitor a student’s progress.

Keeping the students fatigued, off balance and uncomfortable prepares them for coping with the stresses of life in the field. They will have to make decisions under stressful conditions, and the training gives them an idea of what those stressors will be.

In near total darkness, students place the entire contents of their rucksacks onto a poncho in a specific order. Going through each required item one by one, instructors search for violations. Each violation is paid for with pushups or an equally demanding exercise.

The instructors constantly stress attention to detail. By not following procedures explicitly students can put themselves, someone else or the mission at risk.

Tech Sgt. Mike Bowman explains to a student that his failure to properly store his radio in his rucksack could allow sand to jam the antenna rendering it useless.

Bowman asks, “Can you do your job with a radio that doesn’t work?”

The student responds, “Negative sergeant!” Then the student drops down for more pushups.

The environment the students face in training may seem harsh, but it pales in comparison to the real thing, according to the instructors. Mistakes and indecision in training result in humiliation and push-ups; on the battlefield, mistakes and indecision can cost lives.

While a platoon takes cover from a barrage of enemy gunfire, it’s the TACP who must remain calm and call in a deadly accurate air strike against the enemy position.

At that time, black beret and all, the TACP truly lives his motto: “Death on Call.”

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