Shaw AFB Pilots Want a Better Way to Fly Between Land-Based and Offshore Training Ranges

“Wild Weasel” F-16 pilots of the 20th Fighter Wing who specialize in the suppression of enemy air defenses or SEAD mission, have launched an effort to improve the realism of the training they do from their home station, Shaw AFB located a few miles west of Sumter, South Carolina.

The project is known SCEWR – the South Carolina Electronic Warfare initiative. An idea born at Shaw, it’s now a collaboration between the Wild Weasel squadrons, the South Carolina Air National Guard, Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort in Beaufort, SCSC
and the FAA’s Jacksonville Air Route Traffic Control Center in Jacksonville, Florida.

According to 20th Operations Group commander, Col. Kevin Lord, who oversees the operations of the 20th FW’s approximately 79 F-16C/DMs, the Wing’s pilots have been using the same static airspace corridors to fly between training areas off the Atlantic coast and inland training ranges in southeast Georgia, eastern North Carolina and south-central South Carolina for roughly 20 years.

SCEWR is aimed at optimizing paths through the local airspace Shaw’s F-16 pilots share with their Marine and Air Guard counterparts as well as civilian and commercial aviation traffic.

In recent years, Lord and others in the 20th Operations Group “looked around and realized nothing has changed with the physical way that our airspace is laid out.” He says they asked, “How do we connect those over-water warning areas where we do full-spectrum training scenarios with some kind of airspace that is protected to get us to those [inland] ranges?”

In other words, how could Shaw’s Wild Weasels train in ranges off the coast – where they can encounter sophisticated air defense signal emitters mimicking those China or Russia use, fly at supersonic speed, maneuver dynamically and face “bad guys” in contract adversary aircraft – then fly as directly and quickly as possible to inland training ranges to practice against land-based air defense emitters in one fluid mission?

Military Training Routes

In late October, 20th FW pilots and staff including Shaw’s air traffic control personnel met with members of Jacksonville Center for the first time ever in person to talk about SCEWR. The FAA personnel toured the base and the two groups began discussing how new airspace opportunities might be created.

There are a number of airspace constructs commonly used by military aircraft to conduct training, missions and flight testing in America’s national airspace or NAS. Many overlap in one way or another with airspace used by civilian aircraft, airliners, package delivery aircraft, MEDEVAC aircraft and increasingly, drones.

MTRs or Military Training Routes are an example. Jointly developed by the Department of Defense and the FAA, MTRs are airspace corridors defined by geographical coordinates below 10,000 feet. Often 10 miles wide, they allow military aircraft to operate at speeds above 250 knots (287.5 mph) to carry out low-altitude activities. Civilian and commercial aircraft are limited to 250 knots below 10,000 feet in the NAS.

But private and commercial pilots aren’t prohibited from transiting MTRs. Military air bases local to the MTRs manage them, issuing notices outlining when they’ll be in use by military aircraft. It’s up to all involved, civilian, commercial and military to avoid each other.

The increasing presence of commercial and civilian traffic in the static airspace corridors 20th FW pilots have used for two decades and the lack of flexibility available to change or adjust those corridors has imposed limits on the realism of the training Wild Weasel aircrews can do in their local area.

The SEAD mission, the airborne electronic attack component of electronic warfare, is critical to the U.S. military’s ability to carry out offensive and defensive operations in contested areas. Hence, the ability to conduct realistic training in the local area for Shaw’s 55th, 77th and 79th Fighter Squadrons – the sole combat-ready, deployable active-duty F-16 wing located in the United States – is vital.

Lord notes that the capabilities and systems aboard the Wing’s F-16s are much different today than they were 20 years ago. “With our GPS’ and our tactical displays we can be within a tenth of a mile of whatever the boundary is. And if they change that boundary we can very easily change the systems in our airplanes to adhere to that new boundary.”

Dynamic Airspace

Col. Lord describes the airspace local to Shaw AFB as the most crowded the Wing’s pilots contend with worldwide.

“I’ve flown the F-16 in airspace all over the world and there’s more traffic here at home than anywhere else. When we sat down with [Jacksonville Center] we started monitoring traffic flows and identifying the times when most general aviation and commercial aviation don’t fly – at night or above 18,000 feet.”

Lord says traffic on most of the airline/civilian routes diminishes considerably around 9:00 pm local. Understanding that local flow of air traffic opened up the possibility of a “temporary airspace reservation where we can say from 10 pm local to midnight local, between these points, there is this corridor from 18,000 to 24,000 feet that there will be military training in.”

The idea is to make “dynamic airspace” available in coordination with the FAA to adjust the existing airspace corridors 20th FW pilots fly through or create new corridors with temporary reserved airspace to enhance training.

“Our initial vision with the FAA is limiting that to nighttime [operations]. We go to combat at night,” Lord explains. “Our high-end training is at night. We wouldn’t be opposed to expanding it to daylight but right now we’re focused only on the night.”

Opening up new airspace corridors could also enhance training by allowing the land-based emitters that the Wild Weasel pilots train with to be moved geographically or mixed up.

“We have training emitters completely sufficient for the F-16 and the training we’re doing except that they’re located along low-level routes that have been there for two or three decades. For the training scenarios we need to work today, they no longer make sense. We need them more along the coast and that’s part of the idea of connecting the coast to our land ranges.”

Emitters that can “stimulate” the electronic warfare sensors aboard the Wing’s F-16s whether 30 year old legacy systems or modern day emitters that mimic “a double-digit” surface-to-air missile system provide different challenges for Wild Weasel pilots to react to.

Connecting the over-water and inland training ranges might also make it easier for Shaw’s pilots to benefit from training against contract adversary aircraft, enhancing training for new aircrew and saving wear and tear on the Wing’s fighters.

“The idea is if we can build this connected airspace and these fuller spectrum scenarios, that would be enhanced by having professional Red Air to give us a more realistic representation of the threat,” Lord says. “It would also preserve sorties for my young Blue Force wingman where he can do Blue tactics instead of trying to pretend he’s an adversary.”

Lord hopes that over the next 12 months his pilots and controllers as well as FAA personnel at Jacksonville Center can demonstrate the capability to adjust or construct temporary airspace.

He understands that it will take a series of “incremental steps” but notes that the Wing is already reaping the benefits of the coordination with FAA.

Shaw AFB personal and Jacksonville Center representatives will meet again in the next several weeks. If the SCEWR initiative comes to fruition, Lord expects that it could be replicated in other areas along the east coast to improve Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps aviation training opportunities and the flow of traffic the FAA controls.

“If we start flying in these airspaces at night, that opens them up during the day. It’s kind of this win-win for everyone.”