Wars taking air commandos into uncharted territory.

Air Force Commandos Are Adapting To The emerging difficulties of fighting counterinsurgency wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the U.S. global war on terrorism, said Lt. Gen. Michael W. Wooley.

Wooley, who heads the Air Force Special Operations Command, noted that AFSOC troops increasingly are soaring into uncharted territory.

"Our force is maturing to the point where we can be assigned a geographic area in Iraq, for example, and be held responsible for that piece of ground," Wooley said in an interview.

During the invasion of Iraq, special operations forces were given responsibility for taking the western part of the country, he said. AFSOC's role, Wooley said, was to provide air mobility to those forces and to conventional units. More recently, Air Force special operators provided close air support for Marines in the battle for Fallujah, he said.

AFSOC--headquartered at Hurlburt Field, near Fort Walton Beach, Fla.--is the Air Force component of the U.S. Special Operations Command. It includes 20,000 active-duty, reserve, Air National Guard and civilian personnel.

Air Force special operators, who call themselves "air commandos," are highly trained and rapidly deployable. The command's special tactics squadrons provide combat control, combat weather and pararescue personnel to support both special operations and conventional forces. The command also conducts airborne radio and television broadcasts for psychological operations and supplies combat aviation advisors to the military forces of other governments.

In 2003, AFSOC took over responsibility for Air Force combat search and rescue operations (CSAR). Nearly 7,000 airmen in these units were transferred from the Air Force's Air Combat Command to AFSOC.

The merger with AFSOC has been "a great success story," Wooley said.

Sometimes, rescues take place far from the battlefield, Wooley said. "Back in July, for example, the Air Force rescue coordination center at Langley [Air Force Base, Va.] got a call about a sailor aboard a Chinese merchant ship in the Caribbean," he recalled. "The sailor had gotten caught in a winch, and his lungs had collapsed."

Units from the 347 Rescue Wing at Moody Air Force Base, Ga., and 920th Rescue Wing at Patrick Air Force Base, Fla., responded to the call. The sailor was flown to medical care in Puerto Rico. "A judge advocate from Moody who spoke Mandarin coordinated the whole thing," Wooley said.

CSAR units are "evolving and modernizing even as we speak," Wooley said. Soon, they will be getting new helicopters. The Air Force is planning to buy 132 new helicopters, dubbed "personnel recovery vehicles," to replace 104 aging HH-60G Pave Hawks.

The Pave Hawks are flown by Air Force special operators, the Air Education and Training Command, Air Force Reserve, Air National Guard and Pacific Air Forces. The Air Force plans to award the contract, worth possibly as much as $9 billion, in the fall. AFSOC currently is equipped with 160 specially designed aircraft, such as the C-130 Hercules transport and its derivatives, including the AC-130H/U gunship, EC-130E/J Commando Solo psychological operations aircraft, HC-130P/N combat search and rescue aircraft and MC-130 E/H Combat Talon I/II special operations transport. Air commandos also fly MH-53J/M Pave Low helicopters, in addition to the Pave Hawks.

These aircraft "are getting pretty tired," Wooley said. "There's no doubt about that. We're working them pretty hard."

So far, however, the aircraft are holding up Fairly well, he said. "There are no real show-stoppers," he said. "We take a hard look at them during the inspection cycles."

The command is acquiring 14 C-130s from other Air Force units that will be reconfigured for special operations missions. Ten of them will become Talon IIs, which are used primarily to insert, extract and re-supply special operations forces in hostile or denied territory. They feature terrain-following and terrain-avoidance radars capable of operating as low as 250 feet in adverse weather conditions. They can take off and land on short, unimproved runways, and refuel in flight, giving them an unlimited range.

The other four will be AC- 130U gunships, which use the call sign, "Spooky." The U models are the third generation of C-130 gunships. Armed with 105 mm and 40 mm cannons, and 25 mm guns, they provide close air support, air interdiction and force protection during convoys and ground combat, including urban operations.

AFSOC also is moving ahead with plans to acquire the CV-22 Osprey tilt rotor aircraft, Wooley said. The CV-22 is the Air Force version of the V-22, which is designed to take off and land like a helicopter and fly like a fixed-wing platform. "The CV-22 is a wonderful aircraft that offers increased capability," he said.

Since the V-22 first flew in 1989, prototypes have crashed four times, killing 30 crewmembers and passengers. But the problems that caused those crashes have been corrected, according to the V-22 program office. Testing has continued, and the program office plans to complete operational evaluation this summer and seek a full-rate production decision from the Defense Department in the Fall.

Wooley told National Defense that he is "very confident" of the V-22. A couple of months ago, I went down to [Marine Corps Air Station] New River, in North Carolina, [where the aircraft is being evaluated], and flew the MV-22 [the Marine variant]," he said.

AFSOC plans to buy three CV-22s this year. Ultimately, it intends to acquire 50 of them.

A key word now among air commandos, Wooley said is "interoperability." The command, like other special operations forces, now operates frequently with conventional troops, Wooley said. "Gone are the days when special operations forces go off on their own, in isolation," he said.

For example, Wooley noted, air commandos played a major role in the airdrop of 1,000 paratroopers from the Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade into northern Iraq during the early part of the war.

To make it happen, AFSOC covertly inserted a combat weatherman into the area several days before the operation. "He was there working the weather aspects for the drop," Wooley said. "That area is notorious for sandstorms that could have could have adversely affected visibility."

A sandstorm at the wrong time could have jeopardized the entire mission, Wooley said. "Everybody knew it was dicey," he said. "It was only a couple of hours before the drop that the combat weatherman was able to convince the commander of the operation that the weather would be sufficient. The weather cleared up half an hour before drop time."

Combat weathermen are forecasters who work in forward ground-combat areas. They, gather and interpret weather data while deployed primarily with Army special operations forces. The data is used to generate accurate forecasts for specific mission travel routes and target areas. Combat weathermen are recruited from the Air Force's traditional weather career field, and then subjected to airborne, survival and special-tactics training.

The other members of AFSOC special tactics teams--pararescuemen and combat controllers--also are trained in parachuting, survival and special tactics. Pararescuemen, or PJs for short, are specialized combat search and rescue personnel. They are the only members of U.S. military services specifically trained and equipped to conduct both conventional and unconventional rescue operations.

PJs can deploy by land, sea or air behind enemy lines to identify and extract U.S. or friendly combatants. If a combatant is injured, they are trained to administer first aid.

Combat controllers set up navigational air equipment to guide aircraft for landing on makeshift runways without the benefit of a tower or large communications system. They, are the first to deploy into restricted environments by air, land or sea to establish assault zones, control air attacks against enemy targets, provide vital command and control, gather intelligence, and use demolitions to clear obstructions from potential runways and landing zones.

Their unique missions entitle members of the three specialties to wear berets of differing colors--gray for combat weathermen, maroon for PJs and scarlet for combat controllers.

The special tactics teams are not to be confused with tactical air-control party, airmen. TACP members--part of the Air Force's Air Combat Command--are embedded with Army ground combat forces, mainly special-operations troops. Their primary mission is to direct combat air strikes against enemy, targets. They receive Ranger, airborne and dive training. They also are schooled in radio maintenance and operation. They wear black berets.

In recent years, all four specialties have been dubbed "battlefield airmen," Wooley explained. "That's a new term for something that's been around for a long time," he said.

To do their jobs, battlefield airmen are required to take as much as 160 pounds of equipment--including mapping, plotting, designation and communications equipment--into the field with them. To ease that burden, the Air Force has begun deploying a new battlefield air-operations kit that is 50 percent lighter and reduces the time needed to link sensors to shooter by 40 percent.

"At the end of the day, however, it's the people--not the equipment--that will see us through this global war on terror," Wooley said. "When 9/11 hit us, we were undermanned in all of those [battlefield] skill areas.... We started behind the curve."

The Air Force is working to bring those specialties up to strength, Wooley said. He praised the service's Air Education and Training Command for its efforts to help train additional special operators. Many airmen who want to become special operators have trouble completing the tough training courses.

The AETC has not relaxed standards for special operators, but it "has hired psychologists and coaches to mentor young folks, and help them succeed, not fail," Wooley said.

"We've done a similar thing here at AFSOC," he said. "We are capitalizing on AETC's good work. We are posturing for a successful scenario. We're no longer letting our applicants just sink or swim."

As a result of such efforts, Wooley said that he is "very confident" that, within about two years, the battlefield air specialties will be up to near 100 percent strength.