Calling the Shots : Marine Aviators Temporarily Grounded to Learn New Role Pinpointing Enemy Targets

Marine Corps Capt. Scott Gowell watched enviously as an F/A-18 fighter pilot made his run, dropping a 500-pound bomb that lifted the desert floor and created a huge cloud that could be seen for miles across the vast wasteland.

He had an excellent view from his perch atop a rocky hill in the middle of the bombing range at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in San Bernardino County.

Gowell, an F/A-18 pilot from El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, and other Marine aviators from around the country were about to begin a new job that would take them away from their first love: flying jets.

After training, he and the others will spend the next year attached to an infantry unit at Camp Pendleton as forward air controllers--Marine aviators who travel with ground forces to help pinpoint enemy targets.

“Dragon Zero One, there’s smoke, target 200 northwest,” Gowell said into a radio as he scanned the sky to find the fighter plane.

This is the world of the forward air controller.

It can be a deadly and tragic business. One wrong call and bombs, rockets or missiles can rain down on friendly troops, as happened during the Persian Gulf War, where “friendly fire” killed 35 American servicemen. “Friendly fire” accounted for one in every four killed during the war.

The war dead include seven Marines who were killed by an allied pilot who apparently mistook their light-armored car for an Iraqi vehicle during a night skirmish in Kuwait, destroying it with a Maverick missile.

In the final days of the war, two U.S. A-10 fighters mistakenly fired missiles at two British armored vehicles, killing nine soldiers and wounding 11 others. It was one of the worst “friendly fire” incidents during the Gulf War.

Lt. Col. Sid Mead, an instructor from San Diego, said Marine aviators are used as forward air controllers because they have the knowledge needed to guide planes to enemy targets that are near friendly forces. They understand pilots and their airplanes, he said.

The forward air controller’s expertise is needed “when the bombs start falling close to your own troops,” Mead said. “It’s a lot of responsibility. When the bombs come off the aircraft, he is responsible for where they land. He gets paid to make sure they land over there and not here.”

Last week, a reporter was invited to Twentynine Palms to watch the new forward air controllers in action during a daylong training exercise with live bombs.

It took 70 minutes in a military truck traversing washed-out roads to reach Observation Point X-ray, a 2,600-foot-high hill surrounded by desert and brown jagged mountains. OP X-ray was dotted with radio antennas and ringed with mortars. Five miles to the northeast and barely visible was a battery of 105-millimeter howitzers that occasionally sent a live 55-pound shell to a nearby target.

Marine, Navy and Air Force pilots from bases in California and Arizona arrived at the desert bombing range to assist in the training exercise. They flew F/A-18s, A-4s, A-10s and the AH-1T Cobra helicopter. A C-130 circled high above the desert, refueling the planes between bombing runs.

The forward air controllers guided one plane after another to the target zone for the pinpoint bombing. Helicopters fired their rockets at make-believe enemy targets.

Using maps, binoculars and lasers, the forward air controllers radioed targets to the pilots. Smoke and illuminating mortar shells were used to mark reference points for the pilots.

How do aviators feel about their new assignments as controllers?

Mead said they do not look forward to the yearlong ground assignment because they will not be flying. But, he added, they will realize the benefits later. The Marines train about 150 aviators a year to become forward air controllers.

“Some of them have a (problem) because they are leaving the cockpit for a while,” Mead said. “We have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars teaching them how to fly airplanes, and that is where they want to be.”

But he said that putting aviators on the ground for a while is good for them. It builds rapport between the fliers and ground troops, also known as grunts, he said.

“Every one of these kids, when they go back to flying after their tour of duty here, will be a better Marine Corps officer.”

Most of the aviators will spend a year as forward air controllers and then return to flying. Most of them said they felt that it was better to be with a ground unit than at a desk.

“I think most of us would rather be flying, but this will give us a better understanding on what goes on down here,” said Gowell, who will leave El Toro for Camp Pendleton this summer. “I won’t be flying, but I’ll still be working with aviators.”

The two dozen aviators in the three-week training program came from Marine Corps air stations in El Toro and Tustin as well as from Yuma, Ariz., and Cherry Point, N.C. They will all be assigned to ground units at Camp Pendleton and Camp Lejeune, N.C.

“This is part of our professional development, getting out of the cockpit for a while,” said Russell Sanborn, 28, a Harrier pilot stationed at the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma. “I like it. It is better than selling shoes.

Sanborn’s AV-8B Harrier was shot down over southern Kuwait on Feb. 9, 1991, and he was captured and held prisoner in Baghdad for 26 days. He was beaten, tortured and kept in an eight-foot-square cell, he said, adding that his release came several days after the cease-fire.

“The problem with pilots is, we get tunnel vision. We think being a pilot and being in the cockpit is what the Marine Corps is all about,” he said. “We forget that we are only one-third of the people in the corps. The other 67% are on the ground.”

He said that for every lance corporal or private first class with a rifle, it takes nine other Marines to support him.

“If that guy on the ground were not standing there occupying that piece of territory, then there is no reason for me. My only job is to help him if he is having trouble taking or occupying a piece of land,” Sanborn said.