...destruction of the platoon of UH-60s and two Kiowas--40 crew and passengers dead or wounded and $20 million-plus in equipment destroyed during the last 72 hours. The worst part of it is, we shot them down accidentally with our own indirect fires.

Sound like a freak occurrence? Not at Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC), Fort Polk, Louisiana, rotations. The typical aviation fratricide at the JRTC takes one of two forms: over-flight of a unit (FA, mortar) while it is firing and flying through the sheaf of an indirect mission as it is being delivered on a target.

A typical over-flight incident involves assault and utility aircraft conducting resupply missions inside the airhead forward operating base (FOB). These aircraft operate without formal constraints (routes/corridors), even though they fly to and from the same four locations all week; they are lulled into a sense of security because the firing units are quiet most of the time. When the artillery does fire, their tactical operations centers (TOCs) validate that they are clear of the impact point, but the TOCs never think to check the origin points. Eventually, the pilots' luck runs out.

In a typical terminal effects incident, a ground company commander or fire support officer (FSO) clears a fire mission for ground elements and forgets the Kiowa Warrior orbiting overhead or does not clear the Kiowa Warrior to a realistic minimum distance from the indirect fire sheaf. The high volume of fire delivered in small areas at the JRTC coupled with the use of variable time (VT) as the preferred fuze lead to a high probability that a helicopter inside the sheaf footprint will be damaged or lost.

The cause of these incidents is that 90 percent of the BCTs don't plan for Army airspace command and control ([A.sup.2][C.sup.2]) inside their areas of responsibility (AORs)--they just take the plan division gives them. They don't plan standard-use Army aviation flight routes (SAAFRs) or air-corridors to deconflict air and ground operations in intensiveuse areas for aircraft conducting repetitive resupply missions or transiting to and from combat operations in their AORs. They don't plan restricted operating zones (ROZs), restricted operating areas (ROAs) or informal equivalents to keep aircraft outside the surface danger area around firing units. Finally, they don't establish fire support coordinating measures (FSCMs), airspace control measures (ACMs) or clearance-of-fires tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) for the Kiowa Warriors in support of the close fight in their AORs.

The average brigade S3 air literally takes the division [A.sup.2][C.sup.2] annex and publishes it as his own with no additions or refinements for the...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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