 The Silver Star is awarded for gallantry in action against an enemy of the United States while engaged in military operations involving conflict with an opposing foreign force. In order of precedence, the Silver Star is only preceded by the Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Service Cross. In September 11, 2001, 977 service members in the Department of Defense have been awarded the Silver Star. Seventy-five of those recipients have been airmen. More remarkably, seven service members in the entire Department of Defense have been awarded the Silver Star twice. Of those seven recipients, three have been airmen. Two of those three airmen served as combat controllers, Sean Harvelle and Ishmael Vigayas. One of those three airmen, Senior Master Sergeant Thomas T.C. Case, serves as a tactical air control party specialist, otherwise known as ATT&CKP. As ATT&CKP officer myself, I am honored to introduce T.C. as one of our selected Eagles for 2019. As previously mentioned, T.C. was awarded his first Silver Star for actions he took in the spring of 2003, as he supported Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment's efforts to seize Haditha Dam in Iraq. His second Silver Star was awarded for gallant actions he took in the summer of 2009, as he supported Alpha Company, 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment's efforts to destroy terrorist training camps in the Coast Gardez Mountain Pass in Afghanistan. T.C. represents a generation of service members who have spent the majority of their military career, if not their entire career, in a vicious cycle of combat rotations. In 22 years of service, T.C. has deployed 16 times in support of taskings from both Air Force Special Operations Command and Joint Special Operations Command. While the majority of Airmen engage our enemy from an aircraft, our TAKPs, as you will hear from T.C., engage our enemy on the ground. TAKPs serve as a critical communication link between the ground force commander and our Airmen delivering firepower from their aircraft. One of the fundamental joint qualifications of a TAKP is to serve as a Joint Terminal Attack Controller, otherwise known as a JTAC. We are qualified JTACs to serve as a member of the ground components fire support element. TAKPs, with our joint qualification as JTACs, advise, plan, synchronize and control kinetic and non-kinetic effects in the terminal environment. We are aligned with both the conventional army and special operations forces. T.C. is being honored as an Eagle because of his contributions to airpower's heritage. Surprisingly, his remarkable physical carriage, when he came face to face with our enemy on more than one occasion, does not define him or his career. T.C. is not resting on the laurels of his silver stars. Rather, his contribution to airpower's heritage is the culture he is currently shaping for the future TAKP Airmen who will follow in his footsteps. He has led a significant effort to vastly improve the equipping and training of the TAKP Enterprise. He has taken his past experiences when he was an ill-equipped, not-properly-trained young airman and shaped strategic headquarters air force-wide equipment and training programs with tactical effects at the squadron level. Before we begin, I'd like to welcome T.C.'s wife Kathy, his mom Rita, and his dad Glenn, and his children Devin, Savannah, and John, who could not be with us today. As T.C. shares the stories of his personal resiliency, when situations, both in combat and in his personal life, knocked him down, he will inspire you to become a better leader, which is the essence of this gathering of Eagles. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome me in joining, please join me in welcoming Senior Mass Sgt. Thomas Case. Soundcheck, can everybody hear me okay? Okay, so Major Fales told me I could just come up here and talk about the color of my boots, and if I did that, you all would clap anyway, but we're not going to talk about the color of my boots. Major Henfee, who I've known for many years now, also told me he's going to play one of the Rocky theme songs, Banana Hammock and Rip Away Pants. Fortunately for you guys, I will keep my pants on. So anyway, I'm going to talk about 2003 Haditha Dam raid. I know there's a handful of 75th Ranger Regiment officers in here, is that true? So I know you guys are probably tracking some of that history a little bit. So Haditha Dam is one of the greatest raids in Ranger history in modern times. There are some significant emotional events tied to that in regards to the 152 Rangers, and I think it was just two of those Air Force guys up there, like I said earlier this morning, just a speck of blue and a sea of green as an Air Force guy. So for those of you that were serving at the time, if you look back in regards to 2003, there was a lot of buildup and a lot of fanfare without getting into the politics in regards to how we got to Iraq in 2003. We forward deployed into Saudi Arabia, and we sat there, and we sat there, and we sat there for several weeks, which seemed like, you know, forever. And me kind of being an amateur military historian buff, my thought was like, wow, we're going to, special operations are going to be just like the first go for, where they're kind of sidelined outside of Skudhudding. So what was cool about it, the opening days of the Iraq war, the shock and awe, if you guys remember that, for the generation that remembers when that first kicked off. We were sitting there in Saudi Arabia, and I can remember literally watching Tomahawks fly over the top of us, what I assumed were, you know, they don't fly very high, but they're very, very fast. I remember F-18s coming into the airfield after dropping their ordnance with bullet holes in them and landing at the airfield rat from our staging area. And just like, when are we going to get to the show? I'd already done a couple of Afghan rotations early in the Afghan war, not that, not that violent for the most part. So we were chomping at the bit, we were ready to go. We sat at this airfield for about three weeks, watching everybody else go. Finally they said, and what we did out there, and for the ranger officers, I know you guys are familiar with this, and maybe some 82nd guys in the audience too, I don't know. We did a lot of rehearsals of putting on parachutes and sitting in an airplane and seeing how many people you could pack into it repeatedly. We did that every night for weeks on end, for initially for them jumping to Syop, the Saddam International Airport, to seize that. Thankfully, we did not do that. Third Armored Division took care of that, or Third Infantry Division. So what they did is they'd be like, hey, you're going to go into Western Iraq, you're going to infill, Alpha Company's going to jump in, they're going to seize the airfield, you guys will land behind them, and we will stage that H-1 airfield. Sounds like a plan. So Alpha Company jumps in the airfield, they seize the airfield, there's nothing there, there's maybe a goat herder, it looks like an airfield, we probably bombed the Smithereens back in the 90s war time frame, so there's not a lot of infrastructure there. We land on the C-17s, we do the combat descent, there's some very sick rangers on that bird, they're just spiraling down for any of the C-17 guys in here, and we do the combat land. Walk down the runway, set up our little combat or command post out there, and we just kind of wait, go to sleep that night, it was very cold, I remember that, man, my toes are cold. Give the next morning, receive the mission, that's what a good ranger does, they receive the mission, and they go and execute it, didn't have a lot of time to plan or plan against it. Initial mission was, we're going to roll out to the Syrian border, we're going to find Iraqi Vizop stations, border control checkpoints if you will, and we're going to blow them up. Me as a TACP, as a forward air controller, as a JTAC, I'm like, man, that's a JTAC's dream mission, I don't have to do a lot of work, I just kind of sit there and say, see this tower with my infrared marking thing, blow that up, easy peasy. So we're getting ready to gear up, we're getting ready to roll out that way, and in typical Ranger fashion, which I know you're well, sir, the mission changes. And it's not just to go from this point A to this point A, it's like a completely different mission set. So we're driving across the desert, and there's nothing going on, we're in gun trucks, Humvees. There's nothing going on. And I'm sitting in the back trying to keep myself awake. Couple of young guys, man of the 240s in the saws that are mounted on the gun truck, and trying to stay awake. In the TC seat in front of me is the ground force commander, I think it's General Dave Dewell now, if memory serves me correct. And he says, hey TC, what are you doing back there? And my radio's turned off, there's nothing going on, miles around us. And I'm like, oh, I'm monitoring the fires net, sir, he's like, great job, keep doing that. My radio's turned off because I didn't wanna kill my batteries. So we get this change of mission, I'll get into that here in a minute, and we go and we drive across the desert most of the night, sun comes up, we meet up with a reconnaissance element of a special mission unit. And we were told, you guys are gonna go and seize Haditha Dam. Now Haditha Dam, it makes the Hoover Dam minuscule in comparison for anybody who's ever been out there on Haditha Dam. It's not as deep as the Hoover Dam, but it's certainly a heck of a lot longer, and it's got a four lane hard top across the top of it. Built by the Soviets back in the day, provides power to pretty much all the Southern I wrote from Haditha Dam all the way through Southern Iraq. What their threat was, is they were worried that Saddam Hussein's regime was gonna boil up Haditha Dam for the entire Euphrates, Titus Euphrates Valley, and completely halt Third Infantry Division's assault on Baghdad. Not to mention the humanitarian crisis that would ensued in conjunction with that. So what they were concerned at, they were gonna rig it below, so they wanted us to go clear the dam and make sure they didn't get blowed up. So we're talking to the special mission unit, the reconnaissance element, they're like, you guys are gonna go to Haditha Dam? And they're like, bro man, you go to Haditha Dam, you guys are gonna be decisively engaged. We've been looking at a place for the last three weeks living in the desert. If you guys get decisively engaged, it's a brigade-sized plus element that is defending Haditha Dam, you got a hundred Rangers. So what I remember is Captain Dave Doe at the time, the company commander, Yama Tash's ship, and he says, well let me make a call. So we pull up to satcom radio, he's calling back to the Italian talk, back to the regiment talk, up through the chain. I remembered, I'm pretty sure it was General Franks at the time, the CentCon commander come over the net and he says, Haditha Dam is your objective, go seize it, out, right? Okay, so me and my boss at the time, one of my very dear friends, Eric Brandenburg, goes by Brandy, was with me out there from the talk tube element from Battalion. And I don't even know he was there until the next morning when the sun came up, because we picked up some other dudes. And we start planning. Now this is prior than the Joint Chiefs, the directors of using a military GPS for targeting before that directive came out, we're literally using hand garments off the shelf, commercial off the shelf, and taking intel reports from where our, from where our remaining over day location is, of trying to build the target packages for pre-assault fires, prior to getting on top of the dam. So do the most amount of damage early, come in, seize the dam, life's good, good to go. So we're able to generate some coordinates, pass some stuff up, they send a strike package in before we got there, B-52s, and we start driving that night. And it takes all night to get to the dam. What I remember is all these targets that we'd plotted on our GPSs with our civilian GPSs, with the S2 and J2 Intel mom, to tell us where these locations are. We would drive past those things, you'd see smoking hoax of F-60s, AAA, other service there, defense mechanisms, and all these things, we would drive right by them, like, man, the intel is pretty spot on, which was reassuring. But what I specifically remember, as a JTAC at the time, back then we were E-TACs, it listed terminal TAC controllers. It's JTACs, it's about 0506 timeframe. Where I remember I'm sitting in what we call the penalty box of this gun truck. And we've got eight, six, little bird helicopters escorting the package. I've got F-15s on station overhead, and I've got a GPS that the unit bought me, and a jog joint operations graphic, one to 250 map. That's about this big. I'm trying to read this thing, lat longs for those of you that understand that, with my PBS 14 monocle, NBG, a red light, bumping in the back of a Humvee over uneven terrain, trying to read a map and trying to talk F-15s on to different points of interest to secure the route ahead of us. Because the thing was, we hadn't really developed those TTPs on how to do that in regards to some of the brevity terms for the pilots in here. Any lemon foxes in here? Handful of y'all? We didn't really develop any of those brevity terms for a neutral posture, defensive posture, offensive posture, all those types of things in regards to escorting the convoy. So we're kind of flying by the seat of our pants and inventing it literally on the fly. So I kind of got smart at that point, and I'm like, this map is absolutely worthless to me. There's nothing I can do with this thing. And I would just tell all the jets in the stack. Well, it was two of them at the time, we didn't even know what a stack was back then. And it was like, hey, lead, look forward, click, trail, just keep your sensor on friendlies. And it worked great, you know? It was like, wow, I'm glad I thought of it, you know? And so what I remember specifically and the cool thing about it is you got the bettos out there, the nomads, and those people that live in the desert, if you will, they just kind of travel around, whatever it is they're doing. We would drive through these Bedouin camps on our way to Haditha Dam, and there's Iraqi armor, T-72s, T-64s, BRDMs, BTR-60s, all those Iraqi armor sitting in between these tents, cold as the day is long because they didn't want to be anywhere near their weapon systems. But that also tells me that the enemy is deliberately parking enemy hardware, targetable hardware against the civilian population as well. So I was like, but it took me about 10 years to realize that, you know, a little maturity goes a long way in regards to that stuff. But I remember vividly seeing that we drove by and we just kind of, kind of a puzzling look. So day breaks, the sun's just about coming up and we're getting close to the dam. As we approach the dam, I'm with the company commander and his plan is we're gonna go with the command post of the dam element, we're gonna go full bore, we're gonna go right into the center of the spillway on the dam. One of the platoons where companies, or well platoon or reinforced platoon, will stop short of the dam and set up a blocking position. Another element of the same size will proceed to the other end of the dam, the east side, and provide another blocking position. So we get to the dam almost immediately, starts off, I've been to Afghanistan so I know what pot shots sound like, right? So there's a couple of pop-pops here and what we assumed at the time were angry farmers. And it just, a couple of pop-pop-pop, no big deal. Couple of ranges of return fire, no big deal. It's about that moment that the crescendo opens up. And just the volume of fire being received on Haditha Dam by about every nook and cranny was absolutely incredible. And we're kind of looking at each other like, we don't even know where this is coming from initially. Brandy, I referred him earlier, my old boss, he comes up on our eternal net that we had for TACP and he says, hey man, I cannot get a cast request in because by this time the F-15s at Chekhov Station, they're being go for fuel, out of gas, mom. So I'm gonna make sure I explain it to you. So, but we got little birds and they're doing their runs. You know? And I said, Roger that, so I said, I gotta get cast up on station, close air support. So we have the X-wing antenna mounted to the truck, the Satcom antenna. And I pick up the handset, call back to the jock, requesting immediate cast, I hear nothing on the other end. I'm like, huh? So then I like, what's next, right? Trouble shooting mode, right? Check the power, radio's on. All right, check the connection, and the antenna's connected. Check the antenna. One of the X-wing radiating elements was shot off. So now seven X-wing, I got a T-wing. All right, they don't invent those, they don't make those. So, I'm like, great, what do I do? And I don't really have time to bust out my personal little Satcom antenna and start breaking it out and extending it and putting all the elements on and finding the azimuthan direction, find that satellite and talk back. So I say, hey, if you heard my request, I need you to key the hand mic twice. And I hear it from the other side, click, click. And then I knew that close air support was on the way. About this time, Arranger 2, they got a couple of superficial wounds, but the fire's still going. And what I remember from this special mission unit, guys, we had some EOD guys, explosive orders and disposal guys attached to us, so if the dam was rigged, they could un-rig it. And I'm walking around with these guys on the spillway, and we're shooting and running and gunning and doing our stops of things. And they're looking for explosives on top of the dam, and there's some elements down inside the dam clearing it. And we're standing up there, and when you hear bullets whizz by your head and they almost hit you in the head, it's a stick for anybody that's experienced it, which I'm sure there's a handful in here. Sounds like a bee bluzz by your head. That means the bullet's really, really close to your head. And we're standing around and we're like looking at the dam, looking out at the back. I got PT boats coming up our way, shooting at us from the backside with the Iraqi Coast Guard on the lake or whatever they were. And these guys, these special mission unit operators, they finally say, man, I'm getting tired of getting shot. I'm gonna get out of the way for a while. And I was like, oh man, I'm glad I didn't have to say it. I'm glad they did. I don't know if that makes sense. So one thing we hadn't cleared yet, literally, then our scope and responsibility was kind of like the control house, you know, like an inter-control point if you will in the dam. It wasn't real big structure. It wasn't real small either. About that time, about seven of my best Iraqi friends come bailing out of there and we literally just shoot them as they're coming out the door. I mean, through the course of that entire week on Hedidatham, we literally had to stack bodies like cordwood because we had killed so many of the enemy. So the first cast assets check on station is F-16s. They check in with me. I immediately push them over to Brandi because he's in the thick of it at the time. There's some waters coming at us. On the lake, there's a series of islands and they're shooting mortars at our position. And that island's about 3,000 meters or so off the shoreline. And when you look at it, you know, our responsibility as a JTAC is to talk airplanes onto the target. But when you try to talk them onto a population of islands out in the middle of the lake, it's very difficult to do, especially based off the imagery that was available to us back in 2003. It's significantly different than what we pull down in regards to detail. So he's trying to talk these F-16s onto the mortar position. He can't do it. He hands them to me. I'm trying to talk the F-16s onto this position. Can't do it. I mean, they're not even picking up the point of origin site where the rounds are coming from. You know, the puff and smoke and dirt and stuff, everything from the round come out of the mortar tube. Finally, one of the Rangers comes up with a stellar idea. He's got a javelin missile system. He's like, you guys can't hit it with a cast? Like, nope. He's like, hold my beer. You know? So he pulls out that javelin, targets the island, smacks that island right next to the mortar site. And the cast asks that the F-16s say, yep, tally target. You can see it. Javelins, well, not made for that or excellent marking rounds. Another TTP. But so he gets that threat annihilated. And basically the entire air package is showing up in support of the Hedita Dam at that point. We have so much going on and we're so overwhelmed and we're so undermanned and we're so outgunned. I'm controlling British Harriers. I remember I mentioned the boats earlier. And these boats are shooting at us in more, more harassment than anything else, keeping us down and locked down and whatnot. And I'm trying to target these boats but the lake we're on, it's a big lake. It's like a great lake, essentially. Probably not the same size, but it's got heavy swells and whatnot. So they've had a limited success in regards to strafing with 20 millimeter off the previous F-16 flight. These British Harriers come in and like, hey, I got, I have a solution. I'm a, I don't know, what was that mom, 26 year old staffs around the time, something like that? I'm not a weapon-eering guy yet. I am now, but anyway. So the British Harriers just say, we'll just put some Mark 82's airburst on them and see what happens. Mark 82 airburst is a brilliant method for sinking a boat. I've put so many holes in these things that those boats immediately saying, I think it was like seven boats told me maybe a kayak or two. Seriously, the kayaks were in the BDA report. It was amazing. That's why I don't like kayaks anymore, Kathy. But anyway, so this entire week we're sitting there trying to develop TTPs. How are we doing this? How are we doing this? How are we doing that? And the crescendo never stops. The sun goes down first night and now the enemy's probing. When I was a kid, I grew up reading Vietnam stories, thinking how cool it would be and how awesome it is and looked up to that generation. Same thing with World War II stories. And all those things. Always seeking the action and adventure and what's next in life in order to get to that point. And that's exactly what I felt like in regards to reading the old stories of the enemy probing the friendly lines at night under the cover of darkness. It also ended up with a lot of dead Iraqi soldiers probing the lines with a bunch of Rangers with lots of testosterone and NVGs. But they would take their S60s their AAA, and they would put them in direct lay mode and they would shoot them at you. Now, bad on me. You can see the tracer rounds coming at you in direct lay mode. And I would think to myself, I've got a couple seconds to get this bomb off before that tracer gets over here. But what we have to remind ourselves that there's other bullets that are in front of those tracers. You know? Lesson learned when I'm watching a tracer and then the bullets smack into the concrete barrier or the frag thing, whatever it is, whatever the S60 shoots. So we spent a significant amount of time targeting S60s, targeting enemy armor. I think the total count for the BDA for that entire week was 29 enemy T-72s killed with close air support, which I'm absolutely grateful for because basically a light infantry element against armored without air support, your chances don't bode so well. So, Brandy and I are just literally passing the mic back and forth this entire week, just pan it up, you know? At one point I had 14 aircraft stacked up over the lake from whatever elevation to whatever elevation, most of it medium threat. The backtrack a little bit, because, yes, forgive me, my memory, you know, a little bit of revisionist history in regards to me retelling old stories. My first actual real world control, I had done some gunship stuff in Afghanistan, nothing overly significant. I had never controlled fast mover F-16 CAS in a combat environment yet, but you gotta start somewhere. Why not then? So, I remember specifically, this is what I do remember. It's the small details that you tend to remember very diligently. Derby 5-4 checks in with me. And what the target is is basically an Iraqi LMTV, a big truck full of Iraqi soldiers comes barreling down the highway at us. My company commander, ground force commander says, hey, can you digitalize that truck? And I'm like, I'm already working that server, absolutely. So I'm talking to Derby 5-4. Describe the target, go through the nine line process, get through all that point, we're at the point of execution, and I just hear him open up with his guns. And I'm looking up here to put my eyes on the jet. What he did was, he broke every protocol out there, went from medium altitude to low altitude, came screaming across the lake, all freaking in the movie Firefox, and opened up with this 20 millimeter cannon. And I picked this up when I hear the sound of the cannon, and I look and I see him screaming across the lake. About the same time, I see the bullets rip literally through the friendly blocking position on the eastern edge of the dam. And mom, excuse me, but I'm thinking, holy shit, we just fried a bunch of good guys. We didn't. Now, grace of God, right? Now the rangers that those bullets ripped through, because nobody got hurt, they thought it was great. They're cheering like, yeah, America, you know, they're doing all sorts of ranger dances and all that other stuff, and my jaw's on the floor, and I'm completely shaken, because now my confidence, I'm like, do I, did I screw this up? The pilot screwed this up? Obviously the pilot screwed it up, and I said, hey, Derby 54, you can check all the stations back to wherever, I'll get the next set of fighters in. And I looked at my ground force commander, Captain Doyle at the time, I said, sir, I did not authorize him clearance. He says, nope, you did not, you're good, continue to execute. I'm like, wow, he still has confidence in me. So I still need to execute at a higher caliber. So out of those 14 aircraft stacked up on any given day, we didn't have the TTPs developed yet. Of course, the pilots are coming up with ideas too, and same things they do with pilots in regards to de-confliction, de-conflicting themselves and make sure the pilots aren't running into each other, and all that other stuff associated with aviation points. And I would look and then I would talk to Brandy on the net, and I said, hey, how about if I take care of everything on this side of the river? You take care of everything on that side of the river. That's how, you know, that was our Bino line, you know, and it only made sense, because we'd done Bino lines before, that was nothing new. But it was a huge river, and it was easy to make sure that our aircraft were separated. And what I would do was, and I had some experience, you know, doing joint air attack teams and stuff like that, but I'd never really executed, you know, if I was an airman on the conventional side. And what I would do is I would just bring a set of fighters in, Brandy would do the same thing, and we would continue to employ with him until that jet set was Winchester, out of bombs, out of ammo. We're out of gas, whichever game first, usually we're out of bombs first, send him home. And the stack would just elevate her down. The next set come through, the next set come through, the next set come through. And we were never wanting for, wanting of targets. There was plenty of targets out there. So my buddy, Mark Foster, is, he's with Charlie Company. And they come through one night when it's kind of calm. They roll through the industrial complex of Aditha, just to do like a battle damage assessment with ISON. And I'm talking to him on the radio, he's like, holy cow dude, this place looks like a nuclear bomb went off. We had absolutely, between Ranger firepower, organic and inorganic and close air sport, the entire air was just flattened. We're doing a lot of laser guided bombs back then too. And I had the softland, the Special Operations Forces laser marker for terminal guidance and guided bombs in. We had dropped so much ordinance in this one area that the dust and haze and smoke was so, so thick that our lasers were useless. The seekers could not pick up the laser spot. So we went back to JTAC 101. Here's your target, go find it, go execute. My first, another, there's a lot of first ever's, okay, for a lot of us out there. And one of my first ever's was a B1 shows on with a belly full of JDAMs, GPS guided bombs. And I look at the commander's like, I've never dropped the JDAM before, much less from a B1 bomber, you know? Cause right now we're taking the strategic role and put it into a tactical role for the B1 bomber. Didn't have the sniper pod yet, just a crew and the navigator, you know? And me and a guy named Sergeant Lund, good friend of mine, he was the FSNCO for the company. Him and I start using our garments again illegally and generating targets to hit these choke points where the enemy would probe at night. And we pull up all these grid coordinates and I relay them up to the bomber, healer, you know, the crew relays them back to me. And I say, hey, excuse me, I'm back stitching. Hey, just let me know when you're in and then give me a 30 seconds. He's like, okay, I'll do you better, okay, okay. Never done this before. So the B1 says, hey, we're in from the IP or IPN bomb. And I forget that a bomber takes the entire state of Texas in order to turn around. So it takes a very long time. And I look at the company commander, he's like, hey, sir, I've never done this before. If you want to just tell the dudes, get their heads down because I've never really done this before. I think target locations are far enough away. I've just never actually employed a J-Dem. He's like, okay. So he's like, hey, everybody get your heads down and get across the radio and everybody gets your heads down. This guy says weapons away and he releases these bombs from relatively far away because they're guided to the point outside of inertia and we just start watching. And he's just like, boom, boom. No pattern, I mean, there's a pattern to it, but every coordinate we passed up, these J-Dem, these 500 pound bombs are going to write to exactly where we talked about. You know, boom, boom. And there was some language on the dam, of course, because this is a significant emotional event and people are screaming, take that, you, efforts, you know, and all that other kind of stuff associated with that. And again, it was another first ever. As these bombs started to walk closer and closer to the town of Haditha, you know, you got the industrial complex, you got the military complex, you got the dam and then where people live in this town. You're watching these bombs slowly start screaming towards the civilian population, if you will. So we called knock it off to make sure we didn't do that because what I didn't know is I'd never dropped the J-Dem before. I didn't know how far they were gonna keep going. Were my grid coordinates correct? I don't know. We didn't have readbacks back then on the Nylon for you pilot types. You know what I mean? It's like, hey, here's the target information, go execute. It was amazing to watch these things go off and hit exactly where you told them to hit without having to freaking physically see it with your eyes, which is another TTP development because we're figuring out on the fly out there in 2003. So this goes on for a while. Every night they're probing. That night with the J-Dems, they did not probe. Probably a good call on their part. And there's a combat controller up on the dam with me and he was there doing HLZ support, helicopter landing zone support and all that other stuff. The target environment was so rich that I looked at him and I said, Luke, are you J-TAC qualified? He's like, I am. I'm like, do you mind controlling for a while? He's like, I would thought you'd never ask, you know? Cause he was tired of blowing up telephone poles for the resupply birds to come in. So this went on for a total of about a week and what we were doing had never been, at least to my knowledge, had never been done before for a lot of things we were doing, you know? Developing things on the fly. But what I will tell you is that it's easy for me to sit up there and say, I'd be an advocate for air power because I'm in the air force, but holy cow, I'm an absolute advocate for air power, especially in support of the joint force, you know, because there's no doubt in my mind without that air power, I may or may not be standing up here or I may be telling you a different version of the story, you know? So, you know, it's crazy to think about how this kid from Socorro ends up, 17th in Socorro, New Mexico, it's a big place, I'm sure you've heard of it, ends up 7,500 miles away, developing TTPs, support of the mission in Haditha, Nama, Iraq. You know, and the essence of it all is not a single ranger was killed up there because of air power, because of responsiveness, not because of what Tom Case did, I was just a very small piece of the puzzle where there's that joint organization there. Artillery, I've been to Afghanistan, I've seen them shoot the rockets at us, you know, I've seen them shoot waters at us. What I learned in Iraq is that I'm no longer scared of mortars, but I'm absolutely terrified of enemy artillery. You know, there's a big difference between 152 millimeter round and a 60 millimeter round, you know, and the sound is a completely different too. When we got to the dam, there's like a lot of places in the Middle East and Central Asia, there's a lot of stray dogs, a lot of emaciated dogs. But for those of you who haven't seen it yet and to prepare yourself for it, I know there's some people in the United States that have. When we left the dam, those dogs were no longer skinny. There's plenty for them to eat because of air power. You know, graphic, but it's reality. Those 152, I think we're correct me if I'm wrong, sir, enemy artillery DS-152s or something along those lines. They're shooting at us from 15 kilometers away. And the rounds, I think we got three or 600 rounds over a six hour period dropped on top of us on the dam. There's no really nowhere to go. The rounds hit window shatter because it's a huge industrial complex. The rounds hit window shatter, you know? Rounds hit, Willie Pete round, a marking round. You know, we're expecting seaburn environment, chemical, biological, new, you know, whatever would be the case. We've got our gas mask on. And you watch these marking rounds hit because I don't know what chemical rounds look like. You watch these marking rounds hit and everybody's like, ooh, did I put my gas mask on? Oh, the dog just ran through it. We're good. Watch the dog for a minute. Okay, we're good. You know? It is excessively hard to fight in a gas mask, much less trying to control in a gas mask. So we didn't wear them. So for all that six hour period or whatever it was, of all these artillery rounds falling on us, you're literally just sitting in the ball just, and in between rounds, we're up, we're looking, we're looking for the forward observer, the enemy forward observer, where is he? What is he seeing? How do I find this guy? We didn't have the ISR soaks. We didn't have the RPA capabilities back then, the other day. Everybody's fighting for that one MQ one, you know? And we're looking. We're losing our Mark-1 eyeball and binoculars. And we would end up finding these guys, these FOs. We would find them on, okay, gotcha, sir. He's my timekeeper. And we would find them and we'd drop a bomb. And sometimes those bombs would be in the corner of an apartment complex because this idiot just made a valid target at the time, based on those ROEs, you know? So, wow, that took up a lot of time. I didn't realize how long I was talking. But, so that right then itself, you know, we could not find these 152s to finish this story out. And we'd send jets back. We're like, hey, go find this. You know, the battalion FSNCO, Omo, he would run out of cover, look at the rounds impact and say, it's somewhere that way. And then he'd run back because there's more coming. You know? And because he went out there, and he ended up an army guy with a superstar for that battle, he'd like, it's somewhere that way. Myself or Brandi knew I need to send jets that way. And they finally, another reconnaissance element from the Ranger Regiment, was out there running around in the west side of the desert. They say, hey, we found what they're fighting at because they looked at our jets. Like, wow, those are leaving Adita Dam. And they correlated all this stuff to where the 152s were firing out of us from. So, I said, Leona, do you see something really cool? And they're like, yeah. And I was like, shoot a Heimars at it. So we were able to shoot a Heimars, a big missile thing, or big, it was the ATAC a missile with the cluster munition in it. And I just like wiped out any bit of artillery out there that would shoot at us. So, what I'm gonna do now, when as I tell this story, this is such, you know, I've got a thousand other stories based off 16 deployments, you know? And really, the essence of this is, in regards to the advocacy of joint air power, coalition air power, because I talked about the British Harriers coming up with tangible solutions to a tactical problem. You know, I talked about JDEMs, never dropped before. I have utmost confidence in those things, as long as my grid quarters are correct. Right? You know, I talked about the survivability of the Ranger element out there on the dam because of air power. And because they're highly trained, I get it, sir. You know, they're survivable in their own right. And the fact that we walked out of there with minimal wounds, the worst wound we got was a guy, one of the mortarmen up there, had his mortar set a Ranger mortar guy, and an artillery around from the 152s smacked his position. He survived. He took shrapnel through his temporal and he's blind with epilepsy for the rest of his life. But he's alive. I'm sure his mother appreciates that because of air power. So again, that's just a small snippet of the Heditha Dam objective. I know the Rangers hail it as a very significant emotional event, and obviously it was. And I also know it's very historic to the Ranger mission overall as well. So with that being said, what I'd like to do, just like the last segment here, I will open up to any questions you guys and gals have, and I'll try to answer them. If I don't have an answer, I'll talk about the color of my boots. You know? But if you guys have anything. Yeah, if there's any questions from the audience, if you could just proceed to the microphones on either side, we'll pause for just a couple of seconds here to see the people start moving to the microphones for a senior master of the case. My man. There we go. Good morning, sir. Thank you for your time here this morning. Thanks for having me. We've been asked at the course here at ACSC to consider the use of air power in near and pure future conflicts. Excuse me, I'm nervous. You're nervous? Look at me. I'm in my rip-away pants. How do you see the battlefield airmen providing effects in this type of situation? Excellent question. So my current squadron, 25th Air Support Operation Squadron in Hawaii, we are probably the only TACP unit. And now granted, my squadron, I'm the squadron superintendent there, we have 27 to 28 AFSCs. So different jobs, mom. So I've got my contingent of Special Warfare TACP. I've got my contingent of Special Warfare Mission support, which is cyber RF ops support in regards to our own ASOC, Air Support Operations Center and JADGIC and all those things. So I'm glad you asked that question because I have a little bit of a unique perspective being in PACAF, being in the PACOM AOR. Everything we do and everything my squadron is doing right now, unofficially, is multi-domain operations. Agile Combat Employment. So think about our threats in regards to our region of PACOM. Think about World War II and the island hopping campaigns. So when we talk about Agile Combat Employment without getting into the weeds and going towards the high side, we're talking about future of island hopping campaigns. But so what the Air Force or what DOD doctors always spit is centralized control, decentralized execution. Well, with the invention of ISR and MQ9s, MQ1s, it's kind of one of the way because every general in the battlefield from 7,000 miles away wants to make the call on one bomb in the bad guy. So let's just talk about strexel operations, stuff like that. So I've met a handful of cadets this week. And the handful of those guys that want to be pilots have said, I want to fly the A10. I asked them, why do you want to fly the A10? Like, because it's cool. Well, yeah. Like, all right, it's cool. But when we think about, I think you said near peer and peer-to-peer, when we think about that, we also have to think about what's going to make our airmen survive. What's going to make him deliver joint air power and come back to do another run or come back home and not to spend eight years away from mama? You know what I mean? So when you look at that and you think about the future, especially our future leaders in ROTC and all those other things, the A10 is not also, and I'm not buying for any type of platform because I think it was, I don't remember it was, he was like, oh, he was used to sitting up here. It's like, what is the best airplane for the mission? So when I cadet says, I want to fly the A10, well, we'll always probably be shooting and blowing up terrorists. But what about the five-year fight? What about the 10-year fight? How do we employ against our adversary that's near peer or peer-to-peer? With that said, I'm probably completely screwing up your question. That's OK. I'll just act like I answered it. When we talk about that, under the re-violation of the Squadron Initiative, under General Golfin and Chief Staff of the Air Force, what do we have available to us that is future technology, current technology, old technology, commercial off the shelf, and how do we tie those technologies together to be more lethal and survivable in that future domain? We, America, we have a lot of friends, but we don't. Just keep that in perspective. So when you ROTC kids are asking for to go fly the A10, that's great. But for the wars you're going to be fighting, because with any luck, me and the Colonel will be sitting on the back porch drinking bit jolips. When you guys are defending this nation, you guys have made the call to be decisive in regards to that decentralized execution, have the operability to do so through the technologies available and those future ones. The JSF, the Joint Strike Fighter, the F-22, those things are absolutely critical to the defense based off the near-peer and the peer-to-peer stuff right now, OK? Our legacy aircraft, our third and fourth-gen aircraft, they're amazing at what they do, but that's why we build the strike package in order to defeat those types of threats, OK? The problem with TACP, we've been stuck in third generation for a long time. I'm glad you asked that because that question is so near and dear to me that when I leave this current squadron in November when I PCS, if I can get my TACP and that Special War for Mission support team to be a gen 4.2, then I've succeeded in them on the path to be a fifth-gen capability from the ground aspect, because right now we're not. Does that answer your question to eat you at all? Thumbs up? My eyes aren't so good. Better than the old guys out here, but anything else? I think we have one more in the back from the young man. Oh, yeah. Is there like, did wind up the bombs or the rounds go off? Did they have any impact on you? Oh, yeah, even to this day, little brother. I'll tell you what. What I will tell you, it looks like a scene out of a movie. What I will tell you, and I am not advocating for you to watch this movie at your age. Wait a few years, OK? There is not a PG or PG-13 version. Literally standing on top of Heditha Dam when I referenced earlier, we would stand there, and me and my company commander, and an RPG literally bounced off the road right between us, just like a scene out of those movies. And I watch this saying, bounce. And I'm like, we just kind of looked at each other. We giggled. We went back. Here's the impact, OK? Here's the impact, brother. Me and the guy I referenced earlier, Sergeant Lund, we sat on top of this dam overlooking the river. And there are these orchards with palm trees and whatnot. And the area was absolutely beautiful. And the fact that you're sitting on top of something and you're delivering violence, it's what you're doing on your nation's behalf. You're delivering violence. The fact that you have an opportunity to take in the serene beauty of it as well, it's kind of strange, I would think. Well, it is. Well, I'm kind of strange. But the impact is there's still beauty in the destruction around you. Does that make sense? He's fine with the microphone. Did I answer your question? Or are you going to talk about blood and guts? Yeah, it is a beautiful area. I'm sure it still is. The funny thing is, the close out of the Hedithi Dam story, when the ISIS-ISIL, whatever we're going to call them, campaign started, I literally sat in a jock somewhere back on the mainland and watched ISIS seize the dam from the Iraqi army as well. And that was a little disheartening. But then I got to watch the Kurds take it back. Anything else? Hey, I'll probably say this again, but I'm thankful I'm the youngest one here. I'm just kidding. You know, it's humbling to be up here, to think that this TACP operator went out and we talked about earlier, put his boots on, went out and executed the mission. I'm standing up here talking to y'all, you know what I mean? And I literally am walking among giants down here, who I think are more incredible than I am. So thank you guys and gals. That's all I got, ma'am. Thank you so much.