Hellfire

THE HUNTER

At the end of 2001, Tommo fired out a questionnaire to all pilots in 9 Regiment: who didn’t want to do the Apache course and why? Surprisingly, not everybody was keen. I guess some thought, why do I want to go and learn all this new stuff, when I’m already at the top of the tree? The money’s coming in, the wife’s happy…

Not me. I couldn’t wait.

The first Apache arrived at Middle Wallop in the summer of 2002 and the list of those selected for the Apache Conversion To Type (CTT) course number one was posted in Regimental Headquarters. My name was on it. There were twenty-one pilots earmarked for CTT1, one of whom would be the new CO, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Felton. So that left twenty operational pilots for 656 Squadron’s eight Apaches, enough for five flights: HQ Flight with the boss, Ops Officer and two QHIs, and four more, each manned by a flight commander, a specialist and two others.

With two seats in each bird, the minimum they needed was sixteen; in other words, not all of us would make it.

I knew that ten years’ flying experience didn’t mean I was a shoe-in. The Apache was an immensely complex machine to master; I needed to make myself indispensable. I had ticked the EW Officer box, but I had my eye on the Weapons Officer’s course. It could lead to the sexiest job in Army aviation: Squadron Weapons Officer – guns, rockets and missiles; right up my street – and the more I learned now, the better.

Three of us from 656 were assigned to a bespoke Apache Weapons Officer’s course. My old mate Scottie would be there; he was going to become the Weapons Instructor for 673 Apache Training Squadron at Middle Wallop. It was billed as the most in-depth course we had ever attempted. If we managed to jump through every hoop, we’d end up advising on Apache weapons tactics to senior officers, teaching weapons and firing techniques to Apache aircrew, planning and running Apache live firing ranges, and designing and running Apache weapons missions in the Boeing simulators.

Captain Paul Mason started the first day as he meant to go on-grilling us on what we knew. I’d learned shit-loads and was keen to show him. There was no pass mark, thank God; we realised we actually knew jack-shit. I think I got my name right and that was about it.

Paul was the Apache weapons guru. A good-looking lad from the north-east, he wasn’t physically imposing, but boy, did he walk tall. He’d studied weapons, sights and sensors in the USA and decided there and then to rewrite the rulebook. This horrendously complex course was his baby.

It sounded as though it would take us half a lifetime to develop sufficient understanding to even come within reach of the hardware. He left us in no doubt that to become a weapons, sights and sensors instructor on this aircraft we would need a level of knowledge so comprehensive our brains would feel like they were about to explode. I immersed myself totally and quickly discovered what he meant.

The Cold War had fostered a proliferation of single-role platforms-ships, tanks and aircraft that were each designed for one purpose and one purpose only. The Apache was one of the new breed of multi-role ISTAR asset – a relatively new acronym for Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance. It could be flown from either seat. The gunner sat up front, the pilot in the rear, but the pilot could activate the weapons and the gunner could fly the aircraft. A series of back-up systems ensured that if a critical piece of kit got hit – or even the pilot – the Apache could still get home.

The helmet-mounted display harmonised man and machine. The helmet itself was connected to the aircraft by two electrical leads: the first for comms, the second for the sensors. As soon as you powered up the aircraft, a pair of surveyors behind each seat transmitted pulsed infrared beams and the four helmet sensors let the system know the position of the pilot’s head relative to the cockpit.

You then stared down the Boresight Reticule Unit (BRU), a tube on top of the coaming which contained a series of concentric circles, through the crosshair within the monocle over your right eye. When your right eye, crosshair and bull’s-eye were perfectly aligned, the aircraft knew precisely where you were looking.

The monocle display could get pretty busy. It showed the direction in which the aircraft was headed, and where both crew members were looking. The pilot would generally have flight symbology – airspeed, altitude and distance to the next waypoint – displayed, and the gunner weapon symbology: to know ‘range to source’ – the distance to whatever target he happened to be scoping. If either of us actioned a weapon, weapon symbology would automatically kick in.

Behind the symbology, we could view whatever was being looked at by the Target Acquisition and Designation Sight (TADS) System or the Pilot’s Night Vision System (PNVS) (known as the ‘Pinvis’). It was like viewing a movie, complete with subtitles, projected on a window, while still being able to see through to the outside world.

The TADS day television – DTV-camera image could also be displayed on the monocle, along with the Pinvis or TADS thermal image.

In thermal mode, vehicle engines and people would glow white, day or night; if it was cold enough, we could even trace footprints. The Apache gunner and pilot were now becoming like Schwarzenegger’s Terminator: hunting for the target in both normal and thermal vision simultaneously. This took multi-tasking to a new level: your right eye viewed targeting symbology and a computer-generated thermal picture of the world one inch away, while your left scanned the outside world in full colour at infinity.

We had two principal means of detecting targets – via the TADS and the Fire Control Radar. The FCR – the heart of the Longbow system of the ‘D’ model Apache – was awesome. Its Air Targeting Mode (air-to-air targeting) and Terrain Profile Mode (enhanced terrain avoidance navigation) were impressive enough, but the Ground Targeting Mode’s ‘RF missile engagement’ capacity blew my mind. In a double sweep of its antenna, lasting just three seconds, the FCR could recognise and detect 1,024 targets. Within the same three seconds, it would automatically prioritise the top 256, accurately locate them, automatically store their coordinates in its computer and then display them to the crew. It would display the top sixteen targets to the crew in priority of threat, selecting which to destroy and in what order.

When flying in squadron formation, the lead aircraft could coordinate with the others via a secure datalink – an unjammable, encrypted, wireless modem – to ensure that no two gunships went for the same target. Two Apaches would watch a flank each and cover the rear while the other six would be the attack aircraft. The gunner could break down the display into six ‘lanes’ on his MPD – the multi-purpose display TV on his instrument panel – selecting sixteen targets per lane. With the push of a button, each attacking Apache would then receive their own share of the targets. A few seconds later ninety-six missiles would navigate towards their individual targets. Once the missiles had impacted at the point of maximum mass, each Apache sent its ‘shot-at’ file to the leader with the push of another button: not bad for one minute’s work.

The TADS turret was situated in the helicopter’s nose, and was the heart of the Apache’s day and night sensor capabilities. The Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) system lay behind a tinted window on the left. The gunner’s FLIR and the pilot’s Pinvis constituted cryogenically cooled optical cameras, highly sensitive to any heat above minus 200°C. They could find a mouse in a wheat field from a thousand metres.

The clear window on the right contained a laser designator, laser range finder, laser spot tracker, the Direct View Optics (DVO) and the DTV camera. The DVO was linked to the Optical Relay Tube (ORT) – the big metal block that jutted out about a foot from the gunner’s cockpit console.

When you placed your forehead on the ORT’s browpad and selected ‘DVO Mode’, you saw a magnified picture of the real world in glorious colour. There were two fields of view: wide and narrow.

The DVO confirmed vital recognition data to a Forward Air Controller (FAC), your crew member or other members of your flight – ‘the target building has yellow window frames…’ – preventing fratricide or collateral damage. The DVO was permanently slaved to the TADS; wherever the TADS led, the DVO followed.

On either side of the gunner’s ORT were what looked like steel PlayStation hand grips, covered in switches and buttons. They controlled sights, sensors and weapons. Each and every button had its own distinct feel and shape – one was smooth and concave, another was serrated and convex; another was shaped like a Chinese hat. You didn’t want to dispatch a missile at your own troops when you really intended to find out their range.

The DTV camera had three fields of view: wide, narrow and zoom. It was called ‘low-light TV’, but it wasn’t really for low light – it worked on a wavelength that allowed it to penetrate ‘battlefield obscurants’, primarily optimised to cut through dust and smoke.

Everything the TADS DTV, FLIR and FCR could see could be viewed in the monocle for quick targeting, on both MPDs for target detail and pinpoint accuracy, and on a small TV on the ORT.

With the flick of a button, the gunner could switch from FLIR to DTV and back again, depending on how much smoke or dust was in the air and the level of heat contrast presented by the target.

When you gripped the controls either side of the ORT, each of your index fingers found a guarded trigger: the right for the laser, the left for missile-release. Once you were lined up on the target, you pulled the right trigger to the first detent to establish range to target. The second detent gave a constant range readout, accurate to a centimetre or two over several kilometres, and painted the target with laser energy.

The missile ‘saw’ the laser energy bouncing off the target. Pressing the left trigger launched it off the rail like a whippet after a rabbit.

Shit… I thought. We really could accidentally demolish our own troops if we got them the wrong way around.

Each helicopter’s laser was ‘coded’ so that missiles didn’t get confused in the air. The TADS housed a laser ‘spot-tracker’ that allowed Apaches to designate for each other – a procedure known as target handover. The laser spot-tracker allowed the TADS to slew instantly to where another Apache within the flight was looking, if you wanted it to do so, at the push of a button. It could also look for targets designated by ground forces. With so much laser energy bouncing around the battlefield, it was a wonder more people hadn’t been blinded in the one memorable conflict that had seen action by Apaches: when AH-64As of the US Army had decimated the tanks of Saddam Hussein’s Medina Brigade on the Basra Road during the 1991 Gulf War.

The course continued to explore the arsenal in the kind of microscopic detail that I thought would only interest the boffins who’d designed it. Little did I know that the lessons Captain Paul Mason taught me would be put into vigorous practice and have me reading more and more just to stay one step ahead of the Taliban.

In March 2003, while I took a break from the Apache to work on temporary assignment in Bosnia for SFOR (Stabilisation Force), George W. Bush and Tony Blair launched their ill-fated assault on Saddam Hussein in response to intelligence, later known to be highly flawed, that Saddam was harbouring weapons of mass destruction and Al-Qaeda insurgents. It was the start of a road that would eventually see us being assigned to the front line of the so-called War on Terror.