Pacific airpower originates in Osan war room

OSAN AIR BASE, South Korea — Across the peninsula and in the waters offshore during late March, U.S. and South Korean forces went through their paces in the annual Reception, Staging, Onward Movement and Integration exercise.

Marines of both countries pounded toward the coastline in assault craft, while inland, soldiers maneuvered across South Korea’s rugged terrain.

About 160 miles off the coast, the USS Ronald Reagan launched jets taking part in the air portion of the mock fight.

And that fast-breaking air portion of the exercise — what warfighters call the “air campaign” — was run with minute attention to detail out of a concrete building set deep into a windswept hillside at Osan Air Base, 48 miles south of the Demilitarized Zone. It’s called the HTACC, (pronounced H-Tack) for Hardened Theater Air Control Center.

“The HTACC is absolutely critical to our fight on the peninsula,” said Air Force Col. Rob Evans, 7th Air Force chief of staff and until recently the chief of combat operations.

The bunker houses the intense, bustling air operations center from which U.S. and South Korean generals would direct an air war with equipment and personnel from around the world — including Japan- and Okinawa-based U.S. troops.

It is, in effect, their war room, the nerve center from which all allied air assets — fighter jets from air bases and aircraft carriers, bombers, cruise missiles, surveillance aircraft, unmanned drones — would be marshaled and put into action in the battle space. The staff also would draw on data from satellites orbiting through space.

The air component staff can find the target, get a precise fix on its location, track its movements on video, decide whether it’s worth hitting, gauge whether hitting it might endanger friendly troops or civilians, assess what aircraft are best suited to the job and the weather conditions, and move aircraft already aloft to hit the target swiftly — perhaps within minutes of a decision to strike.

“This facility gives you time to react and time to think through your actions more than ever before,” said Air Force Lt. Gen. Stephen G. Wood, who as U.S. Forces Korea’s air component commander would run the wartime air campaign. Wood also commands the 7th Air Force at Osan.

Those capabilities are possible thanks to a carefully orchestrated combination of computer networks, intelligence and weather analysts and hundreds of personnel from all branches of service and the armed forces of both countries working as a single team.

It’s here at the center that planners do the meticulous and crucial work of drawing up the Air Tasking Order, or ATO, an elaborate and continually changing list of what targets are to be attacked and when.

But it’s also here that the military can pounce quickly on emerging targets not already on the ATO, using a process called the “rapid targeting cycle.”

A mere 15 or so years ago during the Gulf War, “if you looked at the operations wall it would represent a spreadsheet. There would be people on scaffolding standing” at Plexiglas panels and with grease pencils writing in takeoff times and other data, Evans said.

“What’s changed is this air operations weapons system we have now gives us the ability to react much more dynamically to situations in the battlespace,” said Evans, “to the point where we don’t talk about managing air power … We talk about now directing the airpower in real time in order to exploit opportunities in the battlespace and mitigate adverse effects.”

Tools of the trade

The following are some of the key air assets available to the U.S. Forces Korea air component commander, or “air boss,” in conducting an air campaign during crisis or war:

AIR FORCE

F-16 Fighting Falcon, F-15 Eagle and Strike Eagle, F-117 Nighthawk fighters
A-10 Thunderbolt II close air support aircraft
B-1 and B-2 bombers
E-8 Joint STARS air-to-ground surveillance aircraft
E-3 Sentry AWACS (airborne surveillance; command, control and communications aircraft)
U-2 reconnaissance aircraft
Unmanned aerial vehicles
C-130 Hercules and C-17 Globemaster transports
KC-135 Stratotanker and KC-10 Extender tankers
HH-60 Pave Low helicopters for combat search and rescue

ARMY

Patriot air defense missiles

NAVY

F/A-18 Hornet strike-fighters
E-2C Hawkeye early warning and command and control aircraft
EA-6B Prowler tactical jamming aircraft

MARINE CORPS

F/A-18 Hornet strike-fighters
EA-6B Prowler tactical jamming aircraft

Other centers

The Hardened Theater Air Control Center at Osan Air Base in South Korea is one of five air operations centers the U.S. Air Force calls the Falconer Weapons System.

The other four Falconer air operations centers are at: