High-tech laser-guided weapons are standard equipment on the F-16′s flown by Iowa Air National Guard soldiers on active duty in Afghanistan, but their flights also include some special cargo.

Staff Sergeant Andrea Jones says the U.S.A. flag flying program allows soldiers to request a ride along for Old Glory in the military aircraft on patrols.

“What happens is they submit those flags to the base flag program, from there, they can have their flag either flown in an F-16, a C-130, they can even do it in the unmanned aircraft and even the helicopters. It depends on the flight that the person submitting the flag would like to have their flag flown in,” Jones says.

Jones oversees the flag program for the 124th Fighter Squadron pilots who are part of the 132nd Air Wing based in Des Moines. She prepares the flags that ride along when the Iowa pilots kick in the afterburners and head for the sky.

Staff Sergeant Andrea Jones.

“We send them up with the pilots in a bag and they go ahead and put those in the cockpit with them and fly those over the course of their mission. And when they bring them back, I process those flags, create flag certificates, and then return them to the base flag program where the submitter is able to pick them back up,” Jones explains.

Squadron Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Travis Acheson of West Des Moines, says they are proud to carry along the Stars Stripes. “The pilots love doing that, we stack the cockpit full of American flags and we take ‘em up with us when we rage around the skies of Afghanistan. And then when we come back, we turn the flags in,” Atcheson says.

Atcheson says the soldiers are pleased to be able to give the flags to those on the ground who support them while they are in harm’s way.

Atcheson says,” They can have that as a memento of what we’re doing over here and the position of freedom that we’re here to enforce.”

Jones says the Iowa pilots take up an average of 50 to 75 flags on each mission, and near the end of March had already flown over 300 flags high above Afghanistan. Jones and Acheson spoke with reporters recently from their base in Kanduhar.

The 300 some Iowa Air Guard soldiers will wrap up their mission and come home later this spring.

Photos courtesy of the Iowa National Guard

Members of the 124th Fighter Squadron in Afghanistan.

The Iowa Air National Guard soldiers who are on active duty right now in Afghanistan face threats on the ground and in the air as they provide air support for coalition forces 24-hours-a-day.

One threat the 124th Fighter Squadron’s commander says they are not focused on is the plan in Washington to phase out their Des Moines-based 132nd Fighter Wing.

Lieutenant Colonel Travis Acheson of West Des Moines, says they can’t afford to take their eyes off of the military threats. “We’re trying not to get wrapped up in what’s going on back home, that’s part of the leadership’s role here, I deal with it daily,” according to Acheson.

“We have a lot of smart people here asking a lot of smart questions as most people would back home. The big thing is focus, finish the mission, finish strong, hug our families, shake a lot of hands and then we’ll deal with that back there.”

Ryan Stott

First Lieutenant, Ryan Stott of Jefferson, is an F-16 pilot who says there are various thing they face while in the air. “For us, there is a certain threat from the enemy…they do have shouldered fired weapons and they have the small arms, but probably the biggest threat for us right now is it’s just a very crowded airspace. Lots of other platforms are out here, there’s lots of air power, there’s a lot of things going on,” Stott explains.

And he says the terrain in Afghanistan is a lot different than flying across Iowa. “There’s mountains that go up to 18 to 20,000 feet, so there’s times when you are out there flying at night in the weather, mountains are up 20-thousand feet so you really got to have what we call situation awareness about what’s around you as far as terrain and other aircraft, so those are probably the biggest threats to us,” Stott says.

Lieutenant Colonel Acheson says the weapons of the enemy are much less a threat than the crowded airspace as the enemy often takes cover upon hearing the roar of the F-16 coming in. “I can tell you we’ve had some Iowa pilots get fired upon while they’re doing a show of force,” Acheson says. “The neat thing about that is, understand, when the bad guys are trying to take a shot at an F-16 going about 600 miles-an-hour — they’d better be leading the jet by about a mile-and-a-half for those munitions to even come close. So really, we do not fear that at all, the odds of that happening are zero.”

Major Trenton Twedt of Roland, commands the personnel on the ground who keep the jets running, and says the natural terrain at the Kanduhar base is a bigger threat than the enemy weapons. “This base was not used to having F-16′s, and if you know anything about an F-16, it’s got a big mouth on the front and it has a lot of ability to pull things off the ground, which we do not like to go through the engine,” Twedt says.

“You can damage engines very quickly by picking up pieces of rock or what we call foreign object debris and damage a four-and-a-half million dollar engine, and that’s not a good thing.” He says they did have to work on the engine of one jet after it sucked a garbage bag into it. Twedt says there are tumbleweeds, garbage and lots of dust are always floating around.

“Imagine somebody just taking a big 50-gallon drum of talcum powder and dumping into your room in your house with the A-C on and the heat on and blowing it around, it settles everywhere. And then with construction going on, with gravel roads, not paved roads, everything gets drug onto the hard surfaces where the aircraft are operating,” Twedt says.

“So, three, four, five times a day we’re out literally scanning, a hundred people are out walking on the flight line, picking up rocks, pulling special sweepers.” Major Twedt says there’s also a large amount of traffic around the base which includes lots of people who don’t realize the danger of tracking debris onto the flight line. He says they have to keep watch to keep people out of the area.

The soldiers spoke with reporters this week on a conference call from Afghanistan. There are some 300 Iowa Air Guard members on the mission, and they will return later this spring.

NOTE: This is the second in a series of stories on the Iowa Air Guard soldiers on deployment in Afghanistan.