Air Mobility 1 CONTENT 3 Air Mobility 20 JLSG MOVECON
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KFOR’s Magazine February 2021 Air Mobility 1 CONTENT 3 Air Mobility 20 JLSG MOVECON 7 Feldpost - Keeping us Connected 21 Retrospect KTRBN Operational 8 Readiness Exercise 22 CSM Corner Cakay - keeping CFC KFOR Amateur Photo 9 Moving 23 Competition 2021 10 RC-W Exercises 12 Key Leader Engagements 13 FINCON Ceremony APOD Defences - Armenian 14 Contingent 16 Living with COVID - Part 2 17 Snapshots Croatian Mi-8 cockpit from the multi-national exercise. Commander KFOR XXV Design & Layout Just send your photos to: Major General Mr. Afrim Hajrullahu [email protected] Franco Federici, Italian Army Photographer & by the 20th of the month explaining where you took Cover Photo: the photo and what equipment you used. We will then Chief Public Affairs Office Davide Lauretti select one of the submitted images and publish it in the & OR-6 Italian Army COMKFOR Spokesperson next edition of the Chronicle. A the Chronicle T-Shirt is Lt Col Antonio Minutella, E-mail and Web awarded each month to the winning photographer. Italian Army [email protected] http://jfcnaples.nato.int/kfor You will be immortalised in the Chronicle! Chief Internal Information Is that not something to be proud of? & Editor the Chronicle, Printed by “Blendi” Sincerely, Comdt. Paul O Callaghan Tel.: 044 149 115 Irish Defence Forces The Chronicle Team. [email protected] NATO Nations within KFOR Albania, Bulgaria, Canada,Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States. Non-NATO Nations Armenia, Austria, Finland, Ireland, Moldova, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine. The Chronicle is produced and fully funded by HQ KFOR. It is published for KFOR soldiers and civilians in the area of responsibility. The contents are not necessarily the official views of, or endorsed by, the coalition governments’ defence departments. Editorial content is edited, prepared and provided by the Internal Information Section of HQ KFOR’s Public Affairs Office (PAO) in Pristina, Kosovo. PAO HQ KFOR reserves the right to edit content to conform to style and space requirements. Articles are run on a space-available basis. Articles appearing in the Chronicle may be duplicated in official NATO publications subject to KFOR PAO authorisation. 2 STORY OF THE MONTH Air Mobility Multi- national flight passing Sharr Mountain in Southern Kosovo. Photo by: OR-6 Lauretti obility is essential for all militaries. By to modify their procedures to ensure that all Mroad and by air, it is essential that you crews were trained to respond in the same can move people and equipment to where way. you them to be as fast as possible. KFOR is A lot of planning goes into organising no different. We need to be able to respond an exercise of this magnitude. Balancing in a fast, efficient and credible way to any the exercise ambitions, the operations evolving threat. For that reason KFOR has air commitments and the real world limitations assets. Three nations provide aerial support was a significant challenge for the staff at J3 to KFOR: Croatia, Switzerland and the United Air, the air crews involved and the Operations States of America. Each of these nations have Cells in RC-E and RC-W. The flight operations their own slightly different way of doing element was led by Captain Filip Petrinjak things so standardisation and familiarisation from the Croatian Armed Forces. He was is required. KFOR conducted a standardisation responsible for the planning, coordinating exercise with six helicopters: two Croatian and deconflicting all aspects of the flight MI-8, a Swiss Super Puma, and three US with the support and coordination of Lt Col Blackhawks. An impressive sight, even for the Danilo D’Amato and his staff in J3 Air. Freeing civilian populations that were used to seeing up significant assets to be able to commit helicopters operate throughout Kosovo. The them to this exercise was a major challenge low level altitude through much of the flight for the planners; ensuring that assets were allowed me to see cars and people stopped serviceable and available with other tasks below us, faces turned upwards at the sight, covered by reserve assets, ensuring that wonder what on earth was happening. essential functions such as medevac remain The exercise objective was to increase available throughout. KFOR controls the interoperability between the contingents by Kosovo low airspace, however, it still needs ensuring that the flight crews understood careful management of flight plans in order to how their counterpart’s helicopters handled in ensure that a large group of helicopters at low the varying conditions and how they needed altitude do not cause challenges for routine 3 civilian traffic as well as deconfliction with the civilian about working with equipment that they had not Air Traffic Control in Pristina International Airport. seen before. The crews studied every aspect of their This was even more important when considering that colleague’s choppers in order to explore their key traits, during the exercise, the initial take off and the low how they handled differently in differing conditions, level fly past originated from Slatina Military Airport which choppers would require more space to turn, which shares the runway with Pristina International which ones gave out the most turbulence and so on. Airport. “It is essential that all of the flight crews are able to The fleet took off from Slatina Military Airport, flying work together and that they understand how each in a tight formation before overflying Camp Bondsteel other’s aircraft handles and how they will respond. in the South East of Kosovo, Prizren in the South West The increased interoperability that results from and conducting synchronised landing and take-off multinational exercises such as this one, significantly drills on the airfield outside Gjakova before moving enhances KFOR’s capabilities resulting in a more on towards, Pec/Peja. A low level formation flypast robust force that is able to respond to any threats was conducted when back at Slatina Airport, all arising anywhere in Kosovo.” Lt Col Danilo D’Amato J3 aircraft flying 10m apart at 150km per hour and only Air Chief. 20m from the ground. The fleet finally landed in KFOR The after action review identified a few learning HQ, Camp Film City. outcomes for all of the crews, highlighted a few Exercises such as this ensure that all contingents challenges that they crews had to deal with and are familiar with each other’s procedures so that emphasised the importance of further interoperability in the event of an operational tasking requiring a training in the future. multinational response, the deconfliction has already The exercise ensured that KFOR remains a robust been done and they know each other’s procedures military force, ready to act as a credible deterrent and emergency actions. Flying in close formation against any threats and maintains its capabilities to requires a lot of communication and planning. perform emergency medical evacuation flights at all Ensuring that everyone is travelling at the same time. speed, altitude and direction takes effort. It is only achieved through continuous training and effort. Paul O‘Callaghan Speaking with the aircrews before the exercise, OF-3, IRL-A it was clear that there was significant excitement Chief Internal Information 4 ‚ A Pilot s Perspective here is a saying “I’d rather be lucky Tthan good”, but for the flight of six helicopters on 25 February 2021 it had to be a little bit of both. I say that because from the ground watching the aircraft fly by, it probably looked as if the pilots had done this many times before and all we had to do was fly next to each other on a perfect sunny day and look good doing it. But what isn’t seen is the hard work and planning days and even weeks in advance that went into the two hour flight that day. Of course it all started with the initial concept: Croatian, Swiss, and the U.S. conduct a multinational, mixed multi- aircraft operation to practice flying together and learn each other’s tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) in order to better support our NATO ground forces in Kosovo. The AMC, Capt. Filip Petrinjak of the Croatian Air Force, hosted an initial planning meeting to discuss the basics with the Kosovo Force Joint Operations- Air team, Regional Command aviation operations officers, various aviation unit Commanders, and Pilots in Command (PCs). The Air Mission Brief would then be conducted which finalised who the crews would be, flight route, timing, helicopter order, individual duties, airspeeds, altitudes, call signs, formations, spacing, communications, minimum weather, landing, and refuel plans. After that, additional contingency and safety considerations were discussed: loss of visual contact, lost communications, inadvertent instrument meteorological conditions, go-around plans at landing sites, potential downed aircraft recovery procedures, go no-go times, and calls for weather or maintenance. Eventually each PC would go on to brief their own crew for each aircraft and their own internal crew coordination, emergency, and safety considerations. The Air Mission Brief is where we all began to learn from each other as professional military aviators. We discovered each of the countries had slightly different TTPs and each aircraft had different performance characteristics and capabilities that was taken into account. Due to the experience and professionalism from all involved it became quickly apparent that commonality, safety, and common sense prevailed. While all of this was going on maintenance, operations, fuel, and all of the other logistics and support personnel began their planning and execution behind the scenes in order to make this mission even possible. By the end of the flight, we were “lucky” our weather turned out to be a beautiful sunny day with clear skies and no maintenance issues.