Transcript of interview with Col. Brill
DN: What was the nature of the flying mission today where you crossed the 6,000-hour mark?
Brill: Actually it was a fairly routine sortie, which is the way most of them have been going recently. With the surge operation that started, there was a lot of drama, I guess I could use the best word, in the fall with the guys having to respond to troops in contact situations and deliver ordinance. But it has actually slowed down significantly since the, about, Christmas time frame. Most of what we have done in the past two months is just, in the simplest term, just make noise, just keep the bad guys hunkered down in their holes right now, where we've got them now, and keep them there.
Today's sortie, there were two different operations, which is the way most of the missions are tasked: You're airborne typically between three and a half to four and a half hours. Today's was actually a tad shorter than that. But usually you head out to one of the areas around Baghdad or up to Mosul or down around Basra. You work there for an hour, hour and a half and then go to a tanker.
And the second portion of the flight was tactical reconnaissance, where we were working on one of the main roadways that runs between Mosul and Baghdad, looking at specific structure, about five miles in length and looking for any vehicles that had stopped or any spots on the ground where it looks like there might be disturbed earth. We're basically using our sensors with the infra red to find any indication there may be some buried explosives or improvised explosive devices.
DN: So you're flying to make noise, literally?
Brill: Absolutely. We're up about 10,000 feet above the ground. At that range the F-16 is about impossible to see, but you can very clearly hear it. Its a comfort blanket on the ground to hear that noise; but also for the bad guys on the ground, if they hear it, if they do anything like shoot a rocket or a mortar or small arms, we can get our sensors on that position in a matter of minutes and put a 500-pound bomb right on top of them. It's been very effective for the last couple of months. When it hasn't worked the results have been predictable. We've been hit pretty hard.
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