With national media focused on Iraq, not much is said about Afghanistan anymore. Just returned to the United States from Afghanistan, Air Force Major Vernie Pendley recently provided the Progress a personal account of the shooting war still on in that country.
Pendley, who grew up in Pickens County, said insurgent activity continues along Afghanistan’s eastern border with Pakistan and just north of the city of Kandahar. Pendley said NATO forces manage the northern and western parts of the country where the Taliban is neutralized. Plans are for NATO forces to eventually monitor all of Afghanistan.
Pendley said the Coalition force in Afghanistan includes troops from Britain, Canada, Norway, Korea, Egypt, France, the United Arab Emirates, the Afghani National Army and the Afghani National Police.
"The Taliban are hiding out, trying to keep their heads down," Pendley said. When they come out, it is usually to mine a road and pin down a truck convoy. Insurgents attack from surrounding hills with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms. As pilot of an A-10 Wart Hog, Pendley provided close air support in Afghanistan to Coalition troops battling insurgents on the ground.
The Wart Hog is a single-seat, straight wing jet with two tail-mounted engines. It can drop bombs, but Pendley said the plane's principal weapon is a seven-barrel Gatling gun in the nose.
Inside diameter of each gun barrel on the Gatling is 30 millimeters, about an inch and a quarter. Brass cartridges for the weapon are longer than your hand. Cartridges feed from drum-shaped canisters along a conveyor system to the nose gun.
"The whole conveyor system takes up three quarters of the plane," Pendley said.
The Gatling gun can shoot 3,900 rounds per minute, but the plane only carries 1,174. So pilots fire the gun only two-seconds at a time. Pendley said each two-second firing expends about a hundred rounds.
Cartridge slugs are "high-explosive and incendiary" bullets, Pendley said. On impact, they explode and burn. Pendley said a one-second burst of fire from the plane's nose gun puts ten to fifteen explosive rounds in a single spot, easily enough to destroy an un-armored ground vehicle.
The A-10 also drops laser-guided bombs in the 500-pound class, Pendley said. "About half of that [weight] is high explosive," he explained. And an anti-personnel air-burst bomb, lobbed from the plane, spreads shrapnel over a broad area.
"We also do shows of force," Pendley said. For those, pilots swoop low and drop flares they normally deploy to foil heat-seeking missiles. Wiser insurgents get the message and move off quietly without making trouble.
"Pretty much everything we do as close air support is based on what the ground commander asks for," Pendley said. "We do what they ask for."
Pendley flew scheduled missions for convoy support, mostly at night. "We have the better sensors––night vision goggles and all that," Pendley said. "Odds are we have a better capability [than the enemy] at night."
At times Pendley's flight of two A-10s was scrambled aloft to hit the enemy where American ground troops came under enemy attack.
Pendley said a targeting pod in the plane uses infrared and television technology to provide night vision and nine-power camera zoom over a cockpit video screen.
"From three miles up, you can see individual people with that pod to some degree," Pendley said.
He recalled a mission escorting helicopters. "The guys on the ground heard some [radio] chatter of the bad guys positioning themselves on the hilltops to shoot at the helicopters," Pendley said. "They had us fire a warning shot."
A burst of Gatling fire from the nose gun on Pendley's plane impressed insurgents to lay low. In the face of such overwhelming fire power, the enemy bowed to discretion and decided to fight some other time. The helicopters passed over unmolested.
Pendley said before pilots lay down any fire they check with the commander on the ground. "You talk to the guy on the ground to make sure there are no friendlies there," Pendley said. And pilots use the targeting pod to visually check that no innocent civilians are wandering through the target zone.
It is hard to imagine seeing much on the ground from a plane flying at fighter jet speed. But in Afghanistan, Pendley said, he usually flew at speeds slower than a commercial airliner. He flew low enough and slow enough to be in danger if the enemy had effective surface-to-air missiles.
"I never saw a man-pad, man-portable missile, fired at me," Pendley said. "People did report those while we were there. I didn't see any."
"You match your tactics to their capability," Pendley said. "When we're going to deliver ordnance and get closer to the ground where we're more vulnerable, then we accelerate."
Pendley spent the five months of his Afghanistan deployment based from Bagram Airbase just north of Kabul.
"The base is an old Soviet base from when the Soviets were there, and it has the mines to prove it," Pendley said. He said American troops have fenced and marked fields of Soviet land mines that have surrounded the base since the 1980s.
Even as an Air Force officer of major's rank Pendley worked hard while on deployment. “We worked seven days a week for as long as necessary in combat,” Pendley said. “My squadron supported a 24-hour schedule except for two ‘down’ days for maintenance catch up work during the entire deployment.”
Stateside for a little while, Pendley will spend some time with his wife and daughter at his squadron base in Tucson, Arizona before heading for a year-long tour in Korea. A desk job waits for him there. Pendley is a fifteen-year Air Force veteran. His job in Korea will be his first assignment outside the cockpit. Such assignments are required to gain rank, Pendley explained.
Pendley said he first dreamed of flight as a second- grader at Jasper Elementary. He wanted to be an astronaut. He said he still thinks about it, but the Air Force hasn't picked him yet.
Pendley's three-year-old daughter, Vanessa, wants to be a pilot like her dad. The piloting of Pendley's older brother, J. D., drew Pendley's own young eyes skyward when he was a child.
Pendley grew up near Bent Tree, and his neighbors have not forgotten. "I appreciate all the support I've felt from my hometown while deployed," Pendley said. "I received a lot of cards and letters saying thanks, and I really felt well supported."
Pendley has just completed a masters degree in business administration. Approaching 20 years of service in the Air Force, he is close enough to military retirement to be planning toward it. Pendley said he is not sure what he will do after the Air Force. “Maybe get a real job,” he smiled.
It stands to reason the real job he is doing now will be long remembered by those who know Pendley best. |
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