Two C-17 Globemaster III aircraft piloted by Airmen of the 97th Air Mobility Wing from Altus Air Force Base, Oklahoma, conducted low approach training at Savage Air Strip Oct. 13 at Douthit Gunnery Complex.
Originally the training was scheduled to have two C-17s conduct landing and take-off training on the air strip and a third conduct low approach training; however, due to soil conditions and timing, the training had to be modified to two aircraft conducting low approach training.
Chief Warrant Officer 2 Patrick Verango, 82nd Engineer Battalion, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, and his team conducted a compaction test on the air strip to determine how soft the soil was due to recent rains. He said the surface appears solid; however, the soil below was too wet for a C-17 to land and take off safely.
“The conditions of the runway are too saturated and soft, which will not allow for the birds to land otherwise it will be a safety hazard and more of a liability if something goes wrong,” Verango said.
After conducting the compaction test, Verango and his team determined the ground was too saturated down to about 20 inches below the surface. With damp soil and the weight of a C-17, the aircraft could get stuck.
“The C-17s require a test to be done,” said Col. Doug Snead, 621st Mobility Support Operations Squadron. “It’s called a DCP (Dynamic Cone Penetrometer). It’s a 3-foot rod and you hammer it into the ground and the number of blows or hammers that it takes to drive it into the ground, that tells you how soft the soil it. After you run the numbers, you can determine whether it’s safe to land or not safe to land and if it’s not safe to land, the aircraft could actually sink and get stuck.”
Despite the setback for landing and take-off training, the pilots still made use of the air strip because of the convenient location, Snead said. Fort Riley is one of the only dirt runways in the Midwest while the majority of other dirt runways are in the Southwest, making Fort Riley a convenient location for many pilots to train.
“There’s not a whole lot of these dirt strips around, so it’s a good draw to get mutual benefit and mutual training,” he said.
The saturated air strip was not the only challenge the Soldiers and Airmen faced to conduct joint training at the air strip. At a nearby gunnery range, another unit was conducting training using AH-64 Apache helicopters, Snead said. This caused concern for a possible collision or encounter, however, a potential disaster was averted with alternate timing.
“They’re having Apaches doing gunnery at the ranges today, so at first we thought there would be a conflict because they’re just a few miles down, but they’re actually deconflicted by timing,” he said. “Once we started putting the stuff into our scheduling software, that’s when we determined there was no scheduling conflict, so that’s a good safety tool.”
Continued joint training operations like this are important to the success of both the Army and Air Force, Verango said, as it can assist Soldiers and Airmen in understanding what each side is thinking and going through during joint operations.
“I think this is a great joint training opportunity for the Army and Air Force to be able to train together to be able to see the different ways on how the Air Force does things and how the Army does things, as well,” he said.