Feature photo above by Jane Colclasure
On a cool, quiet Arkansas morning, titans slumber under a cover of stars. The sun is still a couple of hours from rising, but the Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville is never asleep, not entirely. Someone somewhere is always on duty, always at the ready, and at a moment’s notice, machines and personnel would stream to stations before you could say “Wooo, Pig.”
Col. Bret Echard, commander of the 19th Airlift Wing since last summer, assembles a small cadre of pilots in a government-issued conference room on base, as familiar an exercise for the men as it is foreign and fascinating to the visitor. It is an integral part of life here, these preflight planning sessions, but the mission itself is hardly so self-contained. The men seated at the table, soon to be behind the controls, represent a mere fraction of the individuals it takes to execute training flights.
Outside, various units have prepped and pampered the iconic C-130 transport aircraft in a manner unlike anywhere in the world. Fueling, mechanics, cargo, air traffic control and others all have their jobs, which they do in flawless cohesion and largely invisible to the untrained eye. On official missions, the planes depart to deliver cargo and personnel to support active U.S. military operations. In the wake of natural disasters, they deliver supplies or airlift storm victims as part of Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard operations. Today, it is routine training — or, at least, as routine as it can be centered around an aircraft costing $80 million — to ensure readiness for either of those scenarios.
(Photo by Dwain Hebda)
The meeting comes off with precision as weather, route, mechanical points and other pertinents are reported and noted in a show of efficiency most corporate staff meetings lack. That adjourned, Echard and his copilot make their way to the corridor, their civilian ride-along, a member of the press, in tow.
Echard has been awaiting takeoffs for 24 years, ever since the native Iowan reported to flight school at Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas. Posts in Alaska, Germany, Afghanistan, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., and, not least, a prior assignment to LRAFB from 2007 to 2011 have all found their place on his service record.
Asked what still thrills him after more than two decades and thousands of flight hours, he levels his gaze, starts to answer, then just says, “C’mere.”
The commander strides to a door, pushes the crash bar and walks purposefully out onto the tarmac, where the predawn indigo sky is yielding to streaks of gold, orange and smoky high clouds. Planes stack in prep areas, massive black silhouettes that change to matte gray in the growing light. Airmen scurry, machines hum, and the colonel spreads his arms wide.
“Every day, this is where I get to report to work alongside people I am proud to serve with,” he said. “How could you ever get tired of this?”
* * * * * * * *
Talking to him today, two decades in, Echard wears his military career and all that has come with it as easily as a comfortable sweater. Growing up, however, the thought of military service was largely far from his future thinking, only coming into sharper focus, he said, thanks to the serve-thy-neighbor ethos of the small farming community that raised him.
“I had no idea I was going to be a part of the military until I got accepted to the Air Force Academy when I was a senior,” he said. “None of my family is military, but the upbringing that I had in a smaller community, growing up in that way of life, I didn’t know it at the time, but it prepared me perfectly for a military life. That’s where I learned the grit of who I am.
“The first time I flew on an airplane was literally the flight to the Air Force Academy after I graduated from high school — still had no real understanding or ambitions to fly as a pilot. I just knew that I was going to be a cadet at the Air Force Academy and that I wanted to go there and serve my country.”
Echard may not have known what to expect, but in hindsight, he said some of the demands of the Air Force Academy dovetailed neatly into what was already carved out of him from his life experiences thus far.
“I think the thing that was exactly how I envisioned it was the challenge,” he said. “Growing up wrestling and playing football and a lot of sports and then working on a lot of farms, life was full of challenges, and you just kind of accepted that. At a certain point in time, I think anybody at any college level discovers a larger purpose where you take inventory of your interests and where you see yourself fitting in.
“The Air Force, like any other large organization, has a ton of opportunities — civil engineering, logistics, maintenance, medical, legal. I mean, you name it. There’s a ton of opportunities to find your niche and what feels rewarding to you. Once you hit that phase in your life, you just kind of grab onto it, and that’s what really drove me.”
The events of 9/11 further crystallized Echard’s vision of the kind of service he wanted to give, not unlike most of his classmates and an entire generation of Americans who, for the first time, felt the gut punch of being attacked on home soil.
The events of 9/11 further crystallized Echard’s vision of the kind of service he wanted to give, (Photo by Jane Colclasure)
“That happened when I was a senior at the Air Force Academy, and I’ll never forget the level of motivation I had to get out of the academy and get after it,” he said. “That level of motivation and patriotism, which was not specific to just me, provided a clear understanding of why we wanted to serve at that point.
“It was crystal clear to all of us, not just the Air Force Academy but across the United States, maybe even the planet, the very ‘why’ behind what we were raising our right hand to do. That became pretty clear, literally, in a matter of seconds in New York City.”
* * * * * * * *
There is a unique bond behind a pilot and his or her aircraft, an intangible but palpable link between master and machine. Watching Echard do his walkaround, a circuit he has moved through countless times, one sees him lay his hands on the aircraft at certain points, almost as if to reestablish that connection.
There is a unique bond behind a pilot and his or her aircraft, an intangible but palpable link between master and machine. (Photo by Dwain Hebda)
“In pilot training, the instructors put in pilots from different aircraft in different career fields, so you can talk to them and basically figure out which mission and culture fits you because each mission, each airframe has a different culture,” he said. “That’s where I really latched onto the mission of the C-130. In fact, my first flight in the C-130 was on this flight line in a C-130E model that’s long since been retired, so literally, learning it from the grassroots, it happened right out here in late 2003.”
As for the plane itself, seeing one up close is mesmerizing in scope. In football parlance, the C-130 Hercules — from whence comes the nickname “Herk” — would be a fullback, one with good hands and a nose for contact in all conditions who can go under center in a pinch. Unlike the seldom-used fullback of the modern game, however, the C-130 is always in demand, doing the essential but unglamorous: dropping troops and equipment into hostile areas, airlift support, weather reconnaissance, even firefighting duties when properly equipped.
Nimble enough to deliver palletized cargo and personnel with pinpoint accuracy yet burly enough to tote utility choppers and six-wheeled armored vehicles — 42,000 pounds worth at a clip — the Herk works for a living, often doing dirty, dangerous jobs at that.
“As far as what’s in the back of a C-130, it’s anything and everything that fits,” Echard said. “Depending on the priority, that can be air medical evacuation patients. It can be water and food, like after the Peru earthquakes a decade ago. There could be munitions in the back. If it fits, we’ll fly it, and if the priority’s right, we’ll get it there faster. That can be at night in some of the worst weather conditions you can imagine with minimal support outside of the crew and maybe somebody on the ground with a radio who’s cleared the landing zone and basically said it’s safe to land.”
Echard said that do-all ethos is what drew him to pilot the Herk over its more glamorous cousins in the USAF arsenal. He also said the pride that runs through the Arkansas air base and the thousands of personnel who serve there is rooted in the same blue-collar attitude.
“The C-130 is the personality and the DNA behind Little Rock Air Force Base,” he said. “I’m not talking just aviators and maintainers but all personnel involved. They’re not scared to get a little dirty, not scared of the Arkansas heat in the summertime. When there’s a mission that needs to be done, we’re willing to get after it.
“I think that’s why the base has formed such solid relationships with the local community specifically and even the state — because it’s the same culture of Arkansas, as well. When there’s a job to get done, it’s like, all right, let’s talk about this, let’s put a plan together, and let’s get after it. The grit and determination behind the C-130 mission aligns very, very well with the history of the state.”
* * * * * * * *
Today’s training run consists of two C-130s, the civilian riding in Echard’s plane, meaning the colonel will be piloting the equivalent of a leisurely test drive, per regulations. Even so, as takeoff approaches, the visitor is handed a baggie containing earplugs and an air sickness bag, along with the mental vision of base personnel placing bets on if or when he will need to use it. As the preflight routines are meticulously checked, the guest quietly prays that whatever awaits, he will be spared that indignity in front of America’s finest.
At go time, the engines are switched on one by one, and as each is brought to the proper power level, the plane hunches forward as if straining to fly. A short taxi into position, and Echard drops the hammer, sending the plane hurtling forward with so much steam that she is airborne in the blink of an eye, the ground shrinking as if sucked into a drain. In what seems like only a few minutes, the plane and its companion aircraft up ahead reach Arkansas’ River Valley, where the lead bird begins to perform its standard training maneuvers.
Dropping low over the deck, the pilot banks fluidly left and right over a waterway and through the bluffs that surround it. It was routine for the aviators but outside the rules for fly-alongs, so the reporter was spared, although just watching the other plane made one’s head spin. That, along with the banking Echard and his copilot did, gentler though it was, yielded a couple of uncertain moments where force of will was all that kept breakfast in place.
Later in the flight, the lead plane approaches the Blackjack drop site, an air-to-ground practice target, where the rear bay door of the plane yawned open and a pallet pushed out the back, timed to hit a precise spot in a field. The plane delivers the payload with stunning accuracy and then heads for home. The writer will never look at the Herk the same way again.
* * * * * * * *
Flying might be the fun part, but it is far from the only responsibilities of the wing commander. At any given time, Echard’s military role might look more like the mayor of a city or CEO of a major corporation that generates more than a billion dollars of economic impact a year. Delegation helps him keep on top of tactical problems — a malfunctioning AC unit, a traffic jam at the back gate — but as with the captain of an aircraft, the buck stops with him.
Flying might be the fun part, but it is far from the only responsibilities of the wing commander.
(Photos by Dwain Hebda)
“As a wing commander, you’re not going to get hired to be in this job if you don’t truly understand and love all the things that go into it. It is way more complicated than just a bunch of knuckle-dragging pilots and load masters flying airplanes,” he said. “I certainly fell in love with the mission, but when you talk the Herk mission and the legacy of what we do as a community, there comes a time and a place where it’s really the people that you fell in love with along the way.”
Circulating with Echard and the mass of subordinates with whom he comes in contact on any given day yields the usual military courtesy and protocols, but as the commander himself noted, the kind of process improvement that has set LRAFB apart has only come when base members feel empowered to speak up on a better way of doing things. It is that culture of innovation he is bent on maintaining.
“I think it works almost equally up the chain of command and down the chain of command, really,” he said. “The beauty about Little Rock Air Force Base is the C-130 tactical airlift mission has been here so long. We are continuously developing what, in the military world, we call tactics, techniques and procedures. Some of that is dependent on a capability; some of it is just innovation and a new way of doing things.
Flying might be the fun part, but it is far from the only responsibilities of the wing commander.
(Photos by Dwain Hebda)
“About two months ago, some of the airplanes needed software to be updated, and there weren’t enough harnesses to connect the computer to the aircraft to do it, meaning we were given a task of having to update these airplanes, but we didn’t have the resources to do the work. We just needed to figure it out. In about a week and a half, the maintenance folks talked to our Herk workshop, which is an innovation lab, and they 3D printed the harnesses to plug into the airplane. That was all done here locally, and all of our airplanes were updated, and it didn’t take long to do. That’s a very small example.”
Military life is hard work and hard on families, and while recruiting numbers are currently up nationwide across all branches, the realities of service cannot be fully mitigated. Echard is keenly aware of this, just as he is aware that the base’s biggest strength is how it looks out for its own, from the greenest airmen to the most senior personnel and even into the ranks of veterans who still look at LRAFB as a second home.
Now taking his place in the long line of commanders who have led the hallowed installation, the largest of its kind on the planet, he feels a sense of history and tradition that does not exist just anywhere.
“Little Rock Air Force Base is the home to tactical airlift, and there’s still an insatiable need for tactical airlift around the world,” he said, “but to remain relevant, you have to have the people that, sorry for saying this, have the I-give-a-shit attitude. Those are the ones that you want on your team. Because of them, we’re increasing our capabilities, we’re increasing our relevance, we’re increasing our relevance at the Department of War level, and we’re credible at a level that is unseen in the world of tactical airlift.
“We call Little Rock the Home of Herk Nation, and what that really means is that’s tied to a platform. In the crystal ball that I don’t have, and if I did, I wouldn’t be able to read it anyway, Little Rock Air Force Base will, for a long time, be the home of tactical airlift. The goal for me here is to make sure that this base — the community, infrastructure, aircraft and the people — are still moving in the right direction.”
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