The Art of Clear Thinking by Hasard Lee

Author:Hasard Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Even though all satellite communications were encrypted, we still used code words for the frequencies. Flipping through my book of frequencies, I found Blue 47 and entered the specific frequency into my radio.

HASARD: Mojo, Viper 51—we’re over Bagram and are emergency fuel. I need you to fly at max speed toward Bagram ASAP.

MOJO: Viper, we can be there in about ten minutes.

By this point, we had seven minutes until our self-imposed landing time. The tanker was a promising option but one that could give us false hope and lead us to running out of fuel. Now that it was flying toward us at their max speed, I radioed the tower controller about the status of Kabul airport. He said that the construction was finishing up for the night. There were still people and equipment on the runway, but they could potentially clear it in the next few minutes. Based on previous experience, anytime someone uses the word potentially, they’re trying to help, but are really just guessing. I told my wingman we were skipping Kabul. We now had two options: land on the damaged runway or refuel from the tanker.

We didn’t have time to wait for the tanker to come to us. If we wanted to refuel, then we would have to fly away from the airfield and intercept it. The risk was that if anything failed while trying to refuel, we wouldn’t be able to make it back to Bagram. Again, rough mental math enabled us to break down the problem.

The tanker was about eighty miles away and likely flying about 0.8 times the speed of sound—about eight miles per minute—meaning they would get overhead in ten minutes. If we flew toward them at a similar speed, we could rejoin in five minutes; however, we wouldn’t have enough fuel to make it back to Bagram if something went wrong and we couldn’t refuel. Based on previous experience, I estimated the chance of both of us being able to refuel at about 95 percent, on par with landing on the damaged runway. The upside was that if it worked, it would eliminate our problem since we’d have enough fuel to divert or wait until the runway was fixed. However, the downside was that if anything failed, we would be forced to eject away from our base and above the fifteen-thousand-foot terrain that was scattered with ISIS and Taliban fighters. With that downside, it was probably better to go with the simpler option and just land without attempting to refuel. However, there was potentially a third option.

By intercepting the tanker at a slower airspeed, we could, instead of meeting in the middle, only travel one-third of the way while the tanker traveled two-thirds. This would allow us to save fuel while also keeping us closer to the base. If we couldn’t refuel, then we would have just enough fuel to make it back to Bagram. This hybrid option gave us one shot at refueling while also preserving the fail-safe option of landing.

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