A flight of four A-10 Thunderbolt II’s (or better known as Warthogs) took part in the 2011 Smoky Hill ANG Range Open House.
The four Warthogs showed how they drop bombs while working with ground based JTAC controllers and then showed off some of their skills in firing the 30mm canon in the nose of their awesome aircraft.
Here are some of the pictures I took of their runs.
Click here to purchase prints of these pictures.
A four plane flight from the Oklahoma Air National Guard’s 125th Fighter Squadron kicked off the 2011 Smoky Hills Air National Guard Range activities properly.
These four Lockheed Martin F-16C Fighting Falcons dropped small practice bombs at targets on the range. The practice bombs carry a small smoke charge to mark the position of where it hit to score the pilot’s accuracy in dropping ordnance.
Some of the pictures I took show these Vipers releasing flares. The pilots do this to confuse heat seeking missiles that an enemy soldier might fire at the plane.
Below are some of the pictures I took of the F-16′s at work over the Smoky Hills:
Click here to purchase prints of these pictures.
One of the interesting displays at the 2011 Smoky Hills Air National Guard Range Open House was a group of JTACs showing how they work.
A JTAC team will go into an area and coordinate with friendly ground forces and support them by directing in bombs or cannon fire from aircraft or artillery.
Doing so can expose them to enemy fire also.
In the demonstration at the Open House, the JTACs reacted to taking fire. Some of their fellow members of the 284th Air Support Operations Squadron dressed up as enemy forces and simulated an attack.
Fortunately for the JTACs, they used a flight of four A-10s to send the unfriendlies running.
Here are some of the pics I took of the JTACs in action:
Smoky Hill Air National Guard Range held an open house on August 6, 2011.
The range encompasses 51 square miles. That makes it the largest Air National Guard range in the nation. It also is one of the busiest. It offers several areas for aircraft to drop practice bombs and to fire guns. Smoky Hill ANG Range also offers several areas for ground forces to train.
Many different units will come through the Salina, Kansas area (the range is only 10 miles to the west) to train at the range. At least three times a year Canadian units will make the trip down before they deploy on combat missions.
The Open House gave the local citizens an opportunity to see up close the training conducted at Smoky Hills ANG Range. The range brought in F-16s from the Oklahoma and South Dakota Air National Guard, JTAC forward air controllers from the range, A-10s from the Air Force Reserve at Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, B-52s from Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, and an AH-64 from Fort Riley, Kansas to show off their skills.
Below are only a handful of the many pictures I took at the open house:
