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Command & control battle management operations: Controlling the chaos

  • Published
  • By Master Sgt. Ryan Crane
  • 81st Training Wing Public Affairs
KEESLER AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. --  A U.S. Air Force pilot’s primary mission is to strap into their aircraft and put bombs on target, deliver cargo around the world, or surveil the battlefield. They are the tip of the spear.

That spear, however, is wielded by a group of highly professional and technically competent enlisted Airmen called Command & Control Battle Management Operations, but more commonly referred to as C2BMO.

“We manage airspace and aircraft,” said Tech. Sgt. Ernest McGachey, 334th Training Squadron C2BMO instructor. “We are responsible for creating the air tasking order and tasking the aircraft within that order.”

An air war is a complex and fast moving event to manage McGachey explained, but the role of C2BMO is to take what could be a chaotic environment and mold it into a process that is methodical and adaptive to an ever-changing battlespace.

“If an aircraft takes off, it is because we tasked them,” said McGachey. “You may have hundreds of aircraft tasked for that given day through the air operations center and we ensure they have what they need to accomplish their mission. We answer questions like, ‘who has the most fuel, who is closest, who can get there fastest and who can stay on station longest?’ There is not another career field who has more situational awareness of the current tactical situation than us.”

While all of this responsibility sounds like a lot to handle, the instructors of the C2BMO course here at Keesler Air Force Base are tasked with taking Airmen straight from basic training and providing them with the building blocks required to carry out this vital mission set.

The course at Keesler is 28 training days but is only the first step in the C2BMO pipeline. Following their time here, Airmen will attend follow-on training that lasts about two-and-a-half months. After that, they proceed to their first duty station where they will undergo significant on-the-job training.

C2BMO Airmen will typically be assigned to an air operations center or an air control squadron following their technical training. This is where they gain the bulk of the experience needed to control the chaos. This is also where all air operations are controlled from for a given theater.

After gaining experience on the job, Airmen are afforded the opportunity to “shred out” and go back to school to become a weapons director. Weapons directors are the combat controllers of the sky. They monitor radars to show pilots where enemy aircraft are so the right aircraft can be targeted during a mission, McGachey said.

Providing that situational awareness to pilots and relaying critical information from the ground to pilots, ultimately saves lives.

“I actually met somebody who I provided air support to,” McGachey said. “He was in Northern Afghanistan and he received air support five times in the area I controlled and he told me that without that support he wouldn’t be there today with his family.”

Tech. Sgt. Yzonya Maull, 334th TRS C2BMO instructor, concisely explained the importance of the career field following McGachey’s story.

“We’re not just racking and stacking aircraft,” Maull said. “We’re ensuring people go home to their families. We are critical to the air war. It’s not gonna go down without us.”