Fog of War, and Refueling at 25,000 Feet

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 22, 2006 — -- We awake to the Fog of War.

No, not a car bomb, IED attack, or U.S. troops engaging insurgents, but literally the FOG OF WAR.

It is pea soup outside, we can't see a hundred feet in front of us and our C-17 aircraft that was supposed to be on ground, loaded and ready for us to board by 9 a.m. is circling the Iraqi skies above, waiting for the fog to lift so it can land.

What would Rumsfeld do?

We have this sinking feeling that we will be here for a while, and our evening arrival at Andrews Air Force Base looks more like it will be early Saturday morning. Good thing we had to wake up early and drop off our luggage by 5:30a.m. only to have it sit on a truck for hours and hours.

We are supposed to fly to Mosul, where new Defense Secretary Gates is to receive an intelligence and operations brief and meet some troops before returning to the States, but the weather gods have other plans for us.

Gates meets with a few soldiers from Task Force 2-15 of the 10th Mountain Division who are leading a model "embedded training program" where U.S. Army soldiers "embed" with Iraqi army units.

This task force has 400 men spread through an Iraqi brigade, advising them, teaching them, training them, even living with them. They hope the Iraqi soldiers will be ready to succeed on their own in a year's time.

Lt Col Bob Morschauser, a member of the task force, believes the partnering is successful and he told the defense secretary he thought more of it needed to be done.

"The big thing is confidence," he says. "They are gaining confidence rapidly," learning tactics, techniques and procedures of the U.S. Army.

There were supposed to be a half-dozen Marines at the meeting, too, but they couldn't get here due to the weather.

Gates receives a briefing from Combined Joint Task Force Troy, which is the "counter-IED" unit -- they develop ideas and technologies to defeat the IEDs that have become such a devastating force in this war.

After the briefing, some of the unit's soldiers give the defense secretary a demonstration of counter-IED equipment and he gets to see first-hand the latest tools the military has to try to suppress these deadly weapons.

We are not going to Mosul, which is a disappointment, but on the upside we may get home close to our originally scheduled time instead of the middle of the night.

In the daily press briefing, Gates gives no specifics, but says he thought the Iraqis had a greater degree of confidence and a better understanding of what needed to be done to secure the country. He adds they are eager to take the lead, but cautions that it is a difficult situation and that it was going to be a long haul.

Reacting to the news of U.S. warships heading towards the Gulf Region, Gates says he thought the United States was sending a message to all countries in the region, not just Iran, adding that the United States has been in the Gulf for a long time and "we will be [t]here a long time."

Because of the fog, we skip the helicopter ride back to the Baghdad airport and drive in a convoy. While it wasn't far, the road conditions, slowing to snake through checkpoints and slow-moving vehicles make us appreciate the short helicopter ride we got when we arrived.

There don't seem to me too many things more dangerous than two enormous aircraft flying within 100 feet of one another at 25,000 feet going 400 miles per hour, but that's what happens during an aerial refueling.

Sitting in the C-17 cockpit during the refueling, and it was an amazing sight. You see the tanker off in the distance to the side, and then it moves into position above and in front of the C-17.

The C-17 then inches closer and closer until the fuel boom from the tanker is over and behind the cockpit and latches into the receptacle.

Understandably, this is not a quick process: the pilots take their time, going a hair faster than the tanker to catch it until the hookup process is complete. There is not a lot of room for error.

Being so close to a flying gas can -- which is what an air tanker essentially is -- and bouncing in its wake, the exercise requires enormous concentration from the C-17 pilot, who watches gauges on the bottom of the tanker that tell him if he is too high or too low, too far forward or too far back.

After about 20 minutes, we finish refueling from one tanker and a second comes into complete the refueling.

Still no in-flight movies, but we get a couple of meals and people scrounge for floor space to put their sleeping bags. Arriving at a rain-soaked Andrews Air Force Base after a 15-hour flight, everyone is exhausted and looking forward to sleeping in a real bed.

We have one more stop tomorrow before we come home.