Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) | By Mark Brunswick | 5 June 2010

Guard pilots back from a mission with altitude: Five Minnesota Guard pilots are home after taking part in a surveillance program along the Afghan-Pakistani border

The group was instrumental in setting up in Afghanistan what U.S. Army officials call Task Force ODIN — the acronym derives from “observe, detect, identify and neutralize.” “We found them, we observed them and the people on the ground would go in and get them,” said Husnik, 39, a 20-year veteran of the Army who also flies helicopters. “What we were trying to do was cut the head of the snake off.”

Jun. 5–As a pilot for a surveillance program whose very name was classified until three years ago, Brad Husnik’s view of the war in Afghanistan came from an altitude he can’t tell you about.

The once-secret Army mission that Husnik and four other members of the Minnesota National Guard recently completed involved a yearlong deployment gathering intelligence from a twin-engine plane flying along the Pakistan border, four hours at a time.

The group was instrumental in setting up in Afghanistan what U.S. Army officials call Task Force ODIN — the acronym derives from “observe, detect, identify and neutralize.” Its goal was the same as when it was started in Iraq: to track the movement of key insurgent personnel and to neutralize roadside bombs — the main method of attacking military and truck convoys.

“We found them, we observed them and the people on the ground would go in and get them,” said Husnik, 39, a 20-year veteran of the Army who also flies helicopters. “What we were trying to do was cut the head of the snake off.”

ODIN began in Iraq with small sensor-carrying civilian planes and unmanned surveillance vehicles equipped with night-vision, infrared and full-motion video. The information was linked to infantry units and attack helicopters. The C-12 aircraft, stripped of civilian accoutrement, carries up to three analysts who supply real-time video and data to commanders on the ground and attack helicopters in the air. In Iraq, one system was able to detect changes in roadways over time, which could indicate the presence of buried explosives.

The effort in Afghanistan actually began with the Minnesota unit, which was part of a 37-pilot program called Task Force ODIN-A. The planes, known in the civilian world as King Air 300s, were purchased from private owners and quickly retrofitted, said Chief Warrant Officer 5 Ronald Peterson, the detachment commander.

“We built the unit from scratch,” Peterson said. “They bought the airplanes right off the street from civilian owners because they couldn’t wait to have them built.”

Several of the Minnesota pilots hopscotched across the ocean to airfields in Iceland, Greenland, Scotland, Germany, and, finally, the Middle East to deliver the planes to Bagram Air Base north of Kabul and to a base in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.

The unarmed planes were painted gray and unmarked, but the sophisticated equipment attached to the exterior hinted at their mission. With some countries nervous about participating in U.S. military affairs, pilots wore civilian clothes in transit.

Despite the often inhospitable Afghan environment, the unit flew 197 consecutive days without an interruption. A massive snowstorm on Super Bowl Sunday broke the string. The company flew several hundred combat missions and more than 3,600 accident-free hours.

Similar efforts have met with tragedy. In an unrelated program, for instance, Minnesota native Randy Bergquist and two others were killed last October when their plane crashed in northeastern Afghanistan. Bergquist, a native of Bemidji and a former drug interdiction officer, was working as a private contractor for Lockheed Martin on a NATO surveillance mission.

The Army unit’s role came as U.S. and coalition forces are relying more on unmanned drones for surveillance work in Iraq and Afghanistan. The drones also are being used to carry out missile attacks.

‘Pilots at heart’

Husnik, of Forest Lake, has been flying since he was in high school, including stints for Mesaba Airlines and as an emergency medical pilot for North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale. For him, the concept of piloting a drone from a joystick on the ground would be a grudging assignment.

“It’s probably the future in the military but all this group are pilots at heart,” he said. “They want to be in the aircraft when it goes up. We’d do a UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] mission if asked. Everybody here would accept that duty, but our true passion is in that seat. Our hearts are in that plane or in that helicopter.”

The unit’s return was noted in a small welcome-home ceremony Wednesday by Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

“I don’t understand all that it takes to navigate mountainous terrain in dangerous areas, but I’m sure it was interesting and challenging,” Pawlenty said. “I hope you also know it is really meaningful. We should not forget this is the place that housed the people that attacked us on 9/11.

“To be able to disrupt and eliminate that threat as it is housed in Afghanistan or elsewhere is really important. The reconnaissance mission in that regard provided really important intelligence information and advanced the mission.”

He then jokingly asked about the toilet facilities in the stripped-down aircraft.

“They were removed for weight saving, sir,” one of the crew informed him.

Copyright (c) 2010, Star Tribune, Minneapolis
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

Source: ST

See also:

• Newest manned spy plane scores points in war effort
• An Inside Look at Task Force ODIN Operations in Afghanistan