The E-11A BACN touches down in Warner Robins

ROBINS AFB, Ga. — As the JSTARS mission sunsets at Robins Air Force Base, four new ones come to take its place. With the groundwork for these missions well under way, Robins AFB is sure to see growth in several industry areas, and the area around it will feel the impact of growth for years to come. One of these new missions, the flying mission of a group of E-11A Battlefield Airborne Communications Nodes, hit a major milestone at the end of April.

The first of these aircraft touched down at Robins Air Force Base on April 24. On May 2, the 18th Airborne Command and Control Squadron, a unit activated in February 2023, completed the first sortie with the E-11A BACN aircraft at Robins AFB. More is to come.

Media were invited on base Wednesday morning to speak with mission personnel and view the aircraft. Here’s what we learned:

The E-11A is a high-altitude, long-endurance craft intended as a “communication gateway” for military operations, providing air, ground and maritime sources multiple routes to exchange information. Built by Bombardier, the craft is 99 feet long, has a wingspan of 94 feet, and can hit 14,750 pounds of thrust. It can reach altitudes of 51,000 feet, and has a range of 6,235 nautical miles.

The Battlefield Airborne Communicate Node, the materials and technologies carried by the aircraft that give it it’s communication capabilities, are controlled from the ground at a site within the orbit location of the E-11A. The gear aboard the aircraft allows the United States military increased “tactical situational awareness and communication abilities from the forward edge of the battlefield to operational decision makers in operations centers.”

“The mission is all about communications and enabling command control connectivity. We basically extend the range of a lot of communication systems, be they radio or data link, and then we allow people who have different types of radios and data links to communicate with each other that otherwise would not have been able to,” 18th Airborne Commander Scott Sevigny said. “There’s a need for it because we have a lot of different communication systems over the years; some are older than others, some are much more modern, new types of technology. In order to be able to integrate those together, we want to make sure we have all of our war fighters, as much as possible, with the common operational picture, as we normally refer to it, so that everybody knows what’s going on at the same time.

“It’s been a lot of work, but it’s been rewarding work. It’s been great working with the people of the 18th ACCS, and great to have new mission capability here at Robins, and to have an operational impact in deployed locations that we are going to now or could be going to in the future.”

According to Sevigny, deployments for this mission will begin in the summer or fall this year, with more aircraft on their way by the end of 2023. Initial operational capability will be reached by 2025, and full operational capability should be achieved by 2027.

18th Airborne Senior Enlisted Leader Senior Master Sgt. Christie Conn, who is responsible for managing the unit’s resources and caring for the people in it, shed some light on the unit’s resource needs.

“Our priorities in the 18th ACCS are people, mission and innovation — if we take care of the people, they’ll take care of the mission, and we’ll get after the mission through innovation,” Conn said. “With a flying operation, it’s pretty complex; we have our payload component, and then as a flying squadron we have our all the multiple shops that are involved in that.”

The mission employs a number of departments, organizations and programs to ensure planes get off the ground and make the mission successful. Several different skill sets are also required to ensure mission success.

As of Wednesday, 20 enlisted were working towards the mission’s work, with more on the way next year. The bulk of staff will come in 2025, and by 2027, 170 enlisted will staff this mission alone.

Director of Operations, E-11A Instructor and Evaluator Pilot Lt. Col. Richard “Rich” Elmore spoke on some of the abilities of the aircraft, and how it will serve towards mission goals.

“It’s an incredible plane, it’s very capable. It’s very fuel-efficient as well, you can fly up to high altitude for extended ranges. The automation is incredible,” Elmore said.

This aircraft requires two pilots, and is capable of landing and taking off from shorter airfields. Elmore said that aircraft is capable of quick start-up, and is highly automated. The efficiency of this mission, with pilots, maintenance, logistics and support staff all in one place, means that downtime between flights is limited.

Limitations of the craft are in the process of being discovered, as the pilots test how far it can be pushed.

Maintenance Operations Officer Capt. Randy Lambert talked about maintenance of the craft, and what that will look like at Robins AFB.

“Our job as maintenance is to supply a safe, reliable, properly configured airplane for our customers, which are our pilots in the 18th ACCS,” Lambert said. “We have a lot of unknown unknowns when it comes to maintenance as far as parts that are going to break, things were not sure of yet as far as cycles, because this plane is mostly going to be flown down range.

“You still have your standard maintenance, pre-flight, recovery, post-flight, launch — it’s still a lot of maintenance even though it’s new.”

As these planes are used, their flights and what’s done during those flights will be tracked. Maintenance staff will use this data to properly fill any unknown cycles of the aircraft and its parts.

Airplane maintenance will be completed by Northrop-Grumman, while payload maintenance will be complete by enlisted maintainers.

For the E-11A BACN, this is just the beginning. Over the next several years, the mission will grow and develop at Robins Air Force Base alongside the base’s other new missions. As more information comes available on this aircraft and the work it completes, you can read about it in The Houston Home Journal.

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