Pilot sheds light on Operation Inherent Resolve

The Department of Defense daily releases a list of U.S. and coalition airstrikes conducted in the previous 24 hours against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) forces across war-torn Iraq and Syria.

Periodically a news outlet will use the strike data to weigh the effort by the United States and allies in trying to use air power alone, plus training of indigenous forces, to destroy radical Muslims spreading violence and fear.

Air National Guard Col. Michael Stohler is one of the pilots battering ISIL, or what Stohler prefers to call “Daesh” forces, a less respectful acronym also favored by the Iraqi government and coalition partners.

Stohler not only flies an A-10 Warthog ground-attack, close-air aircraft but he commands in theater their reactivated 332d Air Expeditionary Group, a descendent of the legendary Red Tails of 332nd Fighter Group from World War II.

He agreed to be interviewed, and named, to broaden understanding of the purpose and challenges of air campaign Operation Inherent Resolve.

One surprising fact is how long A-10 pilots must fly to complete a mission. Sorties usually aren’t shorter than five hours but can be longer than nine, requiring two to three mid-air refuelings.

“Imagine getting in your car and driving for 9 1/2 hours, never to get up to eat or to do anything,” says Stohler. “It’s long. It’s hard on you. The equipment we wear starts wearing on you after a while. Not to mention some of the flights can be very intense. So it’s quite physically demanding, much more so than I anticipated it to be.”

Length of sortie depends on distance to target areas and the mission once there. Besides actual flight time, pilots spend an hour to 90 minutes in planes on the tarmac, going through pre-flight and post-flight routines including arming, or disarming, of the aircraft.

All U.S. military in the AEG are Air National Guard on six-month deployment. Pace of operations has been intense, says Stohler, with planes flying around the clock. That puts a lot of strain on pilots, maintainers and base infrastructure, which also supports coalition aircraft and crews.

This is Stohler’s ninth deployment to the region as an Air National Guard fighter pilot, and his second flying A-10s. Earlier he flew F-16s. He has more than 3,800 flight hours in two aircraft, almost 600 hours in combat.

Last fall, he says, “I was doing my standard civilian job, flying a little at the Guard and watching the news” when what he saw told him “I needed to get back over here and make a difference.” He calls Daesh “the most barbaric organization on the planet right now.”

His timing to volunteer for another deployment, at age 48 after 29 years’ service, resulted in his being selected to stand up and command the 332nd AEG. Before he was a fighter pilot, Stohler was a staff sergeant and aircraft maintenance specialist working on F-4 Phantoms jets.

The weapons load on A-10s is typical of U.S. fighter aircraft to include laser-guided bombs, satellite-guided bombs and missiles. But A-10s are armored and have a 30 mm rotary cannon, making it especially fearsome against ground forces.

“We are very aware of that,” says Stohler. “The noise it makes when the gun fires is very intimidating as well. It would be intimidating too if an F-15 Strike Eagle or an F-16 was pointing at you. But the gun really does scare people and that’s nice to know.”

It’s also a good weapon too for reducing collateral damage, a priority for coalition aircraft. The cannon, though intimidating, can be the most minimal ordnance available to limit destruction to identifiable Daesh forces.

A-10s pilots are trained to find a target, seek verification and do on-the-fly targeting and strike. While that sounds like a solo operation, Stohler says “the coalition flying up there is enormous and we work as a team.”

Targets can be spotted by A-10s or other aircraft, Predator drones, satellites or by “someone with binoculars on the ground,” he says. Almost all targets get vetted up to higher command to determine validity. “As you can imagine this is complex,” Stohler says.

Tom Philpott can be contacted at Military Update, P.O. Box 231111, Centreville, Va. 20120-1111, or by e-mail at:

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