I'll admit it: Although I've sat through many Crew Resource Management (CRM) courses, like many of us, I have struggled to stay awake. But, let me tell you a story about how good CRM prevented a bad situation from getting worse. In this case, it enabled the Air Force to save two valuable combat assets—an F-16 and, more importantly, my life. Here's my story. My flight lead, Capt Jason "Hollywood" Smith, and I were fragged to conduct night Close Air Support (CAS) in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). Unlike most nights, however, the winds required that we take off from Runway 14. Though this was our first time using this runway (Runway 32 is always the active), we were comfortable to proceed because a previous AEF rotation of F-16s had taken off from Runway 14 with no problem. As we approached the runway, it became apparent that Runway 14's lighting was as poor as 32's—marginal at best. In fact, the runway's poor lighting was cited as a contributing factor in two previous mishaps. Nevertheless, we were accustomed to flying with the poor lighting and weren't put off by the deficiency. The weather was scat-tered at 15K and forecasted to get slightly worse. Illumination "was low, making it a very dark night. All in all, just another combat night sortie in Iraq Well, almost.
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