OPERATION DEEP FREEZE PITS THE U.S. MILITARY AGAINST A FORMI- DABLE ADVERSARY: Antarctica, where winds in a hurry to escape from one of the most hostile environ- ments on Earth race across a landmass larger than the U.S. and Mexico combined at speeds that often reach 80 mph.
It takes an LC-130 five days just to get there from the crew’s base in New York. On landing, they will find a wel- come mat of cutting frost and snow. An active volcano juts through an an- cient and unrelenting ice sheet that is more than 14,000 feet thick in places. Snow, fog, and clouds obscure the
horizon. A pilot could be soaring 10 feet above the ground or a thousand. “There’s nothing on the ground to give you a sense of scope or scale,” says Col. Timothy LaBarge, com- mander, 109th Airlift Wing, New York Air National Guard. “There are no trees or houses. It’s very difficult to ascertain things like height and depth perception and roll control.” “It really is otherworldly here,”
Lt. Col. Edward “Hertz” Vaughan, USAF, commander, 13th Expedition- ary Support Squadron, Joint Task
58 MILITARY OFFICER JANUARY 2012
Force-Support Forces Antarctica, said during his most recent season on the ice. “I don’t think people get tired of it or get used to it. Every day I get up, and I am just thrilled to be here. It’s like no other place on Earth.” Since 1955, personnel from the Air
Force, Navy, Army, and Coast Guard have supported the U.S. Antarctic Program and the NSF’s research. Each September, as summer in the Southern Hemisphere draws near, they’ll go back for a new season of what some have called the military’s most difficult peacetime mission.
Uniquely compelling U.S. scientific interest in Antarc- tica can be traced to the Palmer- Pendleton Expedition in 1830, when Nathaniel B. Palmer and Benjamin Pendleton explored the area with
Dr. James Eights, a U.S. scientist. Later, Roald Amundsen, Richard E. Byrd, James Clark Ross, Robert Falcon Scott, and Ernest Shackleton led the way. Today, Operation Deep Freeze is a joint-service, interagen- cy operation, with strategic inter- theater airlift, tactical deep-field support, aeromedical evacuation support, search-and-rescue re- sponse, sealift, seaport access, bulk fuel supply, port cargo handling, and transportation requirements. “[Military participation] gives us
tremendous logistics capability to be able to support a very wide range of activities,” says Brian Stone, direc- tor, Antarctic Infrastructure and Logistics Division at the NSF. “We can fly anywhere on the continent. We can take world-class research- ers out of institutions in the U.S. and
PHOTOS: ABOVE AND PREVIOUS SPREAD, COURTESY USAF
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