In this third of three interviews, Major Kenneth McAdams, US Air Force, discusses his deployment to Afghanistan as an aircraft navigator in the 15th Special Operations Squadron from May through July 2005 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. He begins this interview by stating that their predeployment training, including high-level airdrops over Texas and mountain flying in Colorado, was excellent and matched well against the mission sets they had to execute in Afghanistan. Upon arriving in Afghanistan he found himself employed with a serious mission set, including flying the mountains of Afghanistan, landing on and leaving from unimproved landing zones, and conducting many airdrops. Noting that the MC-130H has specialized equipment which ordinary C-130s do not, parts were often lacking for these systems for weeks at a time while missions proceeded regardless. "The mission I thought was the best I've ever flown was when we flew into a dry lakebed in southwestern Afghanistan," says McAdams, "It was just cool going into a dry lakebed and not into an airfield." He goes on to say that many of the missions flown were dangerous because they did not have a good idea of local Taliban strength, it was not certain that the landing surfaces could support their aircraft, and many of the airdrops required them to climb over ridgelines and then rapidly drop down to reach a good drop altitude in one pass. He states that the key to dealing with these obstacles was "preflight planning. I'd spend hours just sitting there pulling terrain elevations off charts before flying and figuring out how our terrain-following radar was going to act in the various terrain that we were going to be flying in the next day…. For a while, our terrain-following radar was out on one of the aircraft so we'd have to remain flexible and just plan differently." He adds that some of their missions were probably in support of coalition allies but explains that many of the personnel supported were not in uniform and did not conform to military grooming standards, making it difficult to know who they really were. McAdams says that the Army could learn something about flexibility from the Air Force while the Army's system seems better for producing senior-level leaders. He closes by recommending that Army units coordinating with aircraft for support need to pay more attention to the planning details to receive useful aerial support.

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