Airman earns Bronze Star during Iraq tour

  • Published
  • By 2nd Lt. Ryan DeCamp
  • 56th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
LUKE AIR FORCE BASE, Ariz. --  Lt. Col. Kip Wilkowski, 56th Fighter Wing Exercises and Evaluations chief, headed to Iraq in May of 2008 knowing his year-long deployment would include leading a safety team. The job description included being responsible for the welfare of 32,000 people. The safety of local Iraqis, members of other militaries, foreign nationals and all branches of the U.S. military was in his hands.

Apparently he was good at it.

Colonel Wilkowski was awarded the Bronze Star for his work as the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing Safety chief at Joint Base Balad, Iraq, Jan. 8. The presentation came at an officers' call in Club Thunderbolt by Brig. Gen. Kurt Neubauer, 56th Fighter Wing commander.

"A lot of what we in safety fought was complacency," Colonel Wilkowski said. "Troops are amped up in that environment where they feel they have to get the mission done. We tried to promote 'walk before we can run.' Otherwise they may end up doing something that's unsafe and get hurt. Taking a couple seconds to put protective equipment on will help speed the mission up versus someone getting hurt and being bed ridden."

Quick thinking by him and his team helped prevent that scenario from happening. An August fire at Balad caused $1 million in damages. Colonel Wilkowski noticed there were no ambulances on scene. Thinking about the 120-degree heat and seeing firefighters overcome by heat, he took action.

"One of the firefighters went to get water to cool down and then tried to go back to fight the fire without his protective equipment," he said. "One of my ground safety NCOs stopped him. I then directed that a mobile triage be set up to care for firefighters overcome by smoke and fumes and others suffering from heat exhaustion. Volunteer firefighters were called to the scene and we began carrying wounded firefighters, on stretchers, away from the fire."

Another desire of his team was to have the base refocus on published procedures in order to increase the safety of aircrews operating in and out of Joint Base Balad. He said Balad used to average 130 to 150 hazardous air traffic reports a year, whereas a stateside base may see five or ten. His team's work dropped the Balad count by 58 percent.

Birds on and around the base also presented a problem. His team began a bird control program to reduce the overpopulation which helped decrease the number of bird strikes with aircraft by 76 percent.

He flew more than a hundred F-16 missions, including one mission that helped neutralize six improvised explosive devices.

"My job was to provide surveillance for a road used by coalition forces and local Iraqis and look for suspicious spots that may be possible IEDs," he said. "While airborne I identified multiple infrared significant spots and notified the coalition forces, who were about an eighth of a mile away from the location.

As the coalition forces approached the location with a bulldozer, used to detonate and clear IEDs, the first IED exploded. The coalition ground team informed Colonel Wilkowski they were new IEDs not seen before. Two IEDs detonated and the EOD team disarmed four more. No one was hurt on the mission.

"Had the team not known the IED's location and had the devices been controlled by a person instead of being pressure activated, they could have possibly killed someone," he said. "It was a very heavily trafficked road and it was my opinion the IED was triggered by a pressure plate, so it had no discrimination. It would have been triggered by any vehicle traveling on that road."

Colonel Wilkowski learned he would receive the Bronze Star in December while reviewing his personal information in Virtual MPF. He was informed by the 56th Fighter Wing Staff he would be presented the award by Brig. Gen. Kurt Neubauer, 56th FW commander, at January's commander's call.

"I was humbled by it," Colonel Wilkowski said. "You don't set out to get an award like this. It is very gratifying, but more so knowing what I helped to accomplish in Iraq. To be recognized in that kind of a forum in front of all my peers at Luke made it very special."