By JOC Joe Staker

During this time in the Arabian Gulf, a few sailors are helping USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) to gather some unusual souvenirs. They hope their cameras will collect thousands of images of the surrounding area, from as high as 50,000 feet.

Photographer’s Mate Second Class Edward Fagg of Lansing, Mich., a Fighter Squadron 31 "Tomcatter," and Aviation Electronics Technician Third Class Eric Schindler of Bancroft, Mich., a member of Sea Operations Detachment Oceana, Va., are mainstays on a remarkable technical team. Avionics Shop 6 is the maintenance center for the Tactical Air Reconnaissance Photography System (TARPS), a camera array that permits entire aircraft carrier battle groups to "see" hostile terrain through shared digital imagery.

TARPS pods are routinely carried under the fuselage of F-14D Tomcat fighter jets as they fly Operation Southern Watch missions, enforcing the United Nations-sanctioned "no-fly" zone over Southern Iraq.

The 17-foot, 1,850-pound gray pod is actually a protective aluminum case manufactured by Grumman. Inside its shell, three camera sensors are mounted in sturdy equipment racks. They aim down at passing terrain, using infrared to capture images at night.

In the air, the aluminum pod protects the cameras from vibrations and soaking by hydraulic fluid and JP-5 jet fuel. It must withstand buffeting by winds at twice the speed of sound.

When a Tomcat returns from a reconnaissance mission, the pod is opened and film is rushed to processing. The shipboard record for processing turnaround, from landing to finished print, is 13 minutes. 3,350 feet of new film is placed in the pod, and it is ready to go again.

"We send out the pods once every three days, two at a time," said Fagg, 27. "It keeps us trained, but doesn’t overload us. As of September 25, we had used the pods on 56 missions in the Arabian Gulf."

Fagg explained the advantages of TARPS imagery over satellite reconnaissance. "The satellites make one pass over an area, and have to be reprogrammed," he said. "With new TARPS digital imagery, anything a jet with a pod ‘sees’ can be sent straight back to us by radio signal. Our specialists can interpret the images and use it almost immediately. And you can always send the pilot back for another look."

Each image displays the latitude and longitude of the location photographed. That information would be invaluable in a combat situation. "With the location data our communications can reach out to a jet in the air," said Fagg. "It would swoop down and drop a load, and then we can come through again to assess the bomb damage."

While 10 sailors maintain the TARPS pods, only one actually repairs the intricate equipment inside. Schindler, 21, characterized his job as "mildly complicated to overwhelmingly complicated." "If you have worked with it for a while, you get a feel for what might be wrong," he said. "After that, you can usually determine the problem right away."

The heat of the Arabian Gulf, where average noon temperatures hover in the high 90s, can cause some simple equipment problems. When film is moved from an air conditioned area out to the flight deck it can fog, jam, or adhere to surfaces around it. Film transport and shuttle speeds are also simple fixes. But other "glitches" are more challenging, requiring circuit card troubleshooting. "I know that when I send the gear out, it doesn’t come back," Schindler said. "That is how I know I’mdoing my job well."

Schindler pointed to one camera with a 610mm lens, in a frame the size of a large television set. The related hard drive alone was the size of a small set. "The components can weight anywhere from 15 to 120 pounds," he said. "I guess I’m sort of a heavy duty, high tech repairman."