Photo courtesy of Juice/Ukrainian Air Force. To achieve its goals, the Grey Wolf Team promotes ingenuity and forward thinking among its members - akin, in some ways, to the creative culture of a Silicon Valley startup. There is no other such group in the US Air Force, and no template exists for the team’s unique mission, which began only after Russia’s Feb. Service on the Grey Wolf Team is voluntary, and members are typically requested by name. “I may not be able to share much of those details with the Ukrainians, at least not initially, because they come from classified sources, but I nevertheless get a lot of information from the Ukrainians about what their actual needs are, what their problem sets are.” “We are able to see a lot of the intelligence, up to a pretty classified level, and be able to make assessments on what Ukraine’s air force needs to succeed from an air component perspective,” the team member said. Typically with five to eight members, the team is entirely composed of US Air Force personnel, including fighter pilots, air battle managers, intelligence personnel, and others from specialties that can help. The Grey Wolf Team operates from the floor of the US Air Forces in Europe, or USAFE, air operations center at Ramstein. “Knowing their pilots, knowing their aircraft we decide what we can reasonably ‘onboard’ and execute in order to create effects on the battlefield,” said the pilot, who asked that his name not be published due to the sensitive nature of his work.
Those suggestions include proposals for equipment deliveries, as well as the transfer of tactics and techniques to Ukrainian air force pilots and support personnel, which can then be immediately used in combat. Photo by Anatoliy Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images. Ī Ukrainian MiG-29 flies above pro-Russian activists blocking a column of Ukrainian soldiers in the city of Kramatorsk on April 16, 2014. With input from Ukrainian counterparts, the team passes recommendations up the Department of Defense’s chain of command for “low-cost, game-changing” solutions to Ukraine’s air combat challenges, one team member told Coffee or Die Magazine. Oleksandr “Grey Wolf” Oksanchenko, a legendary Ukrainian pilot killed in the war’s opening days, and based at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, the Grey Wolf Team focuses on understanding the limited technological tools available to the Ukrainians, whose air force comprises mostly Soviet-era hardware.
There’s not another team like this in the Air Force that’s doing the same thing,” said an Air Force fighter pilot who has worked extensively on the Grey Wolf Team. “We exist because there’s a bunch of motivated people who want to help out. An ad hoc US Air Force task force known as the “Grey Wolf Team” is advising Ukraine’s air force in its defensive air campaign against Russia’s invasion.
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