Fighting Falcon F16
Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Other / Unknown
ATC Issue All Types; Airspace Violation All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
General None Reported / Taken
Human Factors; Procedure
The session involved multiple military fighter aircraft returning from military airspace. I was assigned the position without help. There was no traffic when I took over. I was asked after all fighters were in my communication if I would need a D-Side. At this point; way too late to be effective; there would not have been much else to do except listen for read backs and coordinate what I was already had ready to do in time. Later a D-Side came in but way to late to be of assistance and so was mainly listening and trying to get a handle on the traffic. To complicate the situation the first group of fighters had poor English. This situation is typical of what we expect on the floor as controllers and demonstrates many failures of the airspace and TMU offices that seem to never get addressed. I learned after this session that the airspace person had advised our supervisors that we would get foreign fighter pilots to practice locally. Apparently; airspace was to brief the workforce and would get details which never happened. IF WE RECEIVE ANY FOREIGN FIGHTER PILOTS (or other fighter group visitors) we [need] a BRIEFING. Our briefings have been dropped on numerous military operations and have been poorly done which leads to much confusion on the floor. It is horribly unsafe especially in light of pilots doing weird things lately. Get TMU and OM's involved. How can we have a volume of 6 fighter groups; bad weather; non-standard runways; and foreign pilots and no person with authority that has any awareness of a situation like what an ability to consider metering or a MIT program? Require flights to return via only high or low altitudes. Stacking flights on the same routes and expect them to be placed with proper separation in 50 miles plus the fact that these foreign groups have different standards for spacing in non-standard groups. I was told that we are not allowed to use 'Button 5' or similar for communication changes. No problem however; over numerous times the fighter groups only refer to the changes in this way. It is much simpler to do and get the point across with this verbiage in plain form.
ZSE Controller described an unsafe condition when preparations for handling multiple foreign military aircraft were not properly briefed or planned.