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54the new skills involved in tanking procedures and operations. Weoperated out of the small US Navy Tactical Support Cell where we couldjust manage to brief and debrief the crew captain, navigator and AEO. Itwas with some measure of envy that we used to call on Victor Ops intheir large, hot, dusty tented accommodation and then go back to work inNimrod Ops and squeeze into our cramped %u2018air-conditioned%u2019 office.Northwood issued broad tasking on a daily basis and we translatedthese instructions into two %u2018Form Green%u2019 sorties; the main one coveringthe rapidly extending sea lines of communication (SLOCS) towards theFalklands, and the second, surveillance around the island. Signal trafficwas dealt with by Tactical Communications Wing (TCW) and they alsoprovide air/ground communications during Nimrod operations to thesouth. ASMA, when it arrived, was of immense help since it permittedus to augment TCW communications with HQ while providing acontinuous secure communications link with Northwood Ops andKinloss. For engineers and operators alike, this was a particularlypowerful tool and a great leap forward for the Nimrod force operatingaway from home base in the early 1980s; a fact which is perhaps not soreadily apparent today when most of us possess PCs, email and mobilephones. For example, ASMA gave us in Ops the ability to downloadfrequency prediction charts and improve our Nimrod-to-groundcommunications by determining the best frequencies for the longer rangesorties towards the Falklands.Post flight reports were by Form Purple and this involved a rapidchange of gear compared to our routine peacetime reporting to HQ. TheAir Commander was, rightly, not too pleased with the quality andcontent of the early reports. We needed to improve our interpretation of,not only what the returning crews told us, but what the Air Commanderwanted to know about what was happening on the ocean, even if it wasnegative information. After some not too gentle persuasion, we were ableto get the intelligence team to understand that they needed to debrief acrew and not just accept its first report. If the radar operator thought hehad detected a naval vessel, we wanted his assessment of the contact andnot just the sanitised interpretation by the crew execs. The newSearchwater radar was of immense help here but a little more of thatlater.Rules of Engagement (ROE) came as a bit of a surprise; none of ushad any previous experience of this kind of constraint and as each new