Wisconsin National Guard to assist Haiti relief efforts

February 3, 2010 - When a massive 7.0 magnitude earthquake devastated Haiti last month, the U.S. rushed to provide assistance. National Guard Soldiers and Airmen here in Wisconsin and across the country made themselves available to provide humanitarian assistance. Beginning next week the Wisconsin National Guard will be among the relief workers.

Three members of the Wisconsin Joint Force Headquarters' Detachment 52, a C-26E fixed-wing aircraft unit, will head to Homestead Joint Air Reserve Base in Florida Feb. 9 to assume an operational airlift support mission for approximately one month. The small aircraft and crew will shuttle personnel and supplies between Florida and Haiti beginning Feb. 11.

Approximately one week later, a senior non-commissioned officer from the Milwaukee-based 128th Air Refueling Wing of the Wisconsin Air National Guard will report for a 120-day tour to provide civil engineering assistance. In addition, several other Wisconsin Guard Soldiers and Airmen have volunteered their expertise, many in response to a request for troop availability from the National Guard Bureau.

"The Wisconsin Guard is in constant communications with the National Guard Bureau, and is ready to send a wide array of Wisconsin Guard assets to Haiti," said Maj. David May, liaison officer for the state Emergency Operations Center. Wisconsin is among at least 32 other states to volunteer National Guard assets for humanitarian assistance, he added.

A total of five Soldiers from Detachment 52 will serve in the relief effort, with two Soldiers relieving part of the initial crew. While the Guard members will be on active duty orders, this is not a conventional deployment, but rather an "operational use mission."

According to Col. Jeff Paulson, director of aviation and safety for the Wisconsin National Guard, the Department of Defense frequently tasks Detachment 52 with brief missions outside the continental U.S. The DoD's Operational Support Airlift Command has command and control of the 10 C-26 units in the National Guard, one of which is in Wisconsin.

Haiti falls within the area of operations for the U.S. Southern Command, which is based in Miami. Homestead JARB is located in the Miami suburb of Homestead. Southern Command has coordinated with the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development to assess how the Armed Forces may be of assistance.

Paulson said no special training is required for this particular mission.

The Wisconsin C-26 aircraft and crew will join relief efforts being conducted by thousands of military forces including Guard members from more than 20 states.

The last time the National Guard supported relief efforts in Haiti was 2008, when eight Air National Guard medical personnel were onboard the USS Kearsarge when it was diverted from its Continuing Promise mission to Haiti following Hurricane Ike.

Col. David Aycock, deputy chief of staff of operations for the Army Guard, said that the next few weeks may see a transition to reserve component units, including those from the Army Guard, taking the lead in Haiti.

"The Army has asked us to look at some alternative solutions to provide some options for either additional forces that may be required or to replace some of the forces that are already on the ground sometime in the near future," Aycock said. "My personal perspective is this thing is going to transition more and more to the reserve component-side of the house in the weeks ahead."

However, which units or types of units that would be activated have not yet been determined. "We've been asked to staff some potential options," Aycock said. "We don't have a hard requirement yet but we're looking at some organizational constructs of what we think would be the right force structure to go down there within the parameters we've been given."

Those parameters may change based on the needs on the ground and any mission plan would have to be first validated by Southern Command.

"We still have to go through the process of getting a validation from both Forces Command and Southern Command that the force mix we're working meets the requirement on the ground," Aycock said. "And we would need to put specific Army Guard solutions against that list, brief the leadership here and then engage with those states that own those units."