C-17'S JOIN ARMY TO TOTE THE LOAD

by STAFF SGT. RASHARD COAXUM
315th Airlift Wing Public Affairs

4/14/2014 - JOINT BASE CHARLESTON, S.C. April 14, 2014 -- Four Air Force Reserve Command C-17 Globemaster III's moved four tanks weighing more than 260 tons in addition to a contingency of Army personnel last week from Wright Army Airfield, Ga.

C-17 air and ground crews - from the 315th Airlift Wing here and the 445th Airlift Wing at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio - teamed up to transport the M1A1SA Abrams battle tanks and an element of Soldiers from Wright AAF, Ga., to McEntire Air National Guard Base, S.C., in support of a tank movement for the Army's 1/118th Combat Arms Brigade.

Coordinating the effort was the 315th Airlift Control Flight from JB Charleston, under the command of Lt. Col. Lamar Thigpen. "What's so great about this mission is that we are really moving something that has to go somewhere," Thigpen said. "Typically in exercises we pick it up here and move it to another base then pick it up there and bring it back where it started, but this to me is a real world movement and operation."

The ALCF, the Air Force's mobile command and control contingency response unit, provides oversight on air mobility processes such as air operations planning and execution, load planning and aerial port operations. The Air Force Reserve command currently operates five airlift control flights that provide highly trained airlift personnel to manage, coordinate and control air mobility assets as well as having the capability for operating at locations where there is limited support. In addition to those capabilities, ALCF's are able to deploy within 36 hours of being tasked as a contingency response element to the most austere places, Thigpen said.

"Let's say that the Army or Marines have located an area with nothing on where support is needed. They call us and we can go in and set up command and control fast," Thigpen said. "We have the personnel who can coordinate the airflow of things coming in so that we can get them off the airfields and to the people who really need them." "If we look back to the earthquake in Haiti, the ALCF was tasked with running Homestead Air Reserve Base [Florida] as an intermediate staging base in support of the emergency relief missions," he said. "Our command and control had visibility on all the missions and were able to contact people down in Haiti to find out what they needed."

"Based on what was needed, our guys were able to prioritize the shipments, get the chalks together and figure out what needed to get there first," he said. Lt. Col. John Russi - the airlift operations coordinator for this tank mission and aircraft commander for the second transport C-17 from JB Charleston - helped plan this first ever combined operational movement of the Abrams tanks with the South Carolina Army National Guard.

He said that it takes a combined effort for the ALCF to make a mission like this tank movement successful. "We've done a lot of coordinating with the Army," he said. "We had to handle issues like making sure we had the performance we needed. We came down a month ago and did site surveys. We had to make sure the ramp could handle the aircraft and that after the plane was on the ground, it could turn in addition to so many other things." In addition to the safety aspect, Russi noted that a heavy focus of the mission was placed on effective training for the air and ground crews. "We wanted to make sure that everything would be safe for everyone training during the mission because that training is extremely important to what the ALCF does," he said.

"We don't normally lift this kind of weight," Russi said. "There have only been a handful of times a C-17 has been used to carry an M1 tank. That was either to take them to Iraq or Afghanistan or for the initial operational phase for the C-17 to do capability demonstrations." "This gives us more real-time real-world experience in the case we're actually transporting these into combat again," Russi said. The 315th ALCF was recently awarded as the Air Force Reserve Command ALCF of the year for 2013.

Thigpen said that he was proud of all the Airmen involved with missions like the tank movement and how they work together to make the ALCF entity it is to be in position to receive these types of accolades. "We really are the grease of the machine," Thigpen said. "We are the conduit between the user and our higher headquarters." "We make the centralized control and decentralized execution, and we make that happen because we are the bridge between the two.

He said that in the long term, he hopes that being that conduit will help build stronger relationships not only nationally between our military service branches but internationally with other countries. "We are the smallest group of a contingency response force. We can get out and help you get your stuff where it needs to go regardless of who you are," Thigpen said. "Ultimately, the Airlift Control Flight is about building relationships because that is what ALCF's do."