Hoosier Wing soars to new heights during mobility exercise

by Tech. Sgt. Mark R. W. Orders-Woempner
434th ARW Public Affairs

4/1/2014 - GRISSOM AIR RESERVE BASE, Ind. -- Dusting off a playbook from its old Strategic Air Command days, the 434th Air Refueling Wing soared to new heights during a recent mobility exercise.

During the strategic warfare exercise held March 8-9, the largest KC-135R Stratotanker unit in the Air Force Reserve executed various response, mobility, and command and control procedures in response to a simulated global threat.

"We exercised more processes to a greater extent than we have done in decades," said Lt. Col. Joseph Austin, 434th Operations Support Squadron chief of plans. "We said, 'let's fill the tank full and see where the cracks are so we can fix them,' and when we filled the tank full, we were still able to execute to an outstanding rate.

"We maxed out maintenance, aircrews, support, air traffic control, transportation and logistics," Austin added. "We maxed out everything."

Helping control the complex exercise were 434th ARW command post command and control technicians who processed emergency action messages, relayed information to aircrews, and kept both wing leadership and higher headquarters in the loop, said Senior Master Sgt. Jeffrey Withrow, 434th ARW command post superintendent.

"We had more evaluators in here than anyone else did on base because we really wanted to test our abilities," said Withrow. "They really dug deep, and so we now have a lot of confidence we can do the job."

Adding to the complexity, the exercise was capped off with a launch of 10 KC-135s in two five-ship formations.

"Nobody here, not even the old SAC warriors who are still around, can recollect launching that many aircraft here in this unit or in the old 305th Air Refueling Wing," said Austin. The 305th ARW was the regular Air Force unit at Grissom until the base realigned as a reserve base in 1994.

"The Air Force stopped exercising this in the 1990s, and since then I don't think the Air Force Reserve has ever launched that many jets in formation at once for something like this," he continued.

And, launching 10 aircraft in rapid fashion with a miniscule margin of error is no easy task, said Chief Master Sgt. Tony Hoffman, 434th Maintenance Group superintendent.

"It took a 100 percent effort from all personnel to execute at that level," Hoffman explained. "We've never gone to this latitude; we've exercised it up to that point, but we never pushed them like we did during this last exercise."

For their part, the operators were extremely grateful for the effort displayed by the maintainers.

"I have to give it up to maintenance as they took jets that are all over 50 years old and launched them at a mission capability rate much higher than required and much higher than anyone expected," remarked Austin. "It wasn't like a normal day-to day mission here where if something small was broke we could take 10 minutes to fix it; we had to be 100 percent ready to go, and if they jets weren't ready to go on engine start, they didn't go."

Outside of maintenance, Austin said both aircrews and support functions performed admirably.

"Once again ops proved they can get the job done," he said, adding that they intentionally put their most inexperienced crews on the jets to give them a chance to learn. "We put them out there so they could learn, but we also put an older, more experienced crew member who had gone through this years ago, as an extra crew member so they could watch over them and offer helpful tips on the jet."

While there were plenty of positives to go around, Austin said there is still room for improvement, especially when it comes to communication.

"If there was anything to learn it was that the first rule of battle, which is if you don't have communications, you don't have a cohesive force, holds true," he explained. "We'll be working on that as we prepare for the next inspection.

"And, we're looking forward to our next inspection and expect to put our best foot forward," concluded Austin.

The 434th ARW routinely deploys Airmen around the globe in support of the Air Force mission and U.S. strategic objectives.