315th Public Affairs Office
10/24/2014 - KEY WEST NAVAL AIR STATION , Fla. -- The 701st Airlift Squadron at Joint Base Charleston, South Carolina flew two C-17 Globemaster III aircraft and transported 117 members from the 315th Airlift Wing to Key West Naval Air Station, Florida, Oct. 16 for a four-day readiness inspection mission.
The training mission was part of the 315th AW's unit effectiveness training, which is the Air Force's new way of evaluating a unit's wartime, contingency and force sustainment readiness.
Lt. Col. Ronnie Schier, 701st Airlift Squadron director of operations, said the training mission started as a simple fly-away.
"The genesis of the training mission was originally orchestrated as a fly-away to a different environment that would provide multiple sorties, multiple jets and joint-force training with United States Southern Command and Special Operations Command South," he said. "As the fly away evolved it went from flying and dropping paratroopers to conducting readiness training in multiple areas to count toward our UEI."
In the past, an operational readiness inspection was conducted approximately every five years to evaluate and measure the ability of a unit to perform, and all aspects of a unit's mission readiness were evaluated by outside inspectors visiting the base or deployed locations.
In December 2013, the 315th AW was the first Reserve wing to undergo a UEI, which was designed to shift responsibility of a wing's mission readiness to wing commanders who are now responsible for the new inspection system.
According to Schier, the nice thing about a UEI is the trust that Air Force leaders give to units to do the right thing.
"We assign our inspectors, we assign the training and nothing is going to be grazed over," he said. "We take our UEI seriously, and integrity is always at the forefront of our self-inspection process."
The training was evaluated by 315th AW inspectors from the 315th AW, and evaluations will be part of the wing's capstone - which is a culmination of inspected training events performed by the wing over a two-year time period.
Over the course of the four-day trip, multiple flights provided training opportunities for aerial refueling missions, and Airmen from the 315th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron honed their skills performing medical scenarios in the cargo compartment of their flying hospital.
Each day Airmen on the ground received training in self-aid and buddy care, water survival and other survival training from two 315th AW survival evasion, resistance and escape instructors.
Pulling off a training mission of this size took a team effort, and Master Sgt. Stephanie T. Kimbrell, a logistics planner assigned to the 315th Logistics Readiness Squadron, said that she and her team were brought on board in August to help with the planning process.
Kimbrell assisted with planning the "logistical footprint" of the training mission - lodging, transportation, passenger manifests, conference rooms, etc.
"The mission planning presented several challenges, which is expected when moving approximately 117 Airmen at once, but we were able to overcome these obstacles and move the mission forward," said Kimbrell. "Making sure all points of contact had the correct data as it related to lodging reservations and transpiration were some of the items we handled."
Moving past the challenges, Kimbrell said there are many benefits to training collectively and seeing our total force in action.
"Training like this not only allows us to discover process challenges, it also test all of the moving parts such as our passenger terminal and inspector general team," she said. "This type of training mission presented a somewhat rare opportunity to move this many Airmen at once."
"For me, the highlight of this training resulted in 100 percent accountability and our ability to overcome some of the last minute personnel adjustments," she said. "Communication between the home station and our deployed location were major factors to the success of the mission."
Lt. Col. Bobby Degregorio, 315th LRS commander, was another key Airman who helped coordinate the mission, which he said closely resembled how the Air Force operates and makes best use of resources utilized in today's military environment.
"Because of the decline in the operational tempo, this training gave us the ability to maintain our mobility machine on the support side while giving the operators a chance for a 'one-stop shop' training environment," he said. "This four-day operational exercise helps us to comply with the new UEI process and how we do our jobs."
Looking forward, Schier is already working on the next fly-away with a major focus on aircraft maintainers.
"Keeping our aircraft ready to deploy at a moment's notice helps us ensure that we will always be ready to accomplish any mission we are tasked with here at the 315th," he said. "We have four excellent crew chiefs deployed with us here, and they have done an awesome job maintaining our two aircraft. We are already looking at our next fly-away and how we can provide a training environment for our maintainers that will provide around the clock aircraft generation training to challenge them and all of the things that go into their world."
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