HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. – Base officials here conducted readiness exercise activities the week of March 25 to ensure Hanscom personnel were prepared for various real-world occurrences.
During the week, events such as deployment line processing and cargo loading preparation took place, along with Airmen preparing equipment and reviewing manuals to ensure they were up-to-date on current procedures. The events culminated with a simulated deployment to Hanscom’s Camp Patriot, which served as a contested, degraded, operational environment.
“Overall, the members from the organizations involved – 66th Air Base Group, Air Force Life Cycle Management Center Detachment 7, Digital Directorate and Command, Control, Communications, Intelligence and Networks Directorate – pulled together as a team to execute their mission,” said Lt. Col. Nathan Markley, Hanscom’s director of Inspections.
Hanscom inspection team members incorporated a number of on-the-fly type issues during the deployment activities to test the ability of different offices, such as legal and medical, to deal with problems that might pop up in a real-world situation. Markley said there were a number of variables tossed in, but for the most part, everyone did a good job responding.
“The Air Base Group’s ability to deploy personnel and cargo has definitely improved,” he said.
Scenarios at Camp Patriot included weapons handling, dealing with unexploded ordnance, a potential chemical/biological attack and dealing with infiltrators. To make the events more realistic, participants used blanks and smoke generators, something Hanscom hadn’t done in many years.
Markley said the members seemed like they were motivated to participate in the exercise and it turned out to be truly an eye-opening experience for some of the younger Airmen.
“For some of our younger troops, it definitely opened their eyes as to what it may be like to be deployed for this first time,” he said. “Some individuals definitely were stressed.”
He added that as part of exercise events, personnel had to perform their Air Force Specialty Code duties while in MOPP 4, or full chemical protective gear. He said that it got “intense” for personnel trying to perform even simple tasks such as connecting a computer, typing on a keyboard or viewing a computer screen while in the gear.
“There were definitely lessons learned and some take-aways,” Markley said, “but that’s to be expected every time. We’d rather make any mistakes at Camp Patriot than when deployed real-world.”
Air Force Materiel Command inspectors were on hand to evaluate the exercise for the readiness piece of the Unit Effectiveness Inspection, or UEI. Full results are forthcoming.