Airmen participate in base mobility exercise

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Catharine Schmidt
  • 109th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
STRATTON AIR NATIONAL GUARD BASE, N.Y. --  The Deployment Control Center (DCC) was activated and more than 160 Airmen and 21 short tons of cargo were tasked to deploy during the May Unit Training Assembly. Airmen and cargo were tasked to deploy to three locations: Southwest Asia, Greenland and New York City. In the dining facility, Airmen worked their way through the mobility line, got their gear and were ready to go. But they didn't actually have to go anywhere - it was just an exercise.

As the dining facility filled with Airmen, over in the Logistics Readiness section the DCC stayed on top of it all, ensuring that the mobilization process was running smoothly.

"Every section on base is represented in the DCC," said Lt. Col. Ron Ankabrandt, the deployment officer for the exercise. "We all interact very closely with each other, which is mandatory in this type of situation." Once the mobilization tasking came down to the DCC, they had 72 hours to get people and cargo out.

"Our cargo deployment function makes sure that all cargo has the appropriate documentation, hazards, air worthiness, so it can be transported on any aircraft to any location in the world," said Senior Master Sgt. Guy Yesse, the deployment NCO for the exercise. "As for our personnel, we're ensuring that they're able to deploy and forward-deploy to any location." The DCC looked chaotic, but according to Sergeant Yesse, was running very smoothly.

"This is actually well-controlled chaos," he said. "Right now the DCC knows exactly where all the equipment is and its current status. It knows exactly where all the people are and their current status. And we track it through a system called LogMod."

The system was placed on the center's wall, so everyone was able to see what was going on. The DCC watched closely as constant updates were made to the system. "Our main purpose is to get the right people to the right place with the right equipment at the right time," Sergeant Yesse said.

As the DCC moved forward, and Airmen loaded cargo to be shipped as other Airmen filled the dining facility-turned mobility line, exercise evaluation team members lingered about, ensuring everything was going as it should. The key components being evaluated were aircraft generation, command and control, the DCC, PDF, CDF, Intel, weapons processing, mobility bag processing, life support and aircrew deployment support.

"The purpose of this exercise was to ensure we are maintaining our ability to keep the mobility machine operational," said Lt. Col. Steve Fukino, EET leader. "We succeeded in that, and in doing so the mobility machine worked well. However, we can improve in a lot of things. But we did meet our goal. We are always prepared to send our weapons systems to war at a moment's notice."