103rd Airmen Showcase Readiness Capabilities

The Connecticut Air National Guard's 103rd Airlift Wingdisplayed its ability to quickly deploy in the event of a short-notice wartimetasking during a large-scale readiness exercise March 2-5, 2020.

The scenario involved airmen from around the base and taskedmembers from the 103rd Maintenance Group to generate a C-130H Hercules aircraftwhile wearing mission oriented protective posture (MOPP) gear, and an aircrewfrom the 118th Airlift Squadron to fly a mission while wearing aircrew eye andrespiratory protective system (AERPS) equipment.

U.S. Air Force Maj. Doug Ferro, 118th Airlift Squadron pilot, 103rd Airlift Wing, Connecticut Air National Guard, checks Maj. David Monico’s Mission Oriented Protective Posture gear during a large-scale readiness exercise at Bradley Air National Guard Base, East Granby, Conn. U.S. Air National Guard photo by Staff Sgt. Steven Tucker

The exercise marked the midpoint of a five-year strategicplan initiated in 2018 by the U.S. Air Force’s introduction of full spectrumreadiness.

“This tests our ability to get out the door fast and sustainin more challenging environments,” said Lt. Col. Wendy Farnsworth, 103rdAirlift Wing Inspector General. “After two years of training and buildingexercises, we’re at our first real milestone to be measured by Air MobilityCommand on how ready our unit is to deploy and sustain in possible chemicalenvironments.”

In building the exercise, Farnsworth and the wing inspectionteam, comprised of functional experts in various career fields, design anobjective that tests mission essential tasks in these areas. If a careerfield’s readiness standards include operating in a degraded environment, theexercise scenario gives them a way to test that capability. The inspection teamfrom Air Mobility Command then evaluates how Farnsworth’s team builds andgrades the exercise against these readiness requirements.

“Our office based the simulated location, amount ofpersonnel and equipment tasked to match a realistic situation, but still stressthat we’re testing something,” said Farnsworth. “We actually build a lot of thedesired evaluation objectives based on our commander’s intent for what heconsiders to be ready while using our actual reporting information as afoundation,” said Farnsworth.

The generation phase of the exercise implements theinstallation deployment plan and tests both the personnel and cargo deploymentfunctions’ capability to efficiently deploy airmen and necessary cargo. Theemployment and sustainment phase shows the unit’s ability to perform theirtasks in MOPP gear in the degraded environment.

“We just got back from a deployment, so we know we canperform our tactical airlift mission all day,” said Col. Roy Walton, 103rdAirlift Wing vice wing commander. “This adds the contested environment to thescenario and the exercise gives us the opportunity to show we can do that.”

This exercise also gives the wing an opportunity to build onits capabilities, said Walton.

“To me there is nothing wrong with finding thingswrong—there are a lot of people that have never done this sort of exercisebefore,” said Walton. “So our wing inspection team will document everything,we’ll get better, and we’ll get to a point where this will be just normaloperations.”

“We have about 50subject matter experts that I get to work with to pull everything together,”said Farnsworth. “I couldn’t be happier to be in this position going throughthis inspection with the team that I have.”