Teamwork key to overcoming exercise challenges

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Juan A. Torres
  • 314th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark. --  The 314th and 189th Airlift Wings and the 463rd Airlift Group participated in ROCKEX this week in preparation for their upcoming operation readiness exercise.

"Exercise scenarios began a month ago with the warning order given to the 463rd AG," said Maj. Nathan A. Allerheiligen, 314th AW Readiness director.

Once a unit receives a warning order, they will begin to plan and prepare to deploy. Usually the warning order will specify specific tasks and outline the general requirements of what the base will be responsible for.

Specific tasks include getting accountability of people, beginning to develop information on the potential destinations and updating deployment training. Units also outline personnel who may be tasked to go, develop a leadership team and send advanced teams to survey the destination.

The exercise evaluation teams of the 314th, 463rd and 189th have worked together to develop scenarios and a master schedule of events list to create the simulated environment necessary to test the base's capabilities and ability to meet the desired objectives, according to the major.

The objectives of the ROCKEX were to exercise base support of a short-notice Air Mobility Command deployment tasking of the 463rd AG and to exercise the 314th AW's capability to deploy a sample of its air expeditionary force capabilities.

Team Little Rock also exercised and evaluated base readiness and capability to respond to various security incursions, base response to a major accident off-base with casualties and base response to a hijacking scenario.

"The base is in a constant cycle of exercising, determining shortfalls and fixing the problems identified. We are constantly striving to ensure our Airmen maintain top-notch readiness and proficiency in warrior skills," said Major Allerheiligen. "As an exercise evaluation team, we also learn about ways to provide better scenarios, more realistic training and how to do things better all the way around."

The 189th AW also participated with the 314th AW and 463rd AG in parts of the major accident response exercise.

"Our goal has been to develop a stronger relationship with 314th as we take on a larger role in the exercise," said Maj. Daren C. Dickson, 189th AW Logistics and Plans officer.

Various units in the 314th AW also received staff assistance visits to check their compliance levels, and all base agencies participated in force protection exercises.

"This has been a tough exercise. We have tasked various base agencies well beyond their normal capabilities to support deployment operations in order to test our ability to augment those units. Many parts of our deployment process have been forced into 24-hour operations to contend with the task load," said Major Allerheiligen.

"This was all intentional so that we could gauge our true capacity and ensure that we are at the desired level of readiness," he said. "We have found some places to improve, but in a general sense, I'm confident that Team Little Rock is ready for war and for our operational readiness inspections."