Photo By Staff Sgt. Anthony Jones | Spc. Amanda Allison, of Okmulgee, Oklahoma, a member of Company A, 777th Aviation...... read more read more
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OKLAHOMA - A specialized unit of Oklahoma Army National Guard Soldiers proved themselves vital to the National Guard’s mission during their annual training period at Camp Gruber, near Muskogee, Oklahoma.
Petroleum supply specialists of Company A, 777th Aviation Support Battalion (Assault) operated a forward arming and refueling point (FARP) on the National Guard training base in eastern Oklahoma.
Staff Sgt. Jeff Griffin, of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, is the unit’s non-commissioned officer in-charge and said a FARP is critical to the Army’s war fighting mission.
“A FARP is essential to a combat mission,” said Griffin, who has served for 15 years as a fueler for the Oklahoma Army National Guard. “Aircraft need to minimize their time on the ground, that is when they are most vulnerable to enemy fire. A FARP minimizes an aircrafts downtime by providing rapid refuel capabilities.”
Rapid refueling means keeping the helicopter’s engines on and blades spinning, something the Soldiers of Company A trained on heavily while resupplying three different aviation units at Camp Gruber.
Griffin’s troops, along with fuelers from 2-149th General Support Aviation Battalion, based in Lexington, Oklahoma; 1st Battalion, 244th Aviation Regiment, based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and 3rd Battalion, 140th Aviation Regiment, based in Oklahoma City, completed more than 70 hot fuels, a term used for the rapid refueling and 10 cold fuels, when pilots must shut off their aircraft’s engines and bring the blades to a complete halt. In total, more than 20,000 gallons of fuel were pumped into aircraft during annual training.
The fuel Company A and the other petroleum supply specialists pumped, enabled units of the 90th Troop Command, operating at Camp Gruber, and the 45th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to conduct a wide range of operations with helicopter support, Griffin said.
The missions the fuelers supported included inserting engineers for reconnaissance missions, medical evacuation training for ground medics, sling load transport of artillery pieces and insertion and extraction of cavalry scouts of 1st Squadron, 180th Cavalry Regiment, 45th IBCT.
Company A’s annual training took on a special importance this year as the unit is preparing to deploy to Kuwait to support operations there, Griffin said.
“My mission right now is to get the Soldiers trained to the highest caliber before they go on deployment,” Griffin said. “On their deployment they will be hot refueling aircraft going into the box. They need to get as many repetitions in this as they can possibly get and this training is giving them those repetitions.”
Because the company does not share a location with an aviation unit, Company A is only able to conduct FARP operations like this during annual training, Griffin said. One of his Soldiers, Spc. Cody Wilson, deployed to Afghanistan with the Oklahoma Army National Guard’s 120th Engineer Battalion in 2012 and was able to coordinate with an active duty unit, allowing him to work on their FARP. Wilson said the training he and his fellow Soldiers are receiving at Camp Gruber is great preparation for deployment.
“This is spot-on training,” said Wilson, an accounting student at Oklahoma State University – Oklahoma City. “When we go over, we will be very proficient.”
He said during his Afghanistan deployment FARPS were prepositioned areas that had been improved over time and units would take command of them when they arrived in country. The field training happening at Camp Gruber teaches the fuelers how to operate in a stark environment where they must set up their FARP from nothing and be able to safely resupply the helicopters.
“This is 10 times harder than what I saw overseas,” Wilson said. “Everything there is preset, here we do everything ourselves from the lowest level.”
Safety is important at the FARP. There are many hazards ranging from debris that can be kicked up by helicopters to a fuel fire.
“Jet fuel’s worst enemy is static electricity and those rotors spinning creates a lot of static electricity,” Griffin said. “We have grounding rods and bonding cables and we make sure to ground and bond to the aircraft before we start pumping or we could ignite a fire in the fuel.”
When the Soldiers approach an aircraft to fuel, one stays several feet behind the others with a fire extinguisher in case a fuel fire breaks out. However, that Soldier’s mission is not to protect the aircraft from fire, but to protect people, Griffin said.
Some days Griffin and his Soldiers are servicing non-stop aircraft, some days they have hours of downtime while waiting for aircraft to arrive, Griffin said. This gives the Soldiers at the remote site plenty of time to grow together, he added.
“I’ve been in the National Guard for 15 years and I’m glad I made the choice I did,” Griffin said. “It’s benefited me in a lot of ways, friendships made, bonds formed and watching the bonds form between our new soldiers who are getting ready to deploy.”
| Date Taken: | 06.11.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 06.15.2015 12:29 |
| Story ID: | 166501 |
| Location: | OK, US |
| Web Views: | 192 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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