Photo By Nicholas Rau | Capt. John Perry, 455th Air Expeditionary Wing Plans and Programs coordinator, left,...... read more read more
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BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan - “No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.”
-Helmuth von Moltke, Military Strategist
With this factor in mind, the 455th Air Expeditionary Wing Plans and Program office meticulously prepares for any variable that might arise and tests each of these scenarios with units from Bagram, Kandahar and Jalalabad Airfields.
“We monitor all the plans, the exercise programs, Crisis Action Team, and necessary taskers for the wing,” said Lt. Col. Joshua Larsen, 455th AEW Plans and Programs chief. “We coordinate with internal and external agencies to make sure that we are aware of any new plan that will affect the wing.”
In the ever-changing world of military planning, the Plans and Program office is forced into the unique position of adapt or become irrelevant.
“We receive everything from data calls to plans requiring our senior leaders to develop and choose appropriate courses of action in the constantly changing Afghanistan environment,” explained Capt. John Perry, 455th AEW coordinator. “We need to be able to always adapt and ensure that the info that decision makers need is available to them to make choices on the future of Afghanistan.”
Sometimes, the role of the Plans and Programs office is to also advise leaders on what cannot be accomplished with the resources available. However, it is also their role as out-of-the-box thinkers to come up with a plan that will still achieve the goals, while also operating within the limiting factors.
“Most of what we do is problem solving,” said Larsen. “We learn to filter out what leadership is going to care about and want to know, and then we address the rest of the issues ourselves.”
In addition to all of these activities, the office also designs, executes and evaluates battle drills to test the readiness of service members and civilians at Bagram. These can be done through active shooter and base defense exercises, or command and control evaluations that involve the execution Crisis Action Team. Whatever the scenario, the desired end result is always the same — getting better.
“We look for potential problem areas and what we might expect to see from the enemy in the future,” said Larsen. “Then we develop the exercises, script the activities, and evaluate the process. We find out what we do right in the exercise and what we did wrong. From there, we know what to train on and what we should plan for in the future.”
One of the unique benefits of working in the Plans and Programs office is that you constantly get to see, or have a part, in the future of Air Force operations in Afghanistan.
“I think one of the most rewarding aspects of this job is that I get to peek behind the curtain and see the future of the AEW and our role in Afghanistan,” said Perry. “I get to see that the plans I have a part in have an impact on the operations for years to come.”
| Date Taken: | 02.04.2016 |
| Date Posted: | 02.04.2016 05:23 |
| Story ID: | 187868 |
| Location: | BAGRAM AIR FIELD, AF |
| Web Views: | 245 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Wing Plans, Programs office shapes future of AEW with expertise, ingenuity, by Nicholas Rau, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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