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The Airmen, deployed with the 1st CBCS from Ramstein Air Base, Germany, provided mission-essential communication systems for the 493rd Fighter Squadron at the exercise, which was aimed at promoting interoperability, in Rovaniemi, Finland, from May 12 to June 5.
“This is the first time in the tactical communications arena we've ever done as a total force team,” said 1st Lt. Nicholas Riascos, 1st CBCS Arctic Challenge communications team lead. “They've never had active duty, reserves and guard, this mixture of personnel and equipment, meshed into one team and thrown into any area.”
Combat Comm provides tactical communications in locations that lack organic communications capabilities, Riascos said. It could be in support of anything from a fighter mission to a combat search and rescue effort. Essentially, Combat Comm can go out into a field and turn it into a high-functioning area.
Providing these important communication capabilities, however, can only be accomplished with enough highly-skilled Airmen and equipment to complete the mission.
"A few years back,” Riascos said, “the 1st [CBCS] realized that we were overtasked, undermanned and underequipped to meet the mission requirements. What we didn't want to say was, ‘no, we can't do it,’ because that wasn't the answer. We knew we could do it if we had additional capacity.”
The solution was to integrate reserve and guardsmen, both Airmen and equipment, into the 1st CBCS.
“Normally a traditional guardsman wouldn't have an opportunity to deploy to an exercise like [Arctic Challenge],” said Maj. Gen. Maas, Air Force Space Command Air National Guard assistant to the commander. “But they need our troops to get the mission done. When you bring us all together, there's an opportunity to learn from each other and share best practices.”
In addition to helping the 1st CBCS in terms of manning and equipment, reservists and guardsmen bring important skills and knowledge with them that help improve their unit.
“Reservists and guardsmen are absolute subject matter experts,” Riascos said. “They could have been at their unit for the last six years on the same equipment, so when they come here [Arctic Challenge 2017], it's extremely impressive to see the knowledge they have. Some of them also work in an equivalent civilian sector, so they just have an immense amount of knowledge they bring to the table."
In preparation for the trip to Finland, the CBCS Airmen trained together at Ramstein AB for two weeks. They ran through different scenarios and tested their capabilities to make sure they could effectively work together in the field.
The training at Ramstein AB and the trip to Finland mark the beginning of a trial period designed to test the long-term efficacy of total force integration in the Combat Comm arena.
| Date Taken: | 06.19.2017 |
| Date Posted: | 06.22.2017 03:26 |
| Story ID: | 238386 |
| Location: | ROVANIEMI, LL, FI |
| Web Views: | 55 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, 1st Combat Comm completes first Total Force Integration TDY, by SrA Abby Richardson, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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