Photo By Capt. Kara Siepmann | The 115th Regional Support Group's personnel section works in the joint operations...... read more read more
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This is the central node of Joint Task Force Joint Reception Staging and Onward Integration, or Task Force JRSOI, for short. Each year, elements of the Air National Guard combine with the 115th Regional Support Group in Roseville, Calif., to stand up a tactical operations center that manages readiness support and provides command and control to National Guard Soldiers and Airmen who deploy to help civilian first responders in the event of emergencies, including last winter’s floods and the current wildfires. Along with Soldiers and Airmen working from Joint Readiness Centers (JRC) across Southern California, they test the task force’s readiness through an internal validation exercise.
The room is mostly quiet except for the hum of the machinery, hushed conversations, and the fingers clacking on keyboards. All screens project the common operating picture: a mix of maps, group chats, a list of shared documents and timelines all smashed onto one screen.
When an update is posted in the feed, Soldiers read it, react by typing in their chat screen, and updating tables hand printed on small whiteboards hanging around the room.
“Attention in the TOC!” shouts Maj. Walter Wade, 115th Regional Support Group Chief of Operations, as he stands, breaks the silence and earns the attention of everyone in the room. All eyes are on him as he continues, “Just published FRAGORD 3. It’s updated on the COP.”
He sits and 40 eyeballs drift back to their computer screens. The workday continues in this fashion until the next interruption.
“Hey, who are you asking that to?” Wade questions a 2nd Lt. who is hunched over her notepad scribbling notes as she talks on the phone behind him. Startled, she looks at the major, wraps up her conversation and returns to her team area. She doesn’t yet know that it’s not the proper process to call a Soldier directly at a JRC and ask questions. All information flows up to the Joint Task Force Headquarters and is then disseminated to the field by Wade’s team. If the 2nd Lt. has a question, she should send the operations team a Request for Information (RFI), and let them reach down to the units and ask.
He looks in the direction of the personnel team but doesn’t see the chief personnel officer, essentially her boss. In their general direction he asks, “Where’s your OIC… get him in here.” A private says “yes sir” and scurries out of the room.
All exercise participants are learning and more senior officers and noncommissioned officers must make on the spot corrections to encourage improvement.
Wade turns and tells the operations first lieutenant sitting next to him. “You should be talking to the battle captain and she should be talking to the S1. Connect with her and set her straight.”
The room returns to the quiet, silent hum. Wade leans over the shoulder of the Tech. Sgt. sitting on his other side. The airman is augmenting the team at the 115th RSG for the weekend and normally works in the communication section of an Air Guard unit. Today, he’s supporting an Army operations team.
“Good initiative, bad idea,” Wade corrects him. “Start calling the JRC ops and tell them to update this since they clearly aren’t.” The sergeant continues asking questions and Wade patiently answers them, but also provides an explanation after every response.
Wade isn’t all bark; and he isn’t unsupervised.
While the Army Guard component chief of staff is downrange at the JRC in Los Alamitos, Air Guard’s chief of staff, Lt. Col. Robert Childs of the 195th Wing at Beale Air Force Base, is present in the operations center.
“Everything that’s happening inside this room, Wade is in charge of that,” says Childs. “And I let him manage that. My role is to liaise to those leaders outside of this operations center.”
The Chief of Operations focuses his efforts assessing the current situation while regulating forces and war fighting functions in accordance with the mission, commander’s intent, and concept of operations, according to ATP: 6-0.5. Command Post Organization and Operations, May 2017.
“I’ve been an S1 and I’ve been an S4 and today, here I am, starting as the brigade CHOPS. I push the section chiefs to report accurate and timely information to my section, but I understand the growing pains.
Most of these Soldiers haven’t run joint operations before and I’m still figuring out how to be a good CHOPs,” Wade said.
In one corner of the room, a group of four Soldiers has combined three tables. Together, the logistics team sits facing each other.
In a typical line unit, the supply sergeant maintains the unit’s weapons, ammunition, and equipment. But at the brigade level, there’s a section of logisticians who handle request across all classes of supply from subordinate units or in this exercise’s case, the needs of the subordinate Joint Reception Centers. Requests vary from weapons, vehicles, generators, power supplies, tents or food and water.
“During a domestic response mission, the 115th RSG logistics team is the liaison between the J4 at the California National Guard headquarters and the units on the ground activating for an emergency, explains Capt. Ryan Kinney. “We find out how to meet their requests. We’re button pushers.”
The team laughs at his explanation.
Laughter, explains Maj. Joey Monforte, logistics section chief, is a natural stress reliever.
“This exercise hasn’t been too challenging in terms of our ability to source requests,” he says. “But there are inconsistencies between information we read in the FRAGORDs versus what we’re hearing from our four reps at the JRCs.”
“Alpha Co, 250th MI, arrived at JTF JFTB (13 VICS and 39 PAX),” yelled an operations section lieutenant standing near his chair. The group of logisticians silently stare at their computer. They don’t look up at either other. After a few moments, they all begin quickly typing. The chief warrant officer types numbers into an Excel sheet compares what she sees on the digital common operating picture and what was just announced.
Kinney opens a new email window and begins drafting. He pauses and yells back to the operations officer, “Is that the same time for the vehicles from Charlie Company or a different time group?”
The operations officer replies that it’s the same time group. The room of heads drop and keyboards click.
“Chief you’re tracking those two vehicles? Their SP was zero nine thirty,” he says, turning his head back to the warrant office next to him. They begin to compare notes.
“The challenge is the mechanism through which we’re communicating,” explains Capt. Michael Scott, reverting back to interview mode and talking over Kinney and the warrant officer.
“APAN (a computer software that allows all participants of the exercise or operation to view the same common operating picture) is the source. But some guys are emailing. There’s so many ways to get info and we’re sifting through what is right.”
Monforte cuts off all the chatter. “She’s doing movement tracker,” he says, pointing at the Warrant Office 2 Amanda Evans, “he’s doing the combat asset slide,” he continues, motioning at Scott. “And Kinney, you’re handling comms through the S4 channel at Los Al and on APAN chat.”
Monforte reminded his team of their roles to solve the minor confusion. The former active duty logistics officer is the undisputed logistical expert, the only member of the team who has solely focused his career on logistics. Kinney has also been an ordinance and engineer officer. Scott was formerly an ordinance officer.
“I’ve been passing on my knowledge and products since I arrived at this unit two years ago. It’s important to maintain information continuity. They’re smart enough to pick up what’s going on,” says Monforte and pats Kinney on the back.
“Every time we do a validation exercise, there are different people participating,” says Kinney. Despite the operations order providing instructions, there’s a learning curve trying to get everyone trained and up to speed on how we operate a JRSOI mission. That’s the reason we do these exercises.
The plans officer strolls by. “Are you guys tracking this 36 PAX?” he asks.
Kinney points to his computer screen. The officer bends over to look at the screen, lowers his glasses and squints to read. He sighs, jots down something on his notepad, says thanks, and walks away.
“Sometimes we jump the gun and execute the movements and skip the steps,” Monforte says. In a real world situation, the staff in this room would only know to contact us. We’d let the operations team know and they’d send a FRAGORD to the JRCs. and we’d inform the JRCs.”
“Let’s add that to the AAR,” he says as he points to the warrant officer.
As the day wears on, the silence punctuated with occasional shouting gives way to steady, friendly-sounding conversation. Laughter erupts again for the logistician’s private table.
Wade says with a smile, “We’re finding our battle rhythm.”
| Date Taken: | 11.06.2017 |
| Date Posted: | 11.06.2017 12:17 |
| Story ID: | 254271 |
| Location: | CA, US |
| Web Views: | 158 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
This work, Finding our battle rhythm- The 115th Regional Support Group conducts statewide validation exercise, by CPT Kara Siepmann, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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