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Officer’s Patriot Warrior planning duty draws to a close
By Tech. Sgt. Jared Becker
4th Combat Camera Squadron
FORT MCCOY, Wisconsin -- A prior-enlisted logistics officer will retire at the end of the year after the Air Force Reserve Command’s premier exercise, Patriot Warrior 2018 comes to a close.
“One of the aspects of Patriot Warrior is training under ‘no-fail’ conditions, so this is not an inspection,” said Lt. Col. Gerald Mekosh of the Reserve’s Force Generation Center at Robins Air Force Base, Georgia. “It is to get people ready to go to war; that is the bottom line.”
Reserve Citizen Airmen from a variety of career fields work with joint and international partners at Patriot Warrior to showcase deployment capabilities and increase readiness through practical hands-on exercises in an austere environment.
“The services all poke at each other and make fun and so forth, but it’s amazing how much more we have in common than we do different,” Mekosh said.
Starting from a bare bones location, service members stand up a fully operational base equipped with mobile hospitals accepting simulated patients flown in on military aircraft.
Mekosh, 55, joined the Air Force Reserve in 1983 as a traditional reservist and Air Reserve Technician. In 1997, he commissioned as a Logistics Readiness Officer. In 2017, Mekosh was given the opportunity to be a part of Patriot Warrior, which would allow him to continue as a traditional reservist rather than an Individual Mobilization Augmentee. This opportunity was unique from serving at the unit level, but it still provided direct involvement with Air Force Reserve units as well as coordination with Army Reserve planners. The Air Force’s portion of the exercise Global Medic became too large and needed to branch off to promote effectiveness, he said. Mekosh has played a lead role in Patriot Warrior ever since and has seen the learning environment evolve. His role has allowed him to have a hand in creating a training environment that prepares Airmen for deployment.
Patriot Warrior 2018 just wrapped up at three locations: Dobbins Air Reserve Base, Georgia; Minneapolis-St. Paul Air Reserve Station, Minnesota; and Fort McCoy, a 60,000-acre post between the cities of Sparta and Tomah in west central Wisconsin. The Sparta/Fort McCoy Airport opened part of its terminal for the training.
Like many exercises, Robins’ Force Generation Center runs Patriot Warrior. Mekosh is a traditional reservist and works full-time as a civilian at Reserve headquarters. Planning for the exercise takes up to 18 months, Mekosh said, meaning Patriot Warrior 2019 is already being discussed.
In his final Patriot Warrior, training is going well; however, “There are going to be hiccups and challenges in every exercise,” said Mekosh, who will leave with many fond memories of his years with the program.
“Meeting the Airmen, understanding where they are coming from, learning what they do, what these different functions do…” he reminisced. “When you’re working the overall planning effort, you get to see a piece of just about everything that is going on. So to me, just obtaining that experience is very worthwhile.”
| Date Taken: | 08.17.2018 |
| Date Posted: | 08.18.2018 17:31 |
| Story ID: | 289368 |
| Location: | FORT MCCOY, WISCONSIN, US |
| Web Views: | 88 |
| Downloads: | 4 |
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