147th Civil Engineering Squadron participates in Silver Flag exercise

TX, UNITED STATES

09.21.2018

Story by Staff Sgt. Daniel Martinez 

147th Attack Wing (Texas Air National Guard)

Ramstein Air Base, GERMANY (Sept. 21, 2018)— Members of the 147th Civil Engineering Squadron, Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base, TX, participated in the Silver Flag training hosted by the 435th Construction and Training Squadron Sept. 21, 2018, at Ramstein Air Base, Germany.
The Silver Flag training is an opportunity for civil engineering Airman to train in an contingency environment while focusing on different technical abilities across multiple career fields. Silver Flag provides Airmen with unique, critical training they may not have access to at their home base and prepares them with real world proficiency.
“It has been a great experience for us at the 147th CES to train in an environment where we were able to hone in on our contingency mission training,” said Capt. Alyson White, the 147th CES operations flight deputy officer in charge. “These Airmen will be able to know that they are prepared to go into real life situations with confidence in their new learned knowledge and skills.”
During the ten-day training, the 147th CES members worked with Air Force active duty, Air National Guard civil engineering organizations and Norwegian air combat engineers.
“During this exercise we brought over 10 Civil Engineering units, Norwegian air combat engineers, and for the first time 2T1X1s (Vehicle Operations) for Silver Flag,” said Master Sgt. Kyle Warnock, the 435th Construction and Training Squadron Command Contingency Training Flight Superintendent. “When they arrived, they didn’t have the skills and techniques required, but after completing the training they are able to bed down for a follow-on force and recover an airfield with Rapid Airfield Damage Recovery (RADR) while in a CBRNE environment. RADR was developed to counter the emergent threat of anti-access area denial (A2/AD) capabilities of our adversaries.”
The goal of Silver Flag is to provide the best and most up to date training to our civil engineer Airmen and give them the opportunity to better serve our forces. RADR is one of the new items that is essential for our civil engineering Airmen to learn.
RADR allows Airmen to respond immediately following an airfield damaging attack by repairing and cleaning the damaged areas in a rapid time frame. Once repaired, this allows aircraft to continue using the airfield runways to complete their mission.
The 147th CES brought 33 individuals from 12 career fields to participate in the Silver Flag exercise. Civil engineering Reserve Airmen must attend a Silver Flag exercise every 4 years to stay current in their training.

• Date Taken: 09.21.2018
• Date Posted: 10.02.2018 10:30
• Story ID: 295116
• Location: TX, US