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TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. – Travis’ defenders transition into full battle gear as the base heightens its security posture.
Airmen across Travis AFB scramble to find shelter after a report of a mock gate-runner. Emergency teams are dispatched to investigate.
While this is all happening, the giant voice is heard, “Exercise, exercise, exercise.”
It takes months to coordinate an exercise between the installation’s Inspector General Inspections Office and base leadership. The IG serves as the “eyes and ears” for the commander. The office has two sections: complaints and inspections.
The inspections team oversees exercises and partners with senior leadership to ensure the 60th Air Mobility Wings’ target areas for improvement are identified in an effort to enhance mission capabilities. Members of the inspection team are responsible for evaluating every exercise.
“WIT members are subject matter experts of certain areas and evaluators of how well the team can meet their objectives,” said Tech. Sgt. Ashlie Steele, 60th Aerospace Medicine Squadron Bioenvironmental Engineering NCO in charge of readiness and operations. “There’s a lot of research that goes into an exercise. We try and set up scenarios to be as realistic as possible.”
Realistic exercises allow units to see their strengths and learn from their mistakes.
“Overall, we assess readiness, discipline, efficiency and economy by providing oversight in conducting inspections and investigations,” said Wasiewski. “Exercises represent a low threat environment where our Airmen have the space to make mistakes and learn from them in order to become the mission-making juggernaut that we are.”
Every exercise the IG coordinates has a common goal in mind.
“When we do an exercise, our intention is to make the 60th AMW and our reserve and contingency response wings better, which is why we have such robust exercises,” said Bill Hoeft, 60 AMW IG inspections planner.
With each exercise, multiple agencies come together to resolve a variety of problems. This teamwork is essential to mission success, Hoeft continued.
As of Sept. 20, Travis held had two exercises in 2019, Golden Thunder and most recently, Golden Edge. The base is planning a third before the end of the year.
“Knowing each other’s roles is important,” Steele said. “We have different jobs, but whether you’re bioengineering or emergency management, we have one goal: get the mission done.”
Steele wants Airmen to know that when they’re performing in an exercise, it’s ok to not know something but to trust their training and learn from their mistakes.
“If there is a concern in a target area and we don’t know what the issues are, then we cannot come up with a plan to fix it,” Wasiewski said. “That is why we rely so heavily on the Wing Inspection Team. We could not get
Team Travis to the performance level it is at without WIT.”
Hoeft foot-stomped the importance of being mission-ready and not getting a 100% rating during an exercise is fine. It’s how the team strives to fix the target areas that matter.
“We just want to be prepared,” Hoeft said. “The responsibility of being ready as a base falls on all of us. It’s important we do all we can to improve upon our deficiencies and grow.”
| Date Taken: | 09.20.2019 |
| Date Posted: | 09.20.2019 19:52 |
| Story ID: | 342829 |
| Location: | TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, CA, US |
| Web Views: | 33 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Inspection team key to readiness, by SrA Jonathon Carnell, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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