Photo By Senior Master Sgt. Joshua Allmaras | Airmen from the 124th Maintenance Operations Flight’s Maintenance Operations Center...... read more read more
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The flightline of the Idaho Air National Guard at Gowen Field, Boise, Idaho, can be a busy place, especially on drill weekends, but there is one shop – the 124th Maintenance Operation Center – that has a pulse on everything that’s happening to ensure the A-10 Thunderbolt II is ready to fly.
Located on the second floor of a hangar overlooking the flightline in a nearly 350-square-foot office space, MOC controllers stay busy answering radios or phone calls, gathering info, inputting data into the computer, and relaying the information to others.
“We always have a snapshot of the health of the fleet,” said Tech. Sgt. Ryan Lesmeister, a production controller with the 124th MOC, regarding what the information flow does for the workcenter.
From its relatively small space, the MOC serves as a hub reaching out into various areas in the maintenance group and throughout the 124th Fighter Wing. Whether it’s working with the operations group to track the daily flying schedule and record the flying hours on each aircraft, to monitoring in-flight information, to annotating scheduled and unscheduled maintenance – detailing what needs to be repaired, which shop is doing the repair and when the repair will be accomplished – the MOC is the keeper of key information.
“The MOC serves as the nerve center for maintenance activities, both on the flightline and in our back shops,” said Maj. Kristin Daigle, commander of the 124th MOF, the flight the MOC falls under. “They coordinate the flow of information and act as dispatch to expedite the repair of our aircraft and equipment. The MOC controllers bring order to what would otherwise be disorganized chaos. They are multi-taskers in the true sense of the word.”
Gathering essential information on each A-10 is only one part of the MOC’s role. What they do with that information is just as important.
The gathered information is inputted into various programs, including the Integrated Maintenance Data System and the Enhanced Maintenance Operations Center, to track the data and the status of aircraft to ensure each A-10 is mission capable.
“We help coordinate maintenance to ensure we have healthy, deployable, war-ready assigned aircraft,” said Senior Master Sgt. Ben Hopkins, senior production controller with the 124th MOC. “Our input into IMDS provides a product that decision makers in leadership can utilize to make informed decisions about future courses of action in the maintenance effort. It also allows us to report to our local analysts and to MAJCOM the status of our fleet and ability to deploy.”
The MOC is manned with multiple military positions, including a handful of full-time Airmen, as it has to be staffed during maintenance hours to ensure communication continues to flow. Production controllers are mid-career Airmen who are already trained in maintenance skills when they arrive in the MOC.
“One of the strengths that we have up here, since we do have different maintenance AFSCs, is each person brings their job knowledge into the center and shares that,” said Hopkins.
The 124th MOC currently has individuals with four different job backgrounds to include: crew chiefs, avionics, engine shop and weapons.
In addition to tracking tasks throughout the maintenance group, the MOC also coordinates with other offices across the wing, including the petroleum, oil and lubricant section to assign fuel delivery to the A-10s, as well as transient aircraft; the fire department to coordinate maintenance engine runs; the civil engineer squadron to request a sweeper as needed for the airfield; vehicle operations when there is a disabled vehicle on the flightline; and security forces to notify them of aircraft locations and synch security responsibilities.
With several radios to monitor, and even more during an exercise like this drill weekend in which the 124th Fighter Wing participated in a Wing Focus Exercise to test its wartime capabilities, it can be chaotic at times with a lot of information to pass on or input.
Tech. Sgt. Natalya Hart, production controller with the 124th MOC, said, “Communication is huge up here … to allow a smooth flow throughout the day,” explaining the importance of taking a phone call or radio call and finishing the job to completion.
“Their job is to remain cool, calm and collected even under the most stressful of conditions, like an aircraft emergency or a mishap on the flightline or in one of the hangars,” said Daigle. “We have a fantastic team of controllers with a wide range of experience and expertise, which makes for an extremely competent team of professionals.”
| Date Taken: | 02.06.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 02.11.2022 01:55 |
| Story ID: | 414477 |
| Location: | BOISE, ID, US |
| Web Views: | 173 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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