Photo By Senior Airman Morgan St Marks | A U.S. Air Force 92nd Maintenance Squadron aircraft hydraulics technician performs...... read more read more
Subscribe
FAIRCHILD AIR FORCE BASE, Wash. – What happens when the lights go out and the phones fall silent? The 92nd Air Refueling Wing conducted an Energy Resilience Readiness Exercise which affected the functions of many buildings at Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington, August 11-15, 2025.
The exercise demonstrated the 92nd ARW’s ability to successfully conduct critical operations for nearly 48 hours with no access to power, internet or phone services.
“This ERRE was specifically designed to test DoD installations’ backup power systems and ability to maintain critical operations,” explained Tyler Smith, Emergency Operations Center director. “Unlike regular exercises, the purpose of this ERRE was to flush out unexpected mission limitations in a controlled, real-world kind of way.”
The extended power outage challenged each agency to execute their contingency plans and maintain a consistent line of communication. One key factor in these plans was the designation of "runners" – personnel responsible for physically checking in on team members at different locations and relaying vital information.
“Enduring hardship is a great motivator for improvement,” Smith mentioned. “Prior to this exercise, many unit and base leaders may have stated, for example, “we’ll just use runners” in a comm-out scenario. But this ERRE showed us it’s not that simple to ‘just’ do something new we’ve never practiced. From my perspective as one of the EOC Directors, I expect that our base emergency management experts will recommend exercising comm-out procedures more often to encourage development of, and competency in, several work-around strategies.”
Smith said each squadron ranging from the 92nd Communications Squadron to the 92nd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron uses power and network capabilities to a different degree, so some units were more impacted by the exercise than others.
“My section manages network switches on the base, and they completely rely on power,” explained Tech Sgt. Paul Arrington, 92nd CS network infrastructure non-commissioned officer in charge. “We were very well prepared so when it was time to make sure the switches came back on, we had very little challenges getting the network back. There’s always going to be an ‘unknown’ as far as recovery efforts, but my team killed it!”
To prevent critical disruptions, some facilities, such as the Commissary, dining facilities, and Child Development and Youth Centers, experienced only brief outages. This decision prevented potential issues like food spoilage and childcare difficulties.
“The minimum outage required by law is 10 hours, and installations typically stay in that ballpark,” said Smith. But Fairchild, a leader in the Air Force in everything we do, held our outage to nearly 48 hours, destroying the previous record for ERRE duration!”
| Date Taken: | 08.19.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 08.19.2025 15:42 |
| Story ID: | 545982 |
| Location: | FAIRCHILD AIR FORCE BASE, WASHINGTON, US |
| Web Views: | 56 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Fairchild conducts no-notice power outage exercise, by SrA Clare Werner, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
