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Wing Inspection Team oversees mobility exercise at Scott AFB

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Megan Friedl
  • 375th Air Mobility Wing Public Affairs
SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. --  About 65 Wing Inspection Team members oversaw a mobility exercise Jan. 9-12 that involved the 375th Air Mobility Wing, the 932nd Airlift Wing (Reserve) and the 635th Supply Chain Operations Wing, which falls under Air Force Materiel Command.

"The Wing Inspection Team, or WIT, ensures the wing is mission ready 365 days a year," said Mona Bonick, 375th Inspector General Office deputy chief. They provide the wing commander with an unbiased assessment on the wing's ability to execute the missions.
This was the first joint inspection to include the reserve unit in more than four years, she said, and together with the 635th, the exercise mock-deployed about 350 people to a forward operating base. This was also the first exercise to fully use the newly sworn-in WIT members, which is part of the Air Force's restructuring on how inspections are conducted.

Instead of the AMC headquarters' Inspector General team coming to bases to examine a wing's compliance or readiness capabilities, that responsibility now lies with wing commanders. The planning and execution of exercises--whether for deployment or crisis response--rests now with the wing-level Inspector General office with support from the Wing Inspection Team.

The WIT consists of subject matter experts who are trained and sworn-in by the wing commander or Inspector General, and they conduct independent assessments through various compliance and readiness inspection venues.

Charley Mills, 375th AMW director of inspections said, "WIT has to be a diverse team of people so we can plug and play for the different mission sets that we are required to inspect. In the past, the wing would get notified of a higher headquarters inspection and would spend the next six to eight months preparing for that inspection. This is not very cost effective. With this new concept for inspections, we are trying to move from a culture that 'ramps up' prior to an inspection to a more steady state of constant compliance. By effectively managing this process, we should see significant manpower and budgetary savings."

Both WIT members and Airmen benefit from year-round evaluations, as Tech. Sgt. Simona Patrick, a WIT member for the 375th Force Support Squadron, explained, "It's a teaching tool for all of us. Focusing on constant compliance and improving mission effectiveness every day, while balancing resources and risks, is important to commanders. These mobility exercises, along with unit and no-notice inspections, make it possible to test these standards."