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ORI prep goes into full swing

  • Published
  • By Col. Gary Goldstone
  • 375th Airlift Wing commander
SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. --  As soon as the wing ended its first mobility exercise of 2009 late last week, 25 members of our team flew up to Minneapolis Friday to meet with Guard and Reserve members who will be teaming-up with us for the Operational Readiness Inspection in March 2010.

For the ORI, 300 members of the 375th Airlift Wing will be paired up with 250 members of the Minnesota Air National Guard's 133rd Airlift Wing, based out of Minneapolis-St. Paul, and about 40 members of the 94th Aerial Port Squadron, from Robins Air Force Base, Ga. 

All of our units were selected by the Air Mobility Command Inspector General's staff to undergo the ORI together during this timeframe, and although we'll be inspected together, each team will receive an overall separate rating. 

We're fortunate to be paired up with these units for several reasons. They have a robust team of people who are able to provide continuity of operations, and they have a lot of great procedures already in place that will help with our efforts. The Guard brings with them a C-130 mission capability that we will be relying on to assist with deployment of forces and equipment, and the Reserves are primarily supplying their aerial port operational functions. 

We'll spend the next year working with them as we have additional training planned along with three scheduled fly-away exercises where we will actually load up our folks and gear and head downrange. Our first fly-away exercise is right around the corner--May 11-17 at Volk Field, Wisc., which is one of four possible sites for the actual ORI. The other sites are in Gulfport, Miss., Alpena, Mich., and Savannah, Ga. We will not know where we are headed until later this year. Our other two fly-aways are scheduled for October and January of 2010, both in Gulfport. 

During this first fly-away, we'll have two full days of training before hitting our folks with wartime scenarios, and then we'll work through our redeployment phase. I can't stress enough how important it is that we think about our redeployment--coming home--as probably the most important aspect of the whole exercise. That is where most of the safety mishaps and injuries occur. We all want to get home, but we all must ensure we schedule that into our timeframes and not let a whole week's worth of effort be blemished due to carelessness or impatience as we make our way home. 

This training mirrors the areas that we are evaluated on: Our initial response, our employment (getting folks to the fight), our mission support functions and our ability to survive and operate in a wartime situation. 

Key planners from each of our teams met with each other to discuss the taskings and to coordinate and clarify expectations as briefed by AMC's IG representative, Mr. William Bergen. He gave everyone an overview of the requirements and guidelines that will make the ORI successful. 

He said the No. 1 criteria that often makes the difference between receiving an excellent or an outstanding rating for the inspection is attitude. That attitude encompasses responsiveness, readiness, our ability to react authoritatively in stressful situations as well as competence in doing our job. Other aspects are our appearance, adherence to safety standards, leadership and, of course, followership. 

Those are things that we just can't all of sudden show up to the fight with. Those are characteristics and skills that we need to possess now, so that it's all standard operating procedure by the time we're in a situation where we're being rated on how well we perform together while under fire. 

We are getting to a point soon where we will be putting names to these deployable taskings. Some agencies may not be able to do that until right before the deployment order is issued, but every agency should be working to ensure any one of their members can perform the duties required. After all, that is the true measure of readiness--not just sending your A-team, but sending a team that will and can perform together with the right attitude, competence and responsiveness. 

We're off to a solid start, and we're headed in the right direction. Many of us are new to the processes here and the recent mobility exercise shows where we need to refine our procedures, so let's not set it aside to fix until May. Let's fix it now and work on it internally before then. 

If you think about it, our Guard and Reserve folks only have 24 days before the ORI (not including the fly-away exercises). Their Saturdays and Sundays are compressed with ORI prep. We need to work our preparation into our daily activities and mission execution. ORI prep may not be the only requirement on our plates these days, but being able to get our combat-ready Airmen to the fight--and then be able to accomplish the mission safely--is the most important mission we do.