VOLK FIELD AIR NATIONAL GUARD BASE, Wisconsin -- The 931st Maintenance Squadron participated in a joint Crash Damaged or Disabled Aircraft Recovery exercise April 11 to 15, 2016, at Volk Field Air National Guard Base, Wisconsin.
Maintenance units from the 22nd Air Refueling Wing, 507th Air Refueling Wing and 433rd Airlift Wing also took part in the exercise.
“We had a varied team from multiple career fields. I gained a lot of experience during this exercise that’s not normally part of my day-to-day duties,” Tech. Sgt. Anne Phillips, 931 MXS Aerospace Propulsion craftsman. “Being from different units allowed us to practice building the relationships necessary to focus on the task at hand.”
After accomplishing the first goal of learning to cooperate, communicate and allocate between agencies efficiently, Airmen could tackle the hands-on portion of the exercise. Gregory Mitchell, 931st MXS Aero Shop chief, believes bringing multiple units together for a single training exercise prepares them for real-world, multi-agency operations.
“In a real-world event, you never know who you’re going to be working with,” Mitchell said. “In the unfortunate event that aircraft goes down, you could have recovery teams from the host unit, the local unit and local civilians. We all have to learn to work quickly together.”
The recovery teams were faced with multiple tasks and unique challenges throughout the exercise. To challenge the primarily fixed-wing aircraft units, they were assigned with lifting various helicopter parts – which have a different center of gravity and require particular techniques.
Hands-on experience for fixed-wing scenarios was posed in the form of a “bogged” C-130, which needed removed from several inches of mud. This realistic scenario shows Airmen the increase in breakaway force – the amount of force required to move the aircraft — between various terrains.
“We’ve always got room to grow, it’s very rare to experience the same scenario twice,” Mitchell said. “What we learn through these exercises continually make us better at the job. Each experience builds confidence and gets us ready for new challenges.”
With the expanse of the 931st Air Refueling Wing and the projected arrival of the KC-46 Pegasus, this exercise equipped the 931 MXS has with skills to handle an even wider array of situations these undertakings may present.