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Travis Initial Response Team matures through joint exercise with Tanker Airlift Control Element

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TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (USTCNS) ---Travis Air Force Base prepared for the 60th Air Mobility Wing's 90-day rotation as the Air Force's Lead Mobility Wing with a four-day exercise which started Feb. 21.

For the first time, the wing's 35-member Initial Response Team was joined by a full 36-member Tanker Airlift Control Element from the 615th Air Mobility Operations Group.

The exercise had both teams pretending to deploy to Comalapa Air Base, a military airfield collocated with El Salvador International Airport. The team's mission was to establish a command-and-control center in a bare base environment and recommend options for sustaining airlift operations for earthquake and mudslide victims.

An important result of the exercise was "to learn how to integrate the TALCE function into what the IRT has to do," said Maj. Bryan Dooley, lead exercise evaluator for the TALCE and Travis' TALCE liaison for advising IRT leadership.

"This exercise was valuable because (the IRT) hadn't really deployed with the TALCE yet," said Staff Sgt. William Johnson, the IRT's logistics planner and one of the IRT members who worked most closely with the TALCE. "Neither one knew much about what the other was about, and combining those different units to work effectively was the greatest challenge."

It took some time for the two groups to get adjusted, including establishing how two units with different chains of command work together at a single location.

While the TALCE is an asset that reports directly to the Tanker Airlift Control Center at Scott AFB, Ill., the IRT falls under the authority of the unified command to which it deploys and advises the commander-in-chief through channels on a host of issues beyond the scope of initial airfield operations run by the TALCE.

By the end of the exercise, however, participants said they saw how the two units complemented one another.

"The TALCE is self-sufficient. We've got everything we need to run a ramp," said Master Sgt. Randall Radford, a communications and aerospace ground equipment specialist with the 815th Air Mobility Squadron. "Being out here working with the IRT, though, I could see how they make a good transition to a more full-fledged operation. The IRT can assess things, make judgments, handle things that distract the TALCE from their job."

TALCE members needed all the concentration they could get, because exercise evaluators had a full slate of activities planned for them. In addition to exercise inputs, the team handled transient aircraft traffic on the 900 ramp, including parking, loading, unloading and reporting for a C-141 and a C-17.

The IRT was equally busy during the exercise, providing passenger support for evacuees, liaison with local nationals and non-governmental organizations, and assessing requirements to grow TALCE airfield operations into a larger-scale relief mission.

"In some ways, this was a better exercise for evaluating the IRT than what we saw in Phoenix Readiness," Johnson said, referring to the two-week mobility training course most IRT members attended in November at the Air Mobility Warfare Center, Fort Dix, N.J. "Here, we spent a lot more time thinking about the details of base support - getting the things we needed, facing a criminal threat, meeting needs for noncombatants - than we did on base defense."

In one scenario, the IRT was asked to support the evacuation of 28 American citizens - played by members of the First Term Airman's Center.

Lt. Col. Victor Salamanca, a flight surgeon at David Grant Medical Center and chief medical officer for the IRT, provided medical treatment for six evacuees.

"I was impressed with the realism of the medical cases," Salamanca said. "The evaluators did a good job moulaging the patients. There was even a 'pregnant' woman who had a prosthetic belly on, and I had to talk through the delivery of her baby boy."

The IRT also tested the realism of the IRT's Logistics Detail, the equipment the team carries with it, and Air Mobility Command's Mission Essential Tasks, the criteria by which AMC evaluators will judge IRT performance in future exercises. Travis is developing the LOGDET and METs that will be used by all LMWs in AMC.

"As a result of deploying only with the equipment we intend to use under the kinds of circumstances where we'll use them, we think we've accomplished what we need to do - to mature the IRT concept into a working unit that's fully ready to deploy," said Maj. Keith Albrecht of the wing Exercise Evaluation Team. (FROM AIR MOBILITY COMMAND PUBLIC AFFAIRS).

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