Maintainers from the 421st Fighter Generation Squadron are gaining valuable training and experience while they are deployed here to provide F-35A Lightning II sorties for Bamboo Eagle 25-1.
The U.S. Air Force Warfare Center exercise is focused on providing the airpower needed to overcome pacing threats and disperses force elements and command and control structures to "hub" and "spoke" locations across the Western United States.
The exercise forces units to remain mobile, carrying out their missions with teams of Airmen who can fill in where needed. Practicing Agile Combat Employment is an extension of what the Airmen, from the 388th Fighter Wing at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, have been working on at home station with Mission Ready Airman training.
"During these exercises we operate at a scope much larger than we do on a day-to-day basis at Hill," said Col. Robert Kongaika, 388th Maintenance Group commander. "Exercises like this are absolutely critical. It's that old adage - 'The more we sweat in practice, the less we will bleed in battle.' If we exercise these movements to the point of failure we will grow from it. These scenarios can be tough, but we're learning from them. We could be tasked with this at a moment's notice, and Bamboo Eagle is an experience our Airmen will draw from."
In a hypothetical scenario requiring "island hopping" from one airfield to the next, the smaller a maintenance team can be, the more mobile and survivable the entire operation is.
"We're working toward a concept where up to 80 percent of our core maintenance tasks can be done by anybody," said Capt. Tate Ashton, 388th Maintenance Group's tactics lead. "So, all of your avionics, crew chiefs, weapons, munitions, and some back shops would be trained in these fundamentals."
With every Airmen in a deployed squadron trained in the basic tasks required as a "maneuver element," teams can be tailored to move forward from the "hub" to a "spoke" based on the manning and resources needed to meet the mission requirements in each location, said Ashton.
For the 421st FGS, Red Flag 25-1 - which had a high operations tempo, but was less unpredictable than Bamboo Eagle - provided a good opportunity to build up some of these skills.
"Our crew chiefs are on the flightline all the time, but for the rest of our Airmen, we got their hands on the jets, got them familiar with launching and recovering aircraft safely," said Master Sgt. Logan Schneider, 421st FGS Tactical Aircraft Maintenance NCOIC and Bamboo Eagle maintenance lead. "For Bamboo Eagle, if our maintainers need to move to an austere location on a C-130 or a helicopter, then we will have a small footprint to refuel and rearm and launch sorties. Having more people trained gives us more flexibility."
One of those Airmen is Staff Sgt. Clarissa Escarsega, who works in the 421st FGS supply section, tracking resources for the squadron.
"I like being around the aircraft, seeing whatever ways I can help out," Escarsega said. "It helps us to learn about other sections and to be more ready to deploy."
