Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va. -- The Airmen of the 480th Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Wing, in conjunction with the Remotely Piloted Aircraft community, have been operating above standard steady-state operations for the past 15 years, deployed in place and working extended hours without ready access to base and family support, and lacking the reconstitution time normally associated with being physically deployed.
That is why U.S. Air Force Chief Master Sgt. John Thompson, 480th ISRW command chief, said the number one input from the wing’s 2016 Occupational Health Stress and Screening Assessment was that Airmen are running on “zero gas in the tank” and don’t have time during missions to complete Air Force training.
To help resolve these issues, the 480th ISRW implemented a Combat Readiness Sustainment Program to give signals intelligence crews the opportunity to step away from their mission to increase their tradecraft and stay current with Air Force operational training, he said.
“The Combat Readiness Sustainment Program is designed to create major gains in readiness for deployed-in-place Airmen through a series of events focused around mission readiness training, resiliency and relevancy,” said U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Amanda Figueroa, 30th Intelligence Squadron commander.
The first iteration of CRSP began Sept. 1 using Distributed Ground Site-1 signals Intelligence flight and command, control, communications Airmen.
These 57 Airmen are currently in the middle of an eight week syllabus that builds tradecraft, expands core subject knowledge and teaches integration with other units operating in the theater, Figueroa said.
“With our mission-sharing construct, every core site within the wing will be able to cycle through sequentially to ensure enough capacity exists to cover our wing's daily taskings and emergency situations,” said Figueroa.
For DGS-1, the program was constructed around a series of six evolutions that use a building block to mission complexity, including academics on adversary threats or capabilities and a visit or briefing by a related member of the Air Force analytic or operations community.
The Airmen can apply the knowledge gained in those environments to a rehearsal of concepts drill, building on increasingly complex scenarios designed to prepare the Airmen for the new mission qualification standard, Figueroa said.
“The ROC Drills, built and administered by the group’s Weapons and Tactics shop, challenged our ability to effectively integrate across the signal intelligence/C3 mission, the entire DGS-1 operations floor and with the broader Intel Community,” she said.
The capstone evolution will include participation from the 3rd IS, 9th Reconnaissance Wing (a U-2 pilot) and the 566th IS from the Aerospace Data Facility, Colorado (Air Force-National Tactical Intelligence).
“Fundamentally, there hasn't been anything like this in the modern history of Air Force DCGS, and we are excited to see these Airmen expand their ability to execute time-dominant fusion on the line in ways we have yet to imagine,” said Figueroa.
In addition to specific mission focused tasks, the Airmen had the opportunity to attend a seven-day activity-based intelligence course, various National Security Agency courses relevant to signals intelligence analysts, and network intelligence analyst’s career development and team building events, she said.
“This is a necessary step in evolving the way we train and develop our Airmen,” said Thompson, noting this is just the first step in their effort to increase their Airmen’s tradecraft and Airmanship skills.