Oh boy, more exercises! This last week we had a 3-day exercise, which should have been easier than the previous 5-day one, but the brass freaked and decided they wanted full base security measures in place after all. Now, typically, on the first day of these things, night and day shift personnel are both in place to help set up the barbed wire, etc. When things are mostly up and ready, night shift is released to go home. This exercise was supposed to be a "surprise attack" kind of a scenario, no warning to put up defenses. As such, the official guidance was that security measures had to be in place within 72 hours. So the typical plan is to ramp up patches of barbed wire until the last day, then take down whatever you got up. Usually.
NOT THIS TIME.
Nope, after the shiny ones released the night shift, it came down that they wanted all the defenses up. By the end of the day. Mind you, this is a task that takes 100 people 3 hours to do. Now they wanted us to do it with only the day shift personnel who were available (i.e. not busy working on their own exercisy things). Whisky Tango Foxtrot.
So me and my supervisor had the pleasure of hammering stakes and planning barbed wire deployment, and then dragging out the barbed wire. We had about 4-12 volunteers throughout the day, and we were working an hour at a time when the heat index indicated no more than 10 minutes of strenuous work at a time. Yeah. Slept well that night.
The next day we had a few aircraft/missile attacks, and so we suited up to go out and look for contamination/ordnance. So we get out there in heat condition 5, full gear, sweep the compound in about 20 minutes and come back. The evaluation team meets us back in the warehouse, and tells us to go out again and do another check. We go outside and start our check again... and there's an RPG sitting right in broad daylight. You couldn't have missed it the first time, you would have tripped over it. The jerks went and put it out there *after* we'd done our sweep. Talk about lazy. When you can't even be bothered to hide a dummy prop on time, you decide to half-ass it and blame it on the testees. It was really unprofessional.
So anyways, we start to go through the actions, call in the location and type of the bomb, cordon off/evacuate for the appropriate blast radius, etc. One evaluator in particular is asking us a whole lot of really weird questions. Unrelated stuff that doesn't really apply or is completely out of the book. After a few minutes the evaluators pulled us aside, because of "lightning". Yeah right. It was starting to rain, and they didn't want to get caught outside (mind you, we were all in full gear, rain could only make the situation *more* comfortable. It was the *evaluation team* who wasn't wearing anything more than body armor). So we went back inside and sucked rubber for another hour before the base called the all-clear. Fun times.
Day 3: We get another aircraft/missile attack (well ok, we get a lot of these, but most are declared "clear" within 10 minutes. Only about 1-3 times a day do we go through the post-attack sweep maneuvers). This time we're sent out, my team finds a mortar by the back of our warehouse. Next to the O2 cylinders. And the diesel tanks. And the backup generators. Okay, wow, the evaluators picked a *good* spot this time. Credit where credit is due. So we call it in to the medical control center, while the other team finishes the sweep. And I'm calling in details, and my partner is looking up blast radius guidance, and the MCC guy is gargling with marbles. Or something. He's practically unintelligible. But whatever, I just keep calling things in slowly and carefully, and requesting "how do you copy" after each piece. Bit by bit he's acknowledging that he's getting the information, though he's still speaking in angry Tagalog or tongues or whatever. I recommend evacuation of the warehouse, by the door opposite from the bomb, and so, the remaining warehouse personnel get out of the building. The other team gets back from the sweep and helps us finish the cordon. This thing is nice. I mean, it is text-book. We've got yellow tape and ordnance signs posted up the yin-yang, from one barbed wire fence to the other. Nobody's getting through without being blind or stupid. My supervisor's checking on everybody, making sure we're doing all right, congratulating us on how we're doing. Nobody understands what MCC is saying. He's still in "crazy Filipino strangle-the-mike mode", as my supervisor put it.
But eventually MCC calls in the Explosive Ordnance Disposal guys. Now this is new territory for us, because we've never simulated things up to this point before. It's always been tag-the-bomb, good-job, go-inside-and-wait-for-all-clear. So we guard the area until EOD shows up. At this point, the security team comes around and asks the A1C on my team if they can let in the EOD team. She's like "sure, I guess?". Doesn't even ask me or my supervisor, who are the actual "Facilities" personnel and are in charge of ordnance sweeps. Ah, security. Even when you start with dental technicians, once you put people on security detail, they just lose 20 IQ points. Must be some kind of a fight-or-flight response. So EOD gets out to our position and starts on things. Then the evaluation team tells us we can go inside. About 15 minutes later we get the contamination-all-clear. So at least we can de-mask, though the warehouse is still off-limits. At this point my supervisor starts debriefing us, we're getting water, chilling out on some chairs down the hallway. The evaluation team comes around, they congratulate us, good job on everything guys, etc, etc, got any questions. We ask about some minor stuff, then wonder "just what is going on with the MCC?" Well as it turns out, the guy running the radios at the MCC was getting hammered on by the group commander (the "Hawk"). Hawk was demanding to know why his building wasn't evacuated.
Now ordinarily, he and the rest of the medical commanders and staff work in a building just opposite of the warehouse. During exercises, all of the buildings are secured and locked, and only the main clinic and warehouse are occupied. This has *always* been our procedure. It's been on the books since forever. We just don't have the time or manpower to keep every building staffed and secured during wartime (at least not until follow-on forces arrive and boost our numbers). Remember, we're cutting our numbers in less than half because all the civilians stay home and the military is divided between day and night shift. So his building is locked during exercises, and no one is supposed to be in there. The Hawk is always going to be down-base in the wing headquarters, doing senior staff things with all the other brass. Occasionally he'll visit the main clinic, but he'll never be in the medical command building. So asking why he hasn't been evacuated is just bizarre.
MCC guy was folding under the pressure from the Hawk (which is *bad*, the dispatcher should always be able to stand his ground, regardless of rank). Then they found out that the first sergeant was in the commander's building. Didn't tell anybody, but apparently this oversight was going to get blamed on us (Facilities team). My supervisor and the evaluation team are calling foul. That building is supposed to be empty, and we did everything by the book in our evacuation and cordoning actions. So we'll see how that'll play out when we do the post-exercise debriefing and lessons learned report. Meanwhile, the evaluators get garblewharble boy replaced with someone who can stay cool and English when the shit hits the fan.
After that it was just the standard sit around and wait for the end of the exercise, then pack up the defenses and clean up. Then around 1630 we all got pulled over to the main clinic to wait for the Hawk to give a Commander's Call briefing to the group.
At 1820, he finally showed up. Most of the talk was about how we screwed up, but it was because he didn't "prepare us enough". Yeah, yeah. Why don't you just say "fayure to communicate" and rub a little more lemon juice in it, huh? The doubletalk "I'm going to say it was my fault but imply that it was your fault" is more grating than any actual criticism would be. The group was not receptive to the message, that's for sure. Then he handed out coins to a few strong performers: the first went to an evaluator who "asked a lot of questions, even if they were sometimes the wrong questions". I'm not really sure what that meant, but oh look, it's the same guy who copped out on the dummy RPG earlier. He was indeed asking a whole lot of wrong questions, I'll give him that. The next coin went to the NCOIC of the IT department. Apparently she's been working "real hard" to get his email working again. This is a woman who has difficulty installing a printer. I've seen it. I'm real sure she's working real hard on his email issue. Pretty much anything computery would be "real hard" for her. Sigh. The last two coins went to 2 dentists who are fairly new to the Air Force, but have captain's bars owing to the degrees they held when they commissioned. Officers like that are always worth a chuckle. They're so polite, and they're always (quietly) asking the lowest ranking airmen about the most obvious military things. You just want to pat them on the head "it'll be alright, just follow the lead of whatever sergeant is standing nearby." Apparently they took "very good notes" during a meeting on chemical attack preparation (led by guess who, the Hawk), and have been studying those notes diligently during the exercise. Yup. Getting information second hand is apparently better than studying it straight from the source, namely *THE FREAKING SURVIVAL BOOKLETS* you are issued the first day you get on base!
I'm not really feeling a whole lot of confidence in my senior leadership at this moment in time. Four months down, eight to go.
P.S. Oh, before I forget. Based on my line number, my supervisor is guessing that I'll pin on Staff Sergeant sometime around May or so. It all depends on how many paygrades are open each month for the Air Force to fill (which is ultimately set by Congress). Ideally, I'll sew it on a bit before I get to my next base. It's always a bit awkward to come to a new base at one rank, then gain a rank a month later, because your coworkers only have a first impression of you. You want to sew on with people you know, or before you meet people you don't know. We'll see how it works out.
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