Exercise helps base prepare for ORI Published March 9, 2006 By Tech. Sgt. Ken Sloat 910th Airlift Wing Public Affairs YOUNGSTOWN AIR RESERVE STATION, Ohio -- During a four-day period in August more than 350 members of the 910th Airlift Wing are scheduled to participate in what will likely be the first of three such practice deployments to help prepare for the Operational Readiness Inspection in 2008. The base-wide exercise, set to begin Aug. 24, is expected to deploy nearly a quarter of the reservists assigned here to the Combat Readiness Skills Training Center at Volk Field, Wis. According to Capt. Raymond Gale, Chief of Performance Planning, scheduling for the August exercise should involve people who are expected to be able to participate in the ORI. It’s smarter, the Captain explained, to involve someone who is a lesser skilled Senior Airman now but will be a highly skilled Staff Sergeant during the ORI rather than a highly skilled Chief Master Sergeant who is likely to be retired in two years. The exercise will simulate the wing being deployed to set up flying operations at a forward operating location. “We’re using the building block approach,” said Capt. Gale. According to the Captain, each of the three exercises will build on the previous exercise and encompass more of the items that the 910th will be inspected on. He said he expected the final “fly-away” exercise may be more challenging that the actual ORI. This exercise in August will focus on the deployment and redeployment phase of the ORI, said Senior Master Sgt. Lou Martsolf, NCOIC of War Plans and Mobilization. For now, explained Sergeant Martsolf, the focus should be on demonstrating the capability to move our people efficiently and safely from here to there and back again. The next exercise, tentatively scheduled for spring of 2007, will likely be more in depth and could even include one or more other units, he explained. The 910th AW is scheduled to participate in the ORI in March 2008 along with units from Missouri, Nevada and Minnesota. “This is the time,” explained Capt. Gale, “to recognize and fix problems.” Others agree. The process of a group becoming a team, explained Col. Michael Marques, Wing Inspector General, isn’t likely to happen overnight. “It takes about three cycles to behave as a group,” he said. “If we don’t start now, we won’t get these cycles in and we’ll be graded accordingly.” The time at Volk Field will likely be used to teach wartime survival skills such as emergency medical care and training on unexploded ordinance, he explained. “I think it will be a full day,” he said. The training center at Volk Field Air National Guard Base, Wis., began operating in 1992. Since then, more than 60 units and over 35,000 personnel have been trained there. Their mission is to train units to deploy, survive and operate at a forward location. Units with wartime missions typically undergo ORIs at least once every five years to evaluate their wartime readiness. Units are given one of five ratings: outstanding, excellent, satisfactory, marginal and unsatisfactory. Air Force Reserve units receiving an unsatisfactory rating are rescheduled for inspection 18 – 24 months later. “We want to be ready and execute the scheduled inspection only once,” said Col. Tim Thomson, commander of the 910th Airlift Wing. “I don’t think any one wants to do it again, so let’s get it right the first time.”