'Crisis Look' exercise lets McChord Airmen test their emergency deployment response time

  • Published
  • By Jake Dorsey
  • Northwest Guardian
JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. --  A conflict breaks out somewhere in the world. American citizens or allies are under attack. The U.S. military is called upon to respond as fast as possible to the situation.

It could happen at any time, so each year the Air Force drills all of its bases as a part of Readiness Exercise Crisis Look.

"For the Air Force, one of our key roles, as an expeditionary air force, is our ability to deploy our folks and get our aircraft ready to take those folks and their equipment somewhere," said Col. David Kumashiro, 62nd Airlift Wing commander.

McChord Field had its turn March 3 to 7 with Operation "Cold Snap," but there was a twist.

As a test group of Airmen, called a chalk, got their briefing, Kumashiro said this year it wasn't Air Mobility Command judging their performance.

It was the wing itself.

"We really no longer have a big inspection team from the higher headquarters come down and take a look what we do," Kumashiro said. "It's really our responsibility to have some wing-level inspectors evaluate our programs and processes, and meet our standards to process and deploy."

A key piece of that is the Deployment Processing line. After each chalk received a briefing, they filed along a wall of kiosks. Medical, financial, spiritual, legal, eligibility and other stations made sure that Airmen had all their paperwork completed before they started receiving equipment, Chief Master Sgt. Dudley Baker said.

The medical and eligibility stations are required for Airmen to deploy, Baker said. Airmen then receive their field gear, including chemical defense equipment, and then wait to get on a bus to take them to their plane.

Master Sgt. Tracy DeMar, with the 627th Force Support Squadron, has participated in the multi-part readiness exercise several times. She's tested stations' readiness along the Deployment Processing Line, worked some of the stations and been in charge of the entire services line.

This year she was one of the inspectors, evaluating the services line and occasionally throwing in routine-busting scenarios to test their performance.
"Some of them they might deal with on a daily basis, like an ID card is wrong or dogtags are wrong," DeMar said. "Then there are others that may never happen, but it could be that once-in-a-while thing, so we throw it at them to see if they handle the pressure."

DeMar said the line was doing great, despite the long hours, while also identifying areas that can be improved on or monitored harder to avoid complacency.

"That's when it's easy for people to attack your weaknesses," DeMar said.

Everyone likes to think they have all their bases covered, DeMar said, so it's frustrating for Airmen to be told they're underperforming. That goes for the inspectors too, as Air Mobility Command officials observed to make sure the wing could handle inspecting its own Airmen.

DeMar said there also were a lot of new Airmen who never had participated in a deployment exercise, let alone an actual deployment. To have wing-level inspectors, AMC inspectors and high-ranking officers all at once was a load of pressure.

That said, Airmen on the line got faster as the exercise went on, standardizing paperwork and processes to increase efficiency. Those new Airmen were part of that speed increase, DeMar said, because they had the fresh eyes that could point out how to do things better.

AMC observers then helped wing-level inspectors by telling them things they also look for.

"This lets everybody, regardless of their rank, look at a process honestly and say, 'You know what? We're doing this great, we can do this better,'" DeMar said. "Everyone's feedback is treated the same."