Most impressed with the heart

  • Published
  • By Col. "Tip" Stinnette
  • 39th Air Base Wing Commander
Monday we received our staff assistance visit out-brief from the U.S. Air Forces in Europe team. We did well and have a clear roadmap to use in our preparations for the inspection in September. We had 19 areas identified as "strengths" and 27 areas identified as "needing improvement." Our personnel reliability program and crash, fire, rescue programs have come a long way from the last inspection.

Our battle staff team, vehicle management flight, fire prevention section and communications squadron information management team were identified as "outstanding teams."

The areas requiring additional attention are in maintenance technical operations, COMSEC management, entry control procedures and escort authority procedures. Our goal is to shore-up our deficiencies by the end of July and use the month of August to tune up our procedures for the next round.

Over the coming weeks we will rotate a good portion of our team to new assignments and receive a number of new teammates. It is important that we ensure a good hand-off as new people come in. Some of you have remarked that we exercised too much and to the detriment of small unit, individual task training in preparing for the staff assistance visit.

With this in mind we have cancelled our May 18 and 19 local exercise so that work centers can focus on individual task training. We will seek to balance our exercise and training schedule in the coming weeks to ensure proficiency in individual support tasks.

I am proud of our entire team ... from our AMC partners' deconflicting flight ops to the services reception of the staff assistance team to our collective performance during the inspection response events. You are all heroes and I am particularly proud of the fact that for two weekends running we have managed to avoid having any ARIs. Well done to all of you and thank you for your commitment to the mission.

Now go on outside, have some fun in the sun and enjoy today's Wingman Day events.

Keep safety in mind always -- more to come as we approach the 101 Critical Days of Summer in a few weeks.