Survive, operate; ambitious three-phase training exercise

  • Published
  • By Nick Stubbs
  • Thunderbolt staff writer
MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. --  Mission success depends on many things, but it is hard to argue that the most important is the ability of Airmen to survive and operate. To ensure MacDill Airmen have the know how to do just that, an exercise kicked off Wednesday as phase one of a three-stage exercise to culminate in August. It's a run-up in preparation for the Operational Readiness Inspection to occur later this year.

"It's a crawl, walk, run process and this is the crawl phase," said Larry Cresswell, 6th Air Mobility Wing Exercise and Inspections chief.

Nearly 300 Airmen eligible for deployment will learn tactics designed to serve them in their area of responsibility at home or in a deployed environment.

The exercise, dubbed Ability to Survive and Operate, is broken into five training blocks, the first focusing on cover and concealment, direct and indirect fire, signs and counter signs and dealing with searches of people as well as dealing with enemy prisoners of war. Members of the 6th Security Forces Squadron conducted this block of training.

Block two included instruction on the M-16 rifle, defensive fighting positions and explosive ordinance recon. Block three focused on Self-Aid and Buddy Care and Block four dealt with contamination avoidance and marking vehicles with M-8 paper. Block five covered contamination control areas, combat wallets, nerve and blister agents and alarm signals.

"I'm impressed with where we are in preparation for the ORI," said Col. Tim Smith, 6 AMW vice commander. "The efforts over this three-day (ATSO) period will give us a solid foundation to build on."

Most of the training is active, said Mr. Cresswell, with some classroom time.

"The majority is hands-on," he said. "I would say about 95 percent is in the field doing and 5 percent classroom."

The "walk" stage of the exercise series begins July 18, with the "run" stage taking place at the end of August, at which time everything learned will be put to the test in a full AOR action scenario.