Historic deployment for 310th AS

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Sarah Breer
  • 6th Air Mobility Wing Public Affairs
MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. --  January of 2001 marked the beginning of a new era when the 310th Airlift Squadron first joined Team MacDill. Twelve years later, they depart MacDill AFB, headed down range marking another first for the 310th.

The 310th AS operate three C-37A aircraft primarily supporting the six CONUS based combatant commands. The C-37A is a twin-engine turbofan aircraft, excellently suited to execute missions for high-ranking government and Department of Defense officials.

Members of the 310th AS take great pride in fulfilling their mission, to provide five-star service to the four-stars. Their job is to provide safe, reliable transportation and complete global connectivity for the Department of Defense's highest ranking members.

The aircraft is essentially a flying office allowing military members to use secure and unsecure internet, satellite communication, telephone and fax lines. High ranking officials can eat, sleep, and work all while traversing the globe leveraging their ability to accomplish the mission while travelling.

"The C-37 mission has a positive influence because we provide hands-on support to the war fighter," said Lt. Col. Derrick Hodges, 310th AS commander.

The 310th has never conducted sustained deployments utilizing their aircraft and aircrew. This all changed when two crews headed to the Central Command area of responsibility to support the mission overseas. One crew consists of two pilots, a communications system operator, a flight engineer and a flight attendant. Both crews share a squadron aviation resource manager.

"Preparing for this historic first deployment was a new experience. A typical deployment is at the wing level. The Air Mobility Command tasked the squadron for the deployment, but no AMC squadron had ever deployed with the C-37A before, so many processes had to be built from scratch," said Hodges of the deployment.

While international duty and individual deployments are nothing new to the 310th AS, the squadron has never deployed as a unit before. A great deal of planning over a short period of time was necessary to ensure first-rate support for the crews and aircraft on their first long term departure from MacDill.

A squadron of 62 members pulled deployment preparations together quickly. It took a team effort from the Airmen of the 310th, contractor logistics support, and multiple functions in the MSG and MDG to make it happen with so little time to prepare.

"We had about five weeks' notice that we were tasked to fill this slot," said Hodges. "It has been a challenge since we have never deployed in this manner before, but we have stepped up. It is hard to measure what we have done, but long term, we are proud of what we bring to the fight."

Each service member going on this deployment volunteered to be a part of it, said Tech. Sgt. Ricky Osborne, 310th AS flight engineer. "Everyone was pumped to go."

Osborne cross trained to be a flight-engineer from health services management. He is very proud of the job he has chosen.

"This job lets me travel to places most people don't get to go," Osborne said.

Members in the career fields that are deploying are all at least second term Airmen, as their jobs require experience not available out of basic military training.

In addition to military members, civilian contractors are also being deployed. A new contract had to be written so they could go with the aircraft overseas. The civilians will perform full line-maintenance on the C-37A while it is deployed.

To do their job, they work together and have to know what they are doing, Osborne said. They could not succeed without the whole team.

Hodges said he is proud of his unit for volunteering, but he isn't surprised that they did.

"Everyone that is tasked to deploy is experienced and ready to go because the mission is necessary and important", said Hodges. "We have to be on time and in the right place every time we do anything."

While deployed, the crews will do the same job that they do while stateside. The crews will replace an Air Force unit from Ramstein Air Base, Germany and will be gone for a typical rotation of approximately three months.