Wing Rejoins AMC After Decade as C-130 Schoolhouse

by Senior Airman Spencer Gallien
94th Airlift Wing Public Affairs

The is set to reconnect with its past as it prepares to rejoin Air Mobility Command for the first time since 2001 on Oct. 1.

For the past 10 years, the wing has been a part of Air Education and Training Command with a primary mission to train active duty, guard and reserve component aircrews in the .

The transition from AETC to AMC will most significantly impact the operations and maintenance groups, while to a lesser extent, impacting units within the mission support group.

"We will go from having a heavily-tasked, day-to-day mission training fully-capable C-130 aircrews to an opera-tional mission where we are preparing to deploy to war," said Col. Steven R. Clayton, 94th Operations Group commander. "We've joined the military to fight our nation's war, and by joining AMC, we will have a more direct way to do that."

As part of the transition, approximately 150 airmen from the 94 AW have already been tasked to deploy to U.S. Central Command's area of responsibility.

"We've already almost filled every slot on the DRMD (deployed requirements manning document) with volunteers," Clayton said. "I'm proud of the way our airmen have stepped up to volunteer."

Senior Master Sgt. Clarence Hester, Logistics Readiness Squadron superintendent, insists that the conversion to an AMC combat mission will mean more taskings for wing members.

"Previously under the AETC training mission, our taskings were mainly individual volunteer deployments," said Hester. "Under AMC, we will see more mass deployments, especially in the maintenance, operations and logistics functional areas. The Ops tempo should increase significantly because our aircraft will now be aligned in the Air Expeditionary Force rotation along with personnel required to maintain and fly the aircraft."

Colonel Clayton pointed out that it's not just our airmen that are affected by this change, but their families and loved ones, too.

"Our airmen need to think about their families," added Clayton. "They prepare for this kind of mission; our airmen are ready, but their families are not used to deployments. Our airmen must take care of and explain this to their families."

One of the most difficult areas of the transition was how to handle the full-time employees who would no longer have jobs after the transition.

"We've been posturing ourselves for quite a long time to minimize the effects of lost jobs," said Clayton. "We've either found new jobs for them on base or allowed employees to leave in order to accept new jobs elsewhere."
Although many full-time employees relocated as part of the move, overall the numbers of traditional reservist jobs will increase.

With joining AMC, comes Operational Readiness Inspections (ORIs), deploying for Air Expeditionary Force buckets and new forms of stress for airmen.

"We currently have 17 units, only four are currently AMC gained," said Hester. As of Oct. 1, all of our units will become AMC gained, which means one ORI instead of two, as we've had to do during the past several years."

"We have a series of deployment personnel and cargo exercises scheduled to get the wing prepared to deploy and pass our AMC ORI in 2014," added Hester. "One key element to help ensure we are successful during the ORI is for the wing to shift from a training, to a combat wing mindset."

Col. Tim Tarchick, 94th Airlift Wing commander, is positive that the airmen at are prepared for the change.

"We have some of the finest airmen in the here," said Tarchick. "There will be more deployments and inspections to prepare for, but I know that our Airmen are ready for the challenge and look forward to it. As the philosophy of NASA states, failure is not an option."