Subscribe
Master Sgt. Joshua R. McGar-vie, a munitions materiel superintendent, Staff Sgt. Jeffrey D. Santos, a munitions inspector, and Staff Sgt. Susan McAllister, a munitions systems specialist, all assigned to the 124th Maintenance Squadron Munitions Flight, were picked out of a total of 69 applicants to attend this training.
The Air National Guard’s main goal for this training was to set a baseline for what knowledge all ammo Airmen need to know, said McGarvie.
This is the first time that a two-week munitions training of this caliber has been offered to ANG ammo troops, and making this an annual opportunity for these guardsmen is in the works. The Ammo Rodeo included classroom instruction and also a challenging competition for those in attendance.
The challenge was to assemble 80 munitions in just eight short hours.
Airmen were strategically broken up into three teams of 15, which included an assigned as team lead fondly referred to as a pad-dad and one crew chief. McGarvie was a pad-dad for the first-place team.
“I oversaw the full operation on the munitions assembly con-veyor pad, for that operation,” said McGarvie. “I had to go do my homework and be prepared to task out the configurations.”
Santos was assigned to a dif-ferent team as part of breakout and inspections element.
“All the bombs and munitions we use, they need to be a certain serial number,” said Santos. “All of that needs inspected and we need to make sure we have the right components.”
The teams had 10 different configurations to complete.
Additionally, an inject, or unknown, was also thrown into the challenge to add to the difficulty.
“Can you think on the fly if something comes down,” asked McGarvie. “If there’s a mission change or whatever, can your guys adapt and overcome?”
“Most of the configurations were ones we’re familiar with, but there were a few that we had never touched,” said McGarvie.
Some Airmen in attendance had little to no experience assembling munitions, depending on their home base’s mission.
“There are numerous individuals that don’t even have a flying mission,” said McGarvie. “So they’re ammo people, but they don’t build bombs ever because they don’t have airplanes.”
These are ammo Airmen, but they don’t have any experience building munitions.
“I can speak for myself and say that I kind of took it for granted until then,” said McGarvie. “We have the opportunity to practice building bombs whenever we want, go out there and do it; we deploy, we do all this stuff, and a lot of guys don’t get those op-portunities and they never get to do that. Collaborating with them was huge."
There were higher ranking individuals that were in that situation, said Santos. Lower ranking individuals were able to teach them, and it was eye-opening.
“Personally, I got the ability to work in that pad-dad capacity,” said McGarvie. “It was different than what I’ve ever done anyway. Instead of being a worker I was managing the whole thing, and getting experience at different levels was a big deal.”
“Any Guardsman will tell you that you can read, you can study, and do the computer training and all kinds of stuff,” said Santos. “But until you get hands-on, it doesn’t really start to set in and you don’t start to retain it.”
With Airmen coming together from all over the country, teamwork and camaraderie was a huge outcome of the ammo rodeo.
“We got a trophy, but I think the biggest thing overall is just collaborating with these people from all over the country,” said McGarvie. “They may or may not do the same thing you do, but you all know that when it comes down to it and you go downrange, you’re going to be doing the same thing.”
“It sounds cheesy, but that’s the win,” said McGarvie. “You can rely on these people, and they can rely on you to do the job when it matters.”
| Date Taken: | 09.08.2017 |
| Date Posted: | 12.28.2017 18:40 |
| Story ID: | 260605 |
| Location: | IDAHO, US |
| Web Views: | 77 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Guardsmen chosen by NGB to attend Ammo Rodeo, by SSgt Skyla Child, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
