Photo By Senior Airman William Lunn | Col. Cory Damon, 22nd Air Refueling Wing commander, holds a KC-46 Weapons Systems...... read more read more
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MCCONNELL AIR FORCE BASE, Ks. – The 22nd Air Refueling Wing (ARW) hosted the third annual KC-46 Weapons Systems Council (WSC) Nov. 13-15, 2024.
Led by Col. Cory Damon, 22nd ARW commander and KC-46 Weapons Systems Council Chair for Air Mobility Command, the council’s theme was Operational Relevance: Building Enterprise Breadth and Depth.
The council focused on a variety of topics, including KC-46 training, insights from recent employment capability exercises and the latest tactical developments for the aircraft. Subject matter experts delivered briefings throughout the first day, followed by open discussion sessions for collaboration addressing challenges that are difficult to tackle through virtual conferences or individual meetings.
The bases that took part in the council included Altus Air Force Base (AFB), Oklahoma; Fairchild AFB, Washington; Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey; Seymour Johnson AFB, North Carolina; and Travis AFB, California.
The WSC streamlined both operations and maintenance by collaboration between departments and ensuring efficient resource allocation. Its initiatives led to enhanced system reliability and overall performance.
“We worked alongside our fellow senior leaders this week, adjudicating those important topics that we will send up to AMC so we can communicate where we want to see the progress of the KC-46 mission in the near future in order to improve our capabilities,” said Col. Jermaine Cambell, 931st Maintenance Group Commander. “Maintenance played a key role in the weapon system council, the majority of the discussions go into the operators, but it is the maintainer that needs to understand what the operators’ needs are. Then we benefit from advocacy of the operators and wing commanders so we can put the maintenance piece to the puzzle in, becoming a more effective fighting force.”
The focus of these face-to-face discussions was to enable participants to create new connections, strengthen existing ones and advance the KC-46’s operational relevance across the Air Force. The combination of ground-level discussions and in-flight training highlighted the aircraft’s growing role in Air Force operations and showcased the power of Total Force collaboration.
“In this weapons systems council, we actually had a multitude of events running concurrently, one of them at the tactical level was a six-ship of KC-46s flying from each wing,” said Lt. Col. Shane Williams, 344th Air Refueling Squadron commander. “They flew in a robust tactic sortie, and then flew a sortie where they dealt with fallback procedures and the refueling of Aircraft. It was a great time to generate lessons learned within the exercise.”
By facilitating knowledge-sharing and joint training, the KC-46 Weapons Systems Council continues to strengthen the aircraft’s operational effectiveness and prepare it for future challenges.
“Once we catalyze these solutions, we want to ensure there is a feedback loop in place for the next WSC meeting,” said Williams. “All of this is going to generate information of a status update, and inquiries based on touch points with staff and the wing commander, so when we get to the next council meeting, we’ll be able to re-access progress with what the working groups had here this time."
The KC-46 Weapons System Council will take place twice a year with the WSC 25-1 projected to take place in either March or April of 2025.
| Date Taken: | 11.20.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 11.20.2024 16:04 |
| Story ID: | 485777 |
| Location: | MCCONNELL AIR FORCE BASE, KANSAS, US |
| Web Views: | 30 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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