Wolf Pack Airmen respond to crisis scenarios

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Gustavo Gonzalez
  • 8 Fighter Wing Public Affairs
KUNSAN AIR BASE, Republic of Korea --  A team of active duty military members and civilian contractors from Global Security and Engineering Services came to Kunsan Dec. 8 through 11 to observe the Wolf Pack's response to various crisis scenarios. 

"They came out here to validate our programs and also to teach us the direction the Air Force is going," said Capt. Jason Monaco, 8th Fighter Wing Plans and Programs. "We are moving toward a homeland security exercise evaluation program and new ways of looking at incident management." 

A total of nine crisis situations were presented to Airmen from all base agencies. Laboratory functions, pharmacy, decontamination, patient care and more were tested during the table-top and hands-on exercises. 

"We have the Air Force Incident Management System and it's kind of a new way of doing business in the Air Force. So the training is to teach us how the Air Force is doing and get us thinking about ways we can improve the processes we already have in place at Kunsan." 

One of the many exercises that took place was a response to an unknown substance. 

"We were taking various tests for radiation and chemical hazards and reading them back to our team leader who read them back to our base," said Tech. Sgt. Paul Johnson, 8th Medical Operations Squadron. "It helps us out for a real world event. I'm learning how to respond to an unknown substance that can possibly harm or kill our personal, how to use our equipment more efficiently." 

Global Security and Engineering Services is a company out of Fairfax, Virginia and is a program sponsored by Headquarters Air Force Installation and Mission Support, and the Air Force Surgeon General's office. The team trains Airmen at bases around the world once every three years on crisis scenarios. They also train guard and reserve Airmen every five years. Remote locations such as Kunsan and Osan are trained annually. 

"This is one of those more involved exercises where they [the units] can actually learn from; they can go ahead and make mistakes," said Wayne Smith, the lead evaluator for Global Security and Engineering Services. "They can put people in that don't normally do this. [They can give them the opportunity to sit in the big chair and actually answer the questions and mess things up if they need to." 

While the team members were on hand to give guidance and assistance, the actual scenarios were run by base exercise evaluation team members Mr. Smith said. 

At the conclusion of the week's events the findings were presented to Wing leadership Dec. 11. Sergeant Johnson already had an experience with the benefits of the training without seeing the out brief results. 

"To me it's really good," he said. "I'm new to this career field so any chance I get I'm training like this. 

According to Mr. Smith, while the training may have inconvenienced some people by taking them away from their daily task, overall he feels the results make it worthwhile. 

"A lot of this stuff is something that is outside the norm," he said. "You don't normally want to think about this type of stuff because our daily jobs need to be taken care of. 

"Do I think it makes a difference? Yeah I do. I think when you talk to some of the people in charge they are actually fired up and they see the things they need to change and hopefully those things will get changed as time goes on."