Milwaukee, WI –
As part of the agile combat employment exercise, 128th Air Refueling Wing Airmen performed training exercises to improve and learn different parts of their job functions to become multi-capable, interoperable, and efficient Airmen during deployment and wartime situations as part of the ACE concept, Volk Field Air National Guard base, Camp Douglas, WI, July 14-19, 2024.
A training unit composed of members from the 128 ARW Operations Group, Maintenance Group, and Mission Support Group, Airmen were trained and evaluated on current and new skill sets to meet job qualification standards and essential tasks authorizations under the ACE concept.
ACE, known as agility combat employment, is based on the U.S. Air Force Doctrine 1-21: “A proactive and reactive operational scheme of maneuver executed within threat timelines to increase survivability while generating combat power,” an approach to counter the challenges imposed by U.S. adversaries. As ACE training looks different for each unit, 128 ARW members were trained on how to operate machinery such as excavators, wheel loaders, specialized trucks, and more, to include how to build pallets and other Air Force career functions.
“ACE is basically a concept of us being able to change the way we deploy,” said 2nd Lt. Benjamin J. Doss, director of the 128th ARW Aircraft Maintenance Squadron Maintenance Operations and lead of the exercise. “It is about spreading out our resources and having members that can do multiple functions. Do more with less.”
The 128 ARW ACE training at Volk Field aimed to maximize resources and diversify Airmen's skillsets, ensuring that they can efficiently integrate into joint operations during deployments and wartime situations.
“It is about making Airmen more well-rounded so that we do not have to take more people than we have to,” said 2nd Lt. Autumn R. Kangas, assigned to the 128th ARW Aircraft Maintenance Squadron Maintenance Operations and lead of the exercise.
As there is no set regulation on the consistency of ACE training exercises, Airmen hope for annual training to not only improve the ACE concept for individual units, but also build camaraderie among service members.
“I would like to do this more annually,” said Doss. “Sometimes it gets forgotten about the camaraderie side and it is such a big piece, I think it is even more important than our people learning how to work forklifts.”
As the exercise wrapped up in Volk Field, 128 ARW leadership and service members expressed new found understanding and respect for other military jobs alongside their training.
“We all do not really get to work together like this so it is nice to bring up morale and get people seeing what their job does for the big picture,” said Kangas. “Respecting other people’s jobs that we do not ever get to work with and realize that they actually do a lot more than we even knew.”