Contractors bring relief to radar maintainers Published Dec. 23, 2003 By Tech. Sgt. Reginal Woodruff 447th Air Expeditionary Group BAGHDAD INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, Iraq (AFPN) -- Supporting flying operations in Iraq and Afghanistan has thinned manning at bases worldwide in many already critically manned career fields. One of which is the radar maintenance career field. Central Air Force officials have brought some relief to the career field by contracting maintenance at Tallil and Kirkuk air bases in Iraq, and here. Eight employees of SYTEX, Inc. and ITT Industries replaced a crew of 10 maintainers who had worked at BIAP for three months. “Contracting radar maintenance has relieved the operations tempo,” said Master Sgt. Jon Mangin, 447th Expeditionary Communications Squadron quality assurance evaluator and the only military maintainer remaining. “Radar maintainers can’t do regular (air and space expeditionary force) rotations because of our career field manning, so we were doing six months.“It’s hard to stand by … and watch someone work on my equipment,” Mangin said. His job now is only to evaluate the performance of the system and contractors. “The contractors are doing an excellent job; we’re getting what we paid for.”The continuity that the six-month rotations provided improves with the hiring of the contractors who will be here for one year, working on current equipment and installing upgrades.“We got the easy part,” said David Zion, team lead for the contractors. “The hard part was getting it here and setting it up.” Military maintainers set up the three vans responsible for guiding “8,000 aircraft per month into the central location” for flight operations in Iraq, officials said. The combat communication package consists of the airport surveillance radar, which gives operators a 360-degree view of airspace; precision approach radar, which provides a 20-mile outlook that allows aircraft to land in bad weather; and the operations van, where air traffic controllers look at the airspace and communicate with aircraft coming into BIAP. The heavy demand of working at the hub of air operations in a combat zone has not fazed Zion or his crew after being here nearly six weeks.“The job doesn’t change from peacetime to wartime,” Zion said. Maintainers are currently working with equipment that has been in Air Force inventory since 1970. Upgrades are scheduled to be made during the contractor’s tour.