Readiness center orchestrates contingency support

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Jeremy Tredway
  • 39th Wing Public Affairs
David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear, walked through the Great Wall of China and made audience members vanish, only to reappear somewhere else. But, those were just magic tricks -- grandiose illusions.

Try making 3,000 soldiers, more than 200 aircraft and nearly 5,000 tons of equipment and supplies disappear and then reappear somewhere else. It just does not happen instantaneously. It is not a magic trick.

What do you do with 3,000 soldiers asking for a place to sleep, food to eat and somewhere to store their gear while passing through?

Members of the Logistics Readiness Center here solved that riddle and many others during the buildup for Operation Iraqi Freedom and redeployment of Operation Northern Watch aircraft and troops.

The trick -- patience and flexibility.

"It was a huge challenge to coordinate billeting, arms storage and work space for the Army on short notice," said Capt. Andrew Hunt, 39th Logistics Readiness Squadron readiness flight commander. "The Army speaks a different language (and) plays by different rules. They definitely taught us a lot about different approaches to getting a mission accomplished. We ended up handling a whole lot more cargo and people than we thought we would."

The LRC staff thrives on coordinated chaos, he said.

"There's not much routine to what we do," Hunt said. "It's basically plan, prepare, react, adjust and accomplish."

The center, which includes logistics, mobility, transportation, supply and personnel experts, is the 39th Wing's central agency for receiving, staging and integrating forces to support contingency operations. The staff is the conduit between deployed people and the wing.

"When something needs to get done, we find the best people to accomplish the mission," Hunt said. "We try to think a couple steps ahead. If we know what's on the horizon, planning for it becomes easier. To be able to do the impossible, we have to be able to expect the unexpected, adapt and overcome."

While the 39th Wing never got the call to launch aircraft for Operation Iraqi Freedom, Hunt contends that portions of the wing were, for all intents and purposes, at war.

"Since the day the LRC stood up, we ... sent stuff or people downrange five times per day. So, when someone asks if we are disappointed that we never got to 'play,' we laugh," he said.