RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany -- Ramstein says goodbye to air national guardsmen and air reserve units as they end a total force integrated operation spanning the past six months.
In March, guardsmen stationed out of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina along with Airmen from Air Reserve Components arrived on Ramstein Air Base with enough communication and manpower support to boost the 1st Combat Communications squadrons’ effectiveness by approximately 20 percent.
“For the most part they were set and ready to go,” said Staff Sgt. Joshua Parsons, 1st Combat Communications Squadron network technician. “Majority of the equipment they brought was their own, so they were already familiar with it. And the part that made it easy is they are actually using the same equipment as us to a point. So as far as us helping them and them helping us it was a very smooth transition.”
The guardsmen and reservists arrived with medium communication packages they used during training with NATO allies to effectively and efficiently build a base of operations wherever military support could potentially be needed.
“A lot of it is the European Reassurance Initiative or European Deterrence Initiative,” said Lt. Col. Jeremy Townsend, 435th Air and Space Communications Group deputy commander.
On 179 day orders, Airmen deployed to Ramstein intending to travel to forward to temporary duty locations for several weeks at a time. Compared to previous methods this change saves countless man hours and money.
“Before the guardsmen and reservist showed up we were in a very high paced, high tempo window,” said Parsons “With them showing up it gave us time to recover, catch up on training, and really helped with the manning and smoothed things out for the rest of our squadron.”
Traditionally members assigned to stateside bases would be temporarily assigned for a few weeks at a time and then return to their respective home stations. A few weeks later another unit would attend similar training in another location. With this new method of generating and employing air mobility, a few units on deployment orders come to Ramstein and from here leave to different training locations.
With the change of the center location to Ramstein, the saving of time and money comes from the resources needed to set up, breakdown, and re-ready communications packages, along travel time to and from training locations.
The operations Airmen were able to accomplish included bomber assurance and deterrence in the United Kingdom, load diffuser and Saber Guardian in Hungary, a fighter training deployment in Estonia, and the artic challenge in Finland all while poised at Ramstein.
Additionally, the total force effort based out of Ramstein allowed Airmen to train for the joint and combined fight while also building partnerships with NATO allies training abroad.
“We’re working with them but also training and sharing ideas and concepts which is always a good thing,” said Townsend “So you could say were growing together.”