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The 18th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, 16th Sustainment Brigade, sling load team conducted training with riggers from the 5th Quartermaster Detachment, 21st Special Troops Battalion, Nov. 29 to 30 on Rhine Ordnance Barracks in Kaiserslautern to learn how to unhook cargo after an airdrop and rig the cargo for helicopter pickup.
“We are showing them what the loads look like before they are dropped and giving them a class on how to recover a cargo parachute,” said Sgt. Corey L. Goss, an aerial delivery shop foreman with the 5th QM Det.
“It is important for us to be here so we can understand how everything is rigged and what happens before it goes down so we know how to recover the parachutes safely and prepare them for the next mission,” said Staff Sgt. Kenneth James, the sling load team non-commissioned officer in charge with the 23rd Ordnance company, 18th CSSB, 16th Sust. Bde.
Once the cargo has been dropped it needs to be de-rigged from the aerial delivery platform and set up in a different configuration to allow for helicopter pickup.
“Each time we do a drop we incorporate our sling load teams in the rigging process so they know how to put it together, which helps them take it apart when it’s on the ground,” said Chief Warrant Officer 2 Ismael Ramosbarbosa, 16th Sust. Bde. senior airdrop systems technician. “They can’t just take a knife to the straps; they need to know how to un-rig the equipment from the platform and parachutes in order to rig the equipment for helicopter pickup.”
There are various types of aerial delivery platforms used for different types of loads.
“The type of platform that we rigged this time is just to make our sling load team more versatile, so they can see another type of delivery device and be familiar with it,” Officer Ramosbarbosa said.
“We are rigging three type V platforms, which is a metal platform 8 feet by 108 inches and weighs 820 pounds and can sustain up to 8,000 pounds of cargo,” Sergeant Goss said. “Each platform will have two 500-gallon water blivits and two G-11 parachutes, which is a 100-foot diameter cargo parachute that can sustain a 5,000-pound load safely to the ground.”
“In the containerized delivery system configuration, which we have used on the previous drops, we are limited to how much we can drop,” Officer Ramosbarbosa said. “Some of the equipment that the CSSBs have cannot be put on a CDS platform.”
The purpose of the airdrop is to provide the Soldiers with practice.
“We have two more drops planned right now,” Officer Ramosbarbosa said. “One in February and one in June. The one in June will have the helicopters to actually pick up the cargo after the drop unlike the previous drops where we just simulated the helicopters.”
The Soldiers are being trained for real-world missions, which is essential to maintaining combat effectiveness.
“This type of training is necessary because there are locations where we can’t get supplies to our Soldiers out there by normal means because of the terrain,” Sergeant James said. “This gives us the ability to airdrop supplies close to where the Soldiers are and have them taken the rest of the way by helicopter so we can sustain the fight in any type of terrain.”
