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Blue-suiters from the 152nd Air Operations Group, Air National Guard
Base, Syracuse, N.Y., are supporting Ramstein’s Air and Space
Operations Center.
These citizen Airmen, along with their active-duty counterparts from
the 32nd Air and Space Operations Center here, are working together to
ensure European Command’s area of responsibility is under control and
has the air-component capability to deal with their operations.
“It’s a very special relationship,” said Col. Jay Silveria, 32nd ASOC
commander. “The 152nd AOG is assigned directly to the 32nd ASOC. The
ASOC covers a certain amount of sortie production per day,” he said.
“For anything above that, we call on the members of the 152nd.”
“This is what we train for,” said Col. Kevin Brown, 152nd AOG
commander. “Our mission at the 152nd is to provide 125 trained AOC
operators in operations, intelligence and communications to augment the
32nd. That is our one and only federal mission,” he said.
“We instituted a regular presence at Ramstein to maintain our support
to the 32nd following our very successful deployments with them for
Operation Iraqi Freedom (in 2003),” Colonel Brown added.
The members of the 152nd AOG train on their own exercise AOC, or battlelab, two times a month just for this reason.
“This is all about trust and confidence between the members of both
units so we know we have each other’s back. We want to train together
and be evaluated together so we are ready to go to war together,” he
said.
This fall, 30 to 40 men and women of the 152nd AOG will be seen more frequently on base.
Operation Eager Falcon is the 32nd ASOC’s mission-ready exercise
designed to prepare members of the group for their upcoming Air and
Space Expeditionary Force deployment. The 32nd AOG will run the
Combined Air and Space Operations Center at Al Udied Air Base, Qatar,
during their deployment.
While a majority of 32nd ASOC members are forward deployed this winter,
guardsmen from the 152nd AOG will backfill their duty positions at
Ramstein’s AOC.
“What really impresses me about the men and women of the 152nd is that
they volunteered to not only help backfill us here while we deploy, but
they volunteered to deploy with us to Qatar,” said Colonel Silveria.
The Air National Guard members are going above and beyond their
two-week-a-year requirement by voluntarily rotating through both Qatar
and Ramstein. The average member at the 152nd served more than 120 days
last year.
“We are very privileged to work so closely with the 152nd,” said
Colonel Silveria. “Most of the 152nd has been doing the AOC business
much longer than we have; we can certainly learn from them.”
That sentiment is echoed by the commander of the 152nd AOG.
“Our relationship is one of mutual support,” said Colonel Brown. “We
are going to support the 32nd with people both downrange and
backfilling at Ramstein during their AEF rotation. After that we are
going to turn the corner and roll into our joint 32nd/152nd Operational
Readiness Inspection during Austere Challenge 06 in September. We are
looking forward to a challenging year supporting the best AOC in the
business,” he said.
