USA — Air Guard Units Prepare for Wildfire Season

WASHINGTON — Wild­fires in the west­ern Unit­ed States are an all too com­mon occur­rence dur­ing the dry months of sum­mer.
The bat­tle against the flames is waged from both the ground and air.
Three Air Nation­al Guard units—the 145th Air Wing from North Car­oli­na, the 146th Air Wing from Cal­i­for­nia, and the 153rd Air Wing from Wyoming are ready­ing for the wild­fire sea­son. Last week the crews part­nered with their civil­ian coun­ter­parts for a week-long air­borne train­ing exer­cise to pre­pare for the dry season. 

“We have one oppor­tu­ni­ty a year to come togeth­er with our part­ners the Nation­al For­est Ser­vice, Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture, Depart­ment of Inte­ri­or and the state forests,” said Air Force Lt. Col. Bryan Allen, deputy com­man­der of the 146th Air Expe­di­tionary Group, which is a com­bi­na­tion of the units. 

“We … come togeth­er to hone our skills so that we can use our air­drop, low-lev­el mil­i­tary fly­ing train­ing in the fire­fight­ing low-lev­el envi­ron­ment and apply aer­i­al retar­dant to put out fires,” he said. 

The year­ly train­ing exer­cise isn’t the only time these units prac­tice their skills as pilots. They main­tain a rig­or­ous train­ing sched­ule through­out the year to ensure that they are pre­pared for what­ev­er may come their way, he said. 

“The air­lift wings that are a part of this pro­gram main­tain a war-lev­el stance,” Allen said. “So our nor­mal train­ing is C‑130 air­drop train­ing, for­ma­tion fly­ing and air-land tac­ti­cal flying—so we do quite a bit of flying.” 

“Our stance is that we want to pro­tect Amer­i­ca either way,” he said. “We have always main­tained the abil­i­ty to go fight the war, and we main­tain that con­tin­u­ous­ly.” Only the top one per­cent of C‑130 air­crew mem­bers are recruit­ed for the mis­sion. The pro­gram began in the ear­ly 1970’s after a major fire in Cal­i­for­nia destroyed hun­dreds of homes and over­whelmed the civil­ian tanker fleet’s abil­i­ty to respond. 

“Over the last 29 years that we’ve been work­ing togeth­er, I have nev­er seen a pro­gram like this that joins two very dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions to exe­cute a mis­sion that is so important…and to do it so well,” Allen said. 

“All of the lives that we’ve been able to save and the prop­er­ty that we’ve been able to pro­tect is a tes­ta­ment to the qual­i­ty of what we’ve been able to accom­plish,” he said. 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →