Small office comes up big for armament, munitions Airmen

Published Jan. 26, 2006
By Staff Sgt. Ryan Hansen
Air Armament Center Public Affairs

EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. (AFMCNS) -- When it comes to handling munitions no one does a better job than the Munitions Materiel Handling Equipment Focal Point here.

The Focal Point is an organization assigned to the Agile Combat Support Systems Squadron. Its sole purpose is to support the entire Air Force armament and munitions community with the development of munitions support equipment.

"The Focal Point is truly blessed with extremely talented people who are focused on giving the warfighter the munitions and armament, tools and equipment they need to more effectively execute the mission," said Senior Master Sgt. Michael Kiser, superintendent of the Focal Point.

For having such a far-reaching mission, the group takes care of business with only 15 people.

"The MMHE Focal Point is doing great things for the warfighter," said Lt. Col. Julie Walker, ACSSS commander. "Their small office, with an equally small budget, supports the entire Air Force."

The Focal Point is the main point of contact for all major commands when it comes to designing new MMHE and Locally Manufactured Equipment. MMHE and LME are unique pieces of equipment that come about when an armament or munitions troop requires something specific.

"If an Airman has a project or an idea or if they need a certain piece of equipment that would make their job easier, faster or safer, they can come to us for help," said Master Sgt. Gary Hoffman, a project manager with the Focal Point.

Besides supporting Airmen in the field, the MMHE Focal Point also works with armament and munitions currently being developed and tested at the Air Armament Center.

"We routinely support the Joint Air-to-Surface Stand-Off Missile, Joint Direct Attack Munition, Small Diameter Bomb ... and various other program offices," Sergeant Kiser said. "If it relates to munitions development, handling and loading weapons on aircraft, you can bet the Focal Point is involved in the process."

When an idea is submitted, the subject matter expert or submitter works with one of the focal point's project managers. The two discuss the proposed piece of equipment and come up with what is known as a user-requirements document.

"We take those requirements and develop a concept from there," said Edward Zamorski, an engineer with the group. "We'll do a whole series of digital models and do stress analysis on what we develop to make sure it's strong enough to do the job. We then work with our drafters to generate some drawings and build a prototype. From there we'll send it out for a test and if the testing goes well, we'll go make a first article and finalize the design."

The Focal Point personnel complete the entire process on base. They use easily accessible materials usually found at a unit's metals shop or at a machine shop.

All new pieces of MMHE or LME are designed at 3-to-1 and tested at 2-to-1.

"By regulation every piece of equipment that's going to hold a load of some kind has to be 3 to 1," Mr. Zamorksi said. "That means it has to be 300 percent stronger than the minimum requirement. If it's something for overhead hoisting, then we'll make it 5 to 1. If it's something that's going to be in a dynamic environment, that's going to be loaded on a truck, driven across the ramp, then we'll take the worst case and make it 2 to 1.

"Safety is a large factor with us," he continued.

Since being established in 1982, the Focal Point has designed more than 100 pieces of equipment for the warfighter and their projects truly run the gambit. They've designed things as small as a lug align tool that helps increase production of JDAMs to an AIM-9 guidance section, warhead and target detector stand.

"We use (the stand) to hold the different missile sections as we disassemble them for maintenance," said Master Sgt. Randolph Raymond, 33rd Maintenance Squadron. "We used home-made wooden stands prior to this and they were not as stable. Now one stand holds them all and it is much more secure."

The team currently has 42 projects in the design or fabrication phase. A few examples include the chaff-flare transport module for the B1-B Lancer, a maintenance stand for the BRU-57 Bomb Rack, a forklift adapter for lifting palletized MK-84 General Purpose Bombs and an Alternate Mission Equipment transport trailer.

"Right now we're doing stuff that touches almost every air frame," Sergeant Jackson said. "We really have an effect on every major command in some way or another."

If troops in the field have a need they can access all of the Focal Point's past drawings and projects via their Web site at https://peonet.eglin.af.mil/mmhe/home.htm. From there they can find out if a solution has already been created to their problem or if their idea will be the next thing on the team's drawing board.

"One of our greatest strengths is speed," Mr. Zamorski said. "We're very flexible and we can do things fairly quickly."