HILL AIR FORCE BASE, Utah -- Hill Airmen recently spent a day at the Base Operations Readiness and Training Area exercising career field-specific scenarios to help prepare them for unique challenges and circumstances encountered in a deployed environment.
Airmen from the Contracting Directorate, 75th Comptroller Squadron and 75th Judge Advocate participated in the field exercise. They joined in regular military drills and simulations, such as donning their chemical gear, self-aid buddy care and care under fire, but also responded to training scenarios specific to the contracting mission.
“This was a very successful exercise,” said Staff Sgt. Greg Orlando, an Air Force Sustainment Center contracting officer who helped plan the event. “We accomplished our goal of helping our contingency contracting officers get through various scenarios they might actually see while deployed.”
Exercise organizers worked to provide scenarios participants could potentially experience while deployed, such as crafting blanket purchase agreements, negotiating with contractors, and other situations that put them in a stressful situation where they needed to understand and manage a varied workload.
Orlando said the goal was to offer something the participants may have never seen before in a training exercise. He worked with numerous base agencies to make the training scenarios as realistic as possible, including Security Forces, Explosive Ordnance Disposal, Medical Group, Logistics Readiness and others.
It was the second year for the one-day exercise, and according to Orlando, it was even better than the last year’s.
“We improved on the complexity of the exercise,” he said. “We hope to expand it even more next year, maybe make it multiple days or an overnight operation.”