325th LRS: Supporting Checkered Flag

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Anabel Del Valle
  • 325th Fighter Wing Public Affairs

Fourth- and fifth-generation aircraft aren’t the only modes of transportation that need preparation for a large-scale event like Checkered Flag 22-1. The 325th Logistics Readiness Squadron vehicle maintenance flight ensures that all essential vehicles are present and serviceable during this busy time on Tyndall’s flight line.

While the 325th LRS maintains vehicle readiness daily, Checkered Flag vehicles take priority during the exercise.

“When a mission priority vehicle goes down, we have to ensure a quick turn-around so the mission can be completed,” said Staff Sgt. Wyatt Joslin, 325th LRS fleet management and analysis. “It makes us change our mission priority but we continue to complete both the Checkered Flag and home station mission at the same time. It makes us more adaptable to overcome if a real world situation were to arise.”

In addition to performing vehicle maintenance, the vehicle maintenance flight also assisted visiting personnel arriving at Tyndall.

“The 325th LRS has done an incredible job, ordering and distributing 189 rental vehicles for Airmen TDY to Tyndall,” said 2nd Lt. Joseph Alvarez, 325th LRS assistant installation deployment officer. “They pre-staged [the vehicles] around Tyndall and even met units arriving at the Panama City airport late in the night to distribute rentals.”

Although the 325th LRS’ supporting duties for Checkered Flag are mainly performed behind the scenes, this doesn’t take away from their major role in training to project unrivaled combat airpower.

“It’s not just my career field, fleet management and analysis, that makes this mission possible,” said Joslin. “Without our entire vehicle maintenance flight, we could not succeed at providing unrivaled support [for Checkered Flag.]”