Tyndall's new squadron manages freedom's assets

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Christopher Reel
  • 325th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
TYNDALL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. --  The success of Tyndall's recent deployment/employment exercise, which concluded Aug. 15, could not have been achieved without the men and women of the 325th Logistics Readiness Squadron.

The 325th LRS is comprised of four flights: the Vehicle Management Flight, the Fuels Management Flight, the Material Management Flight and the Deployment and Distribution Flight.

"During day-to-day operations, the squadron's mission is important to Tyndall because the scope and reach of our mission touches every Airman assigned directly to the wing or our tenant units," said Master Sgt. Micah Getter, 325th LRS superintendent. "We provide the fuel necessary to run every facet of the wing whether it is for the government owned vehicles or for the F-22 Raptors to fly their missions. Through our Material Management Flight, we supply every Airman with the tools, parts and gear to accomplish their missions both here and abroad."

Without these capabilities, the installation's assets, people and equipment, would not get off the ground.

During the installation's most recent exercise, the squadron's execution involved standing up and over-seeing the actions of the Deployment Control Center, Personnel Deployment Function line and Cargo Deployment Function line to process Team Tyndall Airmen and their cargo respectively for deployment.

Members of the 325th LRS provided nine chalks, which are a number of aircraft and their supporting passengers and cargo. Additionally, 325th LRS members processed 129 pieces of equipment, 257 short tons of cargo and more than 350 passengers, all of which were 100 percent on-time.

"It's important this support is provided without error, especially now that we have a combat coded squadron," said Getter. "We provide material management, transportation, fuels and deployment planning support necessary to train the world's best air dominance team for the Air Force."

This is the first time the 325th Fighter Wing has moved this much cargo and these many passengers in this short of a time.

"Our Airmen and contractors did phenomenal given the task," said Lt. Col. Anthony Mullinax, 325th LRS commander. "As of 60 days ago, aside from our contractors who have spearheaded smaller exercises in the past under Air Education Training Command, we in the 325th LRS had absolutely zero trained active duty personnel in the cargo deployment facility, the crucial linchpin in getting a combat-coded fighter squadron out of town."

Within two months, Tyndall went from a wing with zero active duty cargo deployment function augmentee teams performing five chalks with 100 short tons of cargo and roughly 120 passengers to a wing with 64 ground-up trained augmentees doing nine chalks moving more than 350 passengers and more than 250 short tons of cargo in less than 72 hours.

"Keep in mind this was a team effort on all fronts," Mullinax said. "The literal success of this movement depended on maintainers who had never built cargo before building cargo and delivering it in the required timeline, while simultaneously generating jets. Our wing's unit deployment mangers from both the operations group and maintenance group worked hard with the medical group and our force support warriors to ensure personnel were ready when called to process. Every unit worked exceptionally hard at the tactical level to almost make this look easy to a fault."

Exercises provide opportunities to practice scenarios, establish muscle memory and enable continuous improvement through repetition.

"We learned a great deal and identified a lot of improvement areas as I expected we would," said Mullinax. "This exercise enabled us to cement the foundation of support required to project the world's preeminent airpower machine, the F-22 Raptor, anywhere anytime. There's no question now, if these planes and our expert warriors are needed anywhere in the world, the 325 FW will deliver, whether it's to deter a threat or impart decisive lethal consequences supporting our National Security Strategy.

"The next time we do this exercise we will further challenge ourselves to get even better; we want to, and will, get to the point where other Air Combat Command units, who have been doing this for more than 40 years, come to us for answers," added Mullinax.