First CCP load exercise prepares new unit for rapid deployments

HICKAM AIR FORCE BASE, Hawaii - The U.S. Army, Pacific, Contingency Command Post, the first unit of its kind in the U.S. Army, successfully conducted a load exercise with the U.S. Air Force 535th Airlift Support Squadron, 15th Air Wing, at Hickam Air Force Base, Sept. 1.

Exercise participants configured and prepared 162,000 pounds of equipment and materiel for rapid deployment.

"Anytime you are doing something the first time, there is no rule book, so we are in the process of putting that rulebook together," said chief warrant officer Brendan Kelly, aviations operations officer and USARPAC Deployable Assessment Team planning officer.

"We [the CCP] are the nucleus for a joint task force, in this instance, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, but the situation at hand could be one of any number of scenarios that merit the deployment of the CCP."

CCP personnel convoyed to Hickam AFB from Fort Shafter and loaded everything, including deploying Soldiers. The exercise employed the use of a C-17 Globemaster III airplane, a large military transport aircraft used for rapid deployment of troops and cargo. Participating joint personnel filled the aircraft with a variety of vehicles, pallets of equipment and a number of troops.

"This event is simulating what would occur when the CCP is actually going somewhere and has to rapidly react," said Sgt. 1st Class Lameka Drake, the USARPAC senior logistician overseeing the exercise movement and movement planning.

"That's why before taking off to Hickam we had vehicle inspections, pre-inspections, drivers license checks, dispatching of vehicles, secondary load inspections, making sure everything is loaded correctly, weighing, and much more."

The CCP is a small entity compared to most deploying units, and therefore must be fully self-sustaining. There are currently 96 personnel assigned to the CCP, with 73 different job specialties, and the unit must be able to react and deploy within a 72-hour time frame.

"We're Soldiers first and consider branch specifications afterwards, so professional initiative and tactical curiosity are the essential traits needed to make this concept successful," said Kelly.

The CCP is unique to the Army in terms of its specific mission as well. It's intention is to rapidly deploy throughout the Pacific as establish Command and Control capability for the USARPAC Command in support of the U.S. Pacific Command contingency requirements.

"The CCP is important to the Army because it provides greater flexibility in terms of responding to global contingencies, in particular, the Pacific area of responsibility," said Lt. Col. Rudy Aquino, USARPAC CCP Protection Directorate Officer.

Interservice coordination was made with the 535th Airlift, the squadron in charge of the C-17s in Hawaii. "We are here to provide airlift support to any austere location that you want to go within 72 hours," said U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Jason Scaffidi, load master with the 535th. "More specifically, when USARPAC CCP calls us, 24 hours later, we need to be airborne."

The exercise is a first step in preparing to become Fully Operational Capable or FOC, the final step which will occur in 2011 at Exercise BALIKATAN 11, an annual joint multinational exercise conducted in the Philippines. During BALIKATAN, the CCP (with augmentation) will actually fly to the Philippines in two C-17s loaded with all the unit's equipment necessary for self-sustainment operations. This Load Exercise is a first rehearsal in preparation for this final step.

"Our senior leadership understands now they can take a paper product and see what it physically looks like on an aircraft now," said Chief Warrant Officer Michael Miller, USARPAC CCP mobility warrant officer overseeing the exercise . "Now they understand the constraints of the aircraft size in relation to the size of our equipment."

According to Scaffidi, the training gives a good interoperability between the Army and Air Force. "The CCP may have Soldiers who haven't seen the inside of a C-17 or dealt with load masters and or tie downs and there are a lot of our guys who haven't seen a lot of rolling stock like the vehicles loaded today."

"Backing up anywhere in a truck or HMWVV is hard, but putting cargo on one side of the aircraft magnifies that by a trillion," said Scaffidi.

All involved agreed that actually practicing the event and seeing the equipment and personnel in place rather than simply planning it definitely helped further the CCP towards becoming FOC.

"All the greatest plans in the world on paper are great, but as a start point but you have to actually go through the physical process of execution to find out exactly where you are at in order to accomplish that which you planned for," said Aquino.