CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. -- During late March, thirteen U.S. Air Force Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC) cadets arrived at Letterkenny Munitions Center (LEMC) to learn about LEMC's mission and the importance of the Organic Industrial Base (OIB) to U.S. Army readiness.
The JROTC visitors were high school freshmen through senior grade, from Cathedral Preparatory School, Erie, Pennsylvania. They traveled to central Pennsylvania during spring break with their instructors, Col. (Ret.) James Fournier and MSgt. (Ret.) Richard Sambuchino. The cadets received an overview of LEMC and a tour of several LEMC missile maintenance operations.
The group met with Lt. Col. Jeffrey Ignatowski, commander of LEMC, and Ed Averill, deputy to the commander. Ignatowski presented a short overview of the OIB and LEMC operations supporting Army readiness, stressing the positive impact that LEMC's location to major transportation routes, air bases, and ports has on readiness for the U.S. Army and the Joint Services.
Ignatowski and Averill provided the students with a tour of distribution operations including shipping, receiving, and storage areas, such as the Less-Than-Truckload facility, twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) repair facility and containerization docks.
Additionally, the tour stopped at various precision-guided missile maintenance facilities, including the Non-Destructive Testing/X-Ray facility, inter-service missile maintenance facilities, where the group saw a portion of LEMC's Air Force and Navy efforts, the Low Cost Reduced Range Practice Rocket facility, and the Multiple Launch Rocket System Family of Munitions facility, where employees perform maintenance, repair, modification, parts reclamation, disassembly, container repair, and global mobile maintenance on both Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) and Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) for the U.S. Army and Marines. The group also got to see LEMC's Ammonium Perchlorate Rocket Motor Thermal Destruction Facility.
"Being a retired Air Force munitions inspector, it was a great educational lesson to share my active duty experiences with the cadets," said Sambuchino.
LEMC is designated as the Army's Center of Industrial and Technical Excellence for Army Tactical Missile System, Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System and Low Cost Reduced Range Practice Rockets.
"These young men represent the next generation of protectors of freedom," said Ignatowski. "It is absolutely fantastic to have the opportunity to share the impact of not only LEMC, but to stress the importance of the AMC mission to these young men."
LEMC is located on Letterkenny Army Depot and is a Government-Owned, Government-Operated installation. LEMC conducts regional and global distribution of munitions, provides missile maintenance, and conducts demilitarization of munitions for the U.S. Army in support of the Department of Defense and international partners to provide readiness to the Warfighter.
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