By Capt Josh Trebon
One purpose of this blog is to share experiences of the trade with fellow 21Ms. That being said, what does a 21M really need to know to be successful? I have heard repeatedly that good officership is all that is needed to accomplish any task, just focus on your profession as a military leader and you will be successful. However, I think that is painfully misleading. So what does a 21M need to know to successfully accomplish the mission? There is no blanket answer because even though munitions is often mistakenly looked at as a narrow “stove-piped” career field, it’s really huge (almost 400 pages of TTP – XX) and diverse. However, what I can offer for this discussion is my personal experience as a Weapons Maintenance Flight Commander at a MUNSS in USAFE.
The following is a description of a typical day, and the tools of the trade I employed to ensure my flight’s commitment and performance. Hopefully some of what I learned may be helpful to other 21Ms tasked with similar jobs.
The key to my success at the MUNSS was building trust amongst those who worked for me. I tried to do this through very simple gestures. For instance, show up early before the troops each morning and be the last to leave, be confident, and establish buy-in by listening and sharing your decision logic. However, remember the flight is not a democracy, take advice, but the decisions, responsibility and any repercussions are all yours. You always defer the praise to those who work for you and claim for yourself the things that went wrong. That is what being in charge means to me. It has become somewhat of a cliché, but I really do believe we have to manage by walking about. Know your troops professionally and personally, always go to bat for your troops when warranted, but if people screw up, hold them accountable, enforce integrity and accountability, and uphold compliance. Our behavior as leaders is where a compliance culture comes from… behavior, not just words.
I found that everyday there was an opportunity to ensure technical orders, work orders, instructions, etc. were followed to the letter! I made it clear that it did not matter if my flight could do their jobs in their sleep, we must always enforce using the regulating document to carry out tasks. For example, when I had my accountability section process Weapons Status Reports (WSR), I enforced the use of TP 100-3150 throughout the process, to include line-by-line Quality Control (QC). The extra 10 minutes of review, saved us multiple hours of correction and MFRs to fix any errors. This is how organizational high reliability cultures are established… by what the boss “will allow.”
Day-to-day workings of the shop should follow right along with the compliance culture concept. I would start every day off with a stop in Munitions Control. Review the schedule (set at the weekly scheduling meeting with all section chiefs), review the work orders for the day and week, review manning and know the location of all flight personnel (comes in handy for contingencies and impromptu exercises), review work orders with Munitions Control, Accountability Section and Weapons Maintenance Section (ensures all are on the same page). Once this is done, meet with the Maintenance Operations Officer (MOO) to brief what the flight has going on that day. It was important to ask the MOO to occasionally sit in on the scheduling meeting from time-to-time as well. However, bottom-line is to always keep the MOO informed on what is going on… the same goes for the Squadron Commander. Once I felt like I had my house in order for the day, then I would get some administrative work out of the way. After that, as I eluded to earlier, “un-ass” the desk and get out and about again. Stop in all sections and see what’s going on, check on all the items reviewed on the work orders and flight schedule from earlier that morning. If sections needed anything to finish tasks or if work is behind schedule then it was time to “do something,” to get them back on schedule.
In order to ensure my troops had the tools they needed to accomplish the mission, I was always interested to see what training was going on. I wanted to ensure pertinent information was flowing to Munitions Control or any other section that needs to know how to do the really important stuff (e.g., emergency procedures, safety, line number/fire symbol updates, etc.). Above all follow up, I trust but verify. Don’t just sit around and assume that because the training is on schedule that it is being accomplished and/or being done right. Remember “we” are fostering a compliance culture by where we go and what we do all day, not by what we “say.” At the end of the day I would take an “officer-in-charge” review of my flight’s work orders---have they all come back? No one working on a maintenance team should go home until the work order is completed back into Munitions Control and all tools are checked back into the tool room. My section NCOICs knew I was paying attention, they were paying attention as well and we had a great team, but in my opinion this starts with a knowledgeable and active Flight Commander. As Company Grade Officers we really do make a difference in mission accomplishment.
There were a wide-range of tools and knowledge I had to learn. There were many technical orders, instructions, etc. that directly impacted the flight’s day-to-day operations. How could I ensure a compliance culture unless I understood what the troops had to do? I always tried to have a copy of these documents at hand; AFI 21-204 & 101, AFI 91-101,104 & 112, and AFMAN 91-201. I also sought to learn and understand how each section in the flight interrelated (one team one fight). For a MUNSS this was a complex relationship, because security forces, communications, command post, services, and the command section had to function as a single team. To know what all the other sections had going on I listened intently at the SQ/CC’s weekly scheduling meeting so I could try to harmonize my operations with theirs.
Understand the relationship with your Host Nation (HN). This is maybe one of the most important aspects of a MUNSS. Since most dealings with the HN fall to Weapons Maintenance and Security Forces (SF), it was up to me and the SF Commander to foster a good working relationship. When I was in the Flight Commander seat I would do lunch with the HN representatives, attend their scheduling meetings, and in particular, stop by HN Wing Ops, the Chief of Maintenance Office, and the Fire Chiefs Office frequently throughout the week, sometimes only to chat. It is a good idea to foster a good HN working relationship. Ensure the HN has buy-in early in your decision making process, especially scheduling. Leaving the HN in the dark and demanding assistance will lead to mission failure and definitely an “UNSAT” and a “re-inspect” at NSI time.
Last of all, I tried to learn everything I could about Weapons Safety… this has to be known “down pat”. Keep the Weapons Safety Office in the loop at all times, remember they assist greatly in ensuring your compliance culture.
I hope this rambling about my experience at a MUNSS proves helpful. The main take-aways are that we must know what the troops do, know what guidance rules our work, always “live” and enforce a compliance culture, hold the troops and ourselves accountable, and establish and nurture the key working relationships needed to ensure successful mission accomplishment. All these tips may seem “no-brainers”, however, recent events indicate that we need to reacquaint ourselves with the fundamentals. If you agree or disagree with me, let me know, submit a counter or complementary post or contact me directly. josh_trebon@hotmail.com
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