Undisclosed Airfield Ammunition Supply Point

By 1^st Lt. Kai Reyes

Working munitions on Undisclosed Airfield is a dynamic experience, especially for a Lt on his first deployment.  Knowing Bomb Dumps to be called Munitions Storage Area’s my whole 2.5 year Air Force career I was surprised to find people calling it an ASP (Ammunition Supply Point).  Why?  Because the Army ran it.  Everything Air Force munitions personnel do goes through the Army Chief Warrant Officer (CWO).  The Marines, together with the Air Force are a tenet unit on Army grounds all performing the same job.  There are a lot of strings attached with this relationship, but overall the relationship is strong and the mission is not hampered.

The first and biggest point Air Force Ammo has concerning Undisclosed Airfield munitions is space.  When looking at the space, and seeing 30 pads for storage, an in-bound/out-bound pad, an Air Force bomb build pad, a Marine bomb build pad, a residue pad and a few random lots of sand  where extra munitions are put thanks to signed Risk Assessments, one would think that space would not be a primary issue.  However, with all the new airframes coming in to Undisclosed Airfield no one would not think that American forces will be pulling out by 2014.  Each new airframe steadily increases the demand of munitions that must be placed in the ASP.   Stockpile Surveillance is especially weary of new munitions that are in-bound.  Finding space to put everything physically frequently becomes an issue (busting NEW is rarely an issue since just about every other safety issue is waived by the Wing Commander), causing Air Force munitions supervision to come crawling to the Army to try and get a new pad loaned to us.  Munitions Accountability finds it very hard asking GACP for munitions to meet a pilots’ demand for trigger points when expenditure history on a particular item would indicate that whoever made up the trigger point level must have raided a local stash of opium and mistakenly smoked a whole lot of it.  In the eyes of Air Force munitions inspectors the majority of the pads, in fact the entire bomb dump, can be re-warehoused to more efficiently utilize the space available to all three departments.  In a bid to receive more pads the Air Force asked the Army to re-warehouse all of their pads in order to create more space only to be shot down.  We’ll ask again when the new CWO arrives. 

A Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) exists that delineates which storage pads will be used and/or shared by the Air Force.  This MoA exists between Air Force Ammo flight and the Army munitions unit.  Most Air Force leadership at the Squadron and or Group level know next to nothing about munitions operations and would rather not be involved in these MoA’s unless it came to stopping us from supporting airframes.  However, with the 10^th Mountain Division running things on Undisclosed Airfield not even a Group Commander could get the Army to budge if they did not want to.  Not to mention the munitions that the Army provides to its’ ground pounders and helo units account for a very high percentage of munitions expanded in the whole Southern Afghan theater.  As usual with most MoA’s it does not cover everything, there are still a lot of handshakes that are done every month or so in order for the mission to keep on going.  Both Air Force AMMO and Army AMMO feel that it is best to leave us to our own devices when it comes to making these decisions anyway, and so far everything has come to an agreeable conclusion.

Excellence in All We Do.  When taking a drive through the storage pad rows one can easily tell which department owns which pads.  It is particularly interesting to see pads that are shared.  One half clean, organized and worthy of the MMSAV inspection the Air Force had just gone through in November 2010, and the other half (depending on which weekend warrior crew chiefed the operation) looking like a representation of The Leaning Tower of Pisa added by large amounts of used banding for decoration.  However, there is no jurisdiction for the Air Force in Army territory, also given the fact that these Army personnel are here for a 365 day, one can expect a more relaxed approach to operations in order to sustain the stamina throughout a deployment thereby avoiding burn-out.  Besides what might be wrong in the Air Forces’ AFI does not mean it is wrong in another services manual.  The Marines are also very inspection worthy, save for the few cigarette butts occasionally found behind sand berms.  Regardless of how each pad looked, all three branches always strive to help out their sister services, whether I it be sharing forklifts, GCU testers, and facilities in order to perform maintenance on trailers, the job will always get done.

Security of the ASP is another issue.  The Army considers the ASP a restricted area, however COM Undisclosed Airfield does not have a number assigned to the line badge to represent authorization into the ASP.  This is all very confusing to Air Force leadership, when it comes to showing your line badge in restricted areas.  The answer is the Army allows anyone it wants to in the ASP so long as it is in the entry list at the gatehouse and no one has to wear their line badge.  It took QA a while to figure that out, so they would not attempt to write us up for it, and thankfully the MMSAV team had nothing to say about it since they realize their jurisdiction is limited to the Air Force.  However, do not confuse line badges with no number for the ASP with the willingness of the gate guards to keep their ASP safe.  I won’t get into details, but if you ever plan on running in the bomb dump at night to get some exercise be sure to bring extra reflective gear or else you will be liable to having several locked and loaded M-4’s pointed at you by young Marines and G.I.s who have had a lot of spare time lifting weights and drinking protein mixes.  And don’t think that saying, “I am in the Air Force its’ okay” will get you any further out of the whole.

With the constant evolution that Undisclosed Airfield goes through on a monthly basis it is a beautiful sight to see how munitions/ordinance personnel adapt to what they are given.  With projects underway to increase the quality-of-life and workplace environment of our AMMO brethren this job we will become less insane and more productive while maintaining the safety needed to ensure everyone comes home with ten toes and fingers.  As long as we get supplied with the good water bottles (not that Hyatt crap that smells like Diesel fuel) to make coffee with and to mix with our protein powder AMMO can accomplish anything.  If you aint AMMO…

A Munitions Officer Perspective of Overall Airfield Safety Concerns at One Location within the OEF AOR

By: Capt Joshua J. Trebon         

No space, no coordination, and a big safety mess.  With over 28,000+ ISAF, U.S. military & civilian personnel, and contractors undisclosed Airfield, Afghanistan gets the mission done, and done well, but not without its share of safety issues.  Built out of an old Soviet era airfield and an Afghanistan International Airport, undisclosed Airfield maintains a limited territorial footprint amongst Afghan farming communities, thus lack of space is a driving issue at the Airfield.  The Airfield is comprised of one active runway (10,500’ x 180’), two emergency landing strips, and 32 parking ramps.  A plethora of aircraft are represented throughout the Airfield, comprised of various fighters, cargo, helos, and ISR aircraft—including some unmanned platforms.  Aircraft assigned to the Airfield are owned and operated by 7 NATO nations and 3 U.S. services, which further makes things problematic due to differing safety guidelines.

Space is a major concern of the Airfield.  With 28,000+ personnel, the Airfield is running out of room to put everybody, not to mention the quantity of aircraft, which is expected to add 2 additional squadrons comprised of 24 additional aircraft—further populating the busiest airfield post-Vietnam War.  At least in this instance we were made aware of the incoming aircraft, however, past experience at the Airfield has shown that aircraft would literally just show up without any prior planning.  Thus, the airfield consists of 131 probable explosive safety violations, 17 DDESB site plan exemptions, multiple AFCENT waivers for people/equipment, and multiple risk of aircraft loss acceptances by the Wing Commander.  For instance each parking ramp has on average approximately 52 safety concerns.  Further most the ramps are not even close to K-30 requirements.  Reasons for this massive number of safety issues are due to the following: space limitations with an ever-growing mission, lack of coordination between Airfield users, unclear citing authority, and unclear overarching guidance.

The safety communities at the Airfield are not in close coordination.  As stated before, often aircraft show up with no prior planning.  Thus, safety concerns are not pointed out and mitigated in advance.  Site plans are created for each ramp, however, they are only for that ramp, they fail to look the next ramp over and see what implications that parking area may have on the surrounding ramps.  Further problematic, since nearby ramps may be a different nation’s aircraft parking area, that ramp may have different standards IAW NATO site planning.  NATO tends to use their peace vs. contingency site planning guidance ad hoc IAW what serves them best at the time.  The Base Commander has implemented policy, however, it is very generic and is not directive at all.  Thus safety reps from the different nations tend to be laxed and focus on the “waive vs. fix philosophy.”

Anymore it seems the military has more Chiefs than Indians, however, here it is the opposite.  There is no clear or specific citing authority at the undisclosed Airfield.  The Wing has a Weapons Safety Manager (WSM), however, NATO answers to the base commander, who has set generic safety requirements.  And, oh by the way, those safety requirements are not to AFMAN 91-201 requirements, etc., which are followed by the Wing.  Thus, the Wing strives to have their paperwork and safety plans in order, but they are still in violation because their NATO counterparts’ areas affect theirs.   The current norm is find answers you want and then implement those without researching the effects you may have on nearby areas and other nation’s assets.  I know the mission comes first, and the mission is ever-growing here, but I see a massive safety event coming down the pike if something doesn’t get done about it.

So how can this safety snafu of a base be rectified?  The Wing has begun to take steps to help the situation, but those steps will not fully solve the problem.  Mainly the Wing has pushed to move its assets to one consolidated geographic location of the Airfield to limit NATO site planning issues infringing on our site planning.  However, as space becomes further limited as more airframes and further parking ramps are added to the airfield, the lack of prior coordination still needs to be resolved.  The Base Commander needs to establish directive guidance to resolve differing site planning regulations, and establish one clear citing authority.  Further he needs to appoint a Base WSM to manage the various representative pool of airfield user WSMs, and fully manage the airfield as a whole vs. individual fiefdoms.  In addition, he must make coordination mandatory with WSMs prior to any construction project on the Airfield.  Many people/equip waivers could be resolved if this step was implemented.  Finally, he must look to nearby airfields which could support influx of additional airframes vs. jamming all airframes into an already overtaxed/overworked airfield.  The task will not be easy, but it needs to happen.  If Bien Hoa Air Base, Vietnam, on May 16, 1965 proved us anything, airfield safety cannot be taken lightly, regardless of mission requirements.