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The 86th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron and 86th Maintenance Squadron hosted the first-ever five-day-long training called the Ignite Weapons School at Ramstein Air Base, Oct. 20-24.
The Ignite Weapons School was a condensed version of the typical four-month-long course of the Aircraft Maintenance Munitions Operation School. The training was an effort to ensure readiness for future short-notice deployments.
During the course, participants completed 13 academic lessons followed by a tabletop exercise simulating a short-notice deployment. The course aimed to provide a comprehensive understanding of deployment processes.
“The Air Force operations of deployments don’t succeed or fail on the back of one person,” said Master Sgt. Michael Dionne, 86th MXG tactics superintendent. “We are a team, all of us are pieces of the puzzle.”
The puzzle included teamwork and operational awareness, in order to emphasize collective efforts from the beginning to the end of a deployment. Teams were given data, an aircraft, personnel, logistics, and tasked to build and brief a deployment plan within 48 hours.
“The goal is to test our leader’s critical thinking in deploying a wing’s aviation package to an austere environment,” said Capt. Michael Zaniboni, 86th MXG director of operations. “We want them to be able to adapt to the unknown while digesting a lot of information in a short amount of time.”
The course is designed to expose junior officers and senior non-commissioned officers to the broader scope of operational planning they could encounter in their careers. Overall, teamwork was essential to the training. Whenever someone was feeling stressed, it was emphasized to the Airmen that they should lean on one another. By showcasing principles of good communication and teamwork, both squadrons took the steps to build essential tools for deployment readiness.
“We’re building that generational muscle memory,” Zaniboni said. “Our leaders are learning to think through what it may take to deploy, sustain operations and bring everyone home safely.”
On the final day, teams collaborated and presented solutions to leadership on how to tackle simulated challenges that occur during preparing or concluding deployments. As the first iteration of the Ignite Weapons School exercise, the course will continue to evolve and expand to include Agile Combat Employment concepts in order to build lethal readiness among the 86th Airlift Wing.
