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Show f 70 run nn Hill AFB, Utah 84056-582- 4 www.hilltoptimes.cxDm Geimeiral hiIltop.pahiII.af.mil Vol. 57 No. 34, August 23, 2001 B says ALCs aire right-sized- ! I.. .... ijp by Bill Orndortt Hilltop Times editor While Gen. Lester Lyles won't guarantee that Hill AFB will escape the next round of base closures, he's confident INSIDE: closures alfecl entry 15 Page 2 c that the logistics work done here is the right size for the Air Force. Lyles, the commander of Air Force Materiel Command, is at Hill through today for a quarterly Commander's Conference with other AFMC leaders. The conferences "are set up to cover various strategic looks at our command and how we're doing in accomplishing our mission and how we're doing in various mission areas and business areas that we've established," Lyles said in a Monday news conference. "Well take actions, some of which will go back to the leadership of the Air Force, and some may eventually get to Congress," he said. Tm sure there are a couple of areas like workforce shaping and what we need to do to address our workforce issues for the future that will in one way or another end up in the hands of Congress, either immediately or through some other process in the Pentagon." r r 1 n Concerning another recommended School bus schedule Page 2 Great minds think alike Page 3 3SSth Fighter Wing Fighter Country Page A-- D Claims process explained Page 5 Interviews help retention Page 7 a I F i round of closures, Lyles said DoD and Air Force leaders would continue to tell Congress that the military has excess infrastructure. "We do need a round or two of BRAC," he said. "As far as Air Force Materiel Command is concerned, I certainly would not go out on a limb and guarantee that we would not be affected if there is another round of BRAC. However, I feel very confident, particularly with our air logistics centers, we have sort of right-size-d the posture and the picture for our logistics situations in the Air Force. "If anything, there are some questions being asked 'did we close one depot too many?' (Maj. Gen. Scott Bergren, Ogden ALC commander) and his counterparts at Robins and Tinker (AFBs) are certainly operating near their capacity, which is based on a single shift. If you look at the workload, look at the posture for the workload increasing, you look at contending with the aging fleet of aircraft that we're going to have, which will put even more premium on maintenance and capabilities in our depots, I feel very confident that we need and will always need to have our organic air logistics centers." Lyles noted that James Roche, Secretary of the Air Force, has been positive about the value of air logistics centers during recent visits to the Oklahoma City ALC and Warner Robins ALC. Roche is scheduled to visit the Ogden ALC next month. "In talking to the media and talking to the community, he has expressed his Li1 , I I Photo by Marvin Lynchard Gen. Lester Lyles, right, and Maj. Gen. Scott Bergren discuss Issues as Lyles and other leaders arrive for the AFMC Commander's Conference. strong support for our organic depots, the fact that we need our depots, that they are vitally important to readiness and to the future of the Air Force," Lyles said. "It's hoped that with partnering arrangements, continued community support and the kind of workload that we have in our depots, that they will be OK if we go through another round of Secretary of Defense's office and now working with Congress to get legislation, to get money to start priming the pump to bring in workforce at the front end," Lyles said, "and start hiring to bring in interns so that we can avoid BRAC." In the meantime, Hill AFB continues a crisis situation of having all that experience, all that great support we've had, have all of that leave in five years and not have anybody to replace them." He said AFMC plans to bring in between e to hire, both employees and interns, to fill jobs that have transferred from other bases and maintain skills for workers that may be retiring soon. "We are hiring people. The transition workload amounted to about 3,000 jobs, requirements for us, and a great part of that we got from other closing depots, but we have been hiring people for quite some time," Bergren said. "As to the foreseeable future, we don't have any programmed increase in workload of any real significance. We are still in the stages of trying to take on the workload that we inherited from the base closures." Lyles said the workforce shaping concept is helping to plan for positions that could be vacated when approximately 70 percent of the civilian workforce becomes eligible to retire in the next five to seven years. "We've been working with the Air Force, working with the Department of Defense, 0 civilian interns this year, far more than it has over the past 10 years. The interns are coming in at the 'apprentice level,' if you will, coming in to start the career processes to get experience to grow so that eventually they will be prepared to replace some of these people," Lyles said. "We want the intern program to allow us to compensate for the normal attrition. "Another part of the initiative is for civilian personnel the middle-grad- e to try to retain them as much as possible, particularly in certain skill areas, such as science and engineering, skilled wage workers, software engineers. Those are areas that are very, very critical and important to us and so we are looking for incentives and retention allowances so that we can encourage those people to stay on board with us and not leave early, not go out to private industry." A challenge for Ogden ALC and other full-tim- 100-12- air logistics centers Lyles mentioned is to maintain aging aircraft and modify them so the aircraft can still accomplish their mission. "One of our big challenges is to ensure we don't put ourselves in a posture where we're depending on industry to do maintenance for us and overlooking the great organic capabilities that we have," Lyles said. "There are opportunities for partnering with major corporations; for example whoever wins the Joint Strike Fighter contract or some of the engine manufacturers who we depend on today, or Lockheed Martin for the we partner with them to do work in our depots for a specific system. We have some excellent examples of that already. There are some out here; there are a couple at Warner Robins that are sort of models for things. "Northrop-Grummaas an example, work at Warner does a lot of the Robins ALC. They do it both with contracted personnel and government perF-2- 2 n, B-- 2 sonnel working side by side in our facilities at Warner Robins. Those kind of part- nering opportunities we think have tremendous payoff for us in the future, both to us and to industry. We're looking at how we can expand upon that for each one of our depots and for many other weapon systems besides the ones we have on the boards today," Lyles said. Balloons determine range detonation schedule I by Sue Berk Hilltop Times staff People who work at the Utah Test and Training Range want to be good neigh- care tor sslmals, food Vets Pages 9 military TSP cr.rcll.T.gnt starts Oct 9 Page 10 w bors. However, with a mission of destroying missile motors, it isn't always easy. Becky Dickson, an Air Force contract meteorological technician, is key in making the decision to blow up the motors or wait for a better day. Using weather data balloons and scientific forecasting models, Dickson provides vital information leading to a "go" or "no go" call. "We take seriously wanting to be good neighbors," Dickson said. The position of the Air Force has always been no noise. We don't want to disturb the surrounding community." If the decision to "go" is incorrect, the bang from blowing up Minuteman and Peacekeeper rocket motors will generate phone calls, and the possibility of losing the Utah license to conduct detonations. The range is the only one in the nation allowed to detonate large explosives. There's no making mistakes and get- ting away with it here," Dickson said. "Everybody knows if you do. The permit states 134 decibels. We never touch that so we are always within the limitations of the permit" To make the right call, Dickson first sends a helium balloon into 150-gra- m COPY ill tffaffft a p !f' ... 1 certainly try very hard to keep the noise down. But, you also try to keep production going. Sometimes it's between a rock-ana d hard spot. Photo by Mary Galbralth weather Becky Dickson, meterological technician, connects a radiosone to a balloon. The radiosone collects weather data from 30,000 feet aloft and Is key in determining noise levels from missile motor detonations. 150-gra- Becky Dickson the atmosphere to collect weather information at 30,000 feet aloft. The data is then run through the Sound Intensity Prediction System and the Blast Over Pressure Operational Model, and in about 30 minutes the calculations will show what direction the noise will go. "What we look for is wind speed, wind direction and temperature," Dickson said. The system gives you positioning and the computer calculates the wind. We want all the energy from the blast to i go straight up." With the scientific data in hand and recommendations from Dickson, 1st Lt. Neal VanHouten, 649th Munitions Squadron, makes the final "go no go 1 See Balloon, page 2 |