By Jeff Mullin, Senior Writer
Monday was a day of firsts for Vance Air Force Base.
Not only did it mark the conclusion of the base’s first standalone Unit Compliance Inspection, but it was the first time Vance has received anything but a rating of excellent on a major inspection.
Vance’s 71st Flying Training Wing received a grade of satisfactory, the middle ranking of the five-point scale that includes outstanding, excellent, satisfactory, marginal and unsatisfactory.
Col. Chris Nowland, commander of the 71st FTW, likened the experience to someone running their first marathon.
“When you train for a marathon you work hard and certainly the wing worked very hard getting ready for the Unit Compliance Inspection,” he said. “Tremendous effort was put forth and people put in a lot of additional hours and effort.
“When you train for a marathon and then you go out and run your first marathon you’re very proud of yourself, and I certainly am very proud of all the members of Vance.”
After running your first marathon, Nowland said, “You look at the time and you say, ‘You know, I probably could have done that just a little bit better.’ I think that’s kind of the feeling we’re getting across the wing. There are some areas that we think we possibly could have done a little bit better.”
One of those areas involves compliance by Vance’s contractors.
“The Air Force is becoming more and more reliant on contractors and contracts,” Nowland said. “To be responsible stewards of the taxpayers’ resources, we, as the Air Force, have got to make sure the contractor’s doing everything that is supposed to be done under the contract.”
This comes, Nowland said, at a time the Air Force has cut back on its quality assurance evaluators, who are assigned to assess the contract performance.
“That dichotomy makes it very difficult to execute contract compliance when at the same time your front-line personnel who are supposed to be doing that have been reduced,” Nowland said.
This is an area, Nowland said, he and his vice commander, Col. Richard Murphy, have been working on for some time.
“It kind of re-confirmed our suspicions that we’re not exactly where we need to be on this,” Nowland said.
That doesn’t mean, he added, Vance’s contractors are not doing their job, it’s just the paper trail wasn’t complete.
“There’s an audit trail associated with it and you need to be able to demonstrate that in your audit,” Nowland said.
Nowland refused to second-guess the base’s months of preparation for the inspection.
“It’s all about balancing resources and shortfalls,” said Nowland. “Given the operation tempo that we’ve been working under, I find it very difficult to see how we could have done things differently.”
In the past, Vance has undergone combined Operational Readiness and Unit Compliance inspections, the last coming in August 2005. ORIs focus primarily on a base’s proficiency at conducting its primary mission, while UCIs take a hard look at whether or not a base is complying with Air Force instructions and regulations.
“It’s not mission-related, necessarily,” said Nowland, “about how many student pilots you are producing, how many guys you’ve got downrange (deployed overseas).”
The renewed emphasis on compliance, Nowland said, is the result of a 2007 incident in which a B-52 bomber mistakenly loaded with six nuclear warheads flew from Minot AFB, N.D., to Barksdale AFB, La.
“The ramifications of that have rumbled through the entire Air Force so the Unit Compliance Inspection came and they gave us a hard look,” Nowland said.
The 120 members of the inspection team looked at compliance in every area of base operations for the past three and one-half years.
“They go back and they dig for three years and six months and look at everything you’ve been doing to see if you’ve been in compliance,” Nowland said. “That’s a lot of ground to cover.”
The satisfactory rating is good news for Vance, Nowland said, but not great.
“The good news is we’re satisfactory and we meet Air Force requirements,” Nowland said. “Now, I’ll be honest with you, the expectation for the wing was to get an excellent.”
Several units did receive coveted excellent awards, including the 71st Medical Group, the 71st Force Support Squadron, the safety office, the office of the Staff Judge Advocate, the wing chaplain, the 25th Flying Training Squadron, the 32nd Flying Training Squadron and the 3rd Fighter Training Squadron
In addition, the 71st Operations Group received an overall excellent rating from the 19th Air Force Air Crew Standardization and Evaluation Visit (conducted separately from the Unit Compliance Inspection), with the 25th FTS and 32nd FTS noted as outstanding.
The 71st Operations Support Squadron Weather Operations Flight received an overall excellent rating for its Standardization and Evaluation Program for Weather Operations (SEPWO) inspection. This marked the first major inspection for the Force Support Squadron, since it resulted from the merger of personnel and services organizations.
Other positives noted by the inspection team are a strong commitment to safety, supervision and monitoring of the flying training mission and the quality and capability of the base’s instructor pilots.
“Even though we’re kind of focusing on things we could have done better, there are obviously areas in the wing that did extremely well,” Nowland said.
Vance paused Monday afternoon for a family event dubbed the “It’s a Wrap Bash,” but thoughts will quickly turn to the future. The Air Force has decided future UCI’s will be conducted with little or no advance notice.
“A key now will be how do we train the wing and how do we keep the wing on a training regimen such that we can ensure compliance every day and not put forth this tremendous effort to get ready for it,” Nowland said. “But I’m confident that our team will do it. We’ll rest for a little bit and get back on it and get back into our training regimen.”
