September 11 changed that and as a result the 177th fell out of the inspection cycle.
The IG rates wings on three areas: Employment, which is about mission effectiveness – keeping the aircraft flying and putting bombs on target; Mission Support, which covers everything from logistics to engineering, command and control to medical, and finally the Ability To Survive and Operate – how wing personnel react to an attack, and more important how quickly they recover in order to get back to the primary mission of refueling, loading weapons and launching aircraft to continue the fight.
These areas are then broken into sub groups; failure in any one can be catastrophic to the entire wing.
The IG grades all these areas and sub groups either as Outstanding, Excellent, Satisfactory, Marginal or Unsatisfactory.
In preparation, the Jersey Airmen travelled nationwide to observe how other Guard wings were training; then watched them perform during their ORIs.
The stakes were high: units that fail ORIs risk losing their missions; loss of mission could equal unit closure.
Unfortunately many units have failed – the inspection is that tough. |