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AFRC Community Spotlight: A spoonful of technology

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Sarah Hanson
  • Air Force Reserve Public Affairs
ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE, Ga. --  Tucked away in a back office is a group of individuals who play a small role but have a huge impact on the Air Force Reserve Command mission.

The A6 operations division reaches all aspects of the command and its people.

There are four main areas of responsibility at the operations division, and behind the scenes making it happen are approximately 35 Reservists, civilians and contractors.

The first section of the A6 operations division is force development. This group covers career development, training and career field management of all officers and enlisted across the entire cyberspace profession.

“We handle all of the development teams, which means that each year each we look at individuals’ records for how they can progress in their careers,” said Col. Patrick Ryan, former AFRC A6 operations chief. “Where should they go next? What is the best job for him/her? Do they have all their boxes checked in regards to military education? So we have all these different ways as to best develop our people.”

In addition, the force development team handles all the day-to-day interaction with the people out in the units.

“They put the personal into interpersonal communication,” said Ryan. “Every day the force development folks are talking to everybody out in the field and ensuring they have good situational awareness on where they’re going in their careers.”

This team is also working on new ways to bring in new people into the career field.

“What we’re trying to do is copy what the medical and legal community does and bring people in at a higher grade,” said Ryan. “The reason for that is competition with the private sector is so high.”

According to o*net online’s website, which is a partner of the American Job Center network, in 2014 the average annual salary for an information security analyst was $89,000.

Ryan said the team is looking at all the different ways they can keep and get new people in the Air Force Reserve.

The next section of the A6 operations family is cyber surety. This office is charged with the security of AFRC’s networks and the people who use them.

“This team asks the tough questions like is everybody properly trained on how to ensure their data is safe? Are there steps and/or procedures that we can do to make the network safer?” said Ryan. “So this team does the entire compliance work load and have been doing a really good job at making sure our networks are safe to use.”

The A6 operations mission systems team handles enterprise Land Mobile Radio, other wireless communication tools such as satellites and equipment management.

“The enterprise LMR impact is where we’re beginning to put it to the level where you can communicate across the entirety of our command,” said Ryan. “This means you’re not just held to one small area in the command where you can communicate but you could conceivable contact anyone on that entire network.”

The last piece of the A6 operations puzzle is knowledge management. The folks in this office process Freedom of Information Act requests and manage records.

This team ensures FOIA requests get processed within the 20-day window, which is mandated by law. They release information that is releasable and protect material that is not for example Personal Identifying Information or PII.

The knowledge management team took on a new mission recently and that is to develop electronic or technology solutions to make AFRC’s processes more efficient.

“Instead of having a meeting can we use collaborative software like SharePoint, so we don’t have to use TDY funds,” said Ryan. “Those solutions are going to make a big impact moving forward because we have fewer resources that we’ve had in the past.”

Ryan said that the cyber career field is going through a massive change and that the team is moving toward an operational mindset.

“Cyber is no longer thinking about a wire or computer, it’s the actual domain itself,” he said. “We have to figure out how we’re going to defend and attack in that domain of cyber. All our weapons systems utilize this domain across every different functional specialty you can think of in the entire Air Force.

We are in a timeframe that is so tumultuous so let’s look at cyber and look at ways AFRC can make an impact, that in itself is the best thing about this division.”