Communicators turn on "juice" in joint exercise

Published July 10, 2014
By Christian De Luca
514th Air Mobility Wing Public Affairs

JOINT BASE MCGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST, N.J. -- Airmen from the 42nd Combat Communications Squadron took part in a month-long joint exercise at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland, in June.

The Joint Users Interoperability Communications Exercise tests the communication capabilities of federal agencies during emergencies and national and international threats. JUICE participants included the military services, FBI, Federal Emergency Management Agency, national coalition partners and others.

"It's a multi-lateral communications exercise to see how agencies will respond to a mass event in a real-world scenario," said Capt. Charles Gilbert, 42nd CBCS officer in charge of communication operations. "We want to see that, after an invasion or a chemical attack, or a natural disaster, these agencies can unilaterally communicate with each other to fix the incident."

Gilbert said the primary goal for the 42nd CBCS is to support the Joint Network Operations Control Center, which serves as a control agency for the management and direction of the joint forces communications systems.

"We are their backbone," he said. "So any communications they need to reach the outside world, be it Internet, email or phone, we support. We house their main servers and provide everything they need."

John Kahler, lead for the Joint On-Demand Interoperability Network, said the 42nd CBCS was an intricate part of why the J.U.I.C.E. exercise was a success.

"They rolled in with their equipment. They didn't need to ask a lot of questions. They just started working, unloading trucks and setting up tents," he said. "Their responsibility was to set-up the communications for the (joint task force), but they did more than that. They started to interface with the other organizations. So not only did they complete their mission, they supported other missions as well. They just rolled up their sleeves and made it happen."

The interface, technical and social, with other military branches is an important part of these joint exercises, according to Lt. Col. Chuck Rich, 42nd CBCS commander. Deployments often mean working and living with sister services to complete a mission, so training alongside them stateside and learning each other's equipment is imperative.

"These days you're not going to just deploy the Air Force, so communications with our sister services is extremely important in getting the job done," he said. "We all have our specialties. Some things the Air Force is good at that the Army isn't and vice versa. We have to mesh together, and if we're going to play that way, we have to practice that way."

Rich said the one thing that binds the communications community together is they all speak the same language.

"When you get the Air Force or the Navy together they have their own lingo. But when their (information technology) guys, or the geeks, get together, we all speak the industry standard. It's not all branch specific acronyms we made up," he said. "All of our equipment is very deep off-the-shelf industry stuff. So we can talk about packets and IP addresses and all these kinds of things, and we're all on the same page."

When deployed, the 42nd CBCS has the capability to provide communications to about 3,000 people and can be up and running within four hours of hitting the ground. Having a proper communications system that is rapidly operational is crucial to mission completion, according to Master Sgt. Donovan Cameron, 42nd CBCS unit deployment manager. Because of that, a team of civil engineers is attached to the squadron to provide power to its extensive and sometimes sensitive array of equipment.

"On a deployment, civil engineers would be everywhere, setting up buildings, etc. We would be low priority for them," Donovan said. "Then the base commander would ask, 'where's my communications?' So we weren't getting the attention we needed to do our jobs. Having our own engineers who are dedicated to our operation and know the intricacies of our equipment was imperative to meeting our mission requirements."

"I am like their electric company," said Tech. Sgt. Arthur Jones, 42nd CBCS power production technician, who is in charge of the seven-engineer production team. "We're the first ones in to set up and the last ones breaking things down to get out. Anywhere in the world they go, I grab our generators and we go."

During the exercise, Jones supplied power to four air conditioning units, two tents worth of equipment, and the squadron's satellite dish, which is the heart of the operation.

"Our mission, when deployed, is to provide reach-back capability back to stateside. We'll set up our antennae, which will point to a satellite, which will point back to home station," said Senior Airman Jeremiah Warren, 42nd CBCS cyber transport technician. "During this exercise, our home station is right next door. Without our equipment everyone here would still be able to talk to each other. With our equipment they have the ability to talk securely worldwide."

The 42nd CBCS is assigned to the 960th Cyberspace Operations Group at Joint Base San Antonio, Texas, but geographically located at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey. The squadron is scheduled to deactivate based on the Department of Defense budget request for fiscal 2015.

The squadron will continue to move forward, according to Rich, because,despite what happens in the future, having competent, up-to-date Airmen is beneficial to the Air Force Reserve, as well as the trained individual.

"Although we're on the Department of Defense's Appropriations Bill for closure, we're still doing everything we're supposed to be doing," he said. "We're doing our training. We're doing exercises. We're keeping up with it. So, if we get to stick around, we're going to be good. If our guys have to go to other units, they will still be highly trained and prepared."