Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii -- Every two years, the residents of Oahu, Hawaii, witness a spectacular sight: more than 40 military ships, 14 national land forces and 150 aircraft converging towards the small, 596-square-mile tropical island.
This year was no exception: personnel from 29 nations gathered this July for the world's largest international maritime warfare exercise, Rim of the Pacific. Among these seasoned participants — including some with over two decades of RIMPAC experience — a small yet formidable local force made its debut in the lineup.
The 624th Aeromedical Staging Squadron, an Air Force Reserve unit operating under the 624th Regional Support Group and based at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, marked its inaugural appearance at RIMPAC this year.
“This is the first time that they’ve requested any sort of Air Force medical involvement,” said Senior Master Sgt. Erin Esquer, 624th ASTS senior enlisted leader. “It’s usually just the Navy, so this is a big deal.”
This achievement was particularly remarkable as the 624th ASTS has only one asset — well-trained Airmen.
“Our unit has manpower, but we don’t have aircraft,” said Lt. Col. Janet Baxa, 624th ASTS chief nurse. “A lot of Reserve units outside of Hickam have those assets. We rely on the connections we have outside of our unit. When you have key people in the readiness section, making those connections, it allows us to practice what we are supposed to do.”
It is through intentional relationship-building that the 624th ASTS was able to get access to the right aircraft, equipment and environments for high-level training.
“Relationships are huge,” said Esquer. “Whether you are a unit-equipped Reserve unit with your own resources, or if you are the type that is co-located with active duty, relationships matter. You can’t do stuff in a silo by yourself, so we were very intentional to build relationships with others on base immediately.”
It is these relationships that have allowed the 624th ASTS to make unprecedented improvements in their training and readiness in less than a year to reach mission readiness and participate in such a large-scale training exercise.
“When I got here in June of 2023, I was told we didn’t know how to build tents, and we hadn’t had an En Route Patient Staging System training in years,” said Esquer. “None of my people had ever even experienced training with Aeromedical Evacuation.”
The En Route Patient Staging System is a central mission for the 624th ASTS and involves constructing and equipping tents to care for patients brought in from combat areas.
“ERPSS is really, really important,” said 1st Lt. Jennifer Andrade, 624th ASTS medical readiness officer. “It’s our main mission. If we have a near-peer conflict, we are the closest, so it’s super important for us to be ready for when or if that happens.”
Dedicating enough time to quality training can be a challenge for some Reserve units, which often meet for only two days a month. However, Esquer, Andrade and 624th ASTS leadership were committed to creating a plan to achieve mission readiness.
“I told them, we’re going to make it happen, and we’re going to make it happen during our Unit Training Assemblies,” said Esquer. “I’ve got to keep their hands busy. So, in November of 2023, we did our first tent build, our first major event. That amped them up, like ‘we got this, we can do it.’”
624th ASTS leadership also put a strong emphasis on as much mission education and hands-on training as possible during UTA days.
“You have to reinforce why we’re doing what we’re doing,” Esquer said. “People want to do stuff when they know it matters. They want to be seen, they want to be heard, they want to know why it’s important and relevant, and you’ve got to get them excited. And the way you do that is by putting them in those positions to do stuff. Talking about it during a UTA and doing a PowerPoint presentation is great, but then you’ve got to go out and do it.”
As the 624th ASTS Airmen improved, Esquer and her team continued to push them with engaging and innovative training methods.
“We had a rodeo in May UTA where we did an Olympics-style patient litter carry,” Esquer said. “We had teams carry a dummy on a litter with a cup taped to its chest with juice in it, and whoever ended with the most juice in the cup won. That’s the stuff that keeps them engaged. Innovative training matters, they were all bought in.”
624th ASTS leadership also built connections with units from other bases to provide increasingly realistic and complex training scenarios for their Airmen.
“When I was deployed with the 624th, I noticed a lot of ERPSS personnel didn’t have a lot of training,” said Andrade. “So, when I got here, I called my contacts at the March Air Reserve Base unit, and they brought over an aircraft.”
Training with aircraft is critical for ASTS Airmen, who are responsible for transporting patients between aircrafts and staging tents.
“We were able to do ERPSS training with the Aeromedical Evacuation group,” said Esquer, “and that was huge for our people, especially our younger Airmen who had never been on the flight line or an aircraft before.”
The 624th ASTS continued to train intensively during every UTA, going on to participate in Exercise Pineapple Thunder the following month with the 15th Medical Group, the primary active-duty Air Force medical component at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.
“We set up eight tents that time — from one tent to eight,” said Esquer. “And now here we are at RIMPAC, with 16 tents. We have been growing from doing all these training events this past year.”
624th ASTS leadership was also careful to establish the right mindset and environment for learning and growth.
“If mistakes are made, it isn’t a big deal,” said Esquer. “We will evaluate it, highlight it and make a good training plan out of it. We’re gauging where we are at today, so that way when we are in our deployment cycle, we will be absolutely ready to go. If you’re in my squadron, you’re going to be growing. If you don’t like that, you are going to have to find somewhere else to go.”
The 624th ASTS plans to continue to improve and train, with a focus on optimizing for the most mission-critical skills and real-world scenarios, all while helping Airmen understand how they contribute to the overall mission.
“I would highly encourage units to find out what your strengths and weaknesses are, and capitalize on those things,” Esquer said. “Make meaningful training plans. Don’t do things repetitively when not necessary, make it make sense and do things that really matter and keep your Airmen engaged. Make them want to be there versus feeling forced to be there, and make sure everybody within your organization understands their role within the organization.”
(Tarakanova is assigned to the 624th Regional Support Group public affairs office.)