Staff Sgt. Chris Larson, a red hat 119th Civil Engineer Squadron training cadre, watches members of the 90th Civil Engineer Squadron from FE Warren AFB as they use a volumetric mixer to place quick-setting concrete into an impact crater bomb shell for repair at the North Dakota Air National Guard Regional Training Site, Fargo, ND, Sept. 30, 2021. Visiting engineers use the rapid airfield damage recovery (RADR) system to s training to repair damage to a 150ft x 750ft simulated concrete runway, sectioned into 20ft x 20ft squares for practice craters. It is specially designed to punch holes in concrete squares that simulate bomb impact craters that can be repaired with backfill and patching material. The Fargo Civil Engineer Training Site is one of four Air National Guard sites and the first to provide a new RADR training system.
Airmen from the 90th Civil Engineer Squadron traveled to the North Dakota Air National Guard Regional Training Site in Fargo, ND to see the new Rapid Airfield Damage Recovery (RADR) training system in use for the first time.
RADR is a process that ensures that if a major airfield is attacked, Airmen will have the tools and knowledge to know what to do and restore the airfield to a fully functional state.
“The idea is that if we’re at a deployment location and our runway is hit, we need to be able to get out and fix it in a quick time frame so we can fight off the enemy,” Captain Casey Parks-Garcia said. . with the 90th CES.
Although FE Warren Air Force Base does not have a flight line, many of the 90 CES Airmen deploy. While these skills cannot be used at a home station, being ready for anything helps make the Air Force versatile.
“One, we don’t realistically expect anyone to put holes in our CONUS tracks, and two, FE Warren doesn’t have a track, to begin with,” Parks-Garcia said. “As such, we don’t have any of the heavy equipment or materials needed to complete this training, and because CE has so much repair and maintenance to do to keep FE Warren up and running, it’s quite difficult for us to book time to actually accomplish this training.
Without this training, Airmen could find themselves in a situation they are unable to handle.
“Without it, many of our Airmen could have descended without having practiced the RDR process, and they could have been asked to perform a complicated procedure in an emergency situation without having seen it before,” Parks-Garcia said.
Comments are closed.