Air Force trains for war, disaster in Moses Lake

OCCUPIED MOSES LAKE — In an air-conditioned tent pitched amidst the sagebrush and dust of the Grant County International Airport, U.S. Air Force Major Clark Hall takes a breather.

“We are operating as if we are in a foreign country,” Hall said. “We’re staying here and we’re not using the local economy.”

By here, Hall means a small village of tan tents, radar dishes, power generators, and storage containers pitched on scrubland between the tarmac and the control tower, where a number of Air Force personnel from Travis Air Force Base near Sacramento, Calif., are working as part of the Air Force Mobility Command’s week-long Mobility Guardian exercise.

Early last Thursday, about 500 paratroopers with the 82nd Airborne landed at Grant County International Airport and took the base from a group of U.S. soldiers who were playing the role of terrorists who captured the base.

Now, with the air field secure, it’s the job of Hall and his 100 men and women of the 621st Contingency Response Wing to actually run the base in cooperation with soldiers and airmen from 10 other nations.

Which they will do until the end of the week.

“This is all about coalition building,” Hall, who is a C-17 pilot and commander of the contingency response team, said. “We’ve done this before, and we’ve done it recently, run forward air bases in Iraq and Syria.”

By running, Hall means operating the port, moving cargo, repairing facilities and aircraft, and even bringing people in and out as needed. The Air Force is even providing its own air traffic controllers, who take over from the civilians at night.

“In Haiti, we did that after the earthquake (in 2010) to get supplies to the locals,” the major explained. “This is contingency response. It’s not just a military response, we take care of civilians too.”

“We’re seeing how it works together,” Hall added. “So far, it’s been a really good exercise.”

As the Air Force runs a portion of the field, the Port of Moses Lake is still in business, with Mitsubishi taking out three of its MRJ airliners for continued testing.

“We’re trying to stay out of their way,” Hall said.

With a number of other militaries participating — including the U.K., Australia, South Korea, and Pakistan — the week-long exercise here also gives American military personnel the opportunity to both show others how they do things as well as learn from others.

“We’re all doing our normal jobs,” said Air Force Staff Sgt. Michael Martin. “The C-130 (transport planes) swoop in, we unload them, and get them out as fast as we can.”

Martin explained that part of the learning curve is the different equipment each nation deploys, down to nets and hooks. Because, it turns out, the British use different kinds of things to secure cargo in an A-400 transport plane than U.S. crews use to secure cargo in a C-17.

“We’re showing the Australians how we do things, and they show us,” Martin said. “And we see what’s better.”

Martin, who has been deployed overseas before, described the exercise here in Moses Lake as fairly realistic.

“It’s been exciting and fun, and it reminded me of my time in Iraq. It’s a desert and kind of hot,” he said.