Exercise, Exercise, Exercise

During this last unit the Air Force faux deployed a few of us from Hickam Air Force Base to Ramstein Air Base in Germany. We were there for a few weeks to participate in a combined NATO exercise. The exercise, called Austere Challenge, also served as an inspection of the USAFE Air Ops Center (AOC). For me it was also a test of how well WiMW adapted to the military life. This particularly useful as a dry run for me as I am next in line to deploy (for real) to Afghanistan or Iraq. Here are a few observations from the trip:

Connectivity-
At the “deployed” location I had no unclassified network access. This meant online time was limited to that available at our billeting location. There were a few PC’s but they were shared between us and our German guards. If I had been further down range it could have been better or worse. Some of my potential locations have constant access to unclass PC’s and some are further out with very limited access.
In transit access was excellent. My wife, Jessica, was kind enough to surprise me with a new WiFi enabled laptop. Every airport I flew through (Honolulu, San Francisco, Baltimore, Chicago-Ohare, Frankfurt and Charles DeGaul) had a pay wireless network operating. It can be pricey but it can be worth it in the end, especially if you have a fairly active discussion like this last one.

Access to material-
One limfac observed was that I could take with me only what was reasonable to pack or accessible online. This meant that, as useful as it was, Baylis and Smith was out. You may have noticed my points seemed to be slightly Clark-centric. This was not only due to the attractiveness of his arguments but also to the portability of his book. Looking back I should have made Xerox copies of important portions of the larger books and brought a folder of those.

Time-
By far the largest limfac was the amount of time available. This, I think, mirrored reality to most of the intel jobs in CENTCOM. We worked an average of 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. Unless you are super-human like Pip or Nick seem to be then it reduces your effectiveness as a researcher or discussant.

The exercise had a rough start but ended well. Some of you may have a different opinion, but over all I think it was a successful exercise for WiMW as well. We’ll see what the connectivity, access to material and time factors look like when Iraq or Afghanistan comes down the pipe.