Up, up, and away!

  • Published
  • By Col. Jane L. Kitchen
  • 302nd Maintenance Group
The lights dim, the engine roars, and you snuggle down into your field jacket for a 5-hour flight to somewhere in the U.S. At least that is where you are really going but the scenario is that you are flying to a foreign country to set up a base to support our nation. 

You can't snack on anything on the aircraft like you normally do because the Operational Readiness Inspection ground rules say that if you do the inspectors will "take you out" for 24 hours and then your unit will be short. 

Ah yes, surviving the ORI will be anything but fun. It will be challenging, it will be a game of cat and mouse with the inspectors, and it will be rewarding when it is done, but it will not be "fun." 

The aircraft lands and some people you don't know come on board and start giving you directions - you follow them into a large room where they give you a briefing about the simulated country you have landed in. You fill out forms, get on a bus and end up at a parking lot full of bags - yours are there somewhere. 

You have been up for hours by now and you still have to find your room and head on back to your work center because the building must be hardened and the work area has to be set up. Finally, you split into shifts and have to find the dining facility - remember no food in your room. 

Every five years the Air Force puts the wing through an ORI. You may be asking why when we have just returned from a successful deployment to the desert. There are many reasons, but the best one I can come up with is that in doing an ORI we as a wing must work very closely together to do things we just don't normally do. 

The war we just fought may not be the war we need to survive in the future. It doesn't matter that we just returned from the desert - what we learn doing an ORI could save our lives and the lives of those we supervise in the future. 

We can each make a difference, no matter how short the time we are with the unit. Study the ground rules; personally prepare both physically and mentally. You can learn and you can make a difference.