Improvements boost success of wing's second Super UTA

  • Published
  • By Dan Neely
  • 919th Special Operations Wing Public Affairs
DUKE FIELD, Fla. --  Applying lessons learned from the 919th Special Operations Wing's first four-day super unit training assembly last year made the second one much smoother for reservists here April 12-15.
 
That's the assessment of Lt. Col. Ray Porrata, the wing's process manager, who also serves as the SUTA's lead planning officer. Porrata said the wing instituted the annual SUTA concept to maximize reservists' training efficiency by minimizing some of the obstacles they face during a typical drill weekend.

"There are so many distractions -- events like awards and retirement ceremonies, meetings, commanders' calls -- that take away from the limited time (traditional reservists) have to accomplish training," he said.

Benchmarking from a three-day UTA format used by the Reserve 403rd Wing at Keesler Air Force Base, Miss., a 919th SOW process working group recommended combining two UTAs into one - essentially dropping the June UTA to create a four-day, Friday-Monday event in April. Friday was reserved for mandatory mass training events, Monday for individual unit-level training.

However, after the wing's first SUTA feedback from unit-level leadership showed they preferred a Thursday-Sunday schedule with unit training on Thursday and mass training on Friday.

"The feedback was that the units didn't really know who was here," Porrata said. "Their people signed in, then took off to do their mass training. Supervisors wanted to have people in their units first and then give them their marching orders for the next day, so there were some accountability issues that needed to be addressed."

The colonel also noted that reservists overwhelmingly approved of the new schedule, as the earlier Friday-Monday UTA format impacted two different civilian employment work weeks -- the end of the first week and beginning of the second.

The most visible improvement that also generated some of the highest positive feedback was the change to an inbound-only gate traffic pattern during morning commute hours on the SUTA's first two days.

"Last year we had some really long backups extending out onto (State Road) 85, especially during the normally busy Friday morning rush hour," the colonel said. "This time the gate traffic was really never an issue, as opposed to last year, and everyone was able to sign in on time.

"Our whole emphasis with our Super UTAs is to focus on training, and it's nothing more than that, "Colonel Porrata continued. Citing an example, he added, "Mass training for this year's SUTA focused heavily on the Sexual Assault Bystander Training course to meet the Air Force's goal of 100 percent completion rate by June 1. That's why we offered that course multiple times during the Friday of the UTA, and it worked out really well."