Combat comm flexes force for 3rd AF

  • Published
  • By 1st Lt. Ken Malloy
  • 1st Combat Communications Squadron
RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany --  More than 50 1st Combat Communications Squadron members recently participated in Exercise Healthy Star, a quarterly two-week field training exercise.

Healthy Star's objective was to assist 3rd Air Force in developing a contingency plan for conducting humanitarian relief operations.

Lt. Gen. Rod Bishop, 3rd Air Force commander, had a first-hand look at how 3rd Air Force would be able to use combat comm's robust capabilities to conduct contingency operations from a forward joint task force location.

"This exercise provided combat comm with a great opportunity to display its wide range of rapidly deployable communications capabilities," said Master Sgt. Al Domingo, Camp Fasnacht crew chief. "Our team was able to provide secure voice, defense switched network, secure video teleconferencing, non-secure Internet protocol router and secure Internet protocol router (capabilities), land mobile radio and air-to-ground radio assets which provide the deployed commander with command and control over the area of operation."

As European Command's No. 1 choice for providing theater-wide deployable communications, the members of combat comm take great pride in their motto, "First in ... last out," as they provide the operations community with capabilities to command and control operations in a deployed environment.

"From pre-deployment planning to reconstitution, each exercise is designed to simulate challenges Airmen will face when they deploy to a bare-base environment," said Lt. Col. Joe Sublousky, 1st CBCS commander. "The perfect mix of our training and teamwork is the recipe to our deployment success."