Air Force civil engineering team defies challenges during deployment to Kuwait; they helped with war efforts, but their absence affected their home bases in Alaska.

Several dozen U.S. Air Force civil engineers from Alaska exchanged Arctic challenges for wartime and desert conditions last year. They also confronted several engineering obstacles during a seven-month deployment at the staging sites for U.S. troops' mission in the war in Iraq.

These airmen were among the first Air Force engineers assigned to the typically Army mission of civil engineering and maintenance.

Fifty-five civil engineers from Eielson and Elmendorf air force bases--plus two others from Hill Air Force Base in Utah--tackled maintenance operations under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army in Kuwait. The group's deployment began in October 2004 and concluded last May.

TRAINING FOR WAR

Their scheduled December deployment was moved up by several months, and the engineering group was given a week's notice before departure for training.

The first stop was Fort Carson Army Post in Colorado Springs, Colo., for intensive combat training. The group, mostly from Eielson near Fairbanks, joined about 240 other civil engineers to practice marksmanship and run through drills like to fire from moving vehicles and to learn combat lifesaver training. The engineers were being trained for work in perilous Baghdad, Iraq, although the Alaskans spent their deployment in the less hazardous Kuwait.

"We were the first Air Force engineers to go through the Army's Power Projection Platform at Fort Carson," said Capt. Chris Smith from Eielson.

Fort Carson's training program is one of the best of its kind, he added. The training is now required for military civil engineering groups, he said.

The engineers were led by Maj. Jeff McBride, Eielson's 354 Civil Engineer Squadron operations chief, and Senior Master Sgt. John O'Brien, range maintenance chief, also from the same squadron. Smith, a lieutenant during the deployment and one of two of the team's officers, served as a supervisor.

CHALLENGING PROJECTS

After training, the team traveled directly to Kuwait, where they handled infrastructure maintenance projects at Camp Arifjan and five other major Army camps in southern Kuwait, Smith said.

Infrastructure maintenance included overseeing water, sewer and electrical systems, as well as repairing broken doors or windows, Smith said.

The engineers tackled similar projects at the Air Force bases in Alaska, but in Kuwait they were confronted with systems of a different quality, noted Jeff Putnam, deputy base civil engineer, Eielson, who was not deployed.

"It really tied together what our guys do at the home station," Smith said.

Other challenges included working with metric system measurements, dealing with a foreign culture and overcoming difficulty obtaining materials, Smith said.

Putnam illustrated the different Middle Eastern mindset affecting civil engineering.

"One of the unique things about working over there is that for certain projects here you'd show up with a backhoe; there they'd have 80 people with shovels," Putnam said.

The engineering group successfully completed experimental tasks and completed more than 1,100 job orders during the deployment in Kuwait, according to Smith.

The mostly Alaska group, including those stationed at Eielson experienced with sub-zero temperatures, weathered flooding and nearly 100-degree Fahrenheit heat, Smith said.

As part of one major project, the engineers built a 33-acre truck parking lot at Camp Arifjan, which manages most of the trucks en route to Iraq, Smith said.

The camp, a major staging area for Army operations in the war, accommodates thousands of people and vehicles simultaneously. Originally built as a "war readiness material storage" site, activity at Camp Arifjan in the past two years has eclipsed 20-year expectations, Smith said. The scenario handed the Air Force engineers plenty of maintenance work, he added.

The Alaska military engineers also repaired a sewage system at the Kuwaiti Naval Base that had been broken since the first Gulf War more than 10 years ago, he said.

Other projects required digging a one-mile trench for new communications lines and building a temporary food service center for thousands of soldiers preparing to return home.

According to Smith, the group experienced woes typical during any deployment--acquiring tools and materials, locating items shipped from home base and "finding a place to bed down."

The Air Force engineering team was under Army control while working in Kuwait, and the two military branches often function differently. The Alaska team overcame the differences and received praise for their efforts.

"A lot of Army guys requested our work specifically rather than hiring contractors," Smith said. "It was a true joint environment. We were doing an Army mission."

Such accolades will be noteworthy in team members' careers in an era with increasing joint Air Force-Army projects, Putnam said.

It was a challenge, too, maintaining Eielson operations while the base engineers were deployed, Putnam said. About 90 military personnel, included engineers, plumbers, environmental engineers and carpenters, were deployed simultaneously or about 25 percent of the 360-person civil engineering squadron, he said. The deployment to the war zone also was difficult for families left behind, Putnam added.

LESSONS LEARNED

Smith credits the group's significant accomplishments in Kuwait to Maj. McBride and Senior Master Sgt. O'Brien. However, Smith was directly in charge of part of the team and served as McBride's right-hand man.

Acting as a supervisor himself, Smith noted months after returning to Alaska that the biggest challenge was recognizing the importance of process thinking. He learned to establish systems and procedures in the beginning, even though the group expected a limited stay in Kuwait and despite the frenetic war-time environment. It's also easy to react hastily when everything is new-the climate, culture and metric measurements.

But Smith realized the value of pausing to analyze the situation and seek advice from commanding officers.

"We learned real quick that you have to think through what you're going to do," Smith said. "Even in a fast-paced environment, it's important not to just react."

Some systems set up by the team were expected to be in place for the long-term, he said.