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GSS SPICE team provides communications for HUREX

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Anthony Naumcheff
  • 573rd Global Support Squadron
WAIMANALO, HAWAII --  A Category-4 hurricane hits the big island of Hawaii; 115 knot wind speeds snap 15-inch diameter trees like twigs; floods and winds level homes and crops; electricity and communications are crippled.

This is the scenario for Makani Pahili ("Strong Winds" in Hawaiian islands dialect), the most recent of a series of annual hurricane exercises, or HUREX, in Hawaii. This recent exercise included a variety of state and local officials, led by components of the Hawaii Army National Guard and Air National Guard. Each year the HUREX tests the ability of these personnel and organizations to respond to a common natural disaster in this part of the world.

This year's exercise included for the first time, a special team of active duty Air Force communicators, bringing with them a Small Package Initial Communications Element. These Airmen were members of the 573rd Global Support Squadron, a part of the 621st Contingency Response Wing based out of Travis Air Force Base, Calif. Their SPICE equipment delivers regular and secure electronic mail and secure/non-secure voice communications to bare-base deployed locations.

"The combination of experience, training, building partnerships with the guard, and expanding the capabilities of the communications package really broadened our horizons," said Airman 1st Class Demetri Hoskins, 573rd GSS member. "It was a great opportunity."

The 573rd GSS regularly sends SPICE teams on a variety of mobility exercises and contingency response missions, ranging from opening the airfield, joint task force port opening, emergency response and disaster relief. During these missions, it is not uncommon for SPICE to provide initial communications for command and control, typically providing services such as Department of Defense network internet, work phones and video teleconference.

In addition to these routine services, the exercise organizers requested yet another first-ever service for the 573rd GSS to provide; commercial internet (also known as "dirty internet" in the communicator world) and phones for state and local civilian authorities to use as part of a joint response to natural disasters like the one simulated for this exercise.

Armed with this new capability, the five-person CRW SPICE team provided high-speed data communications for the Army National Guard's Command and Control Ekahi element at Bellows Air Station, Hawaii.

The SPICE team leader Tech. Sgt. Daniel Lane said despite operating in an uncommon environment with numerous logistical difficulties and unusual mission requirements, the SPICE team acted quickly and effectively as a group to overcome obstacles and established services in almost half the time originally advertised.

"In the end, the teamwork within the SPICE team and across the many teams involved in this exercise was directly responsible for the overall success of the mission," Lane said. "With such a great first appearance in the annual HUREX, both sides are already hoping to see each other at next year's exercise. The new partnerships, created across the ocean and across the service branches, will truly prove to be invaluable when this exercise scenario's one day become a reality."

The 573 GSS is part of the 621st Contingency Response Wing, located at both Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J. and Travis AFB, Calif. The 621st CRW consists of approximately 1,500 Airmen in six groups, fourteen squadrons and more than 20 geographically separated operating locations aligned with major Army and Marine Corps combat units. The wing maintains a ready corps of light, lean and agile mobility support forces able to respond as directed by the 18th Air Force at Scott AFB, Ill., in order to meet combatant command wartime and humanitarian requirements.