Planning a SAR/EX

[IceNine]

So,  I have had the less than exciting "opportunity" provided me to plan, logisticize, and paper trail 2 hopefully wing wide SAR/EX's next year.  I have already written the training scenario's.

I am working on facilities and food arrangements with the red cross.  But I am not sure if I am missing anything.  So, as I have plenty of time are there things that are often missed, applied for too late, or otherwise that I can do ahead of time to make my life easier, and run a great SAR/EX?

[floridacyclist]

You might look at Salvation Army also on the food and such. I'm sure chapters and all vary, so I won't say they're better or worse, just a possibly untapped resource.

[DKruse]

Make sure your comms infrastructure is sufficient.  With a wing-wide exercise, you'll need to make sure a good comm plan is in place.  A SAREX can break down very quickly if you have a poor comm plan or not enough radio equipment.

[Dragoon]

Another approach is to NOT plan the logisitics/comms end of things, but let the mission staff do that. 

After all, on a real mission the Comms Unit Leader guy is going to have to quickly plan out comms, while the Logistics Section Chief is going to have to handle food, shelter, etc.

Under this kind of arrangement you, as the exercise planner, develop the scenario, figure out where the targets will be, what the clues will be, what distractors you want to add, and what base to work from, etc. etc.

Then.....work with Wing to get the staff picked out several months in advance, give them a general overview, and let them get the training value of working all the support details!

The reason you do this several month out instead of the night before is to help ensure things won't be too screwed up on Day 1 and ruin the training benefit.

[ELTHunter]

Is it going to be an eval type exercise, or are you really going to use it for training purposes.  That will dictate how much pre-exercise planning and prep work you need to do for things like comms and logistics.  I have yet to see a big wing wide exercise where all the radios were programmed correctly and everything came together like it was planned.  Sometimes even after a pre-exercise practice.  But, if this is really an exercise to train and expose your opportunities for improvement, let things happen and see how the staff responds to them.

[IceNine]

The first one I need to use as a "lets learn to work together" type so I need to make sure everything is as well planned out as it possibly can be, I want to run it like the typical EVAL to see where the inter-staff communications break down.  The second one will be more of a "y'all come" and figure it out type.  I have planned several different types of training from Comm Exercises, Mission Base Staff, Ground Team and aircrew so every area will get it fair share of individual attention throughout the year.  I just need to make sure that the only surprises on the first one are the ones I supply.

[Pylon]

Outside of all the obvious operational considerations:  A really good senior member for your Logistics Section Chief will take a great burden off your chest.  SAREX's run so much smoother when the volunteers are taken care of, fed properly, have hot coffee, and all of the other niceties.  People are happy, and happy participants make your life easier too.

LSC can plan for hot lunches to be served on location, to keep a pot of coffee brewing, everybody's radio's charged, appropriate medical considerations made in advance, and so much more.

[SJFedor]

If you're using aircraft (I'm sure you are) make sure you plan for the ferry time in your budget to and from home base. Have whoever is going to be the senior Air Ops Branch Director start working well in advance to schedule the aircraft, make sure it has a crew to take it from home base to mission base and back, and try to have at least 2 full crews per aircraft. You might have some people sitting around doing mission base and other productive things, but if you plan to have 2 full crews per plane, you can bump and move as you need to and won't be too short of people, especially if you're trying to improve out the door times.

If you're using more then 2-3 aircraft, recommend getting an assistant AOBD for every 2 more aircraft you add to do briefings and debriefings, as well as assist in planning and tracking.


Bring donuts. Lots of donuts.

[ELTHunter]

Make sure and have good experienced people for IC, AOBD, GBD and CUL.  A weak or inexperienced person in any of these jobs can make it hard for the aircrews and ground teams to have a good learning experience.  Make sure you double and triple check your comms plan and that all the radio's you Will be using are on the same channel plan.  In other words, channel 1 in all radios is the same frequency.  Also, if using airborne repeaters, make sure all radios have the correct tones, off set and such to key it.  Make sure all aircraft do a radio check BEFORE beginning their taxi.