100th ARW sets bar high with 98 percent ME rate

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Clark Staehle
  • 100th Air Refeuling Wing Public Affairs
RAF MILDENHALL, U.K. --  The 100th Air Refueling Wing added one more notch to its belt when it recorded a 98-percent mission-effectiveness rating for 2007. 

"The ME rating is something we track to see how well we're meeting the mission," said Capt. Tim Feely, 100th Operations Support Squadron, chief of wing scheduling. 

The ME is a new rating system the wing uses to track cargo and passenger movement and includes air-refueling effectiveness, according to Captain Feely. 

"We've just switched to using mission effectiveness versus AR effectiveness because it better illustrates the diversity of our wing's mission," he said. "The 100th ARW mission is to 'Generate air refueling combat power and critical combat support' -- which means moving fuel, cargo, and or people to the right place on time. 'Mission effectiveness' better captures that." 

When the wing receives taskings to fly missions, several things must be in order. The scheduled jet must be in flying condition, meaning there is no maintenance that might preclude it from flying; and the crew must be ready. 

For 2006, the wing posted a 93-percent AR-effectiveness rating. Last year the wing posted an additional 2 percent over that. 

"Now a 2 percent difference doesn't seem like much until you put it into context -- we flew over 1,200 (air refueling) sorties," Capt. Feely said. "So imagine 25 more sorties getting airborne and offloading over a million pounds of gas that would have been stuck on the ground last year! Ninety-three percent isn't bad, but just a 2-percent improvement delivered more than 150,000 gallons of JP-8 jet fuel." 

According to Captain Feely, many units work together as a well-oiled machine to ensure 
as many missions as possible are successful. The 100th OSS's Wing Scheduling and Airfield Operations flights and the 100th Logistics Readiness Squadron Transportation Flight work closely with aircrews to get them where they need to be on time and keep them abreast of any mission changes. 

"We rarely have problems in these areas," he said. "Murphy's Law usually manifests itself in aircraft maintenance issues, so I'm truly impressed with the amount of hard work the 100th Maintenance Group adds to the equation. These are 50-year-old aircraft--they're not getting any easier to maintain." 

The wing's 98 percent ME encompasses all of the 1,670 missions flown during 2007.
Additionally, Refueling Priority 1A in support of the president, known as banner support, reached a milestone between Jan. 5 through 16, with 20 sorties comprising about 52 hours and offloading about 1.7 millions pounds of fuel. By comparison, from Nov. 13, 2006 to June 6, 2007 (eight months compared to 11 days), the wing flew just 15 1A sorties, good for about 700,000 pounds of fuel offloaded. The 11 days in January recorded a 243-percent increase in about seven-and-half fewer months, just a fraction of the time. 

Of the wing's 1,670 missions last year, 57 percent, or 960 missions, were categorized as Refueling Priority 1 or Priority 2 missions. 

The air-refueling support priorities system rates missions based on their importance while supporting the U.S.'s interests. Priority-one missions are the most urgent and are directed by the president of the U.S., the secretary of defense or the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

The 100th ARW has the highest number of priority-one and -two missions of any unit outside the Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom areas of responsibility. RAF Mildenhall has U.S. Air Forces in Europe's only permanently based tankers, which makes them valuable tools as the 100th ARW is the only wing that supports NATO operations. 

According to the 100th OSS Mission Planning Flight, RAF Mildenhall's tankers are capable of refueling nearly any aircraft. The wing helps get most aircraft headed into the AOR across the Atlantic by refueling the KC-10 Extenders tankers escorting the jets from stateside bases. 

Some of 2007's high-priority missions included supporting the NATO's Riga Summit which included presidential support and refueling several flights carrying servicemembers wounded in the AOR to stateside hospitals.