Contingency Response non-flying tour, anyone with experience doing a CRW tour that can give some insight?

[LonghornAirman]

I’d like to know more about it. I’m a C-17 pilot, and I just learned about CRWs. Sounds like a cool gig, even though it takes you out of the jet for a tour. Anyone have experience in a CRW and able to give a rundown on what I’d be doing day to day, ops tempo, is it worth it, etc?

[Sua Sponte]

On 4/23/2020 at 7:53 AM, Longhorn said:

I’d like to know more about it. I’m a C-17 pilot, and I just learned about CRWs. Sounds like a cool gig, even though it takes you out of the jet for a tour. Anyone have experience in a CRW and able to give a rundown on what I’d be doing day to day, ops tempo, is it worth it, etc?

I have friends doing it, experience is varied. I had an old Sq/CC who was a Group/CC at McGuire. He liked it, but said there's enough work for say McGurie, not Travis and McMcGuire, so a lot of the time it was just busy work. There's also a CRG position in Guam, but I've only known CEA's that went there. I had an assignment to the one at Travis circa 2014, but was reprojected back to flying, which I wasn't going to complain about.

[Whisky]

I was a 17 guy at Travis awhile ago and had several friends over at the CRG and have several friends at the CRG now.  It's pretty diverse in what kind of jobs are available. Some of the squadrons are set to go basically stand up an expeditionary airfield anywhere. You could potentially deploy somewhere and be running DZs and LZs or possibly be in charge of multiple E's running an LZ. These squadrons are also often tasked with disaster relief. Going into Puerto Rico after a hurricane and getting an airport up and running for example. There's also a pretty big portion of them that run AOCs during disasters or contingencies.  I haven't heard any people at CRG not being busy. Lot's of exercises if they aren't doing real world ops. Travis has a squadron that specializes in South America ops, and McGuire has one that does a lot of Africom ops. The Beeliners have several CRG IPs that fly a lot of locals and carry their weight or more for local sorties. There are several C-17 guys that also just fly the minimum and maintain currency the best they can. It's a way to keep flying if you wanted.  From what I've heard, McGuire guys have a little harder time attaching to fly at the 6th. They still do, but several guys are attached to fly at Charleston from the sounds of it.

Last point, from what I've heard there's a little rift between Phoenix guys and normal CRG guys. I've heard a couple say that the Phoenix guys get all the strats, leadership opportunities and awards while the non Phoenix guys are treated without the white gloves and tender care. I'm not on a leadership track so I wouldn't care about that, but if you care about that kind of thing it might be worth considering getting there via the Phoenix program.

[supertrooper44]

I was in the East Coast CRG from 2015-2018. It was the best assignment I've had so far. 

First, the CRW has three total groups - one Air Mobility Advisory Group and two CRGs (one per coast). 

The AMAG has two Air Mobility Operations Sqs, two Mobility Support Advisory Sqs, and the Mobility Support Ops Sq. AMOS is the deployable AMD for AOC augmentation. MSAS is the Air Advisor/BPC mission, with the West Coast having an AOR of SOUTHCOM and the East Coast having AFRICOM. MSOS is the home of all but 2-3 of the AMLOs, they are spread out at ~40 OLs. I can't speak to the day to day routine for the AMAG squadrons, but when you're in garrison is usually pretty relaxed business hours. 

The CRGs have three squadrons - two operational and one support squadron (CRSS). I did time in both of the operational squadrons on the East Coast in a couple flight CC roles. I was on the road A TON for both exercises and real-world deployments but I'm a pretty low-density skillset (I'm not a pilot) so I got tapped for a lot of trips, more than the rated bubbas. Garrison schedule was usually pretty laid back, PT time every morning and into the office by 9:30 or so and I was usually gone by 4:30-5:00 unless there was mission planning happening. 

The rated guys rotated through a few positions in the squadron, usually a flight CC job to start and then group training or stan eval or a wing position. Deployed positions for them were CRE Ops Officer and CRE Commander. CRE = Contingency Response Element, about a 60-80 person team normally led by a rated O-4/5 as the CRE/CC and usually two O-3/4 CRE/DOs. Rated also have the opportunity to get LZSO certified so that opens the door up for LZ trips. You'll get a lot of experience leading enlisted earlier than you'd probably get elsewhere. A CRS is ~180 folks with ~12 officers total. 

The worst part about it is probably the Joint Task Force - Port Opening alert mission. Each of the 4 operational squadrons rotates taking it for ~3 months at a crack and during that point your travel is somewhat restricted, but it's not terrible to find a replacement for a weekend if you want to take leave. 

With the exception of the Sq/CCs the rated folks got to fly. A lot of them were attached at the units they came from and the squadron paid for them to go TDY every other month or so to go fly. Some of the C-17/C-5 bros who were attached at the 6th or at Dover picked up actual trips. It really comes down to what job you're doing and how time consuming it is, but most maintained pretty basic quals. 

Happy to answer any questions. 

[Hermey]

Everything Whisky said checks. I’ll just add that attached flying from CRW/CRG as a C-17 AC is pretty tough to nearly impossible. That is the crew position with the most semi-annual requirements and pretty much all you will do is take training lines/sims, be flirting with dropping unqualed or NMR the whole time, and never have much time to contribute with flying missions due to ground duties, training and lengthy exercises or TDYs over at the CRW/CRG. If you’re wanting to contribute as an attached flyer you really need to be a C-17 IP first before going into contingency response (able to pay back locals to stay in good graces with the flying Sq, and even get on the road a bit since your beans are much less).
 

As an attached AC the odds of the Sq giving you an IP upgrade are slim to none. They will want to upgrade their own first. I never saw it happen in 4 years. You won’t have time for it and your CRG/CRW leadership probably won’t support sending you away for it.

[FLEA]

Do you still get airborne qualified in some CRGs? 

[supertrooper44]

1 minute ago, FLEA said:

Do you still get airborne qualified in some CRGs? 

435th at Ramstein has a handful of J-code billets for their airfield assessment UTC and the cop UTC.