Civic leaders get closer look at base

  • Published
  • By Luke Waack
  • JBER PAO
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska --  For three days, dozens of civilian chief executive officers, company presidents and managers toured Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson as part of the Joint Civilian Orientation Conference's Alaska visit.

Monday through Wednesday, Air Force Lt. Gen. Dana T. Atkins, Alaskan Command commander hosted the delegation.

Approximately 50 civic leaders received briefings about what missions the military in Alaska performs on a regular basis and the civilians saw both Air Force and Army units in action.

For some of the visitors, it was their first time on a military installation.

"I think it's an incredible experience that I wish more people could participate in. It really gives you an insight into things you otherwise wouldn't get to see. It's just an amazing opportunity and I've learned a lot," said Elizabeth Bowles, Aristotle Inc. president and general counsel.

The delegation is special according to the ALCOM commander.

"These are civilians that have been nominated by respective commanders from their geographic locations throughout the United States" Atkins said. "Typically, they are individuals who have some significant influence in their host communities and often a lot of the issues we deal with in the military are those community relations. So our ability to share our story, our mission, certainly the expertise and the competency of our service members is to our benefit now, so they can go back and tell our story and then sometimes help us resolve those local issues that are often difficult for us to do on our own."

One main idea military leaders communicated to the civic leaders was that of the military's joint environment.

"Today, we're trying to leverage joint. We're really fortunate here at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson to have the contributions of the United States Air Force, the Army National Guard, the Air National Guard and the U.S. Army Alaska," Atkins said. "So we're trying to show them as broad - spectrum wise - a view of what we're doing up here in Alaska. We just showed them an Alert Scramble. We fly the Alaska NORAD region up here, so we're doing both Operation Noble Eagle and Northern Sovereignty operations, so we showed them our F-22s that are on alert and they scramble and that's pretty exciting."

The JCOC participants agreed.

"The coolest thing I've seen all day is the launch of the (F-22) Raptor," Bowles said.
While the equipment demonstrations were great, she said, the briefings about the various missions of Alaskan Command were the best part.

"I learned a lot from the briefings about what this base does. I don't think that people have a concept of what the military does on a day to day basis, and I think that's the most valuable thing."