JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska -- Malcolm Gladwell famously posited that it takes 10,000 hours of consistent effort to become a true expert in a given field of endeavor.
Sixty thousand hours, then, is world-class expertise, suitable for a hall of fame.
Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson’s 773rd Logistics Readiness Squadron’s airdrop supervisor, Ronnie Brinn, achieved that honor July 27 when he was inducted into the U.S. Army Quartermaster School’s Parachute Rigger Hall of Fame at Fort Lee, Virginia; he is one of only 114 inductees, selected for contributions to rigging doctrine and advancements.
Brinn is from a long line of military veterans and served 26 years in the Army. While he started his career in the communications field, after 10 years he reclassed as a parachute rigger when his former military occupational specialty was deemed obsolete.
“I already had a bunch of jumps,” Brinn said. “I liked doing that. I knew as a rigger, I’d always be jumping.
“I started on personnel chute packing,” he said. “That’s where you learn the dire need to always be sure – that’s the rigger motto, ‘I will be sure – always.’ Never rig anything you wouldn’t jump with yourself. And then, that discipline, you carry that with you. We’re not looking for excellence; we’re pushing for perfection.”
He retired as a first sergeant with JBER’s 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, in 2010, more than a decade before the unit was reflagged as the 2nd Brigade, 11th Airborne Division.
“My last deployment, in Afghanistan, was not good,” he said. “I held Soldiers and watched their lights go out. I had a lot of baggage. I was going to take a civilian job with the Wounded Warrior Battalion. A friend of mine told me he’d seen a rigger position on USAJobs, so I applied for the position with the 773rd LRS.
“That saved me, to be honest.”
The 773rd trains loadmasters and crews to be able to deliver supplies on target from a variety of cargo aircraft. To facilitate that training, Brinn and his team rig parachutes to as many as 10 heavy pallets and 10 to 15 smaller ones on an average week. ‘Smaller’ is relative; the container delivery systems can be up to 2,200 pounds; heavies can be upward of 3,600 pounds. For training, the shop uses rubber ‘lumber’ in stacks and weighted barrels to stand in for other cargo. Each must be padded against impact with the ground, secured to a board to roll smoothly out of a jet, and rigged with a parachute that will break away from the deposited goods instead of dragging them along the ground after landing.
But it’s not the numbers that led to Brinn’s induction into the hall of fame.
“From 1976 until three or four years ago, you had to be at least a chief warrant officer 4 or 5 to be nominated,” he explained. After the change proposal went all the way to the Pentagon, nomination standards were changed; noncommissioned officers and civilians are now eligible.
Regardless of rank, however, nominations require a specific contribution to the field.
“You could have four Silver Star medals and not qualify,” Brinn said. “The biggest criteria for someone to be nominated is what they’ve done for the field in terms of doctrine that changed something. It has to save lives, or changed the job in a way that made people safer.”
Brinn rewrote the Sling Load Inspector Certification Course, updating the doctrine for moving equipment with helicopters.
“I’m a Pathfinder and Pathfinder instructor,” he said, referring to the U.S. Army’s course which trains military personnel to set up parachute drop zones and helicopter landing zones for airborne and air assault missions as well as cargo drops. “People were doing things sling-loading that were dangerous and unnecessary, so we moved it closer to the Pathfinder operations manual.”
The downtime they have as the airdrop operations tempo has slowed has been difficult, he said.
“We love what we do. There’s not one troop who doesn’t love looking up at a parachute and saying ‘I did that.’”
The other challenge is the fact that the shop gets new Airmen, who train, then go to rigger school at Fort Lee, then return to continue their training.
“It’s a two-year process,” Brinn said. “And when they’re really qualified, then they get a permanent change of station. There’s turnover, which is why in 2010, when we took over duties from the Air National Guard during joint basing, they created three civilian positions – we’re needed for continuity.”
U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Ashley Romo, the superintendent of the Combat Mobility Flight, has worked with Brinn for about a year and a half.
“He’s my go-to guy,” she said. “He’s extremely knowledgeable. We bounce ideas off each other, and I take his input into consideration more than my own. He’s also easy to work with, and he’s definitely a mentor to the junior Airmen.”
Senior Airman Ryan Andrews, an aerial delivery specialist, has also worked with Brinn for about a year and a half.
“He’s very patient,” Andrews said. “It can be hard to be patient when you’re an expert, but he’s one of the most patient teachers I’ve ever worked with. He asks questions to understand our thought processes. He wants us to think about what we’re doing, and to get a better concept of what we’re trying to accomplish. He’s done a lot to bring rigging to where it is today, and at the end of the day, he reminds us we’re all human, that when you make a mistake you keep learning, and you take those lessons forward.”
Soon, Brinn said he plans to hang up his rigger cap; after his military career and time at JBER, he said, he and his wife plan to move to Kentucky.
“I’ll find something else to do,” he said. “I have degrees in environmental science and emergency management; I can find something to keep busy.”
Odds are, though, there will be a throughline.
“I’m a trainer,” he said. “This is what I do. I was an instructor. Getting a Soldier or an Airman, training them up, being able to say ‘I had something to do with that person being so good.’ That’s my favorite part.”