Air Force trains MPs for base ops

  • Published
  • By Luke Waack
  • JBER PAO
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska --  The 673d Security Forces Squadron spent five days of the last week with Army Military Police, identifying the differences in military services for those who will augment Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.

Airmen and Soldiers went over the differences in rank structure, flight line driving, report writing, regulations for both services, radio etiquette, and much more.

"There will be orientation to Air Force processes because the dispatch and the command and control will be Air Force run," said Air Force Lt. Col. Erik Bruce, 673d Security Forces commander, "But the best part is we have trained Military Police professionals who are already up to speed on the skills and requirements of being a police officer, we just need to orient them to a new way of doing business."

"The first expectation I have is 'one team, one fight', so the goal is to get everybody on the same page," Bruce said. "We've also conducted orientation with the Air Force patrolmen on the simple things including basic rank identification and the significant benefits of our new fully-joint response capability."

The base environment will now reflect one aspect of the deployed theater, said Army Lt. Col. David Oberlander, 793rd Military Police Battalion commander.

"We do a lot of joint operations together, as it is right now," said Oberlander. "When we go down range and we do police training teams or police mentorship training teams it's both Army and Air Force."

"Our goals for joint basing are to prepare for the joint war or joint operations and working together in a garrison situation or at the home station is going to better prepare us for that mission," Bruce said.

JBER Security Forces are made up of more than service members, Bruce said.

"We are not just Air Force and Army active-duty," Bruce said, "We also have Department of the Army and soon to be Air Force civilians and Total Force representation in our extended active-duty Air National Guard members; we have contractors that are providing security at our installation gates so there's all kinds of uniforms combining for a single mission a single purpose - to provide security and law enforcement services to JBER."

One topic during the orientation was the use of LIDAR instead of the RADAR "guns" MPs were used to using for speed limit enforcement.

LIDAR has been in use by Air Force Security Forces at JBER for several years, said Air Force Staff Sgt. Jessica Tiihonen, 673d Security Forces Squadron, and now Army MPs are trained in its use. She was one of several Air Force instructors during the training.

"I've been teaching LIDAR, the laser traffic enforcement gun and also flight line driving, which was something that was completely new to them, because they've never driven or operated on an airfield before," Tiihonen said.

Other subjects covered by the Air Force instructors were differences in the noncommissioned rank structure and types of aircraft.

"One of the things we had to discuss that we had to compare and show them was the organizational structures," said Tech. Sgt. Jarod Cappon, 673d Security Forces Squadron. "More or less, we've got a lot of the same fundamental training so one of the biggest new things we had to show them was Protection Level Resources - basically Air Force assets like our fighters and our heavy aircraft."

With all members of the team trained for the joint mission, security forces are ready to get to work.