Prime BEEF Day: 21st CES conducts a beddown exercise for monthly training

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Tiffany Lundberg
  • 21st Space Wing Public Affairs
Approximately 100 21st Civil Engineer Squadron Airmen came together for their monthly training, or Prime Base Engineer Emergency Force day, May 18, at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado.

For one day a month, the 21st CES conducts home-station contingency training to maintain and hone in their response skills required by Air Force Instruction 10-210, Prime Base Engineer Emergency Force Program. This month, eight shops came together to complete a specific scenario given to them. The squadron was split into two teams, one team completed beddown planning and the other team executed beddown planning by erecting a portion of a tent city.

The scenario included bedding down approximately 2500 troops, 23 aircraft and operational space assets.

“We wanted to include some of the space mission to make it more Peterson AFB specific,” said Maj. Rachel Hamlyn, 21st CES operations flight commander. “The Airmen on the planning team took the requirements presented in the scenario and developed a plan for tents, electrical loads, power generation, water and fuels. Engineer assistants drafted the actual plan to show where everything would be laid down within an air base as part of the scenario.”

“Our team of 30 planners from eight different (Air Force Specialty Codes) were able to design a small city of about 400 facilities in the span of eight hours which included the necessary water and waste water treatment plants, power plants, and corresponding utility line infrastructure,” said Capt Matthew Akaydin, 21st CES operations engineering element chief. “It’s truly humbling to watch the different functional experts working with each other to get a viable plan on paper in less than a day to support 2,500 people and three separate missions.”

The other team executed setting up a portion of the airbase.

“This hands on portion of the beddown is what we would actually do on the ground setting up tents, hooking them up to power, setting up air conditioning, and additional tasks like that,” said 1st Lt. Jeannette Dy, 21st CES readiness and emergency management flight commander. “We wanted to give the Airmen a chance to hone in on their skills. Here, they can do the tasks multiple times and make mistakes to learn from them which really helps when we are down range putting these skills to use.”

For this particular Prime BEEF Day, the initial exercise planning team reached out to Team Pete space control squadrons to get a better understanding on what space operators need in particular in deployed locations.

The planning team then implemented the support requirements to the exercise participants, said Dy. Including space assets in this month’s exercise helped not only provide the 21st CES Airmen a better understanding on what they can do to support space operations but also the space operators a better understanding on what the 21st CES can provide them.

For most Prime BEEF days, the units mainly trained within their respective shops. This month, the units came together, to train together.

“We have 12 enlisted civil engineer career fields within our squadron; this was a great opportunity for eight of them to come together and train,” said Hamlyn. “The goal of this month’s Prime BEEF day was to train, increase contingency skills, and to build confidence.”