SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine — Nearly 80 members of the 265th Combat Communications Squadron returned Tuesday from a nearly monthlong deployment to Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, in support of the Global Lightning training exercise.
More than 6,500 members from the Air Force Reserve, Army Reserve and Navy, along with British, Saudi and Canadian forces, participated in the exercise, which took place from May 30 to June 23.
“I am very proud of these airmen and our Maine Air National Guard,” Gov. Paul LePage said. “Our soldiers and airmen are always ready to answer the call, and they constantly strive for excellence in all that they do.”
The combat sustainment training was part of the annual Global Medic and Patriot Warrior exercises, which respectively are the Army and Air Reserve medical training exercises that encompass the entirety of patient care.
“The exercise provided the 265th with an outstanding combat communications deployment scenario,” Brig. Gen. Gerard F. Bolduc, acting adjutant general for the Maine National Guard, said.
“This highly realistic training closely resembles an actual combat deployment, which better prepares our airmen to respond rapidly to a real world mission,” Bolduc said.
The operations serve to exercise initial patient evacuation from the field until final placement within a treatment facility, using rotary and fixed-winged aircraft.
The 265th arrived at the deployed location along with their 17 aircraft pallets of communications equipment using C-5 aircraft out of Westover, Massachusetts.
During the mission, the airmen maintained network communications circuits supporting the joint military operations, tracked communications tasking orders to completion, built network user accounts, added user email accounts and computer nodes to the deployed network, distributed Voice over Internet Protocol phones to military partners, and processed and tracked authorized service interruptions.
The unit also configured laptops for personnel with the Army Reserve, Army National Guard, Air Force Reserve, Navy Reserve
and Department of Defense civilians for use on the specialized network.
Six members of the unit are being recognized by the U.S. Army Medical and Training Command for their outstanding accomplishments.
“At every unit at which I stopped today, without fail, the personnel had nothing but praise for the support of the Air Guard,” wrote Col. Barry N. Birdwell, senior signal officer for Medical Readiness and Training Command out of Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
“I’ve worked with Air Guard Combat Communications Squadrons every year since 2007, and the airmen are always true professionals who are technically and tactically proficient,” he said.