NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, Nev. - More than 40 Airmen from the logistics and maintenance career fields came together Aug. 22 through 26, for the first ever Logistics Tactics Conference.
The LOGTAC conference was held here, allowing field and company grade officers along with senior enlisted leaders from both sides to integrate, identify complications and provide courses of action for problem areas in the career fields.
“Anywhere you go, the consensus is maintenance and logistics readiness has a huge divide between them,” said Capt. Wilbert Washington, 99th Logistics Readiness Squadron Materiel Management flight commander. “The point of LOGTAC is to close some of those gaps and address problems to help increase sortie production, not only in Air Combat Command but eventually Air Force wide.”
The logistics officer’s association convened and came up with the problem areas to discuss including F-35 operational improvement, the grey areas between the maintenance groups and logistics readiness units and decentralized materiel support team members.
“I was part of the grey book team as a subject matter expert to figure out what we would need to focus on from both careers as far as regulations and guidelines,” said Chief Master Sgt. Edward Watson, Air Combat Command Materiel Management policy chief. “The grey book can assist without having to look up countless Air Force Instructions and regulations.”
The book provides basic organization constructs and responsibilities, offers insight to the importance of supply chain management to execute wing flying hour programs, and captures “best practices” being utilized across the Air Force.
“It’s essentially a ‘quick reference’ guide,” said Watson. “It’s not a policy, but it does incorporate things from policy along with best practices from different bases, who to go to for particular programs or what AFI to search in and references to go along.”
The week-long conference allowed the Airmen opportunity to reduce some of the short falls allowing for a more cohesive way of communication.
“Anytime you get a population like this together, who can learn from each other, that’s always going to be best for the Air Force,” said Watson. “You build these relationships and we’re all linked based off of our particular function. I can picture our future Airmen taking this and it becoming a living document, updating whenever LOGTAC meets.”