Leaner 81st CS still keeps base communicating

Published July 20, 2011
By Steve Hoffmann
81st Training Wing Public Affairs

KEESLER AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. -- Where would Admiral James T. Kirk be without Spock? Still marooned on Ceti Alpha V? What would James Bond be without Q's ingenious gadgetry? And do you really think you'd be able to so easily share your precious photos of Junior with Memaw in Tulsa if it wasn't for the backend wizardry of Alan Cooper's Visual Basic programming language and graphical user interface and the Dartmouth professors, John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz who forged the way in 1964 with BASIC? Please. You'd still be plunking out go-to statements in MS-DOS.

"We make the magic happen," exclaimed Rodney McGruder, network infrastructure lead. The 81st Communications Squadron is the brains behind the brawn of Keesler's mission, the fluid that keeps the synapses firing.

To put it another way, if Keesler's mission were to make candy, the 81st Communications Squadron would be the nerve center to the entire Wonka factory. Working through the challenges of a recent military-to-civilian conversion and a migration to a more centralized Air Force network, the 81st CS continues to keep the base communicating with one
another. Whether it's person to person, person to plane, plane to computer, computer to computer or loudspeaker to everyone, the 81st CS keeps the base talking and listening.

"I think more than any other squadron on base, the 81st CS touches everyone. We're a lot bigger than people think," said Jack Parnell, installation spectrum manager. "Whether you're sending an e-mail or making a phone call, someone in the 81st CS had something to do with it."

And these days, the 81st CS is doing what they do with a lot less people. Three years ago, the 81st CS was to take part in an Office of Management and Budget A-76 study, which is designed to determine the most efficient way of performing its mission. The 81st CS was a primarily military organization with more than 200 personnel, a mix of mostly active duty and
then civilians. The Most Efficient Organization structure was to determine the impact of employing a smaller, mostly civilian personnel. But the study was cancelled and the 81st CS converted abruptly from a military to civilian organization. Now, the 81st CS is manned by 90 civilians and only 24 military enlisted personnel. "A benefit that this conversion brings is the greater continuity that civilians provide because they're here longer and we don't have to keep retraining," said John McKinley, the first civilian director for the 81st CS, rather than a
military squadron commander. "But a lot of these benefits have yet to be realized because many of us are still fairly new to the job."

With recent civilian hiring controls, the squadron is a little short staffed right now said McKinley. Regardless, the 81st CS continues to operate the navigational, meteorological and communication equipment that Keesler pilots rely on to fly planes. They manage the records and Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act requests, forms, publications, SharePoint, portal content and hardware tracking. They maintain all the phones, wireless devices, radios, routers, switches and the cables, fiber optics and airwaves that transmit base communications. When something goes wrong with your office computer equipment, they deliver the manpower to troubleshoot those problems. They even deliver the mail.

And then there are the network drives and the billions of bytes of information that must be authorized, protected, updated and available when Team Keesler needs it -- from the most sensitive, like the latest cyber warfare tactics, to the least, like the photo of the first sergeant dressed like Ebenezer Scrooge at your squadron holiday party from 1995.

In 2009, Keesler was the very first base to migrate to the Air Force's new centralized Air Force Network where all e-mail, Internet and network traffic is managed from a centralized location off base. Greater security, standardization, stability and cost savings by lessening manpower and service redundancies are the goals of this move.

But when the glitch happens and you need the tender loving touch of the 81st CS, their hands are often tied. However, they can still be a strong advocate and champion of your network issues. And if the problem resides in the hardware on top or under your desk, they are able to send computer support technicians to fix those problems.

"As the Air Force matures in its centralization process and gets the manpower and money to support the bases, these efficiencies will start to be realized," said Julie Noakley,
operations flight chief. "But this process is still in its infancy and there are some growing pains to go through."

"If base users retain nothing else, please get us involved early on any project," McKinley emphasized. "The 81st CS is here to support Keesler so let us help you."