Freedom Wing “Highly Effective” at mission accomplishment

  • Published
  • By Christian Deluca
  • 514th Air Mobility Wing Public Affairs
Members of the Inspectors General Office of the Air Force Reserve Command interviewed and observed Airmen from the 514th Air Mobility Wing, May 19-22, to gauge the health and effectiveness of the wing.

What they found was an overall effective and adept wing, highly capable of executing their mission and improving upon their processes.

This was the Capstone of a biennial Unit Effectiveness Inspection process, which includes multiple self-inspections conducted on a regular basis. Units are graded either highly effective, effective, marginally effective, or not effective in four major areas; managing resources, improving the unit, leading people, and executing the mission.

“We’re looking to determine the overall health and culture of the unit,” Senior Master Sgt. James Hertzog, AFRC Inspectors General Office, Emergency Management Inspections manager said. “We are looking at the broad scope of the whole wing. We inspect just about everything, over the past two years, to come up with a general sense of how the wing is doing.”

The wing scored “effective” in the categories of managing resources and leading people, and “highly effective” in improving the unit and executing the mission.

“I can’t express how proud I am of the Airmen in the 514th AMW,” Col. David Pavey, 514th AMW commander said. “I knew we were good, but we did about as well we could on this inspection.

“I am especially proud of the highly exceptional grade we received on mission execution, because that’s what it all comes down to,” he added. “All of our efforts are for that. It’s a great validation of our Airmen’s work”

The self-examination process is fairly new and is run by the wing’s IG inspections office through the implementation of the Air Force’s electronic Management Internal Control Toolset (MICT) checklist, as well as, various vertical and horizontal inspections.

MICT uses an automated process to monitor and evaluate an organization, and its individual units’ compliance with Air Force directives.

The system allows Airmen to locate and track the improvements of deficiencies within their units, so they can improve and alleviate deficiencies possibly hidden from day-to-day work schedules.

“Under the new self-inspection program the best thing a unit can do is to do a lot of self-examination through the MICT process,” Pavey said. “The fact we have been using it and using it often was apparent to the inspection team before they even got here.”

Pavey highlighted the wing’s efficient use of the MICT system, as well as its focus on attention to detail and being mission-ready as the main reasons the wing did so well with the inspection.

“We maintain a high state of readiness here,” he said. “And that’s the focus of the wing. A lot of that got validated. I’m especially proud of our self-inspection program (IG office) and our safety office which both got the highest marks, I think, the inspectors have seen, to date, under this inspection system.”