JOINT BASE MCGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST, N.J. —
Members of the 621st Contingency Response Wing recently returned home from an alert mission in Niger on August 15. The operation was a deliberate drawdown which ended 10 years of operations within the area of responsibility.
“The 321 Contingency Response Squadron was tasked to close airbase operations in Niger and assist in the redeployment of nearly 1,000 mission partners,” said Maj. Nicholas Strobel, 621st Contingency Response Element Director of Operations. “The base closures highlighted the breadth of capabilities within the CR enterprise and the ability of CR airmen to adapt to a rapidly-changing environment.”
The CR provides a multi-capable force that is trained to handle normal operations of an airbase. With 42 AFSCs in one unit, the CR can speak to any operation and integrate with mission partners effortlessly while addressing any concerns and meeting commanders’ intent. Due to limited forces on the ground, contingency response members in other AFSCs are trained and capable of augmenting those teams. For this mission, intelligence personnel positioned palletized cargo with forklifts and weather technicians parked aircraft. Two air advisors from the 818th Mobility Support Advisory Squadron were able to translate French and communicate cultural differences to improve the team’s relationship with the Nigerien government.
“Everyone took on jobs outside of their core technical areas to keep most base functions available until the very last moment,” said Lt. Col. Collin Lohr, 321st CRS commander. “The results of those efforts speak for themselves; we finished operations six weeks ahead of expectations.”
Strobel explained that the vast amount of AFSCs that continuously train and work side-by-side creates a dynamic of generating new ideas and many times streamlining processes which would otherwise slow down operations due to a single-AFSC mindset.
Many times, the CR is asked to mobilize, and the mission requirements are never the same and are many times not fully defined. However, closing airbases is nothing new to the 321 CRS who deployed in support of operations in Kabul and Bagram in 2021.
“The CR is the best team in the Air Force to handle the most challenging and dynamic situations and it is always an honor to be a part of the mission,” said Strobel. “Everyone’s tenacity and dedication to the mission inspires those around them to step up and work that much harder during the grind. When the CR shows to a location you can be assured that they will not stop moving forward until the mission is complete.”
