POPE ARMY AIRFIELD, N.C. -- The 43rd Air Mobility Operations Group (AMOG) was evaluated on a unit effectiveness inspection Feb. 5 to Feb. 9, 2024. This type of inspection focuses on adherence to Air Force Instructions and other governing regulations for different career fields across the installation.
Prior to these events, Team Pope Airmen were instructed to review Management Internal Control Toolset (MICT), a program designed to provide an interactive application designed to help all levels of leadership implement the self-inspection program and checklist management requirements defined in AFI 90-201 and replicate adherence in their respective units in day-to-day operations.
“On a recurring cycle, the Air Force is going to evaluate if we are effective and if are we able to do our jobs,” said Chief Master Sgt. Jerry Brammer, 43rd AMOG command chief. “This is not just from a mission standpoint but are we taking care of programs and people in a holistic look.”
The team of inspectors are composed of subject matter experts across a plethora of career fields from Air Mobility Command (AMC). For the 43rd AMOG's inspection, members were sent from different Air Force Bases from Scott to MacDill. During their time here, they held daily reporting and evaluating sessions to assess their findings and embedded themselves within the units they were inspecting.
“Our teams are divided into the Air Force Inspection Agency’s four Major Graded Areas (MGAs): Managing Resources, Leading People, Improving the Unit and Executing the Mission,” explained Maj. Ben Busler, AMC IG deputy team chief. “Additionally, the entire team will apply additional scrutiny in area’s the Wing/Group Commander requests.
“The AMC Functional Area Managers (FAM) and Program Oversight Authorities (POA) are often on our inspection team,” Busler continued. “If they are unavailable, they provide a list of subject matter experts to attend. Our inspectors are almost always a Total Force team, including our recent inspection that had one U.S. Air Force Reserve Airman and one Air National Guard Airman.”
Although there may be a misconception across the Air Force concerning these inspections, the true purpose is to advise career fields on standardization of processes. Furthermore, focusing on interoperability of different units and sections conducting business. The end goal being the ensuring of air power, air dominance and air mobility anywhere in the world.
“This helps us validate and verify some of the strengths we have here at Pope in our programs and also quantify some of the areas we are lacking resources,” said Col. Jason Wolff, 43rd AMOG deputy commander. “We never want to miss an opportunity to support our Airmen and civilians doing great things. It was an incredible effort to have the team here to identify unknown noncompliance – things we didn’t know we should be looking at and allow us to focus on those discrepancies.”
During the onset and throughout the inspection, members from Team Pope leadership welcomed the inspectors for their knowledge, skills and expertise on the functionality of the force.
“They have a great team that had the right expertise and experience to dig deep on our issues,” Wolff touted about the inspectors. “Pope is a stand-alone group doing multiple wing level activities and we appreciate a fresh look at what we do.”
At the completion of the week-long inspection, 43rd AMOG leadership received an out brief of the inspectors’ findings prior to routing to higher headquarters at AMC.
As the 43rd AMOG digests their evaluations, they will continue the mission of ensuring rapid global mobility throughout the year and beyond.
“The 43rd AMOG has proven multiple times that we can execute the mission and project the force anytime to anywhere," Wolff said. "The latest support to the 108th Air Defense Artillery Brigade by Task Force Gryphon proved that in October through November 2023. We have good Airmen who can do great things! What we need to fine tune is the documentation and keeping up on repetitions for our new personnel to be trained as well as our seasoned veterans.”