Week 7 – AEF, Open Ranks, EMLEX

Air and Space Expeditionary Force (AEF)

Mock deployment time.  Air and Space Expeditionary Force (AEF) is where the majority of cadets will finish up their GLPs.  Some cadets (like myself) will be in a wing leadership position, while others will be in charge of teams that go out into the play area to compete missions.  This is the next step up from WELPS, with paintball guns, opposing forces, and a lot more moving parts.  The OTS staff will be there to grade everyone and provide a little guidance, but the cadets are left to fend for themselves for the most part.  Communication and accountability are key in this exercise.  Again, go through your chain of command, understand the problem at hand, and everything should go well.  Delegation is also important, as you don’t have to complete every little task, but you can have others do that for you.

Open Ranks & Drill Competition

The second open ranks is the same as the first.  I’ve heard that in the past the second one is done in blues but we were in ABUs.  Following open ranks we had a drill competition.  Normally, a flight is told to perform certain drill commands in a box that is set up on the drill pad.  For our class, two flights were put in the box at the same time and told to execute the moves.  This turned out to be a ton of fun for everyone as well as the MTI’s grading us.

Emergency Leadership Exercise (EMLEX)

EMLEX was one of the final GLP’s that our class did.  It was designed to give us a sense of how a city would respond to a natural disaster.  Much like AEF there were people in charge of the operations, as well as people in charge of the missions themselves.  It was an interesting exercise, but walkie talkie communication problems made it extremely frustrating.

In my OTS Weeks 2015 posts I refer to the EMLEX as the MARE.

– airforceotsguy

AFEX 2 (Wargames)

AFEX 2 was also done this week.  Similar to the first but with someone else in charge and with a new situation.  Again, practice the simulation so you know which assets you have available and where those assets are.