Tabletop exercise establishes BOS operations for Lead Wing Published May 20, 2022 By Tech. Sgt. William A. O’Brien 55th Wing Public Affairs OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, Neb. -- The 55th Wing held a two-day base operations support tabletop exercise to identify the required manpower and equipment needed for a Lead Wing to operate against a near-peer adversary in a contested environment May 16-17. “This is part of 55th Wing’s pivot to becoming a Lead Wing under agile combat deployment,” said Maj. James Black, Air Combat Command Agile Battle Lab director of operations. “A BOS TTX is figuring out how is the 55th Wing going to establish bases to enable combat sortie generation and all the things that incorporates. The goal of this exercise is to ask the right questions so when you do it for real, you're going in with the right mindset.” The team of about 50 NCOs and officers from across all base agencies ran through scenarios and talked through their minimum requirements for each of them and any potential impacts on other agencies and operations. “The participants represent the agencies responsible for BOS activities largely from the mission support group and medical group as well as a few other agencies that support the base, explained 1st Lt. Joseph Szelagiewicz, 55th Wing Logistics program manager. “Everybody here has a strong understanding of what their team does, but bringing them all together gives us the chance to work through how their responsibilities overlap with one another and what we need to make sure those teams are able to work effectively side by side in a crisis or contested situation.” The Warhawks went over a variety of potential scenarios that could arise while operating in a contested environment. By having each unit talk through their role in the particular situation, they developed a checklist and identified items requiring preplanning for each scenario. “We’re going take the pages of notes we compiled and create checklists so when we forward deploy, we know what we need to be looking at beforehand and identify risks our leadership may need to take,” he said. “By pre-identifying them, we can streamline waiver authority or be prepared to make hard decisions and have the information beforehand and be ready for anything that arises.” This is the third Lead Wing exercise held by the Fightin’ Fifty-Fifth since being designated as a Lead Wing in January. “They’re absolutely killing it and asking all the right questions," said Black. "You guys are doing a great job and I am really happy to see the progress you’re making.”