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File: aacep_21.txt
21
the tents . The first tent took about four hours to construct . By
the third or fourth tent, this was down to less than one hour.40
Technical Orders described the design and assembly of the
equipment and also listed the part numbers to facilitate ordering
spare parts. These were supposed to accompany the different pieces
of Harvest Falcon equipment delivered to the sites. However, few
sites received them. Equipment was either so new that a Technical
Order had not been developed or linsufficientt quantities of TOs were
available. The 4449 th Mobility Support Squadron, Hollomen AFB, New
Mexico, only maintained three deployable TO sets . These were
quickly distributed in early August and the later sites had to
scramble. Finally, HQ TAC/DE sent boxes of TOs to CENTAF/DE and
the staff spent hours at the copying machine making sufficient
quantities to distribute to the sites.4
Delivery of the Harvest Falcon equipment complicated the bare
base construction. Boxes containing critical pieces sometimes did
not arrive when they are needed or were missing parts. For
example, a shower/shave unit would arrive and be erected, but no
PVC pipe was on hand to connect the facility to the water source.
Sometimes the equipment arrived on base but was either misplaced or
"borrowed" by another organization. Harvest Falcon assets were
delivered to bases with few markings other than the name of the
base. Whoever happened to be on the fllghtline when the materials
arrived had first opportunity to claim it . Several site engineers
permanently positioned a Representative from their team on the
flightline to monitor and claim what was rightly theirs. Of
course, when other services jointly occupied the same base, this
became even more critical.42
The War Readiness Spares Kits {WRSK ) for several Harvest
Falcon items often did not accompany the item or were incomplete.
In October 1991, CENTAF reported, "We only have to date 6 0 percent
of the required WRSK kits in theater for electrical generators and
the fill rate on some of the kits is less than 30 percent."43
Inevitably the most critical items or those which broke down first
were the items missing from the kits. Filters for generators were
scarce and the engineers resorted to using panty hose. The WRSK
shortage forced operators to "abuse" their equipment. Many
generators were operated for sixteen maintenance cycles without any
routine maintenance . 44
A major problem for E & S personnel was their inability to
monitor the prepositioned equipment (primarily Harvest Falcon
assets ) and vehicles. The Air Force Logistics community had
responsibility for the materiel stored at the propositioning sites
and its delivery to the bases. The user of most of the
propositioned equipment, Engineering and Services personnel, had no
control over it until it arrived on base. Engineers arrived at
sites unsure about when the Harvest Falcon equipment was scheduled
to arrive, how much was coming, or exactly what was coming. The
CENTAF/DE staff f could only pass requirements for propositioned
as sets to the CENTAF/LG staff f to work, based on CENTAF planning or
input from the sites. However, CENTAF/DE never had an approximate
inventory of the propositioned assets during the deployment. In
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