An official website of the United States government
A .mil website belongs to an official U.S. Department of Defense organization in the United States.
A lock (lock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .mil website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

MOC: maintenance choreographed

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Phillip Butterfield
  • 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
JOINT BASE BALAD, Iraq --  Chaos, confusion and frustration: a three-headed monster that hovers over most busy flightlines, Joint Base Balad needs a knight in shining armor.

The 332nd Expeditionary Maintenance Group's Maintenance Operations Center is that knight whose job it is to tame and control this beast and help make Balad's aircraft maintenance effecient.

MOC coordinates and organizes all flightline operations, said Tech. Sgt. William Lee, 332 EMXG MOC NCO in charge. MOC also coordinates maintenance back shop support for flightline maintainers. This lets the aircraft mechanics concentrate on making repairs, not stopping to call the back shops for help.

"If the MOC didn't exist, work on the flightline would be slower, less efficient, and mistakes would happen," said Sergeant Lee, a native of Phoenix, Ariz., deployed from Misawa Air Base, Japan. "Without us, you may have fuel trucks trying to gas up aircraft that aren't ready for flight, leaving aircraft empty and missing their scheduled sortie."

Besides coordinating and organizing maintenance activities for maximum efficiency.

MOC tracks and organizes aircraft takeoff and landing times, maintenance actions, procedures followed during flightline emergencies, and aircraft configurations in a database, said Sergeant Lee.

"MOC is a force multiplier," said Staff Sgt. Benjamin Nash, 332 EMXG MOC controller. We act as a central hub of maintenance communication, organization and information gathering. Wing leadership uses the information to determine flight schedules and make decisions on how to employ the aircraft to accomplish the mission; at times, it can get a little hectic depending on the operations tempo. Nevertheless, we can handle it."

MOC also has the ability to pull information from aircraft archives. This information is used to identify aircraft maintenance trends, which aids in finding the root cause of the aircraft malfunction, said Sergeant Nash, a native of Queens, N.Y., deployed from Shaw Air Force Base, S.C.

"Working at the MOC has been a great experience," said Sergeant Nash. "Being a maintainer on the flightline you just see and understand what's happening right in front of you. But when you come to the MOC you get a broader picture of the whole maintenance entity and how everything works from the top down."