451st ECS teams up, cross miles to achieve mission

Published May 10, 2010
By Tech. Sgt. Renni Thornton
451st Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs

KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan -- Members of the 451st Expeditionary Communications Squadron started out providing minimal support and ended up setting milestones for 451st Air Expeditionary Wing units located at Camp Bastion.

"When we first got called out there in December, we were going to assist the HH-60 unit, which needed radio support. At the same time, the contingency staging facility and aeromedical evacuation teams were starting to stand up, and they needed communications support too. They needed phone lines and computer lines set up for them," said Tech. Sgt. Loc Pham, 451st ECS radio and satellite systems work center.

"One of the biggest challenges was interfacing with the Marine communications support network as well because they were the supporting agency at Camp Bastion. And they were also supporting the British forces there too," said Sergeant Pham.

As a result, several members from the 451st ECS journeyed to Helmand province frequently to give as much support as possible.

"We ran thousands of feet of cable so those Air Force units could have connectivity to do their jobs. They needed computers and phone lines. They even needed tents set up and we helped with those too," said Sergeant Pham.

Team members from the infrastructure work center also made trips to Camp Bastion to assist.

"One of the challenges we helped the Marines resolve was finding a way to streamline the network so that all the users would be able to get connectivity but yet not overwhelm the system," said Tech. Sgt. Tim Crouch, 451st ECS network infrastructure work center.

For the radio crew, the Comm team deployed portable satellite systems to assist units like the pararescuemen, who rely on communications to do their job.

"One of the reasons we assisted was they had to have a structure in order for us to lay the cable in," said Master Sgt. Jesus Romero, NCOIC, 451st ECS, cable systems work center.

"We ended up laying 3,500 feet of fiber cable for data and voice lines. First we finished the CASF. Then we went out to the maintainers to give them connectivity but they were just moving in. They didn't even have a tent up. They had to have a structure in order for us to lay the fiber cables so we also helped them get facilities set up," said Sergeant Romero.

Other team members from the cyber surety work center travelled to Camp Bastion and spent 11 days building web-proxy servers from scratch.

"We had to make sure they each had a policy on it. The twist was it had to be a Marine policy. That was a first for us. We are used to writing Air Force policies but to write a Marine policy was challenging," said Tech. Sgt. Ty Henrichsmeyer, 451st ECS cyber surety work center.

The policy allows caching of sites so that multiple people can access the same
website without all of them being on the system at once," said Sergeant Henrichsmeyer. Less traffic on the external link frees up bandwidth, he said.

Working together, the two services came up with a solution that helped the Marine communications team receive more equipment to handle the amount of users they now have.

"The Marine network was now hosting more users than the equipment was designed for", said Sergeant Henrichsmeyer. It had to be reconfigured, he said.

One of the best parts and also most challenging parts of this project, said Sergeant Crouch, was figuring out a way to interface U.S. Air Forces onto British fiber network and the Marine network.
"That was the big deal--trying to get everyone talking to each other. And we did it," he said.