From the shadows: PMEL Airmen deliver precision to AOR

Published Aug. 8, 2008
By Senior Airman Clinton Atkins
379th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs

SOUTHWEST ASIA -- The door opens into a dimly-lit labyrinth of technology. The bright light from outside sears through revealing the truth behind the Air Force's precision of wartime capabilities.

Though they work from the shadows of the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing mission, the 379th Expeditionary Maintenance Squadron Precision Measurement Equipment Laboratory here tinker away relentlessly - glory is not a priority.

The shop's mission is to calibrate and repair test measurement and diagnostic equipment ultimately resulting in bombs dropped accurately on target. Equipment such as spectrum analyzers, torque wrenches, pressure gauges and missile guided test sets are meticulously fine-tuned to meet PMEL's four criteria of accuracy, reliability, traceability and safety.

"Most of the time people don't know PMEL exists until something needs to be fixed," said Tech. Sgt. Kevin Clyde, 379 EMXS test measurement diagnostic equipment quality assurance noncommissioned officer in charge.

"Our job is important because everything we calibrate gets traced back to the National Institute of Standards and Technology standards so we know the item is accurate," said Master Sgt. Joseph Farmer, 379 EMXS PMEL flight chief. "If it's traceable and has to have an accurate measurement done to it we're the ones who perform it."

Armed to the teeth with tools and gadgets, the 17-man PMEL flight is the sole calibration provider in the area of responsibility.

"It's kind of unique considering we support over 14,000 items," said Sergeant Farmer, deployed from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz. "A normal PMEL would have about 35 personnel for that amount of inventory. We're able to keep it down to 17 because we are a 24-hour operation here."

Each piece of equipment has an average inspection interval of three to six months, which can sometimes be overwhelming.

"We are way under-sized with one of the largest inventories in the Air Force," said Sergeant Clyde, a Yreka, Calif., native deployed from Travis AFB, Calif.

The PMEL provides calibration and support for 10 countries and more than 30 installations throughout the AOR. They also provide customer service to more than 268 customers. In the past three months, the crew has calibrated more than 3,450 pieces of equipment.

"Probably the heaviest workload here is torque wrenches and pressure gauges, which cover about 35 percent of the total items we see," Sergeant Farmer said.

PMEL is currently running at 80 percent capacity and divided into three locations due to limited space. A $750,000 facility currently under construction will solve the spacing issue and boost capacity to 90 percent with an increase in manning to 20 personnel, Sergeant Farmer said. Construction is expected to be completed in September.

"The stuff we don't have the equipment for we're able to do lateral support to other bases in the region," said the Kansas City, Mo., native. "The new building will eliminate half the amount of items we need to send out for lateral support."

The new facility will include a clean room, which will address one of the PMEL shop's greatest challenges - combating the climate.

"The climate here affects the temperature and humidity requirements for the laboratory," he said. "We have a bunch of dehumidifiers throughout the lab - they are constantly on to combat the humidity.

According to Sergeant Farmer, the humidity can have adverse effects on the shop's instrumentation and tools.

"Humidity is very bad for a lot of things we do," he said. "We have to keep the level of humidity high enough to prevent static electricity discharge and low enough to prevent corrosion."

Even though the humidity can hamper the way they do business, Airmen at the PMEL shop take pride in what Sergeant Farmer considers to be the most important aspect of their job - putting bombs on target accurately.

"When the [U.S. troops] were overrun in Afghanistan recently and [the 379 AEW] was able to accurately provide them with air cover by dropping bombs only on the Taliban," he said. "We know those bombs fell the way they were supposed to fall because of the measurements we did on the aircraft's missile guided test sets."

Calibrating a weapon system properly is the difference between hitting the target within a 100 feet and hitting the target within three feet.

"If we don't do our job they can't do their job, it's just that simple," he said.