Entrusting Airmen with deployed contracting needs

Published April 27, 2018
By Staff Sgt. William Banton
386th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs

SOUTHWEST ASIA -- The 386th Expeditionary Contract Squadron’s superintendent, Master Sgt. David King, used to have a computer slide show depicting the contracting career field since the Revolutionary War.

“It shows that at different points of different wars throughout our history, the ratio of military to contractors and their involvement,” said King. “Back in the Revolutionary War there was one contractor for every six military persons, now it is 1.5 contractors to every military person. That shows you what we do is a very unique skill set.”

For a squadron comprised of approximately 17 Airmen, the 386th ECONS’ unique skill set has infiltrated every aspect of day-to-day operations across the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing. For fiscal year 2018, the 386th ECONS has already contracted more than $21 million, about 71 percent of the wing’s fiscal predicted budget, with 95 percent going to local or host nation contractors.

“The Airmen working over there know exactly what the issues are and are able to anticipate the questions before they are asked,” said Maj. Alexander Dehner, 386th AEW Judge Advocate, who works with the 386th ECONS to legally review contracts prior to finalization. “They know [everything with the contracts are] complicated and they put in the time and attention appropriate for that.”

“Consider how much we trust them to handle, the kinds of budgets they work with, and at the end of the day they are the ones who can sign on the lines,” said Dehner.

In recent months contracting Airmen have worked to finalize a more than $20 million vehicle lease renewal. It is just one example of the work 386th ECONS coordinates with U.S. Air Forces Central Command and Air Combat Command while making sure each contract is publicized correctly.

The team makes sure all contracts they touch are handled in accordance with a wide array of government regulations and procedures but sometimes the methods change in the deployed environment.

Stateside government vehicle lease contracts are done through the General Services Administration in partnership with Logistic Readiness Squadrons. Local LRSs do an annual validation of vehicles, which higher headquarters uses to determine how many vehicles are needed at each wing to complete the mission. GSA will then process the request to lease the vehicles through specific locations.

“Here things aren’t structured the same, so it’s really up to us to fill the GSA gap,” said Master Sgt. Joseph Weber, 386th ECONS Base Operating, Support and Services flight chief. “I think a lot of it comes down to flexibility. We can provide support in a flexible way whereas at home station things are more rigid and those vehicles are allocated to specific organizations and they don’t deviate from that.”

The contract in Southwest Asia provides LRS with the flexibility to easily allocate leased vehicles to different locations or installations based on mission requirements and then reallocate them back. A requirement that isn’t as crucial at home stations.

“In the contracting world you have your base operational contracting, and then you have the higher systems level things – buying aircraft and that kind of stuff,” said Weber. “Then you have a third aspect of the acquisition processes, and that is supporting foreign military stuff. That is one thing we are doing now that none of us will probably ever do again.”

A foreign military sale is the process when the U.S. partners with an allied military to help them purchase required equipment or services, such as maintenance contracts.

“It’s an opportunity that these guys are getting that a lot of their other peers aren’t,” said Capt. Jason Butler, 386th ECONS Government Purchases Card flight commander. “It’s a different style and flavor of contracting that is not typical for deployments.”

Butler said it not only helps build trust in coalition partnerships but our allies want to use this service because U.S. contracting personnel are some of the best at doing this in the world.

“What we do is pretty serious,” said King. “When you multiply all that by how many bases we have in Southwest Asia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and all the different places we are at, it starts to add up to a lot, and all those places have contracts.”