News

Reserve pilot nominee for international affairs excellence award

  • Published
  • By Sandra Pishner
  • 446th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
MCCHORD FIELD, Wash. --  One of our own has been nominated for an award that recognizes one individual for outstanding and innovative contributions with the greatest impact on International Affairs and most effective in building, sustaining, expanding, and guiding international relationships.

Lt. Col. Benjamin Morley, 313th Airlift Squadron, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, is Air Force Reserve Command's nominee for the 2013 USAF International Affairs Excellence Award. Morley served as the mission commander for 60-plus personnel team in support of French operations in Mali in 2013.

The award recognizes contributions to activities such as political-military assessment, security assistance and cooperation, international professional development, and interagency liaison, to name a few. It also includes activities that build interoperable coalition capabilities through initiatives such as exercises, training, foreign military sales, information sharing, disclosure, and personnel exchanges.

On Jan. 20, 2013, just hours after receiving a call, Morley deployed to Istres, France where he began a whirlwind series of up to 20-hour days managing the complicated logistics of transporting French troops and equipment to the war-torn African nation.

"Our role, in short, was to establish a base of operations to launch and recover C-17 missions," Morley explains.

The French gave Morley's team an empty hangar and an office to set up operations in, and within 16 hours of arriving, they launched their first mission.

"We provided daily airlift for one month before our portion of the mission was completed," said Morley. "A Contingency Response Team from McGuire supplied logistics support (satellite uplink equipment, aerial port, command post personnel) while we provided maintenance, stage managers, tactics and intel, AFORMS and five aircrew with three aircraft."

The award selection board will look for evidence of leadership traits, such as initiative, judgment, decisiveness, persistence, etc., that were instrumental in the nominee's achievements.
 
"Colonel Morley was a critical enabler for Air Force expeditionary air and space forces conducting global international support operations in 2013," said Lt. Col. Brendan Harrison, 313th AS senior executive officer. "He built interoperable coalition capabilities as the lynchpin in establishing mobility support for joint deployed efforts between France and Africa."

Persistence was never more required than when working logistical issues for the aircrews and maintenance Airmen.

"As an operations mission commander, my team and I routinely work complex logistics issues," said Morley, the only Reservist on the mission. "That includes hotels, transportation, communication, meals; all the things aircrews need when they get to a location."

Because of the limited amount of hotel rooms within the town of Istres, Airmen had to be billeted in several different hotels.

"I spent a lot of my time off base brokering lodging arrangements with two key hotel managers, meeting with them at their offices. They spoke enough English; I spoke enough French to accomplish the task."

These hotels were smaller and could not space block the rooms for the entire duration of the team's stay, forcing Morley to move team members sometimes twice a week.

"To alleviate additional movements, my team members agreed to double, triple and, in once case, fit four guys to one of the larger hotel rooms," said Morley. "Many times I received calls from a hotel informing me I had to move some of my personnel out of their rooms; within two hours. Sometimes these were maintenance troops on night shift who had just returned to their rooms, requiring us to wake them up, pack their gear and literally go sleep in the lobby while I orchestrated their movement to one of the other hotels with availability."

Despite the logistical ground issues Morley, a 23-year veteran with more than 4,000 flying hours said that for him, the most challenging aspect of the mission was the short-notice airlift tasks driven by real-world necessity. "As operations mission commander, I take the best strategic level planning from Air Force and joint headquarters, and then execute the plan," Morley said. "We match up the aircrews and jets that are on station and we press the button."

The 2013 USAF International Affairs Excellence Award is presented by the Secretary of the Air Force in the spring of each year.