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Being part of an excellent team

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Christopher A. Marasky
  • 51st Fighter Wing Public Affairs
OSAN AIR BASE, Republic of Korea --  "Excellence in all we do" is a core value of the Air Force, and a way of life for Team Osan.
For members of the 51st Fighter Wing Mission Planning Cell, the next few weeks will provide an opportunity to show the rest of the Air Force the excellence of the Mustang Stampede.

The team will be flying to Washington D.C. to compete in the Chief of Staff Team Excellence award on the 22nd of September.

The Chief of Staff Team Excellence Award recognizes outstanding team performance and shares best practices within the Air Force. It promotes a systematic approach for enhancing mission capability, improving operational performance, and ensuring sustained results.

The 51st team is one of 22 total teams that will be competing for the award, and one of only two teams to represent Pacific Air Forces at the competition.

"Obviously, by the nature, it's a privilege to represent the 51st MPC, and all of the 35 people who have been working on this project for the last 2 years," said Major Gregory D. Thornton, team lead for the competition.

For the Competition, each team will be responsible for creating and manning an exhibit booth, as well as making at 15-minute presentation to a panel of judges, followed by a 10 minute question and answer session.

Each team was picked by their major command by an awards package method, based on the criteria for the program. Winners were selected and sent to the Air Force level to go to Washington D.C. and compete.

The 51st MPC team won for many innovations, a few of which include creating a software that automates portions of the mission planning cycle, saving time and freeing up war fighters in times of need.

They also streamlined time saving-methods to share information with their Republic of Korea Air Force counterparts in the mission planning phase during wartime.

"We've taken our job and processes and streamlined them, saving valuable time for the base and our counterparts," said Captain Jimmy Jones, a member of the 36th Fighter Squadron, and a member of the 51st MPC team.

The Osan team is confident about the processes they've made, and will take that confidence to Washington D.C., where they will be one of the smaller teams at the competition.

The CSTEA award allows for teams in size of up to 30 people, and Team Osan will be sending four individuals from the MPC. Due to the two year window of eligibility for the award, and the high turnover rate at Osan, there are very few remaining members of the original team.

"We're one of the smaller teams competing for this award, and that's pretty significant," said Major Thornton. "Only about eight of the original thirty people are left, and only four of us can make the trip."

That doesn't affect the team morale though, as the unique challenge of training and working at Osan prepares them for the competition.

"We're going against teams that deal with much larger budgets and returns," said Major Thornton. "Ours is war fighter oriented, from targeting to what the MPC develops, and getting it to the pilot. It's more of an intangible benefit; it's about making things easier, more accurate and safer for the war fighter."

Win or lose, the 51st MPC team looks forward to sharing the new processes that have been developed here at Osan with the rest of the Air Force.