Exercises and the Seat at the Table
Exercises are the only place the deployment machinery gets tested before it has to work for real. Contracting squadrons are often left out of them, not because anyone decided to exclude contracting, but because nobody from contracting was in the room when the exercise was designed.
01Why this matters
Everything in the previous five modules is a process that either works or does not, and there are only two ways to find out. One is an exercise. The other is a real tasking.
An exercise is where a UDM discovers that the roster was out of date, that a member's medical status was not what the system said, that nobody knew who to call about a country clearance, or that the squadron's understanding of its own deployment line was three reorganizations old. All of those cost a few uncomfortable hours during an exercise. The same discoveries during a real tasking cost considerably more.
Why contracting gets left out
Exercise scenarios are usually built by people who think in terms of the functions they know. Operations, maintenance, medical, security forces, and civil engineering write themselves into a wing exercise because their role in a contingency is obvious to the person building the scenario.
Contracting support is just as necessary at a deployed location and much less visible from the outside. Somebody has to buy the things the scenario assumes are there. That connection is clear from inside a contracting squadron and not clear from anywhere else, which means it only gets made if somebody from the squadron makes it.
Exercise planning runs on deployment vocabulary: taskings, sourcing, timelines, processing lines, readiness reporting. A UDM already speaks all of it, which makes the UDM the person in the squadron who can sit in a planning meeting and contribute rather than translate. That is a better reason to be in the room than seniority.
02Getting the seat
Wing exercises are planned months in advance by a planning team, and the scenario hardens well before anyone executes it. Showing up during execution week to ask for contracting involvement is asking for a favor. Showing up during planning is offering something.
The version that works
Exercise planners are usually short of two things: realistic injects and people willing to write them. A UDM who arrives with drafted contracting injects, ready to drop into the scenario, is solving a problem for the planning team rather than adding to their workload. That is a substantially easier conversation than asking to be included in the abstract.
The Installation Deployment Readiness Cell (IDRC) usually knows the exercise planning cycle, who runs it, and when the next planning conference is. That is the fastest route in for a UDM who does not already have the connection.
The objection to expect
The common resistance to contracting involvement is that exercises should not spend real money. It is a fair concern and it is answering the wrong question, because an exercise of any size is already spending real money. Facilities get supported, supplies get bought, services get arranged, and equipment gets rented.
So the pitch asks for no additional money. It asks that what is already being spent get routed through the squadron during the exercise, on exercise timelines, rather than handled quietly as administrative work beforehand. Same dollars, same requirements, and the repetitions come free.
03How exercise taskings work
Exercise requirements get sourced through the same machinery as real ones. A requirement is identified, it flows to units, and units provide people against it. The difference is stakes rather than structure.
For a UDM that structural similarity is the whole opportunity. An exercise tasking exercises the actual process: reading the tasking, checking eligibility, running the member through processing, and reporting status. Every step in Module 04 and Module 05 can be practiced at low cost, including the steps that are hardest to get right under pressure.
An exercise tasking that skips the inconvenient parts teaches a UDM that the process is easier than it is. If the exercise version waives the medical check, pre-selects a member who was always going to be available, and skips the paperwork, it has confirmed nothing. The uncomfortable steps are the ones worth rehearsing, and asking for them to be included is a reasonable request to put to the planning team.
04What to pitch
Concrete proposals do better than a general request to participate. These are starting points, sized so a planning team can say yes to one without redesigning the exercise around it.
Run the exercise's own buys as part of the exercise
The exercise needs things. Route those requirements through the squadron during execution, with exercise timelines and an exercise customer, rather than handling them as quiet administrative work in advance.
Real requirements, real files, real dollars. The cheapest realism available, because the money was already being spent.
Put a contracting officer inside the scenario
Place a contracting officer in the exercise's deployed construct so requirements arrive the way they arrive downrange: urgent, incomplete, and from a customer who has never written one before.
The hard part of contingency contracting is rarely the contracting. It is the requirement definition happening under time pressure with an inexperienced customer.
Stand up a contingency contracting cell
Exercise the first days at a location: establishing authority, setting up files and numbering, working out what can be bought locally, and identifying the approval chain when the familiar one is unavailable.
Practically nobody rehearses the stand-up, and it is the part most likely to be improvised badly at a real location.
Process a member from warning order to the aircraft
Take one squadron member through the full sequence against an exercise tasking: reading the line, checking eligibility, working the line remarks, medical and travel status, outprocessing, and the deployment line itself.
This one is squarely the UDM's own repetitions, and it is the pitch a UDM can make without needing anything from anybody else in the squadron.
Ask for a shortfall inject
Have the scenario task the squadron for something it cannot fill, so the shortfall and reclama path gets used rather than assumed, including writing an operational impact statement.
Most squadrons have never written one. Writing the first one during a real tasking, against a real clock, is a poor time to learn the format.
Pair with finance on the cash mechanics
Field ordering officer and paying agent arrangements involve contracting and finance together, and the handoff between them is rarely practiced at home station.
It gives the exercise a second functional area with a stake in the play, which makes the pitch easier for planners to accept.
Offer to write the injects
Bring drafted contracting scenarios to the planning team rather than a request to be included. Written material that drops straight into the scenario is genuinely useful to people building an exercise.
The most reliable way into a planning process is to arrive with work already done.
05Getting value afterward
An exercise generates findings whether or not anyone writes them down. The difference between a useful exercise and an expensive week is what happens in the days after it ends.
For a UDM the findings worth capturing are specific: which records were wrong, which requirement took longer than expected, which phone number nobody had, which step in the local process nobody could explain. Those are exactly the things that will behave the same way during a real tasking, and they are cheap to fix while they are fresh and documented.
Findings also belong in the readiness picture rather than in a separate file that nobody opens. An exercise that revealed the squadron could not actually field what it reports is information about readiness, and Module 03 covers where that goes.
Beyond the process testing, an exercise is where a UDM builds the relationships this job runs on. The readiness cell, the personnel office, the medical clearance staff, and the wing planners all become people rather than inboxes. That network is worth as much as any finding in the report, and it is why showing up matters even when the squadron's role in a given exercise turns out to be small.
06Working with the IDRC
Exercises are run by the wing, and the readiness cell sits inside that process with a view of it that a squadron does not have. This is the area where asking early costs nothing and asking late costs the whole opportunity.
- Willingness to be in planning meetings months before anything happens, which is where the scenario is actually decided.
- Drafted contracting injects, so the ask is a contribution rather than a request.
- A squadron ready to participate, with names identified and leadership already briefed rather than surprised.
- Findings captured honestly afterward, including the ones that reflect poorly on the squadron, since those are the useful ones.
- The exercise planning cycle, who runs it, and when the next planning conference happens.
- How exercise taskings are sourced and how they will reach the squadron.
- The installation's role in the exercise and how the deployment line will be run during it.
- The path for feeding exercise findings into installation level lessons learned.
That is the set. The thread running through all six is the same one: this job is done with other people, and a UDM who builds those relationships before needing them has a very different experience of the duty than one who calls strangers during a tasking. The readiness cell, the Functional Area Manager, the unit training manager, the commander's support staff, medical, and the exercise planners are the job.