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Maintenance group members eager to compete during Global Strike Challenge

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Mike Tryon
  • 90th Missile Wing Public Affairs
Earlier this month, Air Force Global Strike Command's premier ICBM wing announced its Blackburn Trophy hopefuls for this year's Global Strike Challenge.

Last year's maintenance portion of the competition challenged those who go out to the field, but this year's competition will focus on the skills of those who stay at the shops.

Tech. Sgt. Angel Santiago-Zapata, 90th Maintenance Operations Squadron's assistant NCO-in-charge of power, refrigeration and electrical; Senior Airman James Derbyshire, 90th MOS PREL technician; and Senior Airman Devin Whitehead, 90th MOS facilities maintenance technician, make up the PREL team for their portion of the competition.

The PREL shop is in charge of maintaining the brine chillers that go out to the launch and missile alert facilities. Brine chillers are the air conditioning units used in the missile field.

"The evaluators from 20th Air Force are going to put faults in both the chiller and the test stand," Santiago-Zapata said. "It'll be up to us three to accurately use our technical order knowledge, and mechanical and electrical troubleshooting skills to find and fix the faults as quickly as we can."

The time from when the team was announced to the time of the maintenance group's portion of the competition is about a month and a half. During that time, Santiago-Zapata, Derbyshire and Whitehead will be training, first by only studying technical orders and then with hands-on training.

"We'll be studying technical data for two weeks," Derbyshire said. "After that two week period, our trainers will start to put faults in [both] systems, and then we'll use what we've read in the TOs to effectively troubleshoot and repair those units as quickly as possible."

One key component Warren's PREL team brings to the table is experience.

"I've been doing PREL for the past six years now," Santiago-Zapata said. "You combine that with the technical expertise of Derbyshire and the eagerness of Whitehead, and you'll see that we're unstoppable."

This year's competition is scheduled to take place here from Sep. 26 through Sep. 30; however, Warren's scores will not be posted until after all teams -- operations, maintenance, helicopter, bomber and security forces -- from all Global Strike wings have competed. The score posting is slated to take place at Barksdale Air Force Base, La., in November.