Team Moody is preparing to kick-off exercise Ready Tiger here, Feb. 28, 2021.

Ready Tiger is a Lead-Wing exercise focused on testing Moody’s ability to employ Air Base Squadrons to help generate air power downrange and maintain Command and Control in contested environments.

”This isn’t yesterday’s deployment operations, so we must adapt to deliver world-class airpower anywhere, anytime,” said Maj. Chris Stewart, Air Base Squadron commander for the exercise.

Due to evolving requirements, Moody knows it must find ways to exercise and demonstrate Lead-Wing and Air Base Squadron capabilities.

“We’re taking small steps toward setting up an Air Base Squadron for the exercise,” Stewart said. “We want people to start thinking Air Base Squadron instead of their functional community so they can fall under that single command.”

An Air Base Squadron combines Airmen from various career fields and focuses them on specific missions.

“You’ve got members of the medical community, maintenance community, and the fighter community all under a single squadron and tailored for a singular mission set,” Stewart said.

Ready Tiger is continuing the work of the Mosaic Tiger exercise last fall by further testing Moody’s communication and logistical capabilities under pressure.

“Communications and logistics can be a big problem; those areas are always contested,” said Stewart. “We have to think about primary and alternative contingency methods.”

The exercise will also include a contingency location to simulate a hostile and austere environment.

“The main things being stressed are relocating the wing operations center and enabling the Air Base Squadron,” said 1st Lt. Alexander Sidawi, 23rd Wing A-Staff director of Lead-Wing communications. “We have to identify how to coordinate for logistical movement in both a control denied environment and a logistically denied environment.”

The Airmen participating in Ready Tiger will be tested in new ways as they are exposed to different aspects of Lead-Wing methods.

“The biggest challenge will be the different mindsets from each different community,” Stewart said. “Everyone has their own idea of what [Agile Combat Employment] means in their own community. We’re focused on integrating those different career fields and making sure they understand what an Air Base Squadron does.”

Ready Tiger will ensure Moody Airmen can better execute Lead-Wing concepts while deployed.

“We want to posture ourselves so we can prepare for a certain amount of unknown,” said Sidawi. “We don’t always know what environment we’re going to fall into. We want to be prepared for that, and the Airmen understanding why we're doing this could be the one of the largest contributing factors to actually getting to mission success.”