Soldiers await a lift

An HH-60M Black Hawk medevac crew responds to a request Jan. 17 from students completing a Warrior Leader Course situational exercise at Fort Carson, Colo. Army Reservists assigned to 7th Battalion, 158th Aviation Regiment, at Fort Carson became the first Army unit to receive the latest Black Hawk medevac aircraft configuration in early 2010. Soldiers from Company F, 7th Bn., 158th Avn. Reg., recently started integrating medevac crews into situational exercises for the Warrior Leader Course at the Mountain Post.

“It’s great training for us,” said 1st Lt. Derrek Montoya, Company F, 7th Bn., 158 Avn. Reg., while waiting for a call from classroom six with his pilot-in-command, crew chief and medic. “We get to do our whole routine — run-up and getting ready. If we get deployed, this is what we’d be doing.”

Montoya appreciates the opportunity to practice prioritizing tasks in hectic situations. He said it’s easy to feel “task saturated” while surveying an area, coordinating with other aircraft, mitigating emergency situations, monitoring internal frequencies and maintaining contact with ground forces.

Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Bright, Company F, 7th Bn., 158 Avn. Reg., is an instructor pilot who’s deployed to Iraq three times. Bright was preparing to evaluate Montoya’s response to the “nine-line” from the WLC students.

“The more we can throw at them here, in a training environment, the more prepared they’ll be … when we deploy,” said Bright, regarding the medevac crews. The standard reaction time to a nine-line is 15 minutes, he said, but the company often rehearses responses to urgent calls in less than 10 minutes.