ACT!

Combat Edge, Sept, 2005 by Preston B. Thompson

Serving on the ACC staff has been a very interesting learning experience for me the past 12 months, and I've learned a great deal about safety and the many different missions in ACC. Most importantly, I have a much greater appreciation of how critical each Air Force member is to mission accomplishment, and how we can ill afford to lose a single person for any reason. What makes a loss that much more tragic, is when we lose a person to a preventable mishap, it hurts our team and it hurts us personally.

As a pilot, I use Operational Risk Management (ORM) constantly as I make decisions about how to employ my F-16 to best accomplish the mission and bring my backside home safely. Before a flight I have ample time to plan and do more analysis. Once airborne, time is short, and decisions need to be made quickly, and they need to be based on prior planning and instinct. The decisions I make are based upon my experience, my capabilities, my flight's capabilities, my F-16's capabilities, the importance of the mission, and the risk involved. ORM principles and process are flexible enough to be applied to any career field in the Air Force.

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It's incumbent on each of us to take responsibility for preventing mishaps by using "Operational/Personal Risk Management" (ORM/PRM) and "Checking 6" on everything we do. True, we've heard ORM/PRM over and over, and you've built safety programs, posters, tracking sheets, briefings and more for ORM/PRM. But I'm here to tell you, it can't just be a program, another "Paper Lion." ORM/PRM must be internalized to the point that they happen automatically, both on and off duty. ORM/PRM programs are based on forethought, applied common sense, and our natural instinct to analyze everything we do. That analysis can be a long drawn-out process, or it may only be a split second, but it needs to take place and it needs to be applied to our immediate and future actions.

Take the time, even if it is only a second, to ACT (Assess, Consider, Take Action) because we're all important to our friends, families and maintaining our "COMBAT EDGE."

Colonel Preston B. Thompson, ACC Deputy Director of Safety