Mighty maintainers work through stressful environments at BASE X Published April 16, 2014 By Airman 1st Class Malissa Lott 366th Fighter Wing Public Affairs MOUNTAIN HOME AIR FORCE BASE, Idaho -- Airmen here participate in a weeklong simulated deployment environment "Sharpshooter 14-02," April 16, 2014. Realistic training equates to real-world mission success, and Airmen must be able to perform the full spectrum of their mission in full mission-oriented protective posture gear. "Right now, our job is to prepare for a deployment situation [such as] a possible chemical and biological weapons attack," said Airman 1st Class Austyn McNeil, 366th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron avionics specialist. "We might have to get into mission oriented protective posture gear very fast." Airmen strive to improve on their day-to-day skills as well as protective postures during exercises such as this. "The timeline is a little more intense," said Lt. Col. Jeremy Saunders, 366th AMXS commander. "We need to make sure we get bombs loaded quickly and properly." Even with the frustrations of full MOPP gear, Airmen feel this training is very beneficial for future deployments. "We might have to deal with a situation similar to this that may affect our abilities to do our jobs," said McNeil. Whenever the giant voice system announces the new defensive posture, Airmen quickly transition to new MOPP levels and strive to continue the mission. "During the exercise, my focus is to get the maintainers the resources they need to do the job," said Saunders. "If there is an attack, I need to get them everything they need to turn aircraft and to get them in the air with the proper bombs loaded." Not only do Airmen learn to work around the changing defensive postures, they also have to learn to work through stress, working on bolstering their resiliency. "This training is important because these situations are possible," said McNeil. "Being able to actually operate under these kinds of stresses is important because these situations can occur in real life." The end goal of the exercise is to prepare mission-ready Airmen ready to deploy anywhere, at any time, to accomplish the mission. "This is preparing our unit so that when we get the call from the United States to go to a foreign country to fight, we are ready and enabled to do that," said Saunders. Readiness equates to bombs on targets while saving coalition lives, and no one does that better than Mountain Home Airmen.