An official website of the United States government
A .mil website belongs to an official U.S. Department of Defense organization in the United States.
A lock (lock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .mil website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Base sets AT benchmark for AMC, garners DoD recognition

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman J. Paul Croxon
  • 319th Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs
GRAND FORKS AFB, N.D. --  The remote nature of Grand Forks Air Force Base, N.D., doesn't isolate it from threats. The wing anti-terrorism office's job is to identify threats, both real and anticipated, and develop measures to counter them.

The AT office's efforts were recognized by the Department of Defense recently and adopted by Air Mobility Command.

The AT awards package, which was submitted over one year ago, highlighted the wing's use of ForcePRO software to conduct a risk assessment and the results were used to transform security forces efforts.

"ForcePRO is a software tool I was involved with while working in Washington D.C.," said Mr. Jeff Overholt, 319th Air Refueling Wing Anti-Terrorism Officer. "It was still a prototype and I was eager to try it out at the installation level. The wing supported the idea, and we showed the process and final product to AMC and they benchmarked it."

According to Mr. Overholt, the results of the risk assessment showed a risk reduction when we transitioned from a linear security posture to an effect-based security posture.

"We now conduct security to counter identified threats and not just protect static assets," he said. "It gives the added benefit of actively deterring preoperational surveillance. During preoperational surveillance, terrorists are gathering information and planning before they conduct an attack. This is one of the best times to deter them."

One of the reasons the AT program is so successful here is the support it receives from wing leadership.

"Our Threat Working Group (made up of AT, security forces, the office of special investigations and intelligence) works hard to keep wing leadership informed by providing 'indications and warnings' and we continually assess our security posture," Mr. Overholt said.

Wing leadership strongly supported doing things differently by breaking old paradigms. A lot of what the base did was low cost, like changing tactics, techniques, procedures and developing courses of action that focused on our identified threats, he added.

Constantly improving security is a difficult task. According to Mr. Overholt, there is an observed trend in which the further we get from 9/11, the harder it is to keep momentum going with AT and security efforts.

"Collectively, we have a short memory and a natural tendency to dismantle security initiatives since security can be seen as inconvenient when there are no perceived threats."

The lessons learned aren't Grand Forks AFB unique. Many of the most important lessons are also the most basic.

Awareness has proved itself to be the best tool, Mr. Overholt points out. If everyone is looking for and reporting suspicious behavior then there is a good chance of disrupting terrorist activities.

These AT practices won an award at AMC in April, at the Air Force level in June and honorable mention at the DoD level in November. The practices will be passed on to help AT practices elsewhere.

"Some of our processes are being captured in the next revision of Air Force Instruction 10-245, AT Standards, and AFI 31-101, Security Standards," Mr. Overholt said. "I'm heading to Air Force Security Forces Center at Lackland AFB, Texas, to participate in a working group to rewrite these instructions.