SANDSTON, Va. –
For three years running, the Virginia National Guard’s Army Aviation Support Facility has ranked first in the nation for equipment readiness. Located in Sandston, Virginia, next to Richmond International Airport, with an auxiliary location at the Chesterfield Executive Airport, the AASF is home to the VNG’s fleet of UH-60 Black Hawk and UH-72 Lakota helicopters. A dedicated team of around 50 full-time technicians maintains the fleet with just 25 percent of the personnel of a similarly-sized active duty organization, all while also ranking in the top ten nationally for operational tempo.
“The fact that they are maintaining aircraft at such a high level of readiness is exceptional and a testament to the quality of soldiers and leaders within the Virginia National Guard,” explained Col. Craig Lewis, the VNG’s state aviation officer. “That readiness directly relates to our ability to fulfill federal and state operational requirements.”
Maintaining a fleet of helicopters is a complex effort. Chief Warrant Officer 4 Joe Emery, the production control officer at the VNG’s AASF, said what it takes to succeed is planning, people and parts, as well as time, tools and training.
“You need all those things to work together to forecast and to plan,” Emery said, explaining that each helicopter has scheduled maintenance requirements based on hours flown and time elapsed. To track scheduled maintenance requirements, leaders at the AASF track the status of each aircraft via a chart that looks somewhat like a right-angled triangle. The chart's leftmost aircraft has the most available hours before maintenance requirements, while the aircraft with the least amount of hours is furthest to the right. Ensuring the shape of that maintenance plan means there are always aircraft available to meet mission requirements.
In the National Guard, aviators must meet the same flight hour requirements as their active duty counterparts. In 2024, Virginia was funded for around 3,500 flight hours. That number was taken, divided among the aircraft and from there, a maintenance plan was developed alongside a flight schedule that has the VNG’s helicopters flying four days and three nights a week, plus at least one weekend a month. Emery said their flight schedule is projected for the next year, with each aircraft assigned flights based on its maintenance requirements.
“We know which ones need to fly more and which ones don’t need to fly as much,” Emery said. “So, the further ahead you can plan your scheduled maintenance, the more time you give yourself to react to the unscheduled maintenance.”
Unscheduled maintenance is exactly what it sounds like: maintenance events that can’t be planned for or predicted. If a facility doesn’t have an effective management plan for scheduled maintenance, and multiple aircraft come due for a major maintenance phase, that means unscheduled maintenance issues go unresolved, leading to a diminished number of fully mission capable, or FMC, aircraft. But, with a well-managed maintenance plan, unscheduled maintenance is an easier hurdle to tackle and one that allows aircrews to continue on with their missions.
“If we know what helicopters are going to fly training lines that week, and say somebody is running one up and finds a grounding condition that says it is unsafe to fly, we’ll always have a spare aircraft identified so, if time allows, they can bump or move to that helicopter and fly it,” Emery explained. “Then, the maintainers that we have on the floor and in the shops can start troubleshooting and get to the bottom of how it’s broken and what we need to do to fix it.”
The fixing of these aircraft comes down to the true heart of the AASF, and what is ultimately the most critical to its success: the people.
“It’s building and maintaining relationships internally, with everybody, and it’s knowledgeable maintainers mentoring newer, less experienced maintainers; supervisors mentoring maintenance officers and leaders in the hangar, and it’s everyone knowing what they’re talking about and then talking amongst themselves,” Emery said.
Lt. Col. Ryan Strait, the AASF’s logistics management officer and commander of the Sandston-based 2nd Battalion, 224th Aviation Regiment, said empowering maintainers at all levels is also a key part of their success.
“The supervisors are given that level of authority and responsibility to take care of their aircraft, and therefore, they take much more pride in it,” Strait explained. He said the aircraft develop their own personalities, and having maintainers familiar with the fleet also adds to their success. “Everybody does a really good job learning these airframes and then, once they kind of know it has an issue, they’re always going to fall back on that, and people are sticking around to keep that general knowledge going.”
Extending relationships around the region has helped too, Emery and Strait said. When a helicopter needs a part, they can reach out to their partners at other facilities in other states to acquire it, usually within a few days.
“It’s an art form, and that’s where the people thing comes into play because these guys, their relationship-building skills are amazing, and they now have relationships all up and down the East Coast at various AASFs and other support facilities,” Strait said. “The people aspect of it is what really makes this whole place successful.”
Sgt. Austin Cooper is one of the Black Hawk maintainers at the AASF. He explained that his job is to do a variety of inspections on the aircraft, from normal periodic inspections to more complex repairs and maintenance tasks.
“Everyone here wants to sure all the aircraft are in the best shape they can be,” Cooper said. “We strive to come together, work through all the problems together and make everything the best we can.”
He’s found that all the aircraft really do have their own personalities and said, “After being around them for so long, you kind of pick up on which ones are going to have which quirks about them.”
Similarly, Sgt. Tanner Jones started at the AASF as a maintainer and recently became one of the facility’s newest team leaders. His role, he said, “is to make these my babies, and make sure they can fly.” As a team lead, he’ll be helping newer technicians get their bearings and learn the tricks of the trade, which, he says, is the best part of the job.
“I love it. I love teaching the new guys,” Jones said. “Now that I’ve gained a little bit of knowledge, I get to share it.”
Their success, Jones believes, is in part due to that commitment to knowledge sharing throughout the organization.
“We work extra hard to make sure our aircraft are up, and that’s what gives us the [operational readiness] rate to be at the top,” said Jones. “We learn a lot, and we learn by doing it.”
The VNG’s AASF is also a host site for a Regionally Aligned Support Center, or RAPSC, which provides phased maintenance not just for Virginia’s aircraft, but for aircraft throughout the region. Typically, phased maintenance can take anywhere from 30 to 35 days, depending on the needs of the aircraft.
“This helps us maintain our maintenance posture and has benefits that extend beyond Virginia to the entire Northeast Region,” Lewis said, explaining that the program supports 13 states in total.
As the facility moves into a new training year, the VNG’s AASF plans to continue focusing on the people who make their facility so successful.
“When you empower supervisors and they empower their teams, they really take ownership and take pride in their work and that shows,” Emery said. “We have t-shirts depicting the Virginia AASF as number one in the nation, and that’s something the guys are really proud of.”