Rapid City, S.D., - Wherever military personnel go, whether a school, a deployment or a military exercise, they undergo a procedure known as in-processing, also known as Reception Staging and Onward Integration (RSOI).
During the South Dakota National Guard’s Golden Coyote annual training exercise, the RSOI process is no different than one a service member would encounter when arriving in any other theater of operation.
On June 12 and 13, members of the South Dakota National Guard’s 109th Regional Support Group conducted an RSOI for those service members participating in this year’s Golden Coyote Exercise.
The realistic RSOI process provided by the 109th gives the attending service members much needed consistency as they conduct their training missions.
“New soldiers need to know that whether they go on a deployment overseas or stateside they will have to go through both in-processing and out-processing,” said Staff Sgt. Dell Schultheiss, a foodservice non-commissioned officer with the Nebraska National Guard’s 1074th Transportation Company.
During the RSOI, Schultheiss said all military personnel swipe their identification cards through a card reader to have their names registered in a database. “The purpose of this is to let those in command know we’re here and to be able to locate us in case of an emergency back home,” he explained.
Next, service members receive several important briefings.
“You need to know the rules of the area you’re going to be in otherwise problems could arise,” Schultheiss explained, discussing the importance of these briefings.
Topics included rules for dealing with exercise role players, watching out for tourists, and local road conditions, he said. Safety, weather, and wild animals such as bison and mountain lions were also covered.
Soldiers of the 109th provide the same experience that the attending units would receive when arriving anywhere in the world, but providing that realism can be a daunting challenge, said Officer Candidate Doug Johnson, a training non-commissioned officer with the unit.
“This has been an eye-opening experience dealing with everything involved in planning and coordinating the exercise,” Johnson said. “Even something as simple as getting a kitchen set up to serve three hundred meals took a lot of coordination.”
This is just one example of the tasks the 109th RSG has to complete to ensure units participating in this year’s exercise are taken care of and ready to train when they arrive, Johnson said.
Whenever service members deploy overseas or attend training exercises, they must receive the all the support they need to be ready to perform their duties.
During the Golden Coyote training exercise, these units can rest assured the 109th RSG is on hand, making sure they can meet their training goals or perform their missions the same as if they were responding to a real-world operation.