MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan — The only thing moving faster than storm-level gusts of wind most of Monday was the second hand on the clock.

And that was bad news for the 35th Fighter Wing, which was testing to see how quickly it could get its F-16s armed and into the air as part of a three-day Initial Response Readiness Exercise.

Instead of loading ordnance and getting the planes ready to battle the enemy, maintenance troops were forced to hunker down and wait for the 60-mph-plus gusts to subside.

The wind "probably cost us about six to eight hours" of time, said Maj. Wesley Hales, 35th Fighter Wing chief of inspections.

His office is in charge of designing, running and evaluating exercises at Misawa.

But the airmen were able to work through stress, getting the planes ready with 11 minutes to spare, Hales said.

Senior Master Sgt. Steven Powell, the 14th Aircraft Maintenance Unit superintendent, said the exercise’s goal is to get the aircraft ready for launch following a very specific "time-consuming, step-by-step" process based on the mission requirements.

"The first 24 hours are mainly focused on getting the aircraft ready to deploy," he said.

At the same time, airmen from the squadron must start working their way through mobility lines, so they can head to the next base to help support the fight. An advanced echelon team should be on the ground ready to meet the jets, and the rest of the troops should be following closely behind.

That means the squadron loses crucial manpower as troops are taken out of the hangars and put onto buses.

"They actually pack it up, tool rooms, tool kits" and everything, just as if they were deploying, Powell said.

"The only thing that won’t be done is get on an aircraft and fly out," he said.

And with the 13th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron currently deployed to South Korea, the exercise was even more difficult for members of the 14th, Powell said.

The training is vital, he said, because "you never know when they could ask us to deploy." It happened to him at a previous squadron. He was deployed to Nevada for an exercise when his squadron got the word it needed to redeploy downrange within a "72- to 96-hour time frame," he said.

For the pilots who will be launching in the planes, the first main task is "getting mission planning done," said 14th Fighter Squadron plans and mobility officer Capt. Craig Phelps.

Squadron plans officer Capt. Matt Kenkel said everything from fuel planning to figuring out where to divert in case of an emergency is taken into consideration in the planning process.

"We create a packet for each pilot and brief them up" prior to the takeoff, he said.

The exercise was a good transition for the 14th, which recently returned from a six-month tour in Iraq. Instead of working "close air support" like they did in Iraq, Kenkel said, squadron pilots would focus on their "primary mission of force protection."

Hales — the chief of inspections — said the wing hadn’t had this sort of exercise in 15 months, and "we knocked a lot of rust off."

"We definitely have some work to do," he said, "but that’s why we do these exercises."