Narrative:

I relieved the R2 controller at the start of my shift. I noticed a large military exercise was going to take place in a couple or hours. It was called a missile exercise on the read and initial control sheet. I asked for details of this mission since information was very skimpy in the read and initial. The controller I was relieving said the trainee on D2 will brief me for his practice; since he had the folder with the information in it. When the trainee finally; kind of; maybe understood what he read in the folder at the sector; he tried to brief me. It was clear that he didn't quite understand it; so I took the folder to read myself at the radar position during moderate traffic. It involved a several large chunks of airspace; and a very detailed reroutes involving coordinates of many latitudes and longitudes which would require me to stand up and chart it on the overhead map. There were no overlays prepared for us. I found this too distracting to learn at the sector and voiced my concern to the supervisor. I insisted that he hold briefings for the controllers prior to assuming the position; instead of leaving up to me; who didn't quite know anything about it; to brief my relief. I am very frustrated by our facility because; this happens all the time and I was not going to take it this time. Many of us have brought up the fact that we are not getting operational briefings on events that will affect safety and operations. Nothing has changed. We do get weekly team briefings. We get a review of some required readings and check the box items; but rarely get the big military missions; reroutes; major navaid outages that affect us during peak traffic periods; etc.; the type of briefings that we should have prior to assuming a position. I checked with the crew that received a team briefing yesterday and they were not briefed on this exercise. That would have been the time to brief us! Management does not seem to care about operations. This is not just a one time mistake. This happens all the time! Require our management to brief us on all special large missions that will take place. Not just read it on the sector. Have someone prepare and draw out routes and reroutes that we may need. Develop maps and pictures that will help us quickly understand and avoid an operational error or deviation.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: ARTCC ATCS reported lack of meaningful briefing material regarding operational missions.

Narrative: I relieved the R2 controller at the start of my shift. I noticed a large military exercise was going to take place in a couple or hours. It was called a missile exercise on the read and initial control sheet. I asked for details of this mission since information was very skimpy in the read and initial. The controller I was relieving said the trainee on D2 will brief me for his practice; since he had the folder with the information in it. When the trainee finally; kind of; maybe understood what he read in the folder at the sector; he tried to brief me. It was clear that he didn't quite understand it; so I took the folder to read myself at the radar position during moderate traffic. It involved a several large chunks of airspace; and a very detailed reroutes involving coordinates of many latitudes and longitudes which would require me to stand up and chart it on the overhead map. There were no overlays prepared for us. I found this too distracting to learn at the sector and voiced my concern to the supervisor. I insisted that he hold briefings for the controllers prior to assuming the position; instead of leaving up to me; who didn't quite know anything about it; to brief my relief. I am very frustrated by our facility because; this happens all the time and I was not going to take it this time. Many of us have brought up the fact that we are not getting operational briefings on events that will affect safety and operations. Nothing has changed. We do get weekly team briefings. We get a review of some required readings and check the box items; but rarely get the big military missions; reroutes; major navaid outages that affect us during peak traffic periods; etc.; the type of briefings that we should have prior to assuming a position. I checked with the crew that received a team briefing yesterday and they were not briefed on this exercise. That would have been the time to brief us! Management does not seem to care about operations. This is not just a one time mistake. This happens all the time! Require our management to brief us on all special large missions that will take place. Not just read it on the sector. Have someone prepare and draw out routes and reroutes that we may need. Develop maps and pictures that will help us quickly understand and avoid an operational error or deviation.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.