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Pre-deployment training to be standardized

The Air Force is retooling its pre-deployment expeditionary skills training to create a single program and standardize the training offered to airmen at three centers nationwide.

Air Education and Training Command, in its new role as lead command for expeditionary training, is developing the program, tentatively called Combat Airman Skills Training.

Philip Senna, chief of AETC’s expeditionary training division, said the program will closely mirror the training airmen get through pre-deployment courses at Camp Bullis, Texas; Camp Guernsey, Wyo.; and the U.S. Air Force Expeditionary Center at Fort Dix, N.J. The training will continue at those locations.

“We feel like the training at all three locations is very good, but it can be better were it standardized across the Air Force,” Senna said.

The retooled CAST program grew out of an ongoing AETC review of expeditionary training ordered by Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz. Senna said CAST is not intended to replace Common Battlefield Airman Training, the plan Schwartz canceled last fall that called for a central expeditionary training campus. Rather, Senna said, it is an improvement and standardization of the courses already in place.

The three courses train about 3,500 airmen per year who are going to deploy in jobs or to locations the Air Force and combatant commanders deem hostile or uncertain. The courses are not for airmen serving in primarily outside-the-wire or ground combat roles; those airmen receive more extensive expeditionary training through other pre-deployment courses or career-field technical schools.

Examples of airmen who might attend training at the three sites are individual mobilization augmentees deploying to risky areas such as Baghdad or small bases in Afghanistan, Senna said.

“Our goal ... is to give them the skills they need to do their Air Force mission in an environment that may involve operations that are not traditionally found at a rear-echelon flying post,” he said.

The courses at Bullis, Guernsey and Dix range from five to 10 days and cover skills such as combat first aid, weapons proficiency training, small-unit tactics, land navigation and communication.

The timeline for release and implementation of the standardized CAST program is unclear, Senna said.

A proposal on how to move ahead is expected to be completed and submitted to the Expeditionary Skills Senior Review Group by early February. If that group approves, the proposal will be released to the Air Force major commands and Air Staff directorates for further planning.

It will then be up to the Force Management and Development Council, a group of senior Air Force leaders led by the vice chief of staff, to decide whether to implement the plan.

Senna would not speculate on when CAST might be implemented at the three training sites.

In the short term, Senna said, CAST likely would continue to train the same number of students now being trained at Bullis, Guernsey and Dix. But he left open the possibility that more airmen could attend the training in the future.

“We just don’t know what that future holds for us,” he said. “We do know that in all likelihood there will be an even greater demand for airmen as the situations in the [area of responsibility] change. Airmen are having a great impact ... [and] the need for more airmen will probably increase.”