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Officials streamline expeditionary training

The Air Force is replacing its ad hoc approach to expeditionary training with a program that teaches you the skills you need when you need them, top officials said.

No courses will be added; existing ones will simply be reorganized so leaders can make sure airmen don’t waste time on training that isn’t necessary for their assignments, said Maj. Suzanne Kim, deputy chief of the Air Force Training Branch at the Pentagon.

The new structure divides the training — small-unit tactics, base defense and self-aid and buddy case are examples of the courses taught — into four tiers: foundational expeditionary skills, predeployment, combat airman skills training and mission-specific and specialized training.

“The intent is to set up this governing structure so that the Air Staff has a 360-degree view of all of the expeditionary skills training that is going on right now, so we can ensure that airmen are getting quality training,” Kim said.

Air Education and Training Command and the Air Force Expeditionary Center at Fort Dix, N.J., will conduct the training, overseen by the Expeditionary Skills Senior Review Group, an executive steering committee.

The tiers and the courses that fall under them:

Foundational expeditionary skills are those taught at the service’s accession sources, including Basic Military Training, the Air Force Academy, Officer Training School and Reserve Officer Training Corps. Newly enlisted airmen, for instance, must take an intense four-day Basic Expeditionary Airman Skills Training exercise that replicates the sights and sounds of a war zone.

Predeployment training is for those airmen who are vulnerable or have been identified for deployment. It’s further subdivided: Tier 2A is recurring training conducted at home station for airmen in units vulnerable for deployment through the Air Expeditionary Force cycle. Tier 2B is more hands-on training, also at home station, for those who will be deploying.

“It’s efficient,” Col. Harrison Smith, deputy director of force development on the Air Staff, said of predeployment 2 training. “People don’t accomplish training that’s not needed … in an effort to preserve airmen’s time.”

Combat Airman Skills Training is for airmen who will be deploying to locations the Air Force deems hostile or uncertain and whose duties will occasionally take them outside the base perimeter. It is not for airmen serving primarily in outside-the-wire or ground combat roles, but for airmen who might, for example, have to travel between Bagram Air Base and Kabul in Afghanistan.

“They require that freedom of movement on the battlefield, and we want to give them those advanced combat skills so they can survive and operate and succeed,” Kim said.

Mission-specific and specialized training is intended for airmen such as security forces who will frequently go off base in dangerous environments.

“It’s more specialized, more targeted [training] to fill a particular niche,” Kim said of the most advanced training offered by the Air Force.

The development of expeditionary training has been a long time coming. Former Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley wanted a training center up and running by 2010 that 14,400 airmen would pass through annually. His successor, Gen. Norton Schwartz, canceled the center because he considered it unnecessary and too expensive.

Since taking over in last June, though, Schwartz has made it a goal to standardize expeditionary training. The new structure does that, Kim said.

“It allows the Air Force to have standard presentation of forces” to the combatant commanders, she said.

Now that the structure is in place, the tiers will be refined to make sure existing training is up to the task.

“It’s still in the maturation process,” Smith said. “It’s moving along at a nice clip, but there’s still work to be done to reach where we want to be with that.”