Combatives program won’t reach new airmen

Staff Sgt. Christopher Davidson, top, a military training instructor, demonstrates grappling technique during combatives training at Officer Training School. Air Force officials say combatives instruction will expand to airmen deploying in outside-the-wire jobs before it is added to basic training.


Combatives program won’t reach new airmen
By Erik Holmes - Staff writer
Posted : Sunday Jan 11, 2009 9:34:18 EST

The Air Force will expand hand-to-hand fighting, or combatives, training for deploying airmen this year, but airmen going through basic military training likely will not learn combatives anytime in the near future.

The Air Force’s basic combatives program already is taught to new officers entering the service, but new enlisted airmen will continue to be left out until sometime in 2010 at the earliest.

Col. Scott Bethel, deputy director of technical training for Air Education and Training Command, said the combatives program is not being added to BMT right away because the schedule of the newly revamped basic training — which expanded from 6½ weeks to 8½ weeks in November — is too tight to accommodate the training.

“(Officers) had a little more slack in their program, a little bit more opportunity to capture that bit of training,” Bethel said. “With the BMT, it’s literally down to the half-hour or 15-minute block. … It just was easier at this moment to stick it into the officer programs.”

Launched in January 2008, the Air Force combatives program is a 10-hour course that teaches basic ground-fighting skills such as grappling techniques, arm bars and chokeholds. Based on the popular Modern Army Combatives Program, it focuses on defensive and evasive maneuvers to fend off and subdue an attacker.


Rest of article at: http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2009/01/airforce_combatives_011109/%2e