A crash course in combat

Senior Airmen Jeffrey Oats and Kesha Snedeker assemble a M2 .50-caliber machine gun attached to the gun turret of a Humvee. Two days in the Air Force's new crash combat course will be devoted to field exercises. “When we hand them an M4 or M16, they won’t say, ‘Which end do I point downrange?’” said Col. Scott Bethel, deputy director of technical training operations for Air Education and Training Command.


A crash course in combat
By Patrick Winn - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Nov 26, 2007 7:53:48 EST

As the Air Force creeps toward opening a comprehensive battlefield training course in four years, it’s readying the mid-December debut of a fast-track course for airmen headed to Iraq and Afghanistan for the first time.

It’s called the “bridge,” or temporary course component to Common Battlefield Airmen Training, a sweeping set of classes designed to prepare nonbattlefield airmen who will likely be working outside the wire, as well as security forces and special operations airmen, for war-zone dangers. Some airmen slated for 2008’s earliest deployment cycle will be among the first of 1,200 next year to take the five-day bridge course. They’ll spend two days in the classroom — learning about body armor, chemical warfare protection suits, high-risk isolation scenarios and the like — and devote the remaining days to field exercises, all at Camp Bullis, an Army facility near Lackland Air Force Base, Texas.

In classes of 65 students each, the airmen will learn to fire both pistols and rifles, the basics of land navigation, small-unit tactics, combat skills and self-defense.

“When we hand them an M4 or M16, they won’t say, ‘Which end do I point downrange?’” said Col. Scott Bethel, deputy director of technical training operations for Air Education and Training Command.

It will be entirely Air Force-taught, Bethel said. “We’re not trying to create junior Army guys,” he said. “We’re creating airmen with combat skills.”

Bethel, a key player in designing the bridge course, characterized it as classic battle training matched with malleable lessons shaped by up-to-date feedback from dangerous locales.


Rest of article at: http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2007/11/airforce_combat_course_071126w/