Pre-deployment training to be standardized

[unhappycamper]

Students from the Advanced Contingency Skills Training Course at Fort Dix, N.J., practice their "rush-and-roll" techniques. Combat skills courses will continue at Fort Dix and two other locations under a new service-wide pre-deployment training program designed to standardize the training offered at the sites.


Pre-deployment training to be standardized
By Erik Holmes - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Jan 26, 2009 16:10:36 EST

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.


Rest of article at: http://airforcetimes.com/news/2009/01/airforce_expeditionary_012609/%2e