DAVIS-MONTHAN AIR FORCE BASE, Ariz. -- The 355th Security Forces Squadron held the first Field Expeditionary Combat Skills Training at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, on Aug. 20th and 23rd, 2019.
SFS worked in coordination with the 355th Maintenance Group to ensure the readiness and ability of maintenance Airmen to be multi-functional so they can not only do their job, but defend the base and Air Force assets for the high-end fight.
“The more we train every Airmen on the base to forward deploy into a location that is not as heavily defended as this base, the more ready we are,” said Master Sgt. Thomas Wilson, NCO in charge of the 355th SFS training. “Having every Airmen as a rifleman is vastly superior to a small group of highly trained Security Forces members.”
The training was held at the Security Forces’ Base Defense training area on Davis-Monthan. Its purpose was to ensure readiness of Airmen to be able to fulfill multiple roles in order to defend the base, improve combat skills and win the high-end fight.
“We can gear this training to a broad variety of career fields,” said Wilson. “We can teach them basic combat skills and things that are more in tune to Security Forces that other career fields may not get the opportunity to go through.”
The students learned about the Law of Armed Conflict, Rules of Engagement and other material, as well as hands-on practice that included hand and arm signals, tactical movements and firing positions.
“This training is going to give these Airmen a basic building block of how to do defense missions,” said Wilson. “As Security Forces, we have limited manning and we have critical things to focus on. In order to fulfill the mission in a forward operation, we need every Airmen to be a sensor and a defender.”
SFS is taking this initiative not only for maintainers, but for all 11,000 total force Airmen on Davis-Monthan.
Every Airmen must be ready at all times to train, deploy and win the high-end fight. Davis-Monthan is leading the way in readiness through continuous training and improvement of its Airmen.