(radio distortion squawking) - Roger, Flight 807 approaching Runway 7 Bravo. (intense music) - The Air Force has announced the creation of a new Information Operations technical training school. - So in our business, national security, where our job is to fly, fight, and win, we'd better be masters at this game of innovation. - Air Force basic military training has an updated curriculum with a new focus on readiness and lethality. (radio squawking) - This is the Developing Mach 21 Airmen Podcast. (sonar booming) - Hey hey everybody! Back at it on the pod today, which, by the way, is episode number ten if you're keeping track. Thanks for the subscribe, stream, or download, however you might be listening in today. Have some extra time, we certainly would appreciate some stars, or even a review of the podcast. Let us know how we're doing bringing you timely and relevant info in the education and training world. My name is Dan Hawkins, from the Air Education and Training Command Public Affairs Office, and your host for this professional development podcast dedicated to bringing Total Force, Big A Airmen insight, tips, tricks, and lessons learned from the recruiting, training, and education field. In the interest of full disclosure, this edition of the podcast goes back to my Air Force beginnings, my days in Security Forces, and it really was just a lot of fun to spend time with the teams at the 343rd Training Squadron that are running both enlisted and Officer initial skills training at the Security Forces Academy over at Joint Base San Antonio Lackland. And they talked about recent changes in the curriculum that have put Officers and enlisted in the Air Force's largest career field in the training pipeline together. And they also spent a good deal of time talking about how they're innovating with technology to open up a brand new world to our future defenders in terms of how they prepare to make critical decisions in potentially dangerous situations. So if you've listened to our podcast pretty loyally, you know that we talk a lot on the podcast about how units all across AETC are now going full throttle in breaking those long-held industrial age training paradigms that can be learning limiters. Those paradigms include that the Air Force controls learning, time is the constant, or the last one being that we just teach Airmen how to do a job. So on today's podcast, we sat down with Captain Jeremiah Baxter, who is the Officer in charge of the Security Forces Apprentice course. We also talked with Captain Zachary Watkins, the OIC of SF Officer Technical Training course, along with Senior Master Sergeant Brandan King, the Operations Superintendent of the 343rd Training Squadron, and Master Sergeant Henry Crook, from the SF Officer Technical Training course. And dove deep into one of the biggest changes they have taken on in initial skills training, and that's the integration of the Officer and enlisted together in that training pipeline, which speaks really to that last paradigm of just teaching Airmen how to do a job. With the integration, they are teaching the defenders not just how to do the job, but instead ensuring they learn leadership, holistically in the context of a mission by actually putting them in real leadership situations, including deployment-like scenarios, helping produce more lethal and ready Security Forces Airmen at the end of the pipeline. We also spend some time on the pod talking about legacy in the Security Forces career field, and how important that is and how it impacts training, as well as how technology like MILO, which is a firearms training simulation, and virtual reality have added new dimensions to their use of force training. And that led us into a really major topic that we spent some time on, discussing how their partnership with AFWERX is helping them add the technology into the Security Forces curriculum and updated to their needs, and almost real-time helping the academy produce more lethal and ready Airmen with the competencies and skillsets needed to accomplish the mission in a contested environment, supporting Air Force requirements and Joint Force Commander needs. So sit back, buckle in, episode ten of Developing Mach 21 Airmen starts right now! (mechanical whooshing) So, Captain Baxter, tell us a little bit about yourself! - I'm Captain Jeremiah Baxter, I'm the Officer in Charge of the Security Forces Apprentice course. I've been in the Air Force for eight years, been with Security Forces the entire time. - Captain Watkins, over to you. - Zachary Watkins, Captain in charge of the Officer course, Security Forces Officer Technical Training. Quick background, started off at the Academy, then went to Minot Air Force Base for a couple of years, then Osan, spent time as Flight Commander at both of those bases. After that, went into, did school for 18 months at the University of Southern Mississippi. Graduated there, and my payback assignment was right here, the 343rd Training Squadron where I took over this position. - Senior Master Sergeant King. - So, my name is Senior Master Sergeant Brandan King, been in the Air Force about 20 years. Most of that time has been in Security Forces, I did do a four year stint as a First Sergeant. Also been stationed at 343rd one previous time before as a instructor. I'm here now as the Operations Superintendent. - Okay, and Master Sergeant Crook. - Master Sergeant Henry Crook, been in for 16 years now, stationed everywhere from Malmstrom Air Force Base to MacDill. After that, back to Minot Air Force Base before coming down here. Some of the different things I've done entail convoys up in Air Force School Strike to PSD, protective services detail down at MacDill. - Well, a lot of experience in this room, we're talking about such a great topic today. We're talking training here at the Security Forces Academy, and there's so much going on, but where I first kind of wanted to go down the road with was the overall training environment and producing lethal and ready Airmen. You talk about the environment here at the Academy, but what is it ultimately at the end of the day that you guys hang your hat on here at the Security Forces Academy when it comes to training Airmen? - I would say that the biggest thing as far as what we want to get after overall when an Airmen were to leave here, just overall training, is that at the end of the day we are producing and training Airmen that are able to shoot and move and communicate in any environment we put them out there. So I know we are providing Airmen to all different match comms across the world, all different bases between CONUS, OCONUS, U-safety, PACAF, and all the different missions that are out there. At the end of the day, as long as we're producing those basic Airmen that can shoot, move, and communicate, when they get to their first base they'll be able to understand what that mission is and adapt those shoot, move, and communicate skills to that particular mission. That's overall what our intent is here at the Academy. - And I think a lot of people who maybe aren't familiar with the environment here right now don't understand, you guys really are in a time of flux because you just did a curriculum revamp, and now you're in the process of validating the course. So can you just kind of explain what that really means? - So, May 2017 the initial STRT, the requirements from the Security Forces Executive Team came down and gave us what they basically wanted us to teach, at what skill level. So we took that and developed that for a little over a year, we launched all of our courses in July of 2018, so we had about a year of trying to mesh everything together from the integration piece, lining up the initial skills together and some of our other courses. Like the Intermediate course, the Security Forces Advanced course, and our seven-level course, as well. So we launched all those courses in July of 2018. And now we're going through the validation process. - And how long does that take, what does that look like? - It's typically three runs of a course from start to finish, typically. And through those three validation courses, that's where we identify things that maybe we overlooked or long story short didn't get right the first time and we're just going to adjust fire and make it the best possible product we can for the Airmen coming through and for the members out in the field to get that lethal and ready defender. - I think a lot of times, too, people don't know exactly how these curriculums are built, so can you talk a little bit about the standard. What is the standard on what is actually taught at the Academy? - Right, absolutely! So, as far as the apprenticecourse is concerned and how we come about what we teach our Airmen at the basic level, is we go right back to HAF in as far as what the TRGs are producing. So, HAF has designed the curriculum, or designed the desires of the curriculum to say you will teach certain objectives to a certain PCK code, which means to a certain level we will teach the objectives. Majority of the time, within the apprentice course, it's to that basic three-level Airman across the board of your law and order, your security, and then your ground combat skills as far as the three major objectives we wanna teach across with our Airmen. So we'll take what HAF has designed within the TRG, and we will look at our training development section, and they will start producing lesson plans, they'll start producing course flows that kind of marry up with those objectives. So within the Security Forces Apprentice course we have 65 training days, and spread throughout all those 65 training days are all objectives that the SF Executive Council and HAF have determined, these are the things we want our Airmen to learn at that basic three-level position. So from there, we don't necessarily dictate what we are teaching our Airmen, but we do kind of dictate in the realm of how we teach our Airmen. So within those objectives, we get after HAF says "teach this", we will take that back and we will say "here's how we wanna teach it", designing our lesson plans, designing our training areas, designing some of our scenarios and our exercises on how we get after developing that Airman to a certain level. Some levels are just the basic aspects of our career field, like handcuffing and searching. Hey, you just need to know how to handcuff and search. Other aspects go more in-depth, like use of force or deadly force, where we do have to make sure they have certain scenarios, and they understand fully the consequences of their actions, and that takes more hours, more training, in those certain objectives. But again, that also comes back to the level of training that HAF has dictated we want our Airmen to learn from. And I know from the Officers course standpoint, Captain Watkins can probably dive in a little bit farther. - Yeah, so much the same. But even beyond the technical aspects of the training that we do, the course and how it's instructed and the instruction that we pass on to our students is driven a lot by intent. We've had a lot of communications with Headquarters Air Force and leadership in our Wing Group and Squadron all the way down. Specifically, through the Year of the Defender, the Reconstitute Defender Initiative that hey, we want defenders to be more lethal, more effective, capable, as Captain Baxter was saying, to shoot, move, and communicate, and do it well. And ultimately, our schoolhouse is charged with producing battlefield Airmen. That's what these guys are when they graduate, they wear the beret, they run towards gunfire rather than away from it when it happens. And that's what we're charged with doing here, making sure that every Airman that leaves this schoolhouse has the courage and the mental fortitude to be able to do that. And that's the intent that we use to drive how we train and what we train, and if any of the training, regardless of whether we're technically meeting the intent or checking the box for what's written down, if we're not producing Airmen that do that then we're not doing our jobs. - And ultimately, at the end of the day, what can those supervisors out in the field expect from these Airmen and young Officers that are graduating from the Security Forces Academy when they get out into the field? - Honestly, they're gonna get a motivated Airman that's probably done more stuff in their initial skills training than what some of them have received currently at their home station. Here with this recent iteration of the course development that we've done, added combatives with the red man in there, we've brought back land nav, whereas previously the previous course didn't have land nav or dismounted tactics, and we've brought all that back into the initial skills. So really, they're gonna get a energized defender who's done a lot. Not necessarily are they gonna be experts at it, but they're gonna be just apprentice-level Airmen coming there looking for guidance and feedback from their supervisors, but they will be motivated, and they're gonna be eager to learn, so the responsibility's left up to those out in the field to grab them and take them and to teach them and to lead them, to develop them to what their mission needs, their units. - And I would echo too, on top of them getting a motivated defender, at the end of the day, we still carry on the discipline that they learn in BMT throughout our entire aspect of training. So we talk about Airmen and marching, we have Airmen march during tech school. March everywhere in formation. No Airman's allowed to be left alone. So we talk about a two-person concept. That goes back to our PRP days, our Global Strike, and the things that they may be doing at certain missile wings or other areas where nuclear weapons are there, or PL 1 assets. So we talk about two-person concept, they'll have to be in pairs wherever they go. No Airman's supposed to be alone. We don't do objectives individually, we do objectives as a team, we do objectives as pairs, so we teach that aspect. The discipline side of things, we still hold them to standards. We are ensuring that all of our cadre are out and about all the time, we're seeing what the Airmen are doing. They're living in their dorms, so the same dorms that we've been living in as Airmen, we're holding them to standards. They're having to do blues inspections on a regular basis, they're still having to do room inspections on a regular basis. So all of those aspects of a BMT, we're still carrying on that legacy to ensure that we have disciplined and motivated Airmen that leave our academy. And the same goes aside for the Officer's side, and Sergeant Crook can talk to some of the things we do there, what we're getting out of the Officers and coming out of their tech school, as well. - Yeah, and that's probably a good place to transition into a topic that I find really really interesting, and that's the integration of Officers and enlisted here with the initial skills training. So, just from a strategic big-picture perspective, what was kind of the genesis for doing that and re-imagining, if you will, what that training environment looks like for both the enlisted and the Officers, and then when did all this kind of come together? - So this is me and Captain Watkins' area of expertise, being with the Officer course and bringing in this new integration. So back in July of 2018, last year, we started doing this, and it basically provides the Officers the opportunity to lead before going out into the operational environment. So they get that experience, 104 students right in front of you here. You get that opportunity to learn, make mistakes here before you go out there. - So we've shifted significantly from the way the Officer course used to be run. There was two classes a year with 52 Officers, and the only leadership they'd experience in the course is leading their peers. Captains, Lieutenants, and rarely or infrequently we'd have Lieutenant Colonels or Majors in the course leading each other as they go through on a rotational basis. Whereas now, we have smaller classes four times a year so the Officers can hopefully get into tech school before staying at their base for up to ten months we've seen previously. We get them here sooner, we break up into smaller teams, and immediately after their first day of being on the ground they're given Airmen and they're charged with leading those Airmen through all 65 days of training that they're gonna be integrated with them. For the first several weeks, they're just charged with building rapport, learning names, faces, who those Airmen are, so that when they get to that expeditionary skills phase at the very end of training, that they're able to lead them effectively in a combat environment. And they do that, and it's entirely different, as we've found, than it was when they were leading their peers in the previous course where it could very easily be seen that they just wouldn't take it seriously, or they'd be able to laugh off to the side about it. But when there's Airmen that they're gonna be leading operationally after they graduate, they look at it with an entirely different mindset and I think they have a new appreciation for what they're doing here at tech school than they did before. And it's definitely been a benefit for the Officers and Airmen, alike. - Well, and it kinda talks to breaking those long-held industrial age paradigms of we're not just teaching these Officers how to do a job, we're actually teaching them in the context of doing the actual mission, so they're getting that strategic look, leadership-wise, at an earlier point, left-leaning, so-to-speak, in training. - Absolutely! So what has the feedback been, so far? I know there's some early returns, right? And there's always tweaks that need to be made, but so far, what is it looking like? - Of course with any new course being implemented there's gonna be growing pains, but we've been able to, with our excellent instructors, to basically go over the after-action reports and the end-of-course surveys and see where we can tweak things to make it better for the next one. But overall, I think it's been a benefit for both the Officers and the enlisted, especially out at Camp Bullis where the environment is more challenging and it gives them a chance to lead these young enlisted troops and not just their peers, like Captain Watkins was just saying. What I love about it is, at the beginning, combatives. The Officers are in there with the enlisted, and they're rolling with them, and you're gonna have to bring your A-game or you're gonna get choked out by an Airman, so. (all laughing) It basically tells them, gives them that experience of they're not too good or too big for something. They're going through everything that the Airmen do, so they have that experience, they know what they're going through and able to provide that knowledge once they go into the career field. - It all goes back to trying to instill an identity into the Airmen and the Officers as they graduate here. You look at any of our other battlefield Airmen career field counterparts, and Officers and enlisted train the same. They go through the same indoc, same tech school, they work side-by-side as they go through that extremely challenging element of their growth into officership or just into their jobs. And we're trying to do the same here. Not every enlisted team will have Officers, but every Officer that goes through the tech school will have enlisted members that they're going to be leading as they go through that, and I think they're definitely better off for it. To say that the reception was poor early on would be an understatement. It definitely was not well-received by, I would say, even the instructors and the students, alike. But, as we've iterated and grown through some of the initial stumbling blocks that we saw in some of the first courses as we executed them, we've definitely gotten to a much better product that is producing students that are gonna benefit the career field and the Air Force, alike. - And you specifically mentioned out in Camp Bullis, and we talked a little bit before we actually started recording the podcast about how our officers will go out into a Minot or a missile field and have large numbers of Airmen, so how do you see that training early translate into that expeditionary environment and the realism that it provides for everybody? - I kind of look at it from this standpoint, it gains in credibility. Overall, as far as when they're doing these aspects of their troop-leading procedures, they're being Squad Leaders, they're those Flight Commanders within the integrated teams with the Airmen. It gives them credibility, it gives them a leg to stand on when they get there with their Airmen, because lo and behold they will graduate and a lot of these Airmen are going to Global Strike, they'll be going to the same bases as the Lieutenants, and lo and behold you'll get there and you'll be a Flight Commander at Minot, Malmstrom, or F.E. Warren, and you'll literally see Airmen you were probably on the same team with. And that Airman can look at you and say, "he went through the same stuff I did, "he did the same training. "In all actuality, he led me through that training. "He was the first to do OC pepper spray, "he was the first to make sure I understood what land nav was in my tech school." And they're building that credibility, and they're building that rapport with these Airmen at an early age. 'Cause before, you had a few touch points as far as the Officers got to talk with the enlisted here or there. But that's all it really was, we were talking to them, we were kind of briefing them and everything like that. But now you're literally having these Officers and lead them through scenarios, lead them through exercises that Captain Watkins and the team at Camp Bullis have designed. And really that's where the credibility comes in, that's where they have that leg to stand on. Because these Airmen, that they just led through training, they gotta lead operationally, too. And that's the great aspect of what I think, I see from the apprenticecourse side, and the feedback we get from the Airmen, is that a lot of times they don't have that Officer interaction, and they never understood an Officer could do the same things that they could do or anything of the sort. I think that's where we gain a lot of our leadership aspects and credibility, just to Sergeant Crook's point of if you don't bring your A-game, you get choked out by an Airman. That's gonna happen, and it has happened before, and those aspects. But because they're Officers doesn't mean that they're too good to get down there and dirty with the Airmen. You gotta learn what your Airmen are doing in order to lead them through the scenarios. It doesn't mean you can always do it. But you gotta learn what they're doing and where they're coming from so you can really make those tactical-level decisions on the ground as a new Flight Commander. That's what we're gaining here right now, is that credibility for a lot of our Lieutenants, and I know Senior King can probably touch back to what we were doing in the past and what he's seen from his 20 years in from the Officers side of things. - The way that we're doing it now, the one thing that Captain Baxter was kind of talking about as far as building credibility, I believe it really helps the Officers find their leadership style, their tactical leadership style. We have to learn from one another out there at Camp Bullis as far as using the experiences they had out there, what worked for them, what didn't work for them. Maybe their approach is wrong, or maybe there's another officer that's leading a group of enlisted Airmen that, one that's able to observe what's working for that person and what's not. So it kinda helped tailor them to put a little experiences or nuggets for them to take operationally and when they get to Base X as that new Flight Commander, first times in front of their flight, they don't make some of the mistakes that they've already seen or been witness to or experienced, themselves. So it just, like I said, it builds that credibility. And as an enlisted member, I can only imagine what some of the young Airmen are feeling whenever they see that their Officers are going through training with them. Because, while it's been done a long time ago, I've never seen it up until the more advanced courses do we train with the Os and the Es together. - How has the staff been able to adapt, especially when you start looking at maybe other tech training environments that may be looking at a change on this level? - I can speak a little bit to it, specifically with the Officer course and enlisted course. They've typically been completely separate entities where we had instructors that were focused on Officer instruction and tying back each piece of instruction with some type of strategic vision and reason or a leadership philosophy that builds into why an Officer needs to know what a duty officer shift looks like. And we build in those layers of understanding, whereas on the apprentice course side, we are more focused on technical information. Making sure that you understand the facts about what you need to do so that you can accomplish the technical task, rather than understanding the vision and the intent for why that task is accomplished. When the courses were integrated, those two teaching styles, I wouldn't say they clashed, but they didn't blend as easily as we thought they would. More like oil and water. And we really had to go through a different level of chemistry to kind of make that instructorship work. So that when we do integrate and Officer instructors are teaching apprentice course classes and apprentice course instructors are teaching the Officer classes simultaneously, when we're integrating the classrooms, they do. They sit next to each other in the chairs and learn the same information side-by-side for much of the instruction. The Officers do break away at some points and learn different lessons that focus more on the Officer specifics, so they do still get that strategic intent, but to allow the instructors to focus more on that development of their own instructional skills, be able to teach to a wider audience was definitely beneficial and allowed our schoolhouse and our instructors to grow individually. So I think the quality of instruction at the schoolhouse has been better across the board as a result of it. - And I guess at the end of the day, right, we're always all trying to improve, no matter what job we have in the Air Force, including our instructors. Talking about additions to the things that you guys are doing at the apprentice course level and the Officers and the enlisted coming together, but you also are doing a lot with technology, so I wanna kind of transition towards that. And you guys have two huge additions in that department that's really helping Security Forces get out on the forward edge of the battle space even further than they have been. And that's through the use of virtual reality, and also upgraded FATS, or firearm training simulator, the MILO system, they call it the FATS 2.0. So, could you guys kind of talk about these two upgrades to your curriculum and how they came about and how that's progressing? - Yeah, so I'll touch on MILO. We talk about the FATS 2.0 real quick before we kind of dive into the virtual reality aspect of what we're going in training. So, within our deadly force section, our use of force section of our training, we really start to integrate technology into a lot of our scenario-based training. So prior to any type of technology or prior to any type of screen time or videos being used with our use of force and deadly force, a lot of our scenarios were built around Airmen actors. So you would pull Airmen from the individual teams, the instructor would give them a scenario and say "I need you to act out a domestic situation", "I need you to act out a suicide situation", or "I need", you know, name a situation that a law enforcement officer may encounter on the daily job, and that Airman had to act out that situation and we'd go into those shoot, no shoot scenarios that we use for deadly force. And, at the end of the day, as great of actors as Airmen are, you tend to find that sometimes they go far to the left and far to the right, or sometimes they don't do anything at all. And it doesn't exactly fit the exact scenario every single time that we try to get after from a deadly force or a use of force scenario. And that's where the technology has really come in to help us better our Airmen on deadly force in no shoot and shoot scenarios, and even on them using their use of force progression. Because now, you're using actual scenarios that are the same for all the Airmen, and you can see how they react. And based on those reactions, and with the MILO system being a screen in front of them, they are reacting to a scenario in front of them. They have a weapons system that is tied to that MILO, usually their M9, depending on how they're responding to a certain situation. And they can use that scenario that's in front of them that's the same for all the Airmen, and the instructors can look how they're interacting with that scenario. Yes, it may look like you're shouting at a screen at some point, but at the end of the day the scenario-based training gets far better results on the MILO system versus when we were doing the Airman-based training in a glass house or anything else with that. And another factor, we look at that and we say all right, we're getting after the MILO, we're looking at the screen time. Another factor, too, is weather. Weather is a huge pain for us sometimes when we talk about firing ranges and everything like that. MILO also helps us get after weapons familiarization and weapons firing. So we can put Airmen in front of these screens, we can go through our AFQC qualification course, we can show them before we even get out to the range exactly what our AFQC qualification course is gonna look like, and you can start manipulating that weapon system so you can implement certain types of jams, your misses, your other things that they may run into when they're live-firing and everything. So with that, it also helps familiarize the Airmen prior to live-firing. Because at the end of the day, we are getting Airmen that may have never touched a weapon system in their entire life, and the first time they're doing that is when they're going through technical training. So with that, if we can introduce slow integrations of the familiarization with weapons firing, that'll also help get after that, that's where MILO can come in with those aspects, as well. - That's really interesting, because it kind of, a lot of times you wouldn't think, we're doing the same kinds of things they're doing in flying training, for example, with the use of virtual reality and the sims that they have in Pilot Training Next, for example, where they're able to fly all the approach patterns at a certain base before they ever go to that base and actually fly it 100 times before they fly it for real. It just really helps and enhances that training environment. Specifically when it comes to virtual reality and the 360-degree video, how is that being incorporated into the training, and what's the purpose? - So, much along the lines of how Pilot Training Next came to exist, the AFWERX program. I think it's not lost on anybody in the Air Force that some of our systems slow us down a lot. The procurement process is definitely one of them. Sometimes, by the time we acquisition a new technology and are able to employ it, it's already obsolete. So, what we try to do, and what the Air Force is trying to do with AFWERX, is get programs and get technology that's leading-edge into the schoolhouses and into the units faster so that we can use them before they become obsolete. So virtual reality is definitely in that leading-edge of technology, and we found a company that allowed us to do that with law enforcement-type discrimination drill scenarios, much like the FATS and the MILO system allow us to do. But it's something that's not really in development yet, and so partnering with this company via ATWERX, they provided us, at no cost to us, several virtual reality systems that we're putting our students into and allowing them to utilize these systems in training. The New York Police Department, NYPD, they use the same system right now that we're using in our schoolhouse. And it definitely is, there's definitely great feedback from the students on it. And, as we're going through and iterating, as the students use it, we're finding areas where it could be better, and they're actively developing the virtual reality system for us as we go. Like as we're speaking right now, they're currently 3D printing an M4 rifle for us to be able to utilize it in our training and employ it so that we can have a use of force spectrum that we can apply. So students aren't bound to just using their handgun or not using it, they'll have non-lethal weapons they can apply. They'll be able to use pepper spray, a flashlight which you can also do in the MILO system, as we've seen, the M4 rifle, or even a taser. All of those are being built and provided to us via this company. And then at the end we're able to determine whether this is something that we want to continue to use in our training, whether we wanna purchase it, or even if we don't, other Security Forces units or any unit really in the Air Force, now that it's developed, can choose to purchase it and utilize it for their training. However, the feedback that we've gotten from students is that it is fantastic. I tell you, the moment you put on a virtual reality headset the first time, you're immersed in a world that completely sucks you in! (man laughing) It's hard to distinguish, at some points, reality from what is virtual. And it's definitely a great training aid for our students and every student that's put on the headset, it's been a pretty magical moment. - Yeah, they even have gotten to the detail, too, with this virtual headset like we were talking about we're gonna teach gate-runner scenarios, for instance. They built the gate at Shaw Air Force Base, or they can build actual Air Force base gates and Airmen can see what maybe their base that they're going to looks like and they can start understanding, hey, here's how I check out ID, or here's maybe where that button is on popping the barrier systems, or everything like that. So it's fantastic feedback that we can give to our Airmen and show them where they should've stood, or they didn't stand, or hey you probably should've drawn your weapon or here's what you should've been looking at in certain scenarios. And I think it's a great addition to our spectrum of training that we have here at the Academy. - So has it been something where the use of these technologies has really paid off in the end for the Airmen as they get evaluated to pass those standards that they need to pass? How has that translated from that virtual reality world to the actual evaluation part of training? - At the end of the day, it's another tool in our toolkit that we can use to get after deadly force and use of force scenarios. No system in and of itself is ever perfect, but tying in our MILO system, our virtual reality, our scenarios that we're doing with the Airmen, they can run through a multitude of scenarios on all different systems and that really makes them a better Airman, a better law enforcement officer once they get to their first base, because now they can say, "yeah, I've seen multiple scenarios." Yeah, I understand it's not the real job or what's happening live, but at the same time it allows us to put more scenarios in front of Airmen, different aspects of what's going on, different technology just allows that great opportunity to train, and I think that's something that we've seen. And Sergeant Crook can say what he's seen from the ground level at the instructors, too. A lot of benefit there, I believe. - Well why not? I've always been one that believes in the glass houses and the drills, no matter what type of equipment you have, you still have your fingers that go pew pew right here, and your brain. So constantly drilling in whatever environment you have, but why not use these virtual reality? And like he said, it's just more experience for them going forward. - Well the Airmen relate, too, nowadays as video games. - True. So, when you can bring that MILO or VR system, they're already familiar with a lot of the technology, so it sort of relates to them so they grasp it quicker, honestly. A lot of those young Airmen will probably be better at it than some of us (men laughing) that have been out here a little while. Even though we know the techniques and stuff, they'll just get it quicker. And it grabs their attention, and when you get their attention then they learn. - Definitely. - And when it grabs their attention it makes them feel like they're being invested in. They're like, "wow, this stuff's pretty high-speed!" And they actually care about the training and that monetary factor, as well. Putting it into the training. - Yeah, we've been able to make it happen without the technologies. Our Airmen have been able to meet the standard before they graduate, regardless of whether they had the technology or not. But, unfortunately, I think this, I know for a fact, that this is a mindset that we, even as a career field need to get away from is us just making it happen with what we have. And these technologies are one of the first steps that we have to really get away from that. Where we're saying, "instead of just making it happen, "why don't we make it the best we can?" Using these leading-edge technologies to not just meet the standard, but exceed it. So we have Airmen that graduate not just being able to do it, but actually have some level of confidence when they arrive at their first base. - So, you guys mentioned your partnership with AFWERX. So how did that come about? AFWERX is really out there trying to connect military and industry to make war fighters more agile and adapted, and you've kind of talked to that. But how did that AFWERX partnership kind of evolve, and how beneficial at the end of the day has that partnership with AFWERX been, especially when it comes to developing these new tools for training? - So it's actually, so the company Street Smarts VR reached out to us initially, saying, "hey, we have a product, "and we know that y'all teach law enforcement. "And we think this could be a potential use to you, "take a look." And we invited them to come down, they flew out at their own expense and just gave us a demo. And, like I was mentioning earlier, the first time you put on a virtual reality headset and you get that magical moment where you're in a different world, and now I'm in a law enforcement scenario where I'm responding to a domestic incident, I was there until I took the headset off and then I was back in the classroom. So I was pretty amazed with the technology and felt very confident that this was something that would definitely benefit the career field. And so we reached out and started working through AFWERX that way, and saying, "hey, is it possible for us to potentially do something like this?" And of course, with the competitors and others, they found that this is one of the only venues that we have currently that would allow us to do what we're trying to do. And the AFWERX partnership has been fantastic. Our squadron hasn't had to spend a dime at this point on procuring these new technologies. And we're able to implement them and use them. Our students, we've had hundreds of students that are able to put these VR headsets on and utilize them in training at no cost to us. So, one of the benefits, not only, I think, of bringing in the new technologies, to allow us to use them was expanding the perspectives and the mindsets of people even in our career field. Because we've been kind of locked in to our ways of doing things for a long time. And finally, something that's no-risk for our Commanders to say, "let's try it, "why not?" And then realizing there's all these benefits for them allows us to grow as an organization and hopefully as a career field later on. So AFWERX has been fantastic for that. And of course getting past the bureaucratic red tape of even if a Commander wanted to procure a technology like this outside of the AFWERX program it would take years to even be able to test it. So to actually get it in and employ it without having the time and cost, financially, associated with it, I think is the only thing that allows this technology, in particular, to be here right now. If it wasn't for AFWERX we wouldn't have it. - It sounds like it's really paid big dividends, and you guys are only about halfway through that one year partnership. As we get ready to close things out today I really wanted to kind of tie back into kind of the legacy of the career field and the things that you guys are doing here at the Academy. BMT curriculum changes that they did last year, they really looked hard at how they were looking at the legacy of all Airmen and introducing that Airmanship, if you will, and heritage into their curriculum. So what are the things that you guys now are kind of doing to really footstomp and instill that legacy piece? - Depending on whether you came through tech school or one of the continuation courses we have in our career field, one of the things that a lot of people know about is our Three Bears ruck march that we do. We do it at Police Week, we do it for Fallen Defenders, we've done it throughout different courses we've had. Currently, it's not part of the course, it's something that we just do extra, either before or after training. But we still hold the Three Bears ruck march with our initial skills Airmen, and they seem to always enjoy it, they love it. The comradery sides, they're going across there, and once they finish that and accomplish it, it finishes or finalizes there at the parade field at Camp Bullis at which we started a beret ceremony where they'll be issued their berets for the first time. Basically giving it to them, that way they can take it back, shape it, and clean it up that way for graduation it looks good. But that's something that we've tied in the ruck with the new beret ceremony and it's working out really great, and the Airmen seem to enjoy it. We're trying to keep the rucking tradition alive, even though we don't do it everywhere in our career field. We're gonna keep it strong here. - And you're building resilient Airmen, as well. - Oh yeah, absolutely! We talk about the touch points and what we do, and I go back to my opening statement, as far as building those Airmen that can shoot, move, communicate, and those lethal, resilient Airmen that we're building throughout our tech school, and the touch points we have. So throughout their 65 days of training, we're getting them, they're full of combatives. They're having to do a combative culminating event where they will fight each other for two minutes straight, and they're just exhausted. And when they're exhausted and the fight is on the line, we'll put them in a red man circle, and you will have to fight the red man, and you will have to fight for your life. Because that simulates something that, it may be your worst day, that Captain Watkins was talking to as far as an Airman on the gate. You may have to put your life on the line. And we need to start building that resiliency here. We OC pepper spray all of our Airmen. We build that resiliency, they go through a pepper spray course where they're using their asp and baton skills to not only do their appropriate strikes, but fight a red man while they've just been pepper sprayed. And anyone that's every been pepper sprayed, that's resiliency right there, in and of itself. You can go through and fight after being pepper sprayed. We're implementing night firing. We're doing big exercises within airfield security, WSA security, response forces, big use of force exercises culminating in one of our blocks. And then you go back and look at the Three Bears ruck that Senior King talked about, we have that. We're building that beret ceremony in about a week before they graduate, giving them that nugget and saying, "here's your beret, start shaping it." We read off the legacy of the beret, where it came from. That's a legacy, you gotta understand your legacy to really make your own. And then right at the end of the day, when we go down to Dock 65, and that last day, the day they're graduating, we have a graduation run. It's a formation run, we run about a 5K. It starts at the SF Museum, and it ends at the SF Museum. And this is the first time throughout their entire 65 days of training that we allow them to step foot inside the hallowed grounds of the SF Museum. And we talk to them on those steps, we tell them, "this afternoon when you graduate, "you will start your legacy. "You have to understand where you came from "to understand where you're going." And we do 14 Fallen Defender pushups to honor our 14 Fallen Defenders that we've lost in this war on terror right there in front of the SF Museum before they step into those hallowed grounds and learn about their legacy and where they come from. And that afternoon they'll graduate and they'll start their own legacy as Airmen. And we push them out to the career field where they will continue that legacy that we've implemented and those traditions that we've implemented here in tech school. And they'll honor, they will honor, I guarantee they will honor all of us past and present. And they're motivated, and they're ready to learn. And it's absolutely an honor to teach all of these Airmen, and they're excited to be here. That legacy is really the big sticking point. It's an exciting time right now in our career field. - I really wanna thank you guys for taking some time out and talking with me. So much goodness going on here at the Academy, and you guys have such an outstanding staff and care about putting out lethal and ready Airmen and making the career field as best as it can be. So, I really appreciate your guys' time today. - No problem! - Thank you! - Absolutely, Thanks! we're proud to be here. (men laughing) (electronic swooshing) - Lots of great stuff to unpack there! The Security Forces career field really pushing the envelope to create defenders who can shoot, move, and communicate in a more modern way using technology secured through their partnership with AFWERX, and then again creating lethal, ready, disciplined Airmen who will go out and represent the career field. We wanna say thank you to Captain Baxter and Captain Watkins, Sergeant King and Sergeant Crook, along with Captain Dex Binion from the 343rd Training Squadron who helped us put this podcast together and taking time out of their busy schedules. As a reminder, you can follow Air Education and Training Command via social media on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, as well as on the web at www.AETC.AF.mil Thanks for checking out the podcast as we dive into the world of recruiting, training, and education. For our entire AETC Public Affairs team, I'm Dan Hawkins. So long! We'll talk to you next time, on Developing Mach 21 Airmen.