JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas—Under a late summer sun, Air Force basic trainees practice safely rearming a retired F-16 Fighting Falcon here with mock AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles. Nearby, a bulldozer levels the ground where the rest of this first new airbase training range will sit.
If all goes well, two retired C-130 Hercules aircraft that arrived on base in late August will join the F-16 on the mock airbase’s completed tarmac as early as December, Col. Kellie Courtland, commander of the 37th Training Wing that oversees Basic Military Training, told Air & Space Forces Magazine in a Sept. 2 interview.
“The goal is to have it ready by December-ish timeframe or early 2027,” Courtland said. “But we’re within months of all of that happening.”
Officials from the 2nd Air Force first revealed plans this past January to inject more realism into Basic Military Training by building mock airbases where future Airmen can get hands-on training with real aircraft. The long-term plan is to have four similar areas each with one F-16 and two C-130s, plus another, more expeditionary training range with dirt airstrips.
The project is part of a sweeping effort in BMT to instill “airmindedness” in new Airmen—making sure they understand the basics of generating airpower, especially if their base falls under attack.
“We want Airmen that are going to rise to the occasion. … What we don’t want is an Airman to say, ‘OK, he’s out of the game, she’s out of the game, and he’s out of the game, therefore the game’s done and we’re not going to do the mission,’” Courtland said. “No, what we want is you to say, ‘She’s out. I may not do her job, but that maintainer that’s over there working, I can hand him the wrenches, or that Airmen that’s got to go out there and fuel that plane now, I can help him pull that hose out and make sure that jet is grounded.’”
Training started on this first F-16 in April. Trainees are tasked with a mission to rearm the fighter, organize into small groups, develop a plan, brief the plan to Military Training Instructors, and complete the mission.
They work out of two containerized training stations on the site that contain training materials: videos and mock AIM-9 missiles and smaller 2.75-inch rockets for the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System.
The mock munitions are much lighter than live ordnance, but MTIs take care to ensure trainees understand it takes three Airmen to carry an AIM-9 and two to carry a 2.75-inch rocket.
“These are training rounds; they’re not weighted … but we highly emphasize the fact that ‘hey, you will do a three-person lift’ just some sense of realism because in reality those missiles weigh about 400 pounds,” said Tech Sgt. Johnny Ngo, an MTI with the 322nd Training Squadron.
Tech. Sgt. Brandon Cruz, an MTI with the 331st Training Squadron, said watching trainees train on a real F-16 brought back the excitement he felt when he went through his technical training to become a loader.
He remembers walking into the hanger, “and there’s these four aircraft out there, and it’s almost a surreal moment; like you feel it in your chest, and I was like, wow, I’m in a Transformers movie or something,” Cruz said. “These trainees are getting that experience in BMT within the first five weeks of actually being here. They’re getting that surreal reality check.”
Tech Sgt. Jeremy Hudson said he remembers how different BMT was when he went through in 2014. “It was the basics—drill, dormitory, and discipline,” the MTI from 322nd said. “It was folding shirts. It was making sure your dormitory and your living area was clean, and then it was drill.”
Trainees coming into BMT now are getting much more realistic training, Hudson said. “Five weeks ago, six weeks ago, they were civilians, and now they get to see an F-16 firsthand,” he said.
Overall, the effort is progressing well, but Courtland, the 37th Training Wing commander, acknowledged there are always logistical hiccups when sorting through multiple changes simultaneously.
“You’re trying to build a new curriculum at the same time, you’re trying to do the construction at the same time, and you’re trying to train the MTIs so that they can train the trainees,” she said. “So, you’re always going to have those little clunky pieces in there, but overall, I think it’s going good, and I think it’s got the support [from the Air Force] it needs to thrust it through.”
When completed, this mock airbase training range will have 16 containerized training stations that trains eight key tasks:
- Arming fighter aircraft
- Refueling
- Casualty transfer and evacuation
- Cargo loading
- Post-attack and repair
- Aircraft marshaling
- Aircraft familiarization
- Airbase entry control
There is also a much broader plan to grow the airbase into a four-quadrant training range—each with duplicate set-up consisting of two C-130s and an F-16—by 2031, Courtland said.
BMT officials also plan to build a forward airbase training range with a more expeditionary flavor for PACER FORGE, the final field training exercise of BMT that stresses trainees’ agile combat employment skills.
There will be two dirt air strips that intersect and a towable aircraft fuselage, 37th Training Wing Command Chief Master Sgt. Caleb Vaden said, adding that the plan also involves having an F-16 and one C-130. Currently, the simulated airbase at PACER FORGE consists of some hard structures that allow Airmen to practice skills such as perimeter defense.
The forward airbase training range is also scheduled to be completed by 2031, Vaden said.
“It’s going to have a hangar in the middle, so some of those same types of things they’ll be training on here, like well, it’ll split your team up, and hey, some of you are going to be supporting airfield ops. Some of you are going to be supporting a repair team, should there be damage that you have to go out and assess, and those types of things,” Vaden said. “So, it’s just going to be what you have here, forward with reduced resources like we’ve had in real life, and just a lot of chaos going on to really kind of stress them out.”
