JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas. –
In development for more than a year, the Security Forces Academy at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland is now shifting into leadership-focused training, bringing both officers and enlisted students together.
For the first time in the course’s history, 22 officers and 94 enlisted students will jointly tackle most of the course’s objectives, which include learning law enforcement basics to hands-on training in the field.
“How can we develop our officers and make them better leaders early on in their career,” asked Master Sgt. Michael DiCicco, 343rd Training Squadron non-commissioned officer in charge of the Security Forces officer course.
Officers will train for 70 days while enlisted Airmen are taught for 65 days.
“When we bring both officer and enlisted students together, we put them in leadership positions so the officers, at a very young age, can start developing their leadership traits,” DiCicco said. “They need to get these skills now.”
Enlisted Airmen need to learn that to become a leader, they need to know how to follow first, DiCicco added. Through this connection, DiCicco believes both officer and enlisted Airmen will better appreciate each other’s roles during the course.
“It’s a tough course, not just physically,” DiCicco said. “It’s mentally draining because there’s so much that we’re asking of 17-year old to 37-year olds.”
The course objective is razor focused.
“That is the mission here; making students]more lethal defenders,” he added.
Course graduates will serve on military installations worldwide, as well as in combat missions. Before that happens, the basics about law, authority, government, history and use of force are taught.
Airmen just graduating from basic military training must now learn community relations skills and how to talk to people in different situations. Afterwards, there are combative labs. Students learn handcuffing techniques, searching, less than lethal techniques, hand-to-hand combat, and how to use a baton.
“We put them through a lot of physical training,” said Tech. Sgt. Adam Bearor,
343rd Training Squadron Security Forces instructor.
A new part of this course is exposure to pepper spray. Students are contaminated out in the field and decontaminated in tents after the exercise.
“For the Airmen, it’s a brand new thing,” Bearor said, adding they dispense the pepper spray early in the course to instill confidence in the students for the rest of the road to graduation. “It’s a real test of what they can handle.”
At JBSA-Camp Bullis, students learn how to dismantle patrols, conduct convoy operations, land navigations, dismounting and night side training. Once they return to JBSA-Lackland, there’s still more to learn. Students spend time at JBSA-Medina Annex for more intense training, which includes responding to alarm activations.
Students learn basic policing and security skills and are trained to use M-4 and M-9 weapons. The course assessment period begins upon completion of these lessons.
“Everything that they learned from dot one to dot 62; we put them out there,” Bearor said. “And we start doing flight level exercises so we can see how they apply what they’ve learned throughout the whole course.”
Evaluation of each student’s success is continual.
“They’re confident in what they’re doing,” Bearor added. “They’ve done everything so much that when you see them perform, perform, perform without having ‘what do I do now?’— that’s when the instructors think they’ll be good Defenders.
“By providing more confident, ready-to-go Defenders, it’s just going to make that integrated defense so much better,” Bearor said.
Approximately 4,500 students are trained each year at Security Forces Academy. Graduation for the leadership training course is Oct. 31.