RANDOLPH AIR FORCE BASE, Texas –
What does an "FTOC" do?
That's the question that Team Randolph Airmen may ask themselves when they notice a new sign on a door in Building 661 on Randolph Air Force Base.
With that small change, the 70 or so Airmen who compose the 19th Air Force's new Flying Training Operations Center to be activated with existing 19th Air Force personnel July 17 - at no additional cost to the Air Force - will perform day-to-day standards and evaluations or "Stan-Eval" functions out of that office, said the FTOC's assistant chief of operations and readiness, Lt. Col. John Papachriston.
"FTOC people are mostly pilots and they go to the wings and fly with their personnel on daily missions," Colonel Papachriston said of the mostly officer-heavy unit, which also has enlisted boom operators, gunners, loadmasters and flight engineers.
The pilots and enlisted personnel performing standards and evaluations functions are subject matter experts for crew performance in every airframe in the 19th Air Force's inventory.
Those experts fly at the different bases in the 19th Air Force. They answer questions about training and educational standards for aircrews, but their main job is to ensure student aircrews are graded according to Air Force training standards - and that training syllabuses are adhered to by student and instructor aircrews.
Colonel Papachriston added if there's a natural disaster, a major emergency or a large scale act of terrorism affecting an Air Education and Training Command base, the FTOC personnel will switch into a crisis-handling mode.
Lt. Col. Chris Schweinsberg, Colonel Papachriston's counterpart in the operations and readiness department of the FTOC, said with that crisis - handling mode is something beneficial and transparent to the Air Force - and that means quickly switching from a flight training and evaluation mission at the FTOC to support of the AETC Crisis Action Team.
When that happens, FTOC subject matter experts will coordinate and control the usage of airlift assets - aircraft that can move people and equipment anywhere around the United States and the globe.
That movement is possible because the 19th Air Force has 29 different airframes from wings located on bases in Texas, Mississippi, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Florida, Washington and Colorado.