Battlefield Airmen train on Hickam

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Chris Vadnais
  • Air Force News Agency
HICKAM AIR FORCE BASE, Hawaii (AFPN) --  Joint terminal attack controllers, or JTACs, found a unique place to train for close-quarters battle:  in one of Hickam's base housing areas.

JTACs are part of a tactical air control party team. These battlefield Airmen live and work with Army ground units, and their main function is to coordinate air strikes in support of combat operations.

Soldiers don't knock politely before entering a suspected terrorist hideout; they kick the door down, clear the building's rooms for their own safety and then assess the situation. The battlefield Airmen who fight alongside them need to know how to do these things the same way Soldiers do them.

Teamwork like that requires plenty of practice. JTACs are seeing a growing amount of urban combat downrange, so close-quarters battle training is incredibly valuable for them.

"At any time, a JTAC can find himself, at the company level or even at the platoon level, on a clearing team, clearing through rooms while they're doing close-air support in support of urban operations," said Tech. Sgt. Mark Kistler, a JTAC assigned to the 25th Air Support Operations Squadron at Wheeler Army Air Field, Hawaii.

That's why one of Hickam's old neighborhoods, currently scheduled for demolition, is so valuable to him and his teams. While abandoned buildings may not seem too useful to some, they're much better and more realistic than places where the JTACs usually train.

"Normally we are limited to a range-type complex where they have all kinds of restrictions," said Sergeant Kistler. "You don't get the atmosphere of being in a real urban environment," he said.

"Here, we're able to come in to houses and apartment-style buildings like you might see over in theater and they can get real-life training dealing with stairways, dealing with objects that are inside, like bathrooms and kitchens, that you normally don't get to see so much in the urban training areas here in Hawaii," he said.

For the training, JTACs split into two opposing forces: an aggressor team and a breach team. Aggressors took cover inside the houses while the breach team planned their attack.

Younger JTACs like Airman James Aldridge, who is preparing to deploy for the first time later this year, appreciated the element of reality the housing units lent the exercise.

"Today's training was more urban, with cars driving by and people around," said Airman Aldridge. "In other exercises we're in remote locations, surrounded by vegetation and wildlife. It felt more realistic being able to breach through doors while reacting to realistic attacks," he said.

In a few months these homes will be torn down and replaced with new places for Hickam's Airmen and their families to live. But for one day they were urban battlefields, helping to better prepare Airmen to fight the war on terrorism.

"It's training that could save my life one day," said Airman Aldridge. 


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