Future Total Force arrives for duty in Vermont

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SAN ANTONIO (AFPN) --  Airman 1st Class Kirshell LaCroix had not even graduated from technical school when she decided to jump into the Future Total Force.

She landed in South Burlington, Vt., about a month ago, and the 20-year-old electrical and environmental aircraft maintenance apprentice said it looks like she made the right move.

As part of a Future Total Force initiative, Airman LaCroix is among a small group of active-duty maintainers from the 20th Fighter Wing at Shaw Air Force Base, S.C., being trained by Airmen of the Vermont Air National Guard’s 158th Fighter Wing. The idea is to provide a setting where young maintainers can glean from the vast reservoir of knowledge provided by veteran guardsmen.

“I wanted the experience and I figured it would be something different,” said Airman LaCroix, who raised her hand for the new program when the call went out for volunteers while attending technical school at Sheppard AFB, Texas.

Airman LaCroix said she anticipated the benefit of being trained by a supervisor with 15 to 20 years of experience versus someone who might have only about three years of job knowledge to pass on.

Although Airman LaCroix has been in this innovative form of on-the-job training for only a few weeks, the New Orleans native said she is impressed at the skill of her guard counterparts and how they can draw upon years of corporate knowledge when confronted by a tricky F-16 Fighting Falcon maintenance problem.

“I’ll be more experienced than Airmen who went straight to an active-duty base,” Airman LaCroix said. And as a result, the career-minded first termer said she, in turn, would have more maintenance know-how to pass along when she returns to the active-duty world in two to three years.

There are currently four active-duty maintainers in the program at South Burlington. By the end of August, 12 Airmen will be on station. Seven will arrive from technical school, and the remaining five will arrive from their first duty station with a few years of experience already under their belt.

Although the maintainers may be just now arriving, the program has been in the works for several months.

“We have spent the summer laying the ground work for the program, taking care of detail issues such as where records will be kept and ensuring people assigned here will get promoted on time,” said Lt. Col. Sharon Preszler, an operations officer with the 79th Fighter Squadron and former chief of wing plans for the Future Total Force program at Shaw. “I think it is a bit too early to call the program a success overall, but you can tell from the attitudes of everyone involved that things are going great.

“We have also had tremendous success in establishing a good working relationship between the 158th FW and the 20th FW,” Colonel Preszler added. “Establishing a good working relationship was very important, and it has gone extremely well so far. We have really had a lot of outstanding support for this program too. A lot of people have worked very hard to make the successes we have had so far and we all really appreciate their efforts.”

One of those people is 1st Lt. Adrian Meyer, detachment commander for the 20th Maintenance Operations Squadron in South Burlington. He arrived from Aviano Air Base, Italy, where he gained his experience in the F-16 maintenance world.

He agrees with Airman LaCroix that maintainers who leave Vermont will have a definite advantage from the mentorship they will receive from maintainers who are full-time technicians in the Guard.

“There’s no substitute for experience,” Lieutenant Meyer said. Besides, experience, he said maintainers also have the advantage of training in a more stable environment not as prone to distractions such as high turnover rates in the active-duty world.

“The pace of training is slower here,” the lieutenant said. “They have more of a chance to comprehend what they are being taught.”

He too sees the possible long-range benefit of training with the Guard.

“I hope they capitalize on their Guard experience and take it back with them to active duty to be imparted on the next generation of maintainers,” Lieutenant Meyer said.

If the program is something out of the ordinary for the active-duty Airmen, it has been mostly transparent to the guardsmen, said Chief Master Sgt. Tim Brisson, aircraft maintenance superintendent for the 158th FW.

“To us it’s not different than with our guys,” he said of the comparison of training their active-duty counterparts versus Guard maintainers.

Besides a new way of training, the active-duty maintainers are blazing a new trail in an experimental community basing program. Instead of living on base in a dormitory, the young Airmen are being housed in contracted apartments located about 10 minutes from the base.

Airmen LaCroix said she likes the new living arrangement and the slower pace of life in South Burlington. Lieutenant Meyer added that the active-duty contingent has been warmly embraced by the local populace he describes as personable and outgoing. He said he enjoys the small town feel where “just about everywhere you go, you run into someone you know.” (Contributing to this report were Master Sgt. Chuck Roberts and Senior Airman Matthew Rosine)