Defender Challenge 2020 Postponed Until May 2021

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Category: Guardmount/News

Published: 04 March 2020

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DEFENDER CHALLENGE POSTPONED UNTIL MAY 2021

Defender Challenge 2020 to Test Readiness, Lethality

By Vicki Stein, Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center Public Affairs, 3 March 2020

JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas --The U.S. Air Force Defender Challenge 2020 will pit Security Forces teams against each other in San Antonio, Texas, May 2021.

Defenders will prove their abilities in dismounted skills, endurance, agility, individual weapons, and military working dog (MWD) teams through a series of gut-testing challenges. This year, Security Forces expanded the competitor pool to 19 teams from across the U.S. Air Force major commands, U.S. Army Military Police, and with our coalition partners.  

Brig. Gen. Roy Collins, Air Force Director of Security Forces, says his intent is to demonstrate improved Defender lethality and readiness to defend our personnel and resources in any environment to ensure mission success. 

“Our Defenders will push themselves to the breaking point in these readiness trials to showcase the capabilities we bring to the fight, while displaying our competitive spirit and camaraderie that makes us unique,” said Brig. Gen. Collins.

This year, the challenges are tougher. The dismounted skills assessment, known as combat endurance, will measure strength, endurance, agility, teamwork, leadership, problem solving and knowledge of core skills. Competitors can expect to encounter multiple training objectives throughout the patrol to test their grit and measure the team’s cohesion and resiliency, such as medical aid, fire and maneuver, and land navigation.  

The combat agility competition objective will test functional fitness and the ability to execute tasks in a field-based evaluation under stress.

The weapons challenge evolved into a practical application where shooters will engage in scenario-based shooting events at the individual, pair and fire team levels in the near, middle and far distances.   This event will require active engagement, quicker reaction to situations and higher weapons expertise to prove proficiency on weapons.

A new event this year pits premiere MWD teams against a series of dismounted skills assessments in much the same manner as the combat endurance competition. The MWD and handler are judged as a team through a series of patrol and explosives detection-based field problems.

Chief Master Sgt. Tamara Hartz, Security Forces Career Field Manager, explained that not only will those events determine the most lethal and most ready team, “they will also inform us of things we need to do in our training capacity to help create the best Defender warfighter for the Air Force. Training is the foundation that makes us more lethal and more ready,” said Hartz.

“We updated our training over the past few years as part of the Reconstitute Defender Initiative. By looking at how our Defenders accomplish these events, we can fine-tune our training programs moving us from qualified to proficient in our core skills using lessons learned from this year’s competition to improve them,” explained Hartz. “Using Defender Challenge as both a showcase for talent and a way to assess training needs, we will continue to develop more lethal and capable security forces Airmen.”

Many of the teams who competed in 2018 will be back to defend their titles. Others will take the opportunity to take it from them. In 2018 PACAF won the Defender Challenge title by taking first in the weapons competition, placing second in the dismounted operations challenge, and scoring well in the combat agility.

PACAF won the weapons competition and displayed the highest marksmanship skills of all teams in that category. They won the Coleman Cup, named after Brig. Gen. Richard Coleman, former U.S. Air Force Security Forces Center director of security forces and commander from 1997 to 2000.

Air Mobility Command won the Sadler Cup. The award is presented to the top team in the dismounted operations challenge, named after Maj. Gen. Thomas Sadler, who served as Air Force Chief of Security Police from 1975-1977.

United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force (RAF) Regiment previously held the trophy since winning it at the 2003 Defender Challenge.

In the combat endurance relay event, the German Air Force came out on top, and Lance Cpl. Adam Butler of the RAF team won the Outstanding Defender Award for demonstrating exceptional leadership throughout the competition.

“This year’s event will continue to evaluate our tactics, techniques and procedures and build upon our lessons learned, while working jointly with our world-wide partners, both in competition and crosstalk,” said Collins. “More lethal and more ready!”

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Editor's Note: The Air Force Defender Challenge video is a must watch. Go to the "Gallery" then "Videos" and scroll down to the bottom to view it.

From the Security Forces Directorate

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Category: Guardmount/News

Published: 17 January 2020

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Advancing the Training Continuum

By CMSgt Tamala L. Hartz

Happy New Year! As we begin the new decade and the year 2020 we are continuing to advance our career field’s civilian, enlisted and officer training continuum. These efforts will ensure we are creating a Defender that will win in every fight!

In the last two years we have transformed Security Forces Training from recruitment to retirement. We overhauled every skill-awarding course at the SF Academy and our Military Working Dog schoolhouse. We integrated officer and enlisted training to provide necessary touch points during learning and exercise events. We formed training gates that ensure all Defenders return to the mothership for training at critical points, to match the development of their knowledge, skills and abilities with increased responsibilities. We overhauled our Civilian Defender course at the VA Law Enforcement Training Center to align training with the academy and provide the POST certification. To facilitate teaching and coaching at every base, we fashioned a Leader-Led Trainer course that focuses on providing our noncommissioned officers with the abilities and expertise to deliver training on every operational flight. All of these previous efforts have set the stage for the continuing evolution of our training in the next year.

In 2020, the focus will be on taking Defenders from ‘Qualified’ to ‘Proficient’. This initiative will require continued focus on training time and exercising skills that will build confidence and competence. Proficiency must become what we value and work towards.

Our first step is defining what a proficient Defender looks like. What is a ‘Proficient Defender’?   This is a Defender who accomplishes tasks with fluid instinctiveness and makes critical decisions with the confidence to know he/she will be successful. For example, one will identify a threat, pull their M9 Berretta from a drop holster, aim, pull the trigger and hit the intended target. This is accomplished fluidly, instinctively, and accurately. This proficiency will mature over years of training and experience resulting in smart, seasoned, and lethal Defenders who perform more like precision weapons than gravity bombs.

To begin the effort to become proficient lethal Defenders we must first modernize our home station training tools. It is essential to provide training guides and lesson plans that will arm Leader-Led Trainers and supervisors with relevant, up-to-date and accurate curricula to facilitate learning. We have reached out across the Air Force and created teams of experts to accomplish this cumbersome task. This subject-centered curriculum will provide the needed subject matter expertise to take a Defender from qualified to proficient.

With an understanding of what proficiency is and the tools to accomplish it, the last focus area is who will get us there. The answer, as it is so many times, will be our noncommissioned officers. Proficiency will be achieved through a cascade effect as our Staff Sergeants and Technical Sergeants on our operational flights learn to coach and educate, achieving higher levels of proficiency for themselves and their Defenders. Through the act of preparing for and educating others, a trainer becomes intimately familiar with the task, so much so that after the training they are also capable of executing the task to a higher proficiency level. Additionally when our flight leaders are evaluating the flight accomplishing multiple tasks during an exercise or actual event, their advanced or superior proficiency level enables them to identify the areas in which each Defender needs either additional training or more exposure to the task to increase proficiency levels.

As you can see there is a lot of work to be done, but we have the right people in the right place to ensure we create proficient, lethal Defenders who can win any fight! This is just one focus area we are getting after this year. I look forward to watching our career field mature and continuing to grow over the next 12-months. As always, thank you for what you do for our country, our Air Force, and our career field.

CSAF Charts Air Force Defender Way Forward in the Year of Integrate Base Defense

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Category: Guardmount/News

Published: 02 October 2019

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CSAF Charts Air Force Defender Way Forward in the Year of Integrate Base Defense
By Alex Delgado, 502 ABW Public Affairs / Published October 02, 2019

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein addresses Security Forces Defenders, past and present, at the 33rd Air Force Security Forces Association national meeting banquet in San Antonio 28 Sept 2019, in San Antonio, Texas.

Joint Base San Antonio, Texas - Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein discussed the Air Force’s transition from Year of the Defender to Year of Integrated Base Defense, focusing on how elite Defenders fit into a layered defensive network, in a speech at the 33rd National Meeting of the Air Force Security Forces Association in San Antonio Sept. 28.

Goldfein began by speaking about the beret worn by Air Force Defenders. “That beret represents those who are the best in the world at integrated base defense,” he said. “Elite Defenders…wearers of that beret guard our nation’s treasures and it is our sacred duty to protect them.”

Goldfein announced The Year of the Defender a year ago, “which led to the Reconstitute Defender Initiative,” he said.

But it was a serious security incident at Royal Air Field Mildenhall, England, where an individual was able to drive onto the flight line and ram into an aircraft before he was apprehended, that got the program moving.

“A challenge was turned into an opportunity,” said Goldfein. “We took a good hard look at ourselves in the mirror and determined that we had gone for way too many years without investing in our elite Defenders as a foundation of who we are as a globally engaged service.”

“So we re-focused on proficiency and small unit tactics,” he added. “We increased our investment in our Defenders with $180 million in new equipment just last year.”

RDI encompassed new training, new tactics, techniques and procedures, and a renewed expeditionary focus.

“We’ve made great progress, but we have miles to go,” said Goldfein. “And I will commit to you that we are not going to take our foot off the gas.”

Goldfein referenced the annual Wing Commander Conference he recently hosted, where he engaged with 280 warriors for two days talking about the business of warfighting and leadership.

There, Goldfein shared his vision where an Alpha Warrior Operational (physical) fitness program will be directly associated with the tough business of base defense, along with daily weapons marksmanship training. “I’m not talking about once or twice a year,” he said. “I’m talking about every day, because confidence in our primary weapons comes from repetition.”

Goldfein went on to say that building state of the art ranges at each base would be unattainable, but that there may be answers in being creative and expeditionary at home.

He referenced a shoot house built by the 23rd Special Tactics Squadron at Hulburt Field, Fla., which was built from steel and plywood for about $18,000, and is used daily with live rounds.

“We have got to get creative to get our Defenders more trigger time and work on proficiency and competence with their weapons,” said Goldfein. “And I don’t want you to wait for me to move out on this; as I told the wing commanders; I trust you, go long, I’ve got your back.”

Goldfein went on to emphasize the importance of his message. “We’ve got to be laser focused on combat proficiency because the threat is outside the wire right now as we sit here,” he said. “They are sizing us up, looking for weaknesses in our lines; what we want them to determine is that we are just too hard a target to penetrate.

“I want them to see the beret and know that they are up against the best and are doomed to fail,” he added.

“So we’re going to build on our progress from The Year of the Defender to focus on how elite Defenders fit into a layered defensive network,” he said. Our Defenders should be looking at the entire integrated base defense network that included sensors well beyond that fence line to get a sense of the operational environment.”

“Every Defender should be connected; A walking server, a node in a network that senses and shares data and communications at the speed of relevance against the threat.”

Goldfein went on to define what some current and future threats look like. “So now it’s time to prepare for the next attack that will likely include cyber operations, hybrid warfare, Special Forces and enemy drones.”

“It’s your creativity, your ingenuity, your innovations and your courage that are going to help us prepare for that fight,” he added.

“This is one thing I can look at each and every one of you in the eye tonight with absolute clarity, we have from this moment until that fight starts to get our forces ready,” he said. “And we should treat every week as the last week of peace, and an absolute blessing.”

Goldfein closed by addressing Defenders in the audience. “So to our Defender team here tonight past and present, and your justifiably proud families,” he said. “What an honor it is for me to be part of this special evening, I could not be prouder to serve with each of you as your chief when our country needs us most.”