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.”

Air Force Security Forces History Book Vol III

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Written by John W Probst

Category: Guardmount/News

Published: 14 August 2019

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AFSFA Publishes Security Forces History Book Volume III

Watch our YouTube  video -- https://youtu.be/fBVK_wjP2XY

Dear Air Police, Security Police, & Security Forces Members:

Due to the continued interest in the Air Force Security Forces history, the Air Force Security Forces Association and M.T.Publishing Company have joined forces to publish a third edition history book in 2020. This third edition will make a perfect companion book for the first two and will contain additional history about the Air Force Security Forces with a section for your stories while serving, as well as a chapter for your personal biography. If your biography was in one of the other editions and you would like it to be in this one, it will be necessary for you to resubmit it along with two photos if possible - one while in the service and a current photo. You may use the same photos that were in the previous editions.

Your experience stories are encouraged for this third edition. These can be provided to the publisher free by simply writing an interesting story while serving as a AP, SP, or SF member in 500 words or less. You may also provide photos to go along with your article. All stories will be reviewed for content, possibly edited and published based on pages available for this chapter.

The volume will be:

• 9˝ x 12˝ Hardbound

• Min. 112 pages

• $84.00 (Leather Edition)

• $52.50 (Standard Edition)

Submitting Your Biography for the Volume III History Book ... by mail or electronically

Write your personal biography in 150 words or less, indicating your name, rank, place and date of birth, when inducted into the service, years served, duties, action while in the service, when discharged, awards/medals received, interesting stories as they relate to the Air Force Security Forces, family data, and what you are doing today. If you stay within the 150-word limit, it will cost nothing to participate. The cost for each word over the 150 limit is 15 cents. If your biography is over the limit, please remit a check for the extra words. Send your biography with two photos, if possible – one when you were in the service and a current photo. Do not send photocopies in place of photos, because they cannot be reproduced for use in the book. Biographies may be submitted without photographs. Please type your bio (double-spaced) on plain white paper or submit electronically in a text document. Do not embed photos into the text. Please send those separately. To ensure that all material is returned after publication, write your name, address and phone number on the back of all material submitted. Please send biographies and photos to M.T. Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 6802, Evansville, IN 47719-6802.

You may also submit your biography on-line at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.   Any digital photos must be scanned at 300 dpi for submission. Low resolution photos cannot be used for the book. If you have questions about scanning or submitting digital files, please contact us at 210-277-0448. In submitting photos, please include a caption on the back of the photo with the date and an explanation of who or what is depicted.  A book order is not required to submit material for possible inclusion in the publication.

See your latest AFSFA Security Forces Magazine for the order form.