Undergraduate special mission aviator course is first of its kind in Air Force

  • Published
  • By Jonathan Rejent
  • Nucleus staff writer
KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. --  Enlisted aircrew members now have a stepping stone to aviation.

The 23rd Flying Training Squadron at Fort Rucker, Ala., a geographically separated unit under the 58th Special Operations Wing, has implemented an undergraduate training course for enlisted rotary-wing crewmembers -- the first of its kind for the Air Force.

The now-required Career Enlisted Aviator Rotary Wing Fundamentals course will prepare special mission aviators -- including aerial gunners and flight engineers -- for their graduate training at Kirtland.

In the past, this type of training never existed. After finishing aircrew fundamentals and the special mission aviation course at Lackland AFB, Texas, enlisted aviators would arrive at Kirtland to take on their graduate training with no flight experience.

"All helicopter and tilt rotor flight engineers will now come to Fort Rucker for a crash course in helicopter operations," said Tech. Sgt. Seamus Feeley, CEARF student flight chief.

Mission qualification training on helicopters and CV22s at Kirtland has encountered failure rates upwards of 50 percent. CEARF aims to combat that and save the Air Force in both fiscal and human capital.

"CEARF will save lost time and money by reducing washouts and allow more individuals to successfully complete training and fill a critically undermanned career field," Feeley said.

The enlisted aviators are specially trained to compute weight and balance, take-off and landing data, helicopter pre-flights, aerial gunnery, hoist operations, scanner duties, loadmaster and in-flight malfunction analysis, giving them the tools to understand helicopter and tilt rotor flight, according to Feeley.

The course takes 36 training days to complete, equating to about two calendar months. Feeley said CEARF will train an estimated 88 flight engineers each year.

Feeley said the CEARF's first training flight May 7 was a success, describing it as "a culmination of hard work from the top down - Air Education Training Command headquarters, 58 SOW leadership, 23 FTS leadership and support staff, the flight engineer initial cadre and, of course, the students."