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After nearly 20 years, 3rd Herd Combat Readiness School completes last class

  • Published
  • By Micah Garbarino
  • Tinker Public Affairs
TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. --  It's the end of a mud-crawling, wall-jumping, jam-clearing, buddy-carrying, field-dressing, position-defending era at Tinker.

When the 3rd Combat Communications Group Combat Readiness School completed its final class July 27, cadre members started cleaning and organizing gear that will be shipped out to other Combat Communications units, or transferred to the 72nd Air Base Wing in September.

Since the early 1990s, the school, located in Tinker's Glenwood Training Area, has been teaching six classes of combat communicators each year how to fight in austere environments.

"Our Airmen have the potential to be embedded with combat units and they need to know how to operate in that environment," said school commandant, Master Sgt. Matt Smith.
Airmen who attend CRS, normally a two- week course, learn a wide skill-set that Sergeant Smith said can't be found in one place anywhere else in the Air Force.

"Pre-deployment combat-skills training is great, but a lot of these (joint-service) courses assume the foundation has already been laid. That's what we do here - work on mounted operations, dismounted patrols, base defense, marksmanship, Self-Aid Buddy Care, close-quarters combat, escalation of force procedures and much, much more," Sergeant Smith said.

The course culminated in a 36-hour field training exercise where the class set up an operating base, worked with "local nationals" and defended their position while being outnumbered 2 to 1.

"It's been a good feeling to teach Airmen skills that could potentially save their lives," Sergeant Smith said. "You can see the difference in them when they leave. They have broken out of the routine...and now have confidence in themselves and their abilities as Airmen."