http://www.airforcetimes.com/print.php?f=0-AIRPAPER-2376121.php

December 04, 2006

Pararescue school begins expansion
Ground broken at Kirtland for $64M campus

By Bruce Rolfsen
Staff writer


Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. — Capt. Joseph Barnard respects the history surrounding him as he shows off a building at Pararescue and Combat Rescue Officer School.

There is the Medal of Honor presented to the family of Airman 1st Class William H. Pitsenbarger, who was fatally wounded in 1966 while treating soldiers in a South Vietnamese jungle.

There is an al-Qaida AK47 rifle from the 2002 Battle of Roberts Ridge, in which Senior Airman Jason Cunningham died while caring for injured and wounded soldiers.


Students walking these small hallways understand they are standing in the footsteps of pararescuemen whose names evoke the sacrifices they could be called upon to make.

“These kids know they are going to be shot at. ... They are very, very serious,” Barnard, 42, said of his airmen.

Soon, the school will make room for more students, and the scattered facilities will be consolidated onto a campus.

With the Air Force looking to boost from 88 to 140 the number of airmen who graduate annually out of the two-year-long pararescue course, the school has started the first phase of building a $64 million campus at Kirtland.

The Air Education and Training Command unit broke ground Nov. 9 for a five-story training tower topped by two mock-ups of aircraft cargo bays and loading ramps. From the tower’s heights, students will practice skills such as fast roping to the ground.

The old school is spread across several parts of Kirtland. An instructor in the school headquarters building who wants to check up on a surgical class has to walk or drive about three-quarters of a mile between buildings. Students must walk a similar distance between their dormitories and many of the teaching areas.

The master plan for the new school gathers most of the Kirtland facilities into a common campus where the base’s Zia Park housing area had been.

The campus plan includes dormitories, a gym, urban combat training area, surgical skills training buildings, administrative and classroom buildings, and a “heritage hall” of memorabilia from past pararescue operations.

A memorial will feature a statue of Pitsenbarger. The pararescue community is hoping to raise about $320,000 from private donations for the memorial.

One essential part of the course that won’t change with the new facilities is the requirement that students have “gumption,” said Barnard, who graduated from the enlisted course in 1989 and was later commissioned as a combat rescue officer.

“You can’t be scared to scuba dive. You can’t be scared to hang over the side of a rock with a rope. You really can’t be scared of anything,” he said.

Of the airmen who apply to become pararescuemen or rescue officers, about 25 percent will make it through the indoctrination course at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, Barnard said.

The applicants who do the best at Lackland arrive with discipline and physical toughness. They might have been on a school wrestling or water polo team or raised in a military family.

Of those who reach the Kirtland school, about 98 percent will graduate.

Today, the school annually graduates four classes of students, with the average class numbering 22 airmen, Barnard said.

The school typically has an enrollment of 140 to 170 students and a cadre of 45 instructional personnel.

Including the indoctrination course at Lackland, it takes an enlisted airman about two years to graduate from pararescue school.

The parallel rescue officers’ course is about four months shorter because the officers spend less time learning emergency medical procedures.

Once an airman earns his way into the rescue school, he’ll spend about half his time on the road at bases other than Kirtland. The road trips include six weeks at the Air Force Combat Diver Course in Panama City, Fla., and five weeks at Army bases learning free-fall parachute skills.

Despite frequently being away from Kirtland, the students can bring their families with them to the base, Barnard said.

The new facilities aren’t expected to result in an overhaul of the school’s curriculum.

“We’re very adamant that we like the way we train,” the captain said.

But Barnard hopes to see a change in how officers are taught.

When the combat rescue officer career field was established six years ago, there weren’t enough rescue officers to assign them as instructors at the Kirtland school. Instead, the officers served in operational unit leadership positions and on headquarters staff where rescue expertise was needed.

As more rescue officers have graduated and gained experience, the service has reached the point where officers can be assigned to the school, Barnard said.

He is the first rescue officer to serve as the school’s commander.

Students will be trained in command, control and leadership aspects of the job as more rescue officers are assigned to the school, Barnard said.