Photo By Capt. Faith Hirschmann | The students and instructors from the 820th Base Defense Group’s Pre-Ranger...... read more read more
MOODY AIR FORCE BASE, Ga. – The 820th Base Defense Group hosted a Pre-Ranger Assessment Course here April 22-25, 2019 to teach Airmen the skills they need to attend the Air Force Ranger Assessment Course and then Army Ranger School.
The 820th BDG hosts the course multiple times a year and encourages its members to take it while making sure all candidates have the Army-specific knowledge and skills necessary to move through the training phases.
“This is a learning environment, a coaching environment, that gives them some initial information and skills and gives them a gut check on whether they really want to go to Ranger Assessment Course (RAC) and ultimately Army Ranger School,” said Maj. Michael Wetlesen, 822d Base Defense Squadron commander and Pre-RAC instructor.
The 820th Base Defense Group sends Airmen to many different Army schools to obtain/acquire special skills to operate with other services as needed and defend a base in tough environments. Army Ranger School teaches service members how to lead troops on the ground in close combat missions and direct fire battles. These are beneficial skills for the 820th BDG.
“It brings leadership skills back to the unit. It enhances the abilities of the 820th,” said Wetlesen. “If you have one Ranger qualified person in each unit, they are going to bring up the standard of that unit and improve leadership and attention to detail to ensure that we get the mission done.”
Army Ranger School is notorious throughout the military for being physically demanding and making Ranger students operate with very little sleep and food. The Pre-RAC gave students a taste of this training with 19-hour days and only eating one or two meals a day.
“You’re sleeping straight on the ground, and we only got a couple of hours last night,” said 2nd Lt. Aurora Harting, 824th Base Defense Squadron flight commander and Pre-RAC student. “It’s one thing to know this kind of thing takes a lot of mental toughness because you are tired and hungry and they want to put you under stress, but to actually experience it… This is miserable.”
The course was also a learning environment to teach Airmen the Ranger core tasks they will need to know before they show up at the school. These tasks include land navigation, troop movements, shooting and maintaining machine guns, using radios, employing an M18A1 claymore mine, a ruck march and a combat water survival test.
While the course was hosted by and targeted toward the 820th BDG, Airmen from other units and bases participated as well.
“I saw this as an opportunity to test myself, see where I’m at,” said Technical Sgt. Artem Kukharev, 23d Communications Squadron non-commissioned officer in charge of the Communications Focal Point. “I think that if the opportunity presents itself to do something like this, I don’t see any reason why not to do it.”
| Date Taken: | 04.25.2019 |
| Date Posted: | 06.21.2019 11:03 |
| Story ID: | 328662 |
| Location: | MOODY AIR FORCE BASE, GA, US |
| Web Views: | 169 |
| Downloads: | 2 |
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