Photo By Kevin Clark | Students and staff with the Air Force’s Air Mobility Liaison Officer (AMLO)...... read more read more
Subscribe
Students and staff with the Air Force’s Air Mobility Liaison Officer (AMLO) Qualification Course traveled to Fort McCoy to train April 15-18 at the installation’s Young Air Assault Strip.
Lt. Col. Andrew Baker, course director with the 435th Training Squadron at Scott Air Force Base, Ill., said the class previously conducted this training in Colorado, but for the first time brought the AMLO students to Fort McCoy because of the capabilities found on the post.
“What we found at Fort McCoy was the type of runway that we were going to be operating on, the dirt runway,” Baker said. “The runway — it was great. It was better for training because … it gave us a lot of opportunity for students to see the impact of landing operations. It was significantly better than (training) on a very hard, compacted dirt runway.”
The students also utilized Badger Drop Zone to complete specific training events. “The drop zone was much bigger and much better for our students to kind of see that,” Baker said.
Baker described the types of training the AMLO students focused on during their week at McCoy.
“During the week, we focused on … drop zone control and also landing zone safety officer (training),” Baker said. “The drop zone control was essentially just calling airdrops in, directing the aircraft to a point of release, and then they threw out a 15-pound sandbag. That would score how well the student directed that aircraft to a release point. It's called verbally initiated release system, or VIRS.”
Baker said with the landing zone safety officer training, it involves the students going out and ensuring that runway conditions are conducive for aircraft operations and landings, and they communicate with aircrew.
“We communicate the conditions of the runway,” Baker said. “We communicate if there’s wildlife, if there’s air traffic — anything. That's our job to kind of keep an eye out for them as an extra set of eyes for the aircrew to make sure that they are landing safely. We’re not controllers. We’re just safety officers.
“The responsibility and the risk is all essentially on the aircrew, but we do our part to mitigate that risk as much as possible, and part of that is doing checks on the landing zone,” Baker said. “So, we check for ruts. We check for loose aggregate. All those hazards can cause significant damage to aircraft. So, we have to confirm the type of distress, how bad that distress is, and then we communicate that to the aircrew for their decision on whether they will land there or not. And then we also have to ensure not just the actual landing zone, but we also confirm the taxiway. We confirm the other obstructions like trees or towers are not a hindrance to the operation as well.”
Baker said an AMLO’s job in this scenario is “validating what was surveyed prior to us arriving there to make sure that nothing has changed so that there isn’t anything that’s going to surprise the aircrew. And then the radio communications back and forth to allow the crews to land. For us, it was just training, but it could be bringing in troops and supplies.”
Even though this training at McCoy included C-130 Hercules aircraft, Baker said C-17 Globemaster III aircraft can also be used.
“Yes, both C-130 and C-17,” Baker said. “And in fact, we can also do light tactical fixed-wing aircraft. We used to have a contract with a single-engine aircraft. It was a Cessna C-208. … They would come in and support our class. So, a multiple range of different aircraft can support this training.”
AMLOs have been key contributors to the Air Force and Department of Defense air mobility mission for decades, and especially during Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. Baker described more about why AMLOs are important.
“What they’re assigned to do is really we’re rated officers — so pilots and the ever-dwindling group of navigators,” Baker said. “We work with our ground force commander. We’re (also) assigned to a two-star or three-star headquarters in either the Army or the Marine Corps to work on their staff. And we embed to understand their requirements, to understand their staff and leadership command styles. With that, we can better relate that to Air Mobility Command and understanding Air Mobility Command on the flip side, their styles, their requirements, their processes, we’re able to better help our users — the Army and Marine headquarters levels.”
Baker also compared the job of AMLOs in an analogy of gears working together.
“The best way to articulate it is you have two gears,” Baker said. “You have the Army headquarters gear that is churning right with the Air Mobility Command gear. And the best way to describe an AMLO is we’re a lubricant in a system to keep things running smooth.”
Fort McCoy’s Young Air Assault Strip is likely ideal for this training and Baker said they’ll be returning to McCoy to do the training again.
The air assault strip has been an active training area for more than 40 years and regularly supports a myriad of training every year by not just the Air Force but also Army, Marine Corps, and Navy personnel in a variety of ways.
The strip was completed in 1984 by members of the 618th Engineer Company, (Light Equipment), 82nd Airborne Division, from Fort Bragg, N.C.
James Hubbard, chief of the Airfield Division at the Fort McCoy Directorate of Plans, Training, Mobilization and Security, said the airfield is unique and offers a great training environment for training just like the AMLO course training.
“The airstrip is an important part of our training complex at Fort McCoy,” Hubbard said. “There’s not many airstrips like Young available for training, so it is highly sought-after as a training area for exercises.”
Baker said the training will likely return to McCoy in September.
The 435th Training Squadron is part of the Expeditionary Operations School, which is part of the Air Force Expeditionary Center at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J. The Expeditionary Center’s mission is to provide “Airpower … From The Ground Up.”
According to its history, the U.S. Air Force Expeditionary Center began at Scott Air Force Base as the Airlift Operations School under Military Airlift Command on July 5, 1978. On June 1, 1992, the school became the Air Force Air Mobility School under the newly formed Air Mobility Command. In 1994, the school broadened its training mission and relocated to then-Fort Dix, N.J., and reopened as the Air Mobility Warfare Center. In March of 2007, it was officially renamed the U.S. Air Force Expeditionary Center and became the Air Force’s leader in expeditionary training. See more about the center at https://www.expeditionarycenter.af.mil.
Fort McCoy’s motto is to be the “Total Force Training Center.”
Located in the heart of the upper Midwest, Fort McCoy is the only U.S. Army installation in Wisconsin.
The installation has provided support and facilities for the field and classroom training of more than 100,000 military personnel from all services nearly every year since 1984.
Learn more about Fort McCoy online at https://home.army.mil/mccoy, on Facebook by searching “ftmccoy,” on Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/fortmccoywi, and on X (formerly Twitter) by searching “usagmccoy.”
Also try downloading the My Army Post app to your smartphone and set “Fort McCoy” or another installation as your preferred base. Fort McCoy is also part of Army’s Installation Management Command where “We Are The Army’s Home.”
| Date Taken: | 04.29.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 04.29.2025 18:26 |
| Story ID: | 496513 |
| Location: | FORT MCCOY, WISCONSIN, US |
| Web Views: | 52 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Air Force Air Mobility Liaison Officer Course students come to Fort McCoy to train for first time at post’s austere air assault strip, by Scott Sturkol, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
