DOVER, Del. - Dover Air Force Base held a ribbon cutting ceremony on Friday for its Tactics and Leadership Nexus (TALN). The $400,000 facility is designed to teach life-saving and combat skills to Airmen of all career fields. The program will include group leadership challenges, first aid, chemical defense, weapons familiarization and realistic combat simulations.
TALN simulates a forward operating base to to give Airmen more hands-on training ahead of deployment. The goal is to enhance their critical thinking and decision making skills to give them more confidence in combat environments.
"We think and we've been very transparent as a defense department that our potential conflicts in the future are going to be against adversaries that are much more capable," says 436th Airlift Wing Commander Col. Matthew Jones.
Dover has the U.S. Air Force's first permanent facility to host a program of this kind. It integrates several different combat leadership and training initiatives into one course. Col. Jones says the idea for TALN was born a year ago and now Airmen in the first state have top of the line training.
"There's a higher likelihood in future conflict that those same maintainers are going to be in smaller teams, working on both mobility aircraft and fighter aircraft and those smaller teams will require the maintainers to have different skill sets than just turning the wrench," says Col. Jones.
This 9-hour, one-day course divides students into 4 teams of 7 to apply what they learn in the classroom. It starts with a low crawl in the sand pit. Teams will make way out through conexes and then meet for mask confidence training.
"With their M50 and their full ground crew ensemble, so from boots up to head covering and their mask," says Tech Sgt. Mitchell Simpson. "Most of the time the Airmen only get to be exposed to the irritative agent at basic training. This training is going to be for everyone across the base."
Airmen will be equipped with Simunition protective gear and M16's loaded with Simunition rounds.
"They haven't actually been encountered with a traumatic bleed, somebody in respiratory distress," says Staff Sgt. Logan Hallman.
Hallman says Airmen will use what they learn about bleeding control to apply pressure to mannequins throughout different scenarios on the course.
Each class will be met with a new course, but it's the entire program that Col. Jones says is unique to the Air Force.
"No one has done it quite like this where they have combined both the exercising of the mind and the leadership reaction course," Col. Jones says.
The first course tentatively starts on August 24th, 2020 and eventually every active duty Airman in Dover will take it every three years.
