LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE, Texas — For a service usually stationed so far from the front lines that it has earned the sobriquet "Chair Force," some of the scenes now unfolding at the Air Force's primary training base almost seem blasphemous.
New recruits are being trained to use rifles. They are being taught hand-to-hand combat skills. They are being prepped as battlefield medics. The new regimen is part of a complete revamp of basic training ordered by Air Force commanders in somewhat belated recognition that their airmen, once sent to large isolated bases with hundreds of thousands of troops between them and enemy forces, are now regularly in harm's way.
In Iraq, the Air Force has taken over supply convoys to ease the burden on the Army and Marine Corps, and specialized forces have been used in Army-like combat patrols, conducting raids and seizing suspected insurgents outside such facilities as Balad air base, north of Baghdad. Commanders estimate that about a third of all Air Force personnel have been deployed to the Middle East and Central Asia since Sept. 11, 2001.
Until recently in Air Force history, airmen and their commanders were "a garrison force" that deployed fighter jets in battle but little else, said Gen. T. Michael "Buzz" Moseley, former head of air operations in Iraq and Afghanistan who took over as Air Force chief of staff in September.
"Now everything we have operates off those forward air fields," Moseley said. "Fundamentally, it's a different business."
It is hard to underestimate how drastic a cultural change the move is for the youngest of the armed services. The shift dovetails with larger military needs demanded by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the hunt for terrorists. But it is a delicate balancing act, one in which the Air Force is attempting to adapt to a world of guerrilla warfare even as it insists it is remaining true to the reason it was created: to wield dominant air power.
The Air Force views itself as the "high-tech service," responsible not only for the world's most sophisticated fighters and bombers, but also for most military space programs and the bulk of the U.S. nuclear deterrent.
As a result, its recruits tend to have more education and are as likely to join to become computer experts as armed warriors. Last year, 28% of enlistees had some college education, compared with 24% for the Army.
