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Air Force graduates first combat systems officers

  • Published
  • By Maj. Rosaire Bushey
  • AETC Public Affairs
NAVAL AIR STATION PENSACOLA, Fla. --  This week, bases across the Air Force are receiving something new courtesy of the 479th Flying Training Group at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Fla. -- the very first Combat Systems Officers.

Ten lieutenants, nine active duty and one member of the Wyoming Air National Guard, stepped into the history books April 15 as the first-ever class of CSOs graduated from the 479 FTG at NAS Pensacola- paving the way for a slipstream of CSOs to graduate in groups of about two dozen roughly every three weeks starting this summer.

"Today is a great day for our school, the CSO program, and the Air Force," said Col. Travis Willis, 479th FTG commander. "Hundreds of people worked very hard for a number of years to get the program to this point, and it's going to make a huge difference throughout the service."

Previously the Air Force had separate training tracks for navigators, weapons systems officers, and electronic warfare officers. The CSO school brought those three pipelines together to produce aviators with a common core of systems and employment knowledge.
"Over the course of their 11 months here, our students train in weapon system employment and defensive threat reactions with integrated electronic warfare training and expertise," explained Colonel Willis. "What that means is that a CSO is a universally-assignable operator who has undergone some extraordinary training from flying to leadership to decision making - they've done it all."

To make it happen for a full contingent of students - the 479th expects to be running a full complement of 15 classes of 27 students each by summer - the group has more than 300 members to include 40 instructor pilots and 136 CSO instructors, as well as more than two dozen each of simulator instructors and civil service instructor pilots topped by over 125 civil service aircraft maintainers keeping the unit's 43 aircraft flying.

Students are trained at the group's new $37 million, 58,000 square foot academic building, which houses 18 T-25 desktop simulators as well as T-6 and T-1 simulators. It also features a new 100,000 square foot hangar complex. Flying training is done in the group's 21 T-1s and 22 T-6s.

"The training is incredibly intense," said 2nd Lt. Patrick O'Sullivan, a student in the program's second class that will graduate in June. "The syllabus is rigorous and there's not really time to look around and enjoy the view, as it were."

CSO training starts in Pueblo, Colo., with initial flight screening before students even arrive in Florida. Once at NAS Pensacola, students are put through their paces for 210 training days, which include 55 simulator missions, 18 T-6 missions, 13 T-1 missions and three days of water survival training in the Gulf of Mexico.

And it doesn't stop there. After graduation, it's off to Fairchild AFB, Wash., for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape training and then to their next base and more training on their specific weapons system.

"The CSO course isn't short and it's not easy," said Colonel Willis. "The men and women who make it through this course will have earned the right to wear their wings. There are now 10 commanders who are getting their first glimpse of the Air Force's newest warriors. I'm sure they'll be as pleased with their abilities as we have been."