News

Combat communicators sharpen skills at readiness school

  • Published
  • By Robert Talenti
  • 689th Combat Communications Wing
More than 25 Airmen from the 5th Combat Communications Group recently graduated from an intense three-week course designed to hone their combat skills.

Combat Readiness School course graduates learn a variety of combat skill sets to include convoy tactics, land navigation, ground base defense, communications reporting, and tactical team movement. These skills help the Airmen perform their technical communications, power production and air traffic control duties in hostile environments.

Course graduates are qualified to deploy anywhere in the world within 72 hours of being tasked. Staff Sgt. Shane VanDewark, a CRS instructor, belted out the same message over and over to ensure his words sunk in.

"Effective communication equals effective combat," he said. "We have three main goals in conducting the course - provide our Airmen the tools to effectively operate in a combat environment, get them used to carrying their weapons, and teach them how to provide ground base defense."

VanDewark said because he came up in a civil engineer squadron as a power production Airman, training others like him is unique and awesome.

"I've trained hundreds of students, and I get a lot of gratification knowing I've grown them into combat professionals in the areas of radio operations, protection of critical assets, and defending sites and wingmen," he said. "In fact, they just held off a full site assault. This isn't something they would have been able to do on day one."