ARLINGTON, Va. - Airmen will spend a lot less time fulfilling ancillary training requirements, Air Force officials said about a training plan released in October for active, Guard and Reserve.
Unit commanders underscored the need for a revision, said officials. The changes may solve what the commanders were calling an increasing amount of ancillary training requirements.
Recommendations were made in January after a review by the Air Force's manpower and personnel staff. It included inputs from the Air National Guard and the Air Force Reserve.
Although commanders still train their Airmen as they see fit, the Air Force's new Total Force Awareness Training (TFAT), revises and reduces nine training courses that took Airmen more than eight hours to complete at scattered Web sites.
Now, three 30-minute blocks of training fulfill the same requirements at one Web site. Officials estimate more than six million man hours will be saved annually.
The new training blocks satisfy all requirements for the following subjects:
- INFORMATION PROTECTION covers information security, NATO security, information assurance, records management, as well as the Privacy and Freedom of Information Acts
- FORCE PROTECTION deals with protection from terrorism Level 1 training
- HUMAN RELATIONS entails combating human trafficking, suicide awareness and violence prevention
Ancillary training contributes to the Air Force's mission accomplishment but is separate from specialty or occupational training. It is now categorized into TFAT, Selected Total Force Awareness Training, Event Driven Training and Additional Duty training.
Officials said expeditionary readiness and deployment training is no longer considered ancillary training but rather considered an element of an expeditionary force Airman.
Total Force Awareness Training went online Oct. 15 at the Air Force's Advance Distributed Learning Service (ADLS) Web site, https://golearn.csd.disa.mil, and it is also offered through the Air Force Portal network, https://www.my.af.mil.
"The response to the release of Total Force Awareness Training has been staggering," said Lt. Col. Tim Flora, chief of advanced distributive learning at the Air Force's Air Education and Training Command headquarters. "In the first three days alone, more than 42,000 Total Force Awareness Training courses were competed through ADLS."
The Advanced Distributive Learning System is accessible through any computer with internet service, and the system updates and maintains a record of individual course completions. The system can also transfer ancillary training information into unit databases.
Under the Web site's course listing for TFAT, hyperlinks to three computer-based tutorials on ADLS provide self-paced study on Information Protection, Force Protection and Human Relations.
The interactive tutorials fulfill annual training requirements in Information Security, NATO Security, Records Management, Privacy Act and Freedom of Information Act. They also fulfill annual training requirements in Anti-Terrorism Level-1, Combating Trafficking in Persons, Suicide Awareness and Violence Prevention.
Flora said the ADLS program office is accelerating plans to quadruple the current capacity of its database in response to a 300 percent increase in user demand. Plans are to complete their server upgrades by January. Until then, users experiencing slow performance are invited to access the online courses during the evening, when server performance is "extremely responsive."
In another improvement, Air Guard and Air Reserve Airmen who have limited time and access to computers, can now hold mass briefings to fulfill their ancillary training requirements. Airmen may also download off-line versions of the courses soon from the ADLS Web site.
Manpower and personnel officials are now working to reduce other ancillary training by 50 percent including Selected Force Training and Event Driven Training.
Selected Force Training targets individual ancillary training requirements, such as supervisors who need specific training courses like Survivor Assistance Awareness training. Event Driven Training targets events that dictate training such as Airmen in-processing.
Initiatives to revise Additional Duty Training and Expeditionary Readiness and Deployment Training are ongoing, officials said.
To head off future upsurges in training, Air Force officials said they are using a gatekeeper approach to review and approve new ancillary training requirements.