"If you interrupt that flow, then your end strength is going to start to go down unless you take the option of forcing people to stay in the service."Īs of early April, young airmen were still working their way through basic military training. Cancian said he believes military leadership is concerned about shutting down basic training because it would be difficult to reopen it. As people with four-year contracts leave the service, new ones must be brought in to keep the numbers up. The military's turnover rate is about 25% each year. Still, the service chiefs argue they have an ongoing requirement to provide forces to defend the country.
"If they don't, they're going to have more sickness and perhaps some deaths," Cancian said. "There's a strong pushback in some segments, arguing that the military should apply the same standards and precautions that you're seeing in the civilian sector. It's not clear how long they're going to be able to do that," he said. So, spreading them out would be a part of any solution."Ĭancian points out that all of the military services are facing the same problem. "It's a classic incubator of disease, even in good times. "I think it's very sensible, since one of the problems with boot camp is that people are packed very tightly," said Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The idea is to test how workable it is for the service to use several training locations in an emergency. But officials recently announced plans to send 60 new recruits to Mississippi's Keesler Air Force Base starting April 7. Lackland is the only place where the Air Force holds basic training. "The only thing you can do is good, old-fashioned public health, which is isolating, contact tracing and removing them from the well population that hasn't been exposed," he said.
On a conference call with reporters, John DeGoes, commander of the 59th Medical Wing at Lackland, explained his approach to protecting trainees from infection. We're trying to preserve the mission essential functions here so that we can maintain our national defense, and one of our main jobs here is the training mission." "It's a threat inside the fence line and outside the fence line. "This is a threat," said Joint Base San Antonio commander Laura Lenderman. Several trainees have now tested positive, though the Air Force said it was able to isolate them quickly and slow an outbreak. "What we're doing is making sure we maximize social distance and keep trainees separate from other trainees, other military training instructors, as well as our civilian populace," said Gary Moore of the Air Force 737th Training Group at a virtual town hall meeting in March.
Dining facilities are now kept open longer to make sure recruits keep their distance and don't rush the counters. If anyone from the cohort turns out to be sick, their entire flight can be isolated. The recruits also live in dorms with fewer people, allowing them extra space in an attempt to lessen the chances of infection spreading. Then they spend the first two weeks doing administrative work, sequestered from the wider basic training population. Now the Air Force screens new recruits for the virus as soon as they arrive at Lackland, asking them questions about their travel history and whether they're experiencing symptoms. It was all part of a time-honored system the Air Force used to produce new troops.īut since the coronavirus outbreak, the environment and tempo of basic training has changed. Air Force basic training trainees in a 14-day restriction of movement period practice basic movements at the 324th Training Squadron March 24, 2020, at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland.
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