Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The Air Force announced Wednesday that it is getting rid of BEAST week during Basic Military Training, the four-day-long deployed war exercise that has been a staple of the service's boot camp for the last 16 years.
BEAST week, which stands for Basic Expeditionary Airman Skills Training, will be replaced by a new exercise. Trainees will still go out in the field, but it will last for only a day and a half.
It going away doesn't seem like a big deal this early. I just now had to look up what went into the four day BEAST week; I hadn't even heard of BEAST, which appears to have started after I went through in '06 when it was still Warrior Week. It looks like it wasn't too different, only being a bit more of a "You're in a war zone!" simulation.
Quick research shows the original FTX that they created was 12 hours, then 24 hours, then 36 hours, then they created the week-long Warrior Week, and then they shortened it to the 4-day BEAST. Thinking back on what things we were only exposed to for the first time at Warrior Week or learned there that we hadn't really gone over too much in classes before that week, most of that can easily be crammed into the new 36-hour PACER FORGE. They wouldn't need near as much time on something like weapons familiarization as when I went through Warrior Week because that was before trainees started being required to carry the dummy rifles around everywhere; that is something that they seem to be hammering home through the entire duration of BMT now. BMT has also increased in length, from 6.5 weeks to the current 8.5 weeks.
As soon as I saw the name PACER FORGE my brain associated it with the URC-119 Pacer Bounce system. I imagine that will be hard in the future to keep those separate in my head, as a comms guy. PACER FORGE already sounds better than BEAST though, which sounds more at home in something like Army or Marine boot camp than anything AF-related.
In 1990, there was no such warrior or beast week when I went through.
Doesn’t seem like a big deal to me. You will get all the pre-deployment training before your first deployment anyway. Not to mention all the exercises you will participate in.
I thought deployment training in the Air Force included mixing drinks and hooking up the satellite TV and internet?
It does!
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
