Air Force recruits start basic training at Keesler due to COVID-19. Will it work?

The Air Force for the first time sent new recruits to Keesler Air Force Base for basic training this week in an experiment to keep trainees moving forward as coronavirus social distancing requirements have led to smaller classes.

Lt. Gen. Marshall “Brad” Webb, head of Air Force Education and Training Command, told reporters at the Pentagon Friday that the service had already cut the number of recruits it was sending to basic military training at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas.

The Air Force is now sending 450 recruits a week to Lackland, down from the typical 600 to 800 new trainees so they can be spread farther apart in housing, dining and training exercises.

All new Air Force recruits were previously trained at Lackland and trainers were flown to Keesler from the Texas base. The first 60 new recruits arrived at Keesler on Tuesday.

Webb said it would be three or four weeks before the command decided whether the small class of recruits at Keesler can get the equivalent basic training experience they would have received at Lackland, and whether the Air Force would send another group of recruits. Air Force basic military training typically runs for eight-and-a-half weeks, but has been reduced by a week due to COVID-19.

In the long term, the reduction in the number of new service members could require the Air Force to consider other measures to maintain manpower numbers, such as “stop loss,” Webb said, where airmen who are about to finish their military service commitment are kept on involuntarily. The Air Force was not at that point yet, he said.

The Air Force told Congress in March it faced a shortfall of 2,100 pilots, and it has struggled to keep needed levels of personnel in other critical fields, such as maintainers. If the pipeline to new airmen is further reduced or stopped even temporarily, it would have significant implications on the force, Webb said.

“We normally graduate about 3000 airmen each month,” he said. “If we stand this capability down for a month, it will take a year to recover.”

Tara Copp

McClatchy DC

Tara Copp is the national military and veterans affairs correspondent for McClatchy. She has reported extensively through the Middle East, Asia and Europe to cover defense policy and its impact on the lives of service members. She was previously the Pentagon bureau chief for Military Times and a senior defense analyst for the U.S. Government Accountability Office. She is the author of the award-winning book “The Warbird: Three Heroes. Two Wars. One Story.”