USAF AST / Hurlburt Field, FL Challenge Coin

USAF Crate Special Tactics - Advanced Skills Training Center / Hurlburt Field, FL Challenge Coin

HISTORY

Staff Sgt. Casey Crate, 26, was killed in an air crash northwest of Baghdad on May 2005. The $7.8 million, 50,000 square foot Crate Advanced Skills Training Center was formally dedicated to Sergeant Crate. 

The Crate Advanced Skills Training Center is expected to continue to improve the process of filling the ranks of Special Tactics squadrons with superbly trained Battlefield Airmen. The AST concept was born of necessity when the Special Tactics career fields were experiencing severe manning shortages and training deficiencies in 1999.

AFSOC Advanced Skills Training School was activated at Hurlburt Field under the 720th Special Tactics Group. In 2000, the school was chartered to decrease the time a three level trainee was in training for the five level. Up until the school started, the average time in training for a combat controller to obtain their five level was over two years while assigned to the units. This time has been decreased to less then 12 months and the units receiving a combat ready five level. The curriculum has grown from a one month Initial Familiarization (IFAM) course with 14 students to a one year course that encompasses all the core tasks in the Combat Control Career Field Education & Training Plan (CFETP), teaching over 120 students a year. 

MISSION 

Advanced Skills Training (AST) is a twelve-month program designed to afforTd the most opportune training for newly assigned Special Tactics operators. AST also provides STS operators the ability to become mission ready prior to joining individual STS teams. This schedule is broken down into four phases of training. These phases are designed to provide each student with the necessary skills to advance to the next phase of AST. This course will test the trainee’s personal limits through demanding mental and physical training. You will only succeed by giving 100% at each and every training event. 

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