The Air Force has lengthened the capstone event that all recruits face at the end of basic training to make sure that airmen sweat in training so they don’t bleed in war.
The first boot camp class to complete the new three-day PACER FORGE event — short for Primary Agile Combat Employment Range Forward Operations Readiness Generation Exercise — went through the 57-hour event this week, according to the Air Force.
Since March 3, PACER FORGE has lasted three days and two nights, said 37th Training Wing spokesperson Angelina Casarez, and throws trainees into the opening hours of a simulated deployment.
“Trainees will be expected to build and defend operating locations, recover high-value assets, resupply drops, and provide Tactical Combat Casualty Care,” Casarez told Task & Purpose. “Trainees will be working in small teams which also allows them to practice leadership skills.”
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin described the changes to PACER FORGE as a “game changer” in a post to X on Thursday.
“We’ve taken things to the next level at @USAirForce Basic Military Training, expanding the culminating event to drive home the #WarriorEthos and better prepare Airmen to defend this great country,” Allvin wrote.
David Roza with Air & Space Forces Magazine first reported that PACER FORGE was being extended so that trainees can learn how to operate in small teams, making it harder for enemies to target them.
Lt. Gen. Brian S. Robinson, head of Air Education and Training Command, announced the changes to PACER FORGE on Wednesday while speaking at the Air & Space Forces Association Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colorado.
“Instead of being overly prescriptive by [instructors], what happens now is ‘here’s the objectives you’re set to achieve, here’s the resources available to you … you have 57 hours to solve this problem and try to achieve the objective,” Air & Space Forces Magazine quoted Robinson as saying during the symposium.
Air Force Basic Military Training lasts a total of seven-and-a-half weeks. PACER FORGE takes place during the sixth week of training.
“It’s basically a mock deployment for them,” Military Training Instructor Tech Sgt. Shayla Blakeney told Task & Purpose for a 2024 story. “Cadre is the overseer and will give them tidbits of information. But at the end of the day, that environment out there is trainee-led. All of the information that they’ve learned, like the expeditionary things that they learned in weeks 3 and 4, they’re required to execute it out there.”
In 2022, PACER FORGE replaced the Basic Expeditionary Airman Skills Training or BEAST, which was introduced in 2006 as the culminating event of Basic Military Training. The BEAST was a four-day event in which trainees would face scenarios that mirrored what U.S. troops were facing in the Global War on Terrorism, including simulated mortar attacks, roadside bombs, car bombs, unexploded ordnance, and complex attacks.
In PACER FORGE, trainees are organized into smaller and more dispersed teams than they were during the BEAST, according to a 2022 Air Force news release.
“What we are doing is making them [trainees] ready to join any team, to work well together, to solve tough problems, to be good wingmen and teammates, and to innovate,” Col. Jeff Pixley, then commander of the 737th Training Group, said in the news release.
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