SOUTHWEST ASIA -- Two Airmen from the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing civil engineering squadron explosive ordnance disposal unit recently graduated from the U.S. Army Air Assault School held at Camp Buehring, Kuwait.
The graduation of the two Airmen from the air assault school also serves as an unprecedented event, as this is the first time in history that Airmen have graduated from this particular course while on a contingency operation deployment.
Senior Airman Domenic Martino and Senior Airman Daniel Giansanti, both technicians with the 386th CES EOD, attended the 10-day course where they learned techniques for troop insertion, landing zone set up and evacuation operations involving helicopters. These types of operations are typically used when operating behind enemy lines where vehicles and people must be moved quickly to ensure their safety, explained Martino, who is deployed from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C.
“It was basically all attention to detail. That’s what they taught you throughout the course,” said Martino. “I caught up on it pretty quickly because throughout my EOD school it was all about attention to detail.”
The U.S. Army recently began offering the course to U.S. Army Central Command area of responsibility servicemembers and started accepting its first students at the beginning of April.
Over the duration of the course, Martino and Giansanti learned techniques such as combat assault, slingload operations, where they set up helicopters carry loads such as vehicles, and rappelling operations.
“There are so many fine details you have to look at in each inspection,” Martino explained. “It could be a single link count in the chains, and if you’re one off, then that’s it. It’s a discrepancy or deficiency.”
The 386th CES decided to send the two Airmen based on their demonstrated proficiency and professionalism in their work here at the 386th EOD, said Master Sgt. Travis Hughes, a 386th CES EOD flight chief deployed from Seymour Johnson.
Attending this course will help the Airmen and their teams better perform in a variety of austere locations required to complete the wing’s mission.
“Part of our mission set is to support Army teams and what we’ve found over the last few years is that we have to prepare our guys for these types of mission sets,” said Hughes.
“We have to make sure our guys can safely respond to incidents that require an air insert,” Hughes continued. “Getting them to this course allows them to get that foundation so that when we have to respond via air insert, they can work safely around the aircraft.”
On a more personal level, Martino said he felt that graduating from this challenging course was yet another major milestone he reached in his military career. And it is one he is particularly proud of.