TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. —
The 60th Air Mobility Wing conducted its first Mission Ready Airman-Mission Generation Academy May 20 to June 4, 2024.
The MRA-MG Academy is the first of its kind for the 60th AMW; a codified training school where Airmen learn jobs outside of their Air Force Specialty Codes to prepare for operations involving small teams in different locations with changing circumstances.
The academy supports the creation of Air Task Forces approved by Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall in 2023, an initiative to experiment with ways to more effectively provide deployable, integrated units.
Loadmasters, crew chiefs, flight line specialists, aerospace ground equipment technicians, pilots and other AFSCs learn the roles of other career fields during these classes, which prepare Airmen for filling C-17, C-5 and KC-46 deployment requirements and power projection platform needs.
“We want to make sure that we are developing a group of trained, qualified Airmen who feel comfortable in mission command,” said Lt. Col. Holly Gramkow, 60th MXS commander, who is overseeing the implementation of the MRA-MG Academy. “This helps Airmen feel comfortable making decisions and getting the mission done, even if it’s not necessarily their primary AFSC.”
Spanning over 10 days, the course includes classroom time, hands-on learning and a final test to graduate. Classes involve pre-flight and post-flight inspections, flare munitions transport, aircraft launch and recovery operations, cargo joint inspections, refueling and defueling aircraft and more. Twenty-three students from the Operations Group, Maintenance Group and Mission Support Group, representing 11 AFSCs, learned 15 different tasks.
U.S. Air Force 2nd Lt. Monzell Wiggins, 60th Maintenance Squadron flight commander, led the Travis MRA-MG Academy.
“I had a little bit of anxiety about people being willing to learn stuff outside of their AFSCs,” said Wiggins. “They are pretty hyped to do it, and it’s eye-opening to what different AFSCs are doing and how they contribute to the mission overall.”
This program is in a testing phase and will be analyzed to gauge how long the next MRA Academy should be and how often trainings should be held for knowledge retention. Leaders in the working group will evaluate the results of the academy to implement in future iterations of training.
