Air Force officials release new annual training plan Published Oct. 24, 2007 By Senior Airman Grant Saylor Wing Public Affairs MCCHORD AIR FORCE BASE, Wash. -- Air Force leadership recently approved a plan to significantly reduce annual ancillary training requirements across the Total Force. Starting Oct. 15, annual awareness training, was organized into three blocks of instruction covering nine courses. Total ancillary training can now be accomplished in just 90 minutes. The plan will save the Air Force more than 6 million man hours per year. Response to the change has been met with enthusiasm by Reserve Airmen. "This will give us more time to concentrate on our already knowledge-intensive primary career field," said Senior Airman Glenn Trowbridge, 446th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron. "It will allow us more time on the flightline, and that's a good thing." Supervisors agree. "If they can make it work, it seems like a good idea. Our Airmen don't come out here to do annual training, they come here to get out on the flightline," said Tech Sgt. Edward Sundquist, 446th AMXS. With the old training, "you get into this mode of 'death by Power Point," he said. A recent assessment showed ancillary training consumed a disproportionate amount of the Airmen's time, thus necessatating the change. "This is a huge win for the entire Air Force," said Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley. "By tightening up our ancillary training requirements, we've returned vital time to all Airmen." Three new training blocks satisfy all annual requirements in the following subject areas: · Force Protection - covers anti-terrorism training · Information Protection - five courses including Info Security, Info Assurance, Records Management, Privacy Act Training and NATO Security · Human Relations - covering suicide awareness, violence prevention and combating trafficking in persons All training blocks will be available through the Advanced Distributed Learning Service Web site. At the discretion of the unit commander, they will also be made available through downloadable take-home omputer-based training and as instructor-lead group training. Airmen who complete the training using ADLS will have their record updated automatically. If the off-line delivery method is used, unit training managers will manually upload course completion data into ADLS to ensure full credit.