Team BLAZE members learn AETC plans, ideas for future

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Chase Hedrick
  • 14th Flying Training Wing Public Affairs
COLUMBUS AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. --  Sixty Team BLAZE members traveled to San Antonia Texas on Jan. 11 to join thousands of Airmen at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center for the 2012 Air Education and Training Command Symposium.

During the event Airmen learned about plans for the future of AETC and received information on new training and education tools and techniques from over 120 vendor booths in addition to 70 seminars and panels.

How AETC planned to handle budget cuts was a common question from many Airmen at the Symposium, and was quickly answered by Gen. Edward Rice, Commander, Air Education and Training Command, during his opening remarks. A culture of cost consciousness, also expressed as C3, was introduced as a way for Airmen to look for ways to save the Air Force resources where they can.

"I'm already seeing it," said Rice. "If you just look around at what's going on in the command; from what we're doing in distance learning; what we're doing in bringing electronic capability into the classrooms with different ways of providing the instruction; what we're doing with bringing more into the simulator environment; what we're thinking about in terms of purchases of the next generation of our T-38 and that it's not just an airplane, it's a whole system that's not only going to bring dividends to us in AETC but to the whole combat air forces in the way that we train. It will be revolutionary."

Before the seminars and panels kicked off, the AETC commander challenged attendees to share what they learned at the Symposium with those who kept the mission moving back at their home base. Videos of the seminars are planned to be available on the Air Force Research Institute website, and can also be obtained by request from Alastair.Worden@Maxwell.af.mil.

This year's AETC Symposium took place just before the Jan. 20 release of the Lucasfilm Ltd. movie "Red Tails. A full screening of the event with eight of the original Tuskegee Airmen and the star of the film, Nate Parker, brought in an audience of nearly 2,000 Airmen at the Lila Cockrell Theater on Jan. 13.

Prior to the showing, Nate Parker told the audience that being able to be at this AETC Symposium screening of the movie with real Airmen was important to him, so much so that while the rest of the cast was in DC preparing a showing for President Obama, he chose to stay behind for this one.

Capping the Symposium was the AETC Ball, a formal night out with guest speaker Lt. Gen. David Fadok, Air University Commander and President.