C-130 WIC lifted Combat Airlift to new heights

  • Published
  • By Arlo Taylor
  • 19th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
LITTLE ROCK AIR FORCE BASE, Ark. --  Five of the original cadre members of the U.S. Air Force Weapons School's initial C-130 Weapons Instructor Course came together Friday to attend the retirement of a fellow 29th Weapons Squadron comrade. 

Colonels Glen Downing, Kevin Jackson, Kirk Lear, Greg Otey and John Rutkowski sat down to reflect the challenges of starting the C-130 WIC from scratch and how the concept has changed today's Air Force. 

The genesis of the course began in 1994 when all Air Combat Command aircraft, which C-130s were assigned to at that time, were instructed to stand up weapons schools. 

Under the tutelage of now retired Maj. Gen. Paul Fletcher, then a colonel and Combat Aerial Delivery School commandant, the team took to turning make-shift digs with discarded furniture into the standard bearer for graduate-level tactics training for the Mobility Air Force community. With little time, and even fewer resources at the start, the team of then-captains built a course that changed the way C-130s, and combat airlift, fits into today's warfighting missions. 

"I remember General Fletcher telling us 'You normally get two years to put together... Gentlemen you've got about a year. If you don't get it done in a year, it won't work,'" Colonel Otey, now 19th Airlift Wing commander, recounted. 

"Another intuitive thing General Fletcher said was 'it's going to take 10 years before your students have an impact in the C-130 world,'" said Colonel Rutkowski, now Air Mobility Command Combat Operations Division chief. 

By the time Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom were under way, graduates of the C-130 WIC were making their mark. "A lot guys who were here in the beginning -- initial cadre and students -- were the ones who planned humanitarian airdrops over Afghanistan and got everyone up to speed on using night vision goggles in the early days of Operations Enduring Freedom," said Colonel Lear, now 314th Airlift Wing vice commander. "They were the guys making sure the training could happen." 

Looking back on the 15 years since they helmed the fledgling course, the C-130 WIC founding fathers said they are continually impressed, but not surprised, by the school's success. 

"The thing we consciously said as we stood up the school was 'We're the initial guys and can only do so much. We can put up a frame but every class and group that comes after us has to build upon that frame,'" Colonel Lear said. "We laid the ground work, and then everybody else ran with it, built it better and evolved it." 

"There is no pride in authorship, and we made sure that those who came after us understood that. You don't keep this class because it's a legacy class, but because it's necessary. It makes for a better combat leader," he said. 

One thing that has been a constant is the course's commitment to produce leaders of the highest caliber. 

"It's a five-and-a-half month leadership course disguised as a tactics course. Leadership is the most valuable thing everybody learns here," said Colonel Downing, now Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs Strategy and Assessments Division chief. "Everybody comes from a common background and everybody focuses on a common task. The real learning occurs when they come together as a team to face the challenge instructors put in front of them. In the end, the proof is always in the pudding and the leadership skills in the guise of learning tactics have paid off." 

The notion of "weapons school" was an unknown entity in the mobility world back in 1995. But soon, those patch-wearing C-130 WIC graduates became a hot commodity. 

"We had to get senior leadership to understand we were more than a tactics course on steroids. We were producing combat tacticians, but really we were producing combat leaders," Colonel Downing said. 

And as soon as units started getting Weapon Instructor Course graduates and saw them in action, they wanted more, Colonel Otey said. And that legacy continues today. 

"We not only produce tacticians, we produce leaders and above all we produce integrators," said Colonel Jackson, now U.S. Air Force Warfare Center director of operations. "[Graduates] can walk into a Combined Air and Space Operations Center and by the mere fact they are wearing [the USAF Weapons School Graduate] patch, they are instantly credible. We don't produce managers, only leaders." 

Though many may acknowledge them as "Living Legends," the former cadre members see themselves as a footnote in the ongoing history of Combat Airlift that is still being written. 

"We were too busy to realize what an impact we were making at the time," said Colonel Rutkowski. "Bringing every platform up on the same level playing field with a standard base line of knowledge and the interaction has created one Air Force as opposed to how we used to operate as [Combat Air Force] and [Mobility Air Force]. I think that's huge."

"We were standing on the shoulders of guys who came before us," Colonel Lear added. "We were the ones who were privileged enough to take it to the next level. We were standing on the shoulders of giants."