The 23rd Civil Engineer Squadron hosted a U.S. Air Force Fire and Emergency Services career field conference at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia, March 7-11, 2022.

Fire and Emergency Services leaders from across the Air Force combined their knowledge to reshape wartime firefighting to meet Air Force Force Generation (AFFORGEN) and Agile Combat Employment (ACE).

“We have to change the way we deploy equipment and personnel because our requirements are too large,” said U.S. Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Mark Abrahamson, 23rd CES fire chief. “With Agile Combat Employment, you have to be able to go forward and backward relatively easy. These concepts present a complete paradigm shift from the way we’ve been providing wartime firefighting capability for decades.

“Now we’re doing research and development to create new Unit Type Codes (deployment requirements) for firefighting in the future,” Abrahamson added. “Nothing of this magnitude has been done since the Vietnam War.”

To align with Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.'s AFFORGEN model, Fire and Emergency Services must adapt and ensure they have the ability to deploy with a smaller footprint and still provide aircrew rescue capabilities.

Fire and Emergency Services equipment and vehicles are large and heavy. As a result, new requirements are being created to provide mobility at contingency locations without the need for larger aircraft. Within the Department of Defense, the Air Force holds the only fire truck that is transportable by a C-130.

“We are charged to conduct logistics under attack and project combat airpower,” said Chief Master Sgt. Phillip Winkelmann, Fire and Emergency Services career field manager. “The only way to do that is if we're organized, trained and equipped, and all on the same sheet of music. AFFORGEN provided that sheet of music for us to work from.”

Through this process, all tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP) are being rewritten for the entire Fire and Emergency Services career field to ensure all Airmen are equipped with the same knowledge. With the 23rd Wing actively testing TTPs during local Lead-Wing exercises, the 23rd CES volunteered to head the initiative.

“Moody was the first base to raise their hand and say ‘We can do this. We're Lead Wing. We have tactics, techniques, and procedures; we have personnel and we will take this and move it past a vision to action,” Winkelmann said.

Regardless of what the Air Force mission brings, fire protection leaders are confident that their Airmen will ensure the mission continues.

“We have a great skill set to solve problems,” Winkelmann said. “Firefighters' main focus in life is to look at a problem and solve it. Work the problem to the finish – that’s what firefighters do.”