Airman's Roll Call: Ancillary training Published July 8, 2009 SAN ANTONIO (AFNS) -- This week's Airman's Roll Call focuses on changes to Air Force ancillary training programs. New Air Force policy streamlines redundant and outdated ancillary training programs and aligns expeditionary skills training with war-fighter requirements. Air Force leaders are also addressing the time requirement to complete ancillary training, after discovering a common misperception existed among Airmen that all ancillary training can be accomplished in 90 minutes. Air Force leadership initially set the bar high: 90 minutes per member, per year for annual Total Force Awareness Training requirements. However, deploying Airmen to a combat zone requires extensive pre-deployment training; thus expeditionary skills training never fell into the 90-minute standard. Key points of recent AF/A1 policy: - To prevent unconstrained growth in the Air Force's ancillary training program, the A1 community recently established "gatekeeper" bodies to vet emerging requirements and ensure senior leader oversight. - The Air Force Learning Committee and the Expeditionary Skills Senior Review Group have been designated the gatekeepers for ancillary and expeditionary skills training, respectively. - A gatekeeper process ensures senior leadership has full situational awareness on training requirements, and allows for establishment of priorities, setting limits and communicating results. - Ancillary training that is no longer required or combined with other courses includes Constitution Day training, crime prevention, family care plan brief, local area survival training, equal opportunity for supervisors of civilians, and initial security orientation-"un-cleared" version. "Our primary goal is to eliminate redundancy in our ancillary training to provide Airmen much-needed time to focus on their primary and expeditionary missions," said Lt. Gen. Richard Y. Newton III, the Air Force deputy chief of staff for manpower, personnel and services. "We're going to do that by taking a realistic approach with required training in the future."