Warrior diplomats work ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’ Published Jan. 22, 2016 By Senior Airman Joshua King Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst Public Affairs JOINT BASE MCGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST, N.J. -- Building and maintaining relationships with locals in deployed environments is imperative to the mission of winning hearts and minds. Service members from every branch of the U.S. Armed Forces can attend classes at the Air Advisor Flight, part of the Expeditionary Operations School at JB MDL and learn how to make these relationships prosper. The Air Advisor Flight is a school that trains and educates service members, Airmen across all career fields to deploy and work with partner nation Airmen. "We teach our advisors to asses, train, advise, assist and equip, the five functions of an air advisor, to enable and strengthen their aviation capacity in support of U.S. and partner nation interests around the globe," said Jack Smith, Air Advisor Flight Chief. Core curriculum includes legal authorities, strategic guidance of the role, as well as a culture and language department that educates them on their mission specific region. "The AAF is on a joint base and we work jointly down range, it only makes sense that we receive joint training," said Smith. Class sizes vary from 40-60 students at any given time, with eight to ten instructors depending on the need of class at that time. "Our staff is broken into two main groups, core knowledge skills and region and culture experts," added Smith. "The region and culture instructors are people who have spent time living and working in the country they teach on." Depending on where the advisor will be deploying, classes range in length from 2 to 6 weeks. There is no formal grading at the AAF but students are constantly being assessed on all of the topics they are learning and have to meet certain requirements in each subject. Air Advising is a relatively small field but is growing every day. Advisors down range give daily feedback to the school to help constantly improve and update curriculum. Col. Darin Driggers, NorthCom counter terrorism division, a current AAF student and scheduled to deploy after graduating, said the course has given him more tools to add to his Airman's toolkit that will assist him in completing his upcoming mission. "This is going to be the most challenging and exciting deployment I have been on," said Driggers. "I am looking forward to engaging with our partners, I have never been able to sit down one on one with our partners and I am looking forward to it."