Lackland modernizes as military might grows
Updates at S.A. base include new housing for increasing number of Air Force recruits
SAN ANTONIO — Military officials are eyeing construction plans that call for modernizing key facilities at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, particularly housing for recruits in basic training as the Air Force increases its strength after years of cutbacks.
While the number of basic military training graduates is projected to remain just above 37,000 a year through 2021, the Air Education and Training Command will add four new large dormitory complexes in the coming years. Two others built in the mid-1960s will be renovated as part of a larger plan for new construction at bases in Texas and Mississippi.
The pace is picking up at Lackland, home of Air Force basic training, which saw the number of active-duty recruits rise from 24,137 in 2015 to 31,525 last year — as a percentage, the largest jump in more than 40 years.
“In one year we ramped up to 317,000 active-duty airmen and that represented the largest single-year increase since Vietnam for us,” the command’s leader, Lt. Gen. Darryl Roberson said of the service’s total force. “The Air Force is on a path of growth, primarily for readiness reasons.
“It’s multifaceted for sure, but we are on a path of growth that started out at 310,500 last year to 350,000 with the current plans, and of course you can’t increase 40,000 people in one year without it being probably a wartime scenario.” New plans for control tower
Plans call for Lackland to become an increasingly modern installation, particularly as it adds more Airmen Training Complexes, or ATCs, which can house and feed as many as 1,152 airmen at a time.
Four of the new multistory structures are up and running, with four more to be built between now and 2024 or so. The Command will eventually demolish the much smaller and timeworn Recruit Housing & Training dormitories — some of which were built in the days of recruits’ grandparents.
Those dorms have a host of limitations compared with the new complexes, which are designed to improve safety and have more amenities.
Airmen recently filed into an older dorm reactivated a year ago to accommodate the rebirth of the 324th Training Squadron after lightning flashed across menacing skies 5 miles to the southwest. That’s a safety precaution not needed in the new complexes, where trainees can exercise under a five-story outdoor atrium in all weather conditions.
“I can lose training for hours at a time because of the lightning,” said Lt. Col. Sam Berenguer, commander of the 324th, known as the Knights.
A command blueprint calls for other construction in the coming years. One project is a new air traffic control tower overseeing Lackland’s 2-mile-long runway. The other is a dining facility that will replace a small, aging chow hall on Camp Bullis, the brushy 27,994-acre training range in northwest Bexar County.
The number of recruits graduating at Lackland has been generally increasing in recent years. Lackland expects to graduate 39,400 by the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year, the highest mark since 2009, when 39,550 airmen marched off the parade field.
That’s getting close to the ceiling for the command, but the numbers expected to dip for awhile. Roberson said the command has plenty of facilities to accommodate the 37,000-plus recruits projected to graduate each year from 2018 to 2021.
“If we were to increase the numbers above about 40,000 airmen, then we would get into a situation where we would have to start going with the tents and all that kind of stuff,” he said. Creating new efficiencies
Lackland has been there and done that.
Six months after the Korean War began, the base was a huge tent city serving 70,000 basic trainees, having seen its recruit population jump from 36,513 in just the first two weeks of January 1951.
It was a disastrous escalation. Clothing stocks at other training bases were rationed, and it was impossible to get exact sizes. Lackland exhausted the Air Force’s supply of steel folding cots and mattresses. Training stopped, but resumed at the end of February. Recruits in many cases received instruction for a week before moving on to other installations.
Winter weather in the week after Christmas 1950 had been the harshest in years, and rumors of pneumonia outbreaks and suicides swirled. Those stories weren’t true, but word of the miserable conditions made its way to Washington, prompting thenSenate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson to hold hearings.
The problem was rooted in an Air Force decision to lift its recruiting cap after war broke out. The draft had young men joining the Air Force in droves. Some 210,000 recruits passed through Lackland from July 1950 through June 1951.
The dormitory transformation underscores the Air Force’s emphasis on creating new efficiencies in basic training while instituting changes bent on the mental toughening of airmen who are deploying to hostile, austere environments.
“Here’s the reality: My job’s to make sure that this Air Force is ready for the next conflict,” said Gen. David Goldfein, the Air Force’s chief of staff, in a recent interview. A critical part of his mission, he said, is to “ensure that we’re prepared for what is coming next.”
“I don’t have many things that I understand with absolute clarity, but there’s one belief I have, and that is I have from right now until the war starts to get the force ready, and I ought to be treating every week as a blessing and the last week of peace.”