Photo By Stephen Roughton | Cadet 2nd Class Mikayla McBride writes notes during the land navigation portion of the...... read more read more
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By Randy Roughton
U.S. Air Force Academy Strategic Communications
U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. – Cadets from all 40 squadrons tested their critical thinking, leadership and warfighter skills during the U.S. Air Force Academy’s two-day 2024 Fall Culminating Exercise Oct. 17-18. The CULEX replaced the Commandant’s Challenge and Commandant Training Day and directly supports one of Academy Superintendent Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind’s priorities of creating warfighters to win.
Cadet 4th Class Grace Mallaghan completes push-ups, a fitness challenge, during the Fall Culminating Exercise.
Cadet 4th Class Grace Mallaghan completes push-ups, a fitness challenge, during the Fall Culminating Exercise on Oct. 17, 2024. The 15-hour exercise tested more than 4,000 cadets from all 40 squadrons on critical thinking, leadership and warfighter skills. (U.S. Air Force photo by Justin Pacheco)
Jacks Valley’s immersive training environment
For some cadets, the CULEX was their first return to Jacks Valley’s 3,300-acre training complex since completing Basic Cadet Training. Squadrons competed against each other in land navigation, basic communication, tactical combat casualty care and unit fitness. The performance assessment during these events factored into the overall squadrons’ rankings. Commandant of Cadets Brig. Gen. Gavin Marks will announce the top squadron this week.
Cadet 1st Class Kurt Rinehart, CULEX cadet-in-charge, said the squadrons welcomed the challenge of testing themselves against each other in an immersive environment.
“Cadets were excited to showcase their skills in this outdoor setting and represent their squadrons,” said Rinehart, a Management major. “It’s different this year in the respect that we were in a more immersive environment by using the entire Jacks Valley complex than in previous years. We were ready to see ourselves helping each other, lifting each other up and not just survive but thrive in this CULEX.”
Marks said the CULEX executed world-class military training and assessed the Cadet Wing on Ready Airman Training areas taught since the beginning of the 2024-25 academic year. The exercise focused on accountability, teamwork and a strategic understanding of the future fight during great-power competition.
“Our fall field training exercise provided a great opportunity for cadets to showcase the training they received during the first half of the Fall semester,” Marks said. “We assessed their mission planning, briefing and debriefing skills, fitness, land navigation, basic communications and tactical combat casualty care procedures. They performed very well, and we gained valuable lessons learned to apply to our spring field training exercise.”
U.S. Air Force Ready Airman Training prepares cadets and Airmen to develop and demonstrate the mindset required for deployments supporting a wide range of military operations. The exercise was designed to assess the Cadet Wing on the four-class system instituted this academic year.
The CULEX also tested cadets’ critical thinking abilities through specific scenarios, said Maj. James Moore, a Cadet Wing Military and Training Division officer in charge.
“Cadets used their critical thinking when given a set of details in the scenarios,” Moore said. “Critical thinking came from breaking down that information and providing it in a digestible way so that everyone understood what they needed to do to execute the exercise. CULEX was an opportunity to gather all the cadets in one place to assess their leadership, character and ability to showcase what they have learned.”
The 2024 CULEX was designed to test the skills of cadets in all four classes to support the Academy’s transition to a four-class training system. Cadets were graded by 120 peers, regardless of class, Rinehart said.
“A big focus this year was on how squadrons performed in each event and breaking it down to the flight level,” Rinehart said. “But we wanted to make sure many more individual cadets had the opportunity to showcase the skills they’ve learned. In previous years, mainly the fourth-class cadets performed for the evaluators because they were most recently trained in Basic Cadet Training. As we’re moving toward that four-class system and getting equal military training throughout our time at the Academy, the emphasis was on making sure everyone knows how to do land navigation, combat medical care and talk on the radio. We train on these things every year, but not to the depth that we did in the CULEX.”
| Date Taken: | 10.22.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 10.25.2024 15:55 |
| Story ID: | 483969 |
| Location: | U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, COLORADO, US |
| Web Views: | 45 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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